Image: Kwon Junho

On Pentecost Sunday the Person of the Holy Spirit, the advocate, the one called alongside to help you, was the presence of God to come upon them. What does this mean for you? With the Holy Spirit, you wake up with a fire in your heart and the passion to serve Jesus. The Spirit reveals the way to move forward by faith every day.

Pray with me…“Come, Holy Spirit”…stir up your faith and relationship with the Spirit. Then with the message of the Bible in your hand and the Spirit in your heart, you will hear God’s voice lead you through your daily life!

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As a matter of fact, I believe we need to pray for one another’s physical needs in a much more effective way than we have in the past. Our prayers sometimes sound like this: “Lord, bless brother so-and-so in his illness. Give direction to his physicians. And if it be thy will, bring him to health. Amen.” Though I don’t fault the heart behind that prayer, I want to suggest some ways that we might sharpen our prayers for those who are ill.

Who can pray for the sick?

All Christians are given that privilege, though there may be those who are more gifted in this area than others. Certainly elders are to be involved in praying for the sick. James writes, “Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven.” James 5:14-15

When and where do we pray for the sick?

We should pray in our families for the sick We should pray in the routine of everyday life. We should pray in our small groups or Sunday School class. We should pray in the whole church, whether it is coming forward for prayer by a prayer team, or by the elders, or in a prayer room after a service.

How do we pray for the sick?

There is no divine methodology. The most fascinating aspect to the healing ministry of Jesus is His astonishing variety of methods employed to bring about healing. Anything from a touch to a mud-pack was used by Jesus to demonstrate His Father’s desire to heal. Jesus shows us that methodology is not doctrine. He gives us the freedom to pray in various ways that work.

A number of years ago, I had the privilege of being in a seminar on healing prayer taught using John Wimber’s methods. I believe that Wimber’s basic five steps are a good, well-balanced approach to praying for healing. The five steps with my commentary are as follows:

Giulio Maspero’s book Rethinking the Filioque with the Greek Fathers addresses the seemingly perennial theological debate that has divided Christendom for a thousand years through a close reading of the development of trinitarian doctrine in the early Church. For those unfamiliar with the filioque controversy, a brief overview will help set the stage for Maspero’s book. “Filioque” is a Latin phrase that means “and the Son.” It was first added to the third heading of the Niceno-Constantinoplitan Creed (“I believe in the Holy Spirit…who proceeds from the Father and the Son”) at the regional Council of Toledo held in 589 and later adopted by the Western Latin-speaking Church under the jurisdiction of the Roman pontiff. Greek-speaking Christians saw this as problematic both ecclesiastically and theologically. Ecclesiastically, they saw it as an illegitimate addition to the Creed without ecumenical consent. It would be like a single state in the US making a change to the US Constitution and declaring that all the other states had to accept the change whether they liked it or not. Theologically, Greek-speaking authors thought that the addition of the filioque compromised the unity of God, which was seen to be found in the Father as the sole cause of the Trinity, by adding a second cause within the Godhead. Two causes meant there were two Gods. Ultimately, this became one of the issues that led to the schism between East and West Christendom in 1054 that has never been healed.

Maspero’s book is not an attempt to address all the issues of the Filioque. The history is long and this ground has been covered by others, such as A. Edward Siecienski’s excellent historical survey The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy (Oxford University Press, 2010). Any reader interested in Maspero’s book should read Siecienski’s book first to familiarize themselves with the history. Instead, Maspero focuses on giving a nuanced historical reading of the development of filioque within the development of trinitarian doctrine in the early church from Origen (c 185-254) to Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-395). At each stage, Maspero is careful to explain how these authors were addressing specific issues in their own time and how that affected their articulation of Trinitarian doctrine.

For example, Origen (the subject of chapter 1) was addressing both Stoic materialism and Gnostic cosmology when he made a sharp distinction between God and creation but kept an ordered hierarchy within the Trinity such that the Father was more truly God than the Son, and the Son more God than the Holy Spirit. This Logos-theology (as he calls it) resulted in two models of the Trinity: the linear model (Father → Logos → Pneuma) and the triangular model ( Logos ← Father → Pneuma). These were never resolved in Origen and led to the Arian controversy at the beginning of the fourth century. Maspero then traces (chapters 2 and 3) how these two models worked themselves out in the fourth century in authors like Epiphanius, Pseudo-Athanasius, Athanasius, Eusebius of Caesarea and Marcellus of Ancyra. While Athanasius’s nature (physis)-theology approach might have helped address the Arian debates over the status of the Son, it was insufficient to answer the so-called Pneumatomachians (=Spirit Fighters) who affirmed the divinity of the Son but denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit. It is this debate seen in authors like Gregory of Nazianzus and especially Gregory of Nyssa (chapters 4 and 5) that Maspero focuses on as the immediate context for the development of the Greek filioque.

I think this is a particularly important contribution not only to debates about the filioque but also to general discussions about the Trinitarian debates of the fourth century. Too often the Pneumatomachian controversy is an appendix to the Arian controversy. “Once the Arian controversy was solved,” so the story typically goes, “there were some weird people who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit but that was an anomaly and everybody just moved on until the Christological controversies of the fifth century.” Instead, Maspero argues that the Pneumatomachian controversy highlighted a gap in the nature (physis) model that made the Pneumatomachian position a comprehensible position to hold. It is in their response to the Pneumatomachians that Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa shifted from the question of nature to the question of relation that allowed them to sufficiently answer the Pneumatomachian objections: the identity of the Son and Spirit is distinguished by a difference in the way they relate to the Father (Son is begotten; Spirit proceeds). More so, the Spirit, argued the two Gregories, is metaphysically placed in between the Father and the Son such that the Father can remain cause while admitting an active role of the Son in the procession of the Holy Spirit.

Maspero then tests his hypothesis by comparing these Greek developments with the Syrian theological tradition (chapter 6). Here Maspero once again demonstrates historical nuance in attending to the linguistic difficulties in translating concepts developed in a Greek-speaking context into a Syrian one. Namely, Gregory of Nazianzus was able to distinguish procession as a general category (proion) from the specific relation of the Spirit to the Father (ekporeutōs). Not only does the Syrian Church’s adaptation of the Creed in 410 explicitly say that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son—as well as being present in their own nascent theologians such as Ephrem the Syrian—but Syriac translations of the Cappadocians use filioque-type language to express Gregory’s terminological distinction that was unavailable to them in Syriac. When placed in the highly technical Trinitarian debates of the fourth century, it becomes clear that this evidence isn’t merely the result of translation, but of conceptual pressure arising from the Pneumatomachian debates at the end of the fourth century.

The rest of the book is a comparison between what Maspero has discovered in the Greek (and Syrian) Fathers, with the theological developments in the West, specifically Augustine. Augustine, as the most important Latin-speaking theologian, is usually charged with being the source of the filioque. In chapter 7, Maspero addresses the issue of the so-called “psychological analogy” of the Trinity which plays an important part in Augustine’s De Trinitate. Was this a cause of the filioque? Maspero argues that it was not because he also has discovered a similar, though not identical, psychological analogy at work in Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and the seventh-century theologian Anastasius of Sinai (which he argues is independent of Augustine’s influence). Secondly, in chapter 8, Maspero takes a close look at the metaphysical differences between Augustine and the Cappadocians. While he thinks that Augustine is at a conceptual disadvantage compared to the Greek-speaking East—specifically on the ontological status of relation—Maspero shows how Augustine is driven by similar conceptual pressures (a shared theological grammar) as Gregory of Nyssa to affirm a role of the Son in the procession of the Spirit.

Maspero finally concludes with a summary of his argument and an ecumenical proposal: affirm a Greek understanding of the active (but not causal) role of the Son in the procession of the Holy Spirit.

Maspero has written a nuanced and highly technical, historical, and theological investigation of the “Greek Filioque”. While he gives helpful summaries of his argument along the way to mark the trail he is blazing, this is still an admittedly difficult book and requires a slow and careful reading. Those unfamiliar with scholarship on the Trinitarian debates of the fourth century would do well to read Lewis Ayres’s Nicaea and Its Legacy or Mark DelCogliano’s introduction and translation of Basil of Caesarea’s Against Eunomius. Nevertheless, this is an important and necessary book for three reasons. First, Maspero demonstrates how to do historical theology well. Historical theology isn’t just appealing to what theologians of the past have said, but why they said it. Second, I think Maspero does an excellent job of showing how biblical exegesis was an integral part of these debates. These early Christians weren’t just philosophizing or engaging in abstract conceptual arguments for their own sake. Their reflections arise out of their close reading of the Bible to address the needs of their time. While we might not always understand the nuances of their exegesis, we should walk away from Maspero’s book appreciating just how important the Bible was for them in these debates. Third, remembering the role the filioque played in the division of 1054, Maspero’s work is an important contribution to healing those rifts so that we, as Jesus prayed, might be one.

Reviewed by Ryan Clevenger

Publisher’s page: https://www.eerdmans.com/9781467466417/rethinking-the-filioque-with-the-greek-fathers/

Philip Yancey, “The Rise and Fall and Rise of Jimmy Carter” Patheos (March 24, 2023).

John W. Kennedy, “Pentecostal Research 2.0” AGNews (March 29, 2023).

Shaunti Feldhahn, “God is on the Move at Harvard – and in our World” Shaunti.com (April 6, 2023).

John Lathrop writes: “At the link you can read an article written by Christian author, Shaunti Feldhahn. It deals with Harvard, from which she and her husband, Jeff, graduated. More specifically, she writes about a recent conference that was held at Harvard.”

Elijah Kim of Pathos Foundation speaks about the Quiet Revival DrDanny.Podbean (April 11, 2023).

John Lathrop writes: “At the link you can hear a recent interview with Dr. Elijah Kim (it is about 57 minutes long). He speaks about his own spiritual journey, Boston United Worship, working with churches of different ethnicities, and the ‘quiet revival’ that is taking place in Boston.”

Roger E. Olson, “‘Faith Healing’: What Is It?” Patheos (April 27, 2023).

Historian of religion, Roger Olson, argues that the terms “faith healer” and “faith healing,” though popular with journalists, critics, and now even some historians, are unknown terms to the people and movement (Pentecostals and charismatics) that they are supposed to represent. He says none of the so-called faith healers believed it was faith that healed. Rather, they all believed it was God that healed. Olson concludes, “I do believe in and have experienced healing through prayer within the church as commanded by James 5:13-15 and believe Christians ought to follow that pattern in prayer for the sick.”

Image: Joel Holland

Stephen Strang, “The Spirit of Pentecost in an Upside-Down World: Here’s how you can experience the power of Acts 2 to turn your life right-side up for Jesus” Charisma (May-June 2023).

Charisma’s founding editor teaches a practical introduction to the contemporary ministry of the Holy Spirit that every follower of Jesus can experience.

Kate Shellnutt, “Died: Pat Robertson, Broadcast Pioneer Who Brought Christian TV to the Mainstream: With CBN, ‘The 700 Club,’ Regent, the Christian Coalition, and a run for president, he changed evangelicals’ place in public life” Christianity Today (June 8, 2023).

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Charles Carrin

One of the tragic losses in modern Christianity is the near-elimination of the Holy Spirit from the life and activity of many believers. Religion that is learned and formalized can function without the Holy Spirit; true spirituality cannot. A prominent church leader once said of his denomination that “If the Holy Spirit were to disappear from the Church 90% of its work would go on as if nothing happened.” In many cases that is so. The loss is enormous. While your church or denomination may not be like that, there are still no known Christians today experiencing the Holy Spirit in the same capacity as did first century believers. Nor are we getting the same results. Modern Christianity exerts a fading influence in Western culture.

In John 16:13, Jesus promised, “When the Spirit of truth has come He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is mine and declare it to you.” And again, in John 15:26 He said, “When the Helper comes whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me.” The word Jesus used for “Helper” has a rich and wonderful meaning in its Greek equivalent, parakletos, and was used in the ancient Olympic Games to identify those who accompanied a marathon runner by shouting encouragement to him. This example of the Holy Spirit and the Christian with the marathon-runner to his paraklete is an excellent illustration. Para = “alongside of;” kaleo = “to call.” Here are six scriptural ways the Holy Spirit wants to accompany our race and shout encouragement:

1. The Holy Spirit bears witness directly to our Spirit and leads us internally: Romans 8:16: “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” 1 John 5:6-8: “And it is the Spirit who bears witness, because the Spirit is truth. For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one.”

2. The Holy Spirit will lead us externally: Acts 16:6-7: “Now when they had gone through Phrygia and the region of Galatia, they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia. After they had come to Mysia, they tried to go into Bithynia but the Spirit did not permit them.” Genesis 24:27: “As for me, being on the way, the Lord led me to the house of my master’s brethren.” 1 Samuel 10:6: “Then the Spirit of the Lord will come upon you, and you will prophesy with them and be turned into another man.” Galatians 5:16-19: “Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.”

However, what can get easily leveled against continuationists, from a more cessationist camp, is the idea that such revelation would no longer be needed knowing we now have the completed revelation of God in Jesus Christ, which is, of course, summarized in the full canon of Scripture. This revelation is the final word and no other such revelation is needed. And I understand the concern, especially noting such doctrines as the sufficiency of Scripture. However, I believe there is a very balanced approach that allows for the God-breathed Scriptures to maintain their authoritative place as God’s written revelation while also maintaining that God still speaks, reveals and communicates today.

Here is what I believe we need to recognize.

We must confess there is no more needed revelation from God with respect to his redemptive purposes in Jesus Christ. No more! The work of Christ and the revelation concerning this work – summed up in his life, ministry, death and resurrection – are the final word on God’s redemptive revelation and purposes. And I believe the New Testament makes this quite clear.

Yet, I do not think it is out of bounds to believe God continues to communicate in what I might term as a non-redemptive measure. This is where continuationists part from cessationists.

Again, I reiterate that it would be quite detrimental to say there is still more for God to reveal concerning the redemption of humanity through Christ and the gospel of the kingdom. Christ remains the final word on such. But, to believe God still reveals today, in a non-redemptive sense, should not be seen as harmful to a faith that looks to be grounded in Christ, the gospel and the testimony of the canon of Scripture. Matter of fact, I would argue that, to not allow for God to still directly speak and reveal today, in all his various manners, would cut us off from something very dear to the heart of God.

In all, I want to give two pointers as to why I believe in continuing, non-redemptive revelation:

1) Even while the canon of Scripture was being formed, God was always speaking para-Scripture, meaning he was speaking alongside what would be included in the canon of Scripture.

A couple examples would be found in places such as 1 Samuel 10:10-13 and 1 Timothy 1:18-19.

Charles Carrin: I had a specific God-instruction to write a “charismatic catechism” for the benefit of Spirit-filled believers who had no such resource. I began working and the book assumed the nature of a theological-treatise. There are 300 questions and answers on a progression of 18 sub-topics, beginning with “Who Is God?,” and including questions about the Kingdom, the Church, the Bible, Mankind, Israel, Church History, Spiritual Gifts, the Devil/Demons, and Significant People. A beneficial feature of the book is that it can be opened at any page and the reader can begin studying a “capsule” of important Christian truth. The period of study can effectively be three minutes or three hours.

PneumaReview.com: Whom do you feel will benefit the most from this book?

Charles Carrin: There is something for every age and specialty-interest. Youth, middle-aged, seniors, will find an introduction to the Bible, Christianity, church history, and other important information. It will be of special help to the new Christian who is just beginning their learning process of Kingdom facts, or the long-time believer who needs to re-fresh his Christian education.

PneumaReview.com: How did you select the subjects that you included in the book?

Spirit-Empowered Theology (Chosen, 2017).

Charles Carrin: There were two motivations: A Catechism contains a progression of theological and historical topics. The format reads in an expanding way. One topic leads into another and as far as possible I pursued that development of thought. Themes were chosen in the hope that readers would continue pursuing them beyond the Catechism. Secondly, I prayed, seeking God’s direction for the fields I covered.

PneumaReview.com: Why did you include entries about things outside of the Bible, such as events and people in post apostolic church history?

Charles Carrin: I have been in ordained ministry almost 70 years and have had opportunity for long-range observations of strengths and failures among believers. Most Christians, including many pastors, are woefully uninformed about their own church history. In brief, I have included such historical facts as Emperor Theodosius decreeing in 380 A.D. that only those churches accepting Imperial endorsement and known as Roman Catholic would be recognized as official. All others would be heretic. Modern Christians need to know that there were more Bishops who boycotted this decree than accepted it. Even so, the minority was declared “official” and the others heretic. My hope is that the reader will be motivated to explore the church’s historical field far beyond what I have written. Most Protestants are unaware of their own antiquity.

From the Fall 2013 issue of Pneuma Review.

Amos Yong, Who is the Holy Spirit? A Walk with the Apostles, a Paraclete Guide (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2011), 215 pages, ISBN 9781557256355.

Amos Yong has written a fresh and comprehensive guide concerning the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts. This work has profound implications for contemporary audiences regarding the topic of the Spirit in the Acts narrative. Who is the Holy Spirit will resonate with anyone wishing to discern the winds of the Third Person of the Holy Trinity.

This book is divided into eight parts and thirty-nine chapters. The first part illuminates the ramifications of the Spirit’s outpouring, as well as the kingdom promise and the Spirit’s outpouring. This is followed by an overview of the economy of salvation, including the gifts, fellowship, mission, politics, and charismatic dimensions of the Spirit (part two). Part three underscores the economics of the Spirit in Judea, and part four examines the theological work of the Spirit in light of the story of the people of Israel. The fifth part addresses the movement of the Spirit into Samaria and the highways of Palestine. Part six enumerates the relationship between the Spirit and the Gentiles. Part seven, the prophetic and political overtures of the Kingdom-empire, in addition to the relationship of the Spirit to the world. The final part explores the witness, resurrection, nature, and sacramental dimensions of the Spirit.

According to Yong, the empowering witness of the Spirit outlines how to live faithfully in a pluralistic world. Whether government, society, or the global economy, the demands on our lives will consume us if we are not equipped with the power of Spirit. As Yong proposes, following Zaccheus, our response might also extend “the new economy of salvation so as to reconcile people, opposing and correcting the unjust structures of our world” (p 28). Yet as he explains, there is fellowship, warmth, and healing in the Spirit. This indeed is a sign of the messianic promise and “the redemption, reconciliation, and release long associated with the year of the Lord’s favor” (p 44). Whither the economics of the Spirit? If we fully embrace the Spirit’s power, and overcome our self-centeredness, then we will have the full embodiment of the Holy Spirit upon our lives. Above all, the Spirit filled life in the Acts narrative is about spiritual formation, or perhaps even better, transformation. There is resurrection power in the Spirit and in the Spirit the ability to traverse foes and powers of darkness.

Frank D. Macchia, Justified in the Spirit: Creation, Redemption, and the Triune God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 360 pages, ISBN 9780802837493.

Justified in the Spirit is a sophisticated attempt to do what its title suggests: to find an increased role for the Spirit within the Christian doctrine of justification. The book represents a bringing together of a number of different perspectives—including those that derive primarily from centuries of tradition, along with more recent insights from biblical scholarship. The book moves through discussions of the shape of soteriology within different streams of tradition (Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, Pentecostal, etc.), and combines these with significant contributions from well known theologians. Although Macchia is a theologian himself, he pays more attention to the fruits of New Testament scholars than many other theologians working today.

One of the book’s main arguments is summed up on p. 53: “Participation in Christ is first and primarily a pneumatological reality as believers are caught up in the communion of the Spirit with Christ and, through Christ with the heavenly Father.” This sentence says a lot. One of the book’s main aims seems to be to forge links between aspects of soteriology and Trinitarian language.

Many of the main features, it must be said, are indicative of the age in which this book was written: it is certainly vogue to be “broadly Trinitarian, ecclesiological, and eschatological” (a description found on the back cover). While there may a proper place to be “Trinitarian”, the way in which that call has been handled in recent years has been a little over the top, as it sometimes seems as if one’s handling of any given doctrine can somehow be graded on how great a role it assigns to each member of the Trinity. It is almost as though theologians are afraid to leave out one of the members of the Trinity in any given discussion, even when the topic (e.g. hermeneutics) does not have a natural bearing on the doctrine of the Trinity. This danger seems to be somewhat greater among Pentecostals, as some appear to have a strong desire to bring the Spirit into doctrines in which the Spirit arguably does not belong.

Frank D. Macchia

Does Macchia do that here? It is difficult to say. His discussion is at all places carefully researched, and his arguments are never fleeting or forced. Although he never gives the keys (so to speak) to NT scholarship, he does listen to it intently and with a genuine openness. And yet the question remains whether Macchia accomplishes a pneumatological orientation of the doctrine of justification simply by construing “justification” more broadly than others do, by allowing it to include (rather than lead to) the fruit of the spirit-filled life. The same could be said of how Macchia achieves his heightened emphasis on the role of the spirit-filled community. Both of these concerns naturally belong within a theology, but are they really a part of justification per se? Macchia evidently disagrees with the habit of identifying “justification” with a forensic aspect of salvation, and identifying the other aspects of salvation with other terms. Yet he writes as if the term “justification” must apply to all aspects of salvation—including justification per se, sanctification, and redemption. (See esp. pp. 204–5.) Macchia is not alone in this, but it is still unfortunate that he does not explain why he takes this approach.

The final installment from Professor Williams’ book, The Gift of the Holy Spirit Today, about the greatest reality of our time.

The Gift of the Holy Spirit Today: Effects, Part 1 (Chapter 8)

Epilogue & Bibliography

This book has been written with excitement and hope. If it is true that many people today are freshly experiencing the gift of the Holy Spirit, there is much to be excited about. For in this gift there is fullness of God’s presence and power—and entrance into a whole new dimension of praise, witness and action. Also there is much to be hoped for: that people everywhere will become alert to the possibility of this gift, respond to God’s offer of its availability and thereby receive it from the exalted Lord.

Perhaps these pages will have come as a surprise to some readers. For it is a fact that despite the high significance of the gift of the Holy Spirit, many persons have little knowledge or understanding of it. Such a question as Paul’s, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” (Acts 19:2), may seem totally irrelevant and meaningless to many. They may never really have thought about the matter, and perhaps they have not so much as heard about it.

Others in reading may have felt disturbed. First, there may be some who have long thought of the gift of the Holy Spirit in terms of a kind of divine immanence experienced in a mystical moment. With or without the mediation of Jesus Christ it is assumed that the spirit of a person may enter into union with the divine Spirit. Accordingly, there is already a given—hence gift-like—unity of the divine and human spirit which only needs to be realized through meditation and stripping away artificial barriers. Thus to read all this about the work of Jesus Christ in redemption and forgiveness of sins as necessary to the reception of the Spirit may seem strange and unwarranted. Second, there may be other readers who have long viewed this gift as so inseparably attached to the sacramental life of the church that all persons who receive the proper sacramental action (baptism, confirmation) invariably become recipients of this gift. Accord­ingly, there is no point in getting excited about or looking forward to the gift. For if one has been properly baptized (or confirmed, as the case may be), the gift presumably has been received. Third, there may be still other readers who view the gift of the Holy Spirit as identical with the gift of salvation; thus there is no gift to be considered beyond the new life in Christ. Indeed, some might say, does not the very idea of an additional gift detract from the all-sufficiency of Christ?