James K.A. Smith is a philosophy professor at Calvin College and author of many books and articles. He has designed this book to focus on two distinct aspects of Christian life, the things we love and the habits we have. The book is divided into seven chapters with the first half focusing on the reality of love and the second on habits of worship. He concludes the book with a helpful resource of suggestions for further reading.

Smith opens this book with a distinct re-orientation to view ones’ self as a loving being, rather than a thinking being. He peppers the book with a comic reference to viewing humanity as thinking beings as brains on a stick, rather than beings who are motivated and directed by the things they love. A pointed question drives this: “What if the center and seat of the human person is found not in the heady regions of the intellect but in the gut-level regions of the heart?” (7). He presses the point further: “The center of gravity of the human person is located not in the intellect but in the heart” (9). In this regard, he argues that we are beings that are ultimately oriented by the things we love, and not by the rationality of our thinking. The opening emphasis rests on the repeated phrase and title of the book: you are what you love. Love forms our everyday habits and it forms how we approach making disciples in the church (19). In addition, because of this, love undergirds the interaction of the church with culture. Liturgies, both formal and incidental, unconsciously communicate how we as Christian people view our relationship with God and our relationship with our community, particularly when we are not even aware of having a liturgy (37).

Smith begins to broaden the term and concept of liturgy into multiple aspects of life. There is a liturgy of consumerism (53). There is a liturgy of cultural practice (54-55). As he expands these definitions of liturgy, he will ultimately turn, in the second half of the book, to his concept of liturgy as a methodology for the “rehabituation” or the “re-habit-making” needed in the disciple making work of the Church (61). He argues that re-training the intellect of the disciple does not make new habits of right worship; re-training the heart makes them.

Somewhere in the mid-point of the book, Smith’s thesis seems to take on a different emphasis. It seemed to start out as a work focused on heart habits, but then the book seems to take on an apologetic tone for the liturgical format of worship. The latter chapters of the book seem to labor to demonstrate how “evangelical” or “charismatic” formats of worship miss the mark and how “liturgical” formats of worship hit the bull’s-eye. Wrongly directed, worship can become Pelagianism because the effort is on human effort (73). Later he supports worship as the “arena in which God recalibrates our hearts, reforms our desires, and rehabituates our loves” (77).

James Robinson, Divine Healing: The Holiness-Pentecostal Transition Years, 1890-1906: Theological Transposition in the Transatlantic World (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2013), 238 pages, ISBN 9781620324080.

James Robinson’s second volume in his Divine Healing series is a major contribution to the study of Pentecostal origins in the Anglo-American world. An interesting and highly researched work, Divine Healing: The Holiness-Pentecostal Transition Years, includes enough anecdotes and testimonies from primary sources to engage the lay reader and a tempered, even-handed review of the secondary literature and historical critiques others have had concerning the divine healing movement of the late 19^th century and early 20^th.

The author, (PhD Queen’s University, Belfast, 2001), is a relative newcomer to the field, having retired from a lifelong vocation as a grammar school teacher in Northern Ireland prior to his contributions to Pentecostal studies. His volumes include forewords by such noted Pentecostal scholars as Candy Gunther Brown (Indiana University) and William K. Kay (University of Chester). As a Presbyterian elder with Pentecostal roots, Robinson is conservative in regards to his work on divine healing: “A more subliminal, and possibly ethereal, aspiration is that some within the church of our day will find something in the book pertinent to the safeguard and furtherance of the historic ministry of healing” (Robinson 2011: Kindle Location 145). This hopeful conservatism underwrites both volumes and shines brilliantly through Robinson’s careful attention to detail and objectivity.

Transition focuses on the years between 1890-1906. His prior volume covers 1830-1890, and a planned volume will investigate 1906-1930. However, these dates are not tight restrictions, but, rather, a permeable focus on people and highlights of the proto-Pentecostal era building up to Azusa.

Transition begins with a brief overview of the preceding volume and establishes the parameters of the rest of the work. In the introduction, Robinson outlines three distinctive features of the radical healing apologetic that underwrote the flowering of the movement. These features were: 1) Redemption extended to “both the spirit and the body.” 2) “As salvation is through faith, so is healing,” and 3) “Medical intervention was considered the sign of a deficient faith and brought less glory to God” (Kindle locations 214-224). These features resurface time and time again in Robinson’s narrative and analysis. The rest of the Introduction links the Holiness-Pentecostal transition to earlier historical precedents and highlights divine healing teaching and practice in a variety of contexts.

Chapter 1 looks closely at the Holiness-Pentecostal transition in America. This transition occurred in the post-Bellum era and primarily among splinter groups off of the Methodist church. These splinter groups comprised the Wesleyan Holiness counter movement from which and in which radical divine healing advocates flourished. Again, Robinson underscores the connection between Holiness teaching and divine healing rooted in the extent of redemption. Following the trajectory from Methodism, through the Wesleyan Holiness counter movement, the author finishes out the chapter with how the Holiness movement with its divine healing overtones were linked to early Pentecostal movements and leaders such as Frank Sandford, the Shiloh Movement, Daniel Warner, and Alma White. These links, as elsewhere in the volume, are developed through extensive biography and narrative along with contemporaneous accounts from those outside the movement.

James R. Peters, The Logic of the Heart: Augustine, Pascal, and the Rationality of Faith. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009), 300 pages.

This book is not for the faint of heart or the non-academic reader of philosophy. James R. Peters wraps his thesis around abstract conceptualizations, while he weaves loquacious arguments throughout his book. The text is thickly worded and the reader is urged to keep a dictionary nearby. Essentially, Peters posits a philosophical middle way that balances rationality and mysticism. He proposes that the rationality of the heart must become entangled neither in the objectivity of Modernity, nor in the subjectivity of post-Modernity. In doing so, Peters engages the foundational rationalists (Descartes and Hume) of Modernity conversationally with the mysticism of Augustine and Pascal.

There are two principle difficulties with this book. First, it is elitist in its use of language and written exclusively to the academic community. In doing so, its genre is generally inaccessible to the layperson. Indeed, it is so unapproachable that it may characterize the elitist genre whereby no academic dares to proclaim that the emperor has no clothes, for if one has the courage to confess that Peters is incomprehensible, then one risks the accusation of being dull of mind. Second, Peters has two simultaneous conversations that compete for the reader’s attention. One is in the body of the text and the other is in the footnotes. As a reviewer of this book, it is a noteworthy distraction and one would prefer to see the two conversations merged and the footnotes reserved for reference citations.

How then can someone untrained comprehend this book? We offer three suggestions: First, read the ending first so that you will see the target that the author is aiming at. Second, read the concluding segment of each chapter so that you will discern the logical steps that the author has taken to achieve his goal. Finally, read the introduction to each chapter. Once the reader has a basic understanding of Peters’ theme for the book, then one can begin to explore the depths of his argument. To approach the book with the mindset of reading it front-to-back will undoubtedly find the reader lost before the end of the first chapter.

Reviewed by John R. Miller

Preview The Logic of the Heart: books.google.com/books?id=USJFI8wgQRwC

James W. Sire (Ph.D., University of Missouri), formerly a senior editor at InterVarsity Press, is a frequent guest lecturer at colleges and universities in the United States and Europe. He has written many books and Bible studies, most of which are available from IVP. The current title under review attempts to demonstrate how the psalms that relate closely to the mission of Jesus can also become our answering speech. The central thesis of this book is that the psalms give us insight into God himself. Indeed, through the psalms we come to know both who God is, and who we are. The studies in this book continue the method first set forth by Sire in his Learning to Pray Through the Psalms. In the course of these pages, Sire pointedly examines nine different psalms, their relation to Jesus, and their fulfillment in Jesus. Sire lists five different goals in relation to this book, all of which are laudable: to learn what the psalms say about prayer, to learn to pray the psalmist’s words, to develop corporate prayer from the psalms, to explicate more fully the heart of Jesus as he prayed the psalms, and to suggest how by praying the psalms of Jesus, one can gain insight into humanity of our Lord.

Sire makes a bold assertion that every psalm is a psalm of Jesus (10), as each one of them undoubtedly was filtered through his mind via training in his youth. In fact, he is recorded as using the psalms more than any other Old Testament book. It’s not surprising, then, that at key moments in his life on earth, Jesus of Nazareth turned to the psalms for words to express his deepest thoughts and emotions. Fortunately for us, in the psalms, we too have a voice from eternity (12). As Sire acknowledges, it is not hard to foresee Jesus, his mind and heart saturated with the words and thoughts of the psalms, going off early in the morning to pray. In so doing, they became his answering speech to his heavenly Father. Sire forthrightly states that his desire for his readers is to inculcate the psalms Jesus used into their lives as well, making the psalms their answering speech back unto God.

Sire begins the journey into the mind of Christ by immersing readers into several psalms which Jesus himself refers to and fulfills (e.g. 22, 110, 118, 2, and 69). Within the second half of the book, entitled ‘The Psalms in Jesus’, several psalms that Jesus would have meditated upon are examined. The psalms in the second half of the book, though not typically considered messianic in orientation, all focus upon the heart and mind of Jesus (e.g. 29, 23, 45, and 80). Structural analysis of each psalm helps the reader to grow in their ability to read the Psalms. The guided personal prayer liturgy included within each chapter helps one go deeper in the experience of praying the Psalms.

Live debate on Predestination and Election
Join us on Friday, January 24, at 4pm-6pm EST for a live debate between Dr. Michael Brown and Dr. James White. They will debate the doctrine of Predestination and ask: Did Christ die for all? The debate will be live-streamed again at 9pm EST.

Live debate on Divine Healing
Come back again on Saturday, January 25, at 4pm-6pm EST for a live debate between Dr. Michael Brown and Dr. James White. They will debate whether the gift of healing has ceased. The debate will be live-streamed again at 9pm EST.

Brought to PneumaReview.com in cooperation with RevelationTV.com.

Click to watch LIVE: http://pneumareview.com/live

James K. A. Smith, associate professor of philosophy at Calvin College and executive director of the Society of Christian Philosophers, engages the subject of hermeneutical philosophy and presses the boundaries outward to make room for a distinctly pentecostal perspective. He examines philosophical ideas from Husserl, Heidegger, and Gadamer, laboring to remind the reader of their foundational concepts on language and communication. In this regard, Smith divides the book in two major sections by first exploring the classical pentecostal worldview and then by exploring communication theory, in order to propose how the phenomena of glossolalia might expand Christian philosophy. The first three chapters will be readable and comprehendible for the college graduate, but the second three chapters wade into deep waters of hermeneutical philosophy, which may disorient many of the uninitiated or novice philosophers. Smith concludes the book in an open-ended manner, inviting conversation on his newly proposed conceptual framework. Herein, we recognize that Smith’s targeted audience is the academic community rather than the average person in the church. It has been said that academics take simple ideas and talk about them in complex ways. Thus, in this review we will attempt to do the opposite, to unpack Smith’s difficult words and restate them in simple ways.

In the first half of this book, Smith offers five ways to define the pentecostal worldview. The first of these is fairly straightforward; pentecostals are open to God doing new things. Pentecostals regularly expect a prophetic word to start with the phrase, “Behold, I am doing a new thing” and pentecostals anticipate that God will not always do things as He has done in the past. Second, pentecostals recognize spiritual realities in every area of the natural world. Angels and demons are active participants in our everyday life. Demonic influences motivate people to do evil. The Holy Spirit guides the believer to do good. Third, pentecostals know that the work of Jesus on the Cross accomplished both the salvation of the soul and the restoration of the body; by his stripes we are healed. Pentecostals read the birth-of-the-church Pentecost story in Acts 2 and the healing of the lame man in Acts 3 as being examples of the normal Christian life. Peter did not lead the lame man to salvation and leave him lame; he healed his body then brought him to salvation. Thus, pentecostals expect both supernatural and natural blessings. Fourth, pentecostals place high value on salvation and miracle testimonies. These stories build faith and validate spiritual reality and blessings from God. They are foundational to faith and they take first place in theological understanding. Theological epistemology may not be clearly written, but the pentecostal worldview includes space for “I know that I know that I know.” Fifth, pentecostal philosophy is oriented toward doing the right thing for the poor, the needy, and those who have never heard the gospel; mission is taken seriously.

In the second half of this book, Smith explores theories of languages and philosophies of interpretation. For the most part, these chapters labor to build a theoretical foundation that the final chapter can build upon. Once Smith has established his philosophical basis, he will finally say what he has wanted to say from the start. Speaking in tongues, be it an exhortation with an interpretation or a private prayer in tongues, is more than simply strange words. Smith’s challenge to pentecostal philosophers is to consider the question “What does this prayer do?” over what do these strange words mean (144). He opens the door for philosophers to consider that “tongues” DO something regardless of whether they make any sense or not. It is here that Smith’s purpose becomes clear and exciting; in the arena of language theory there must be a legitimate place for unknown “tongues” to communicate something beyond the rationality of known words. He presses the practical question (What do tongues do?) to the harm of the theological proposition question (What do tongues mean?). “Tongues” effect and affect God. Likewise, “tongues” open other people to an expectation of the miraculous.

James D.G. Dunn, The Living Word, second edition (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2009), 224 pages, ISBN 9780800663551.

James Dunn, professor of Divinity at the University of Durham and noteworthy New Testament scholar, advances the conversation between fundamental and liberal viewpoints on the authority, infallibility, and the inspiration of the Bible. As a second edition, Dunn modifies the twenty-year-old first edition to reflect the ongoing developments in this particular theological discussion. If the final chapter is read first, then the reader will quickly grasp the structure of the whole book, in order to understand his seven-fold thesis; the Bible is a “living tradition” (182). Dunn writes evenhandedly, delineating both sides of the dialogue through clear descriptions of the elements essential to both sides of the conversation. In this regard he draws attention to the “slippery slope” that both the fundamental and the liberal scholar risk when pressing their respective and opposing extremes.

James C. Wilhoit, Spiritual Formation as if the Church Mattered: Growing in Christ through Community (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 233 pages, ISBN 9780801027765.

Dallas Willard, in The Spirit of the Disciplines, challenges the Church to return to the primary purpose of proclaiming the gospel and making disciples (18). James Wilhoit’s spiritual theology, as viewed through the lens of a careful ecclesiology, answers Willard’s challenge for the Church to pursue renewal in authentic discipleship. Beginning as conversations with his students and later as interviews with church leaders, the author’s research attempted to discover patterns and practices of spiritual formation within Christian faith communities. He discovered that “some churches are marked by the presence of a ‘culture of formation’ … while others may have many programs and much activity, [but] lacked the presence of … a transformative culture” (13).

Wilhoit, maintaining that he writes “as an evangelical … deeply concerned about the erosion of intentional practices of spiritual formation in many … churches,” explains his concern that “patterns of nurture” long practiced within the church have either been abandoned or set aside. He lists systematic Bible teaching, Scripture memorization and reading, Sunday evening services “with an emphasis on testimonies, missions, and global Christianity,” observance of Sabbath, shared meals, hospitality, church summer camps, pastoral visitation, and intergenerational socializing as elements of formative spirituality often missing in contemporary faith communities (13). His intent is to present a process of formation based on patterns and practices he defines as four spiritual commitments or dimensions including “receiving, remembering, responding, and relating” that become, in effect, “a curriculum for Christlikeness” in the local church (7).

James Wilhoit is the Scripture Press Chair of Christian Formation & Ministry at Wheaton College.

The author’s theology of formation begins with the gospel. He carefully exposits the problem of sin; its remedy in Christ and the unfolding pattern of sanctification as essential to the individual’s formation in Christlikeness and to the growth and effective ministry of each community of faith. Wilhoit is careful to precisely define grace, which he views as free and unmerited favor, but also inclusive of God’s “regenerating and strengthening power” (79). This recurring theme of grace presents the connecting thread of theological truth that weaves together the author’s exposition of practices and disciplines designed to provide an intentional focus on seeking God’s presence and discerning the Spirit’s movements within the daily life of a faith community.

His conviction that “spiritual formation must continually return to the truths of sin, cross, redemption, grace, and true holiness because the prevailing plausibility structures of our culture push us in the direction of idolatry and false gospels,” emphasizes an approach to formative spirituality that is solidly grounded in biblical theology (76).

The author’s holistic approach to spiritual formation, his focus on a well-developed hamartiology and the importance of community, are important aspects of the text that distinguish it from many other works on formative spirituality that do not develop these ideas as carefully or in as much detail. Wilhoit carefully develops his discussion on the spiritual brokenness of the human person as viewed through the lens of yearnings: those yearnings that persist and are seen “to be the result of compromised discipleship” and those yearnings that have been “fully met in Christ” (61). The author understands that practicing spiritual disciplines may either be used as “a space to meet God and be refreshed and healed by his grace” or as “material [that some use] to become far more accomplished legalists” (76). His refusal to reduce formation to “doing”, but rather examine, from the standpoint of biblical theology, the ontological truths of formation, are strengths of Wilhoit’s presentation.

James M. Hamilton, Jr., “God With Men in the Torah” The Westminster Theological Journal 65:1 (Spring 2003), pages 113-133.

“The contention of this study is that God’s self-disclosure and his favorable presence with the people constitute the Pentateuch’s description of how the Old Covenant faithful became and remained believers” (p. 144), writes James M. Hamilton, Jr. Using John 7:39, “But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified,” as a base from which to build, Hamilton traces the indwelling of the Holy Spirit—or lack thereof—through the Books of Moses.

There is never a question in the author’s mind about whether or not the saints of the Old Testament were regenerated—as noted by the “great cloud of witnesses” from the Old Testament in Hebrews 12:1 (please note that not everyone in Israel was a “saint”).

Hamilton repeatedly uses the phrase “God’s self-disclosure” pointing out that if the Almighty had not taken the initiative; none could have “conjured” or summoned him into forming a personal relationship. With that said, I think Hamilton does a very good job of presenting the Holy Spirit in the tradition of progressive revelation, which is thoroughly consistent with all that God was doing in the Torah, as well as the later books of the Old Testament. While he never uses the word “progressive revelation,” this reader clearly saw that inference.

The article makes it definitively clear that the Holy Spirit was active, resting upon individuals from time to time to accomplish His will, but with the rarest exceptions, He did not appear to permanently inhabit individuals. This too, however, seems to form an outline for the progressive revelation of God as He moves all creation, step by step, back toward complete regeneration within His perfect design.

If I were to be critical of anything in the article, it was Hamilton’s supposition that through John 7:39 we are to assume that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is the only vehicle by which believers are able to maintain their faith. It would seem, according to Hamilton, that the Holy Spirit is some manifest “guarantee” for holding on to faith, a guarantee the men and women of the Torah did not have. Yet at the same time, he acknowledges that in the Old Testament, God being in their presence communally—that is to say, dwelling in the community—was the only means the Israelites had to hold onto their faith. Either way, the result was the same: with God in their midst—either through the indwelling or the Shekinah Glory radiating from the tabernacle—faith was evident at least among a remnant from generation to generation. These things being true, many of the personalities we read about in the Torah did not have a permanent “presence” to gaze upon, and therefore, their faith was driven by something more, something deeper, than a constant reminder.

Reviewed by Kevin M. Williams

James K. A. Smith, Speech and Theology: Language and the Logic of the Incarnation, Radical Orthodoxy Series (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 186 pages, ISBN 9780415276962.

The book is more complex than its title suggests. Speech and theology is a splendid inquiry into the question: how we can speak about God. More precisely, it addresses the question of why we can speak about God at all. Smith’s answer is indicated in the subtitle: it is the logic of the incarnation that allows us, and even compels us, to speak of the ineffable mystery of God.

Speech and theology is directed primarily toward an academic audience. It is published as part of Routledge’s Radical Orthodoxy Series which offers writings of a contemporary theological movement that operates across many Christian and non-Christian traditions, and which works alongside other academic disciplines such as politics, economics, the natural sciences, social and cultural theory. The increasing interest in the central themes of Radical Orthodoxy should also direct attention to this author, who seeks to create a new Christian phenomenology which asserts the Incarnation as the condition of possibility for language generally and for speech about God in particular.

The dilemma of theological language is that every act of human speech about God, who is infinite and transcendent, must employ language and concepts that are finite and immanent. Smith proposes that this should not reduce us to silence. On the contrary, he argues that the transcendent God must appear in terms of immanence or, otherwise, cannot be revealed at all. Consequently, immanence and transcendence should not be viewed as opposites. In the Incarnation, the transcendent God entered into the finite world, not simply participating in it but being embodied by the immanent and thus allowing the finite and the infinite, the immanent and the transcendent, to exist side by side as the very possibility of finite language about an infinite God.