Charismatic historian William De Arteaga introduces us to The Order of St. Luke, where it came from, how it has influenced charismatic leaders for generations, and reports on the most recent international convention held in Orlando, Florida.

The Order of St Luke was founded by The Rev. John Gayer Banks in the 1930’s, an Episcopal priest residing in California. His intention was to introduce healing prayer into the Episcopal and the mainline churches in the United States. By the 1950s the OSL became a leading and important anti-cessationist group proclaiming a prophetic message among the Protestant churches in North America: the Church’s healing ministry must be reclaimed. Ultimately, the OSL also became a solidly charismatic bastion, sharing in many areas of the world the message that the healing ministry reaches its fullness in conjunction with the gifts of the Spirit. The latter transition was not and easy one, as will be described below.

Dearmer’s labors in reestablishing healing prayer in the Church was partly in response to the vast inroads that Christian Science and the other Metaphysical cults were making during the 1900s in attracting orthodox Christians to their churches. The Rev. Dearmer rightly understood that the root problem was that the orthodox Christian churches no longer believed or practiced healing prayer – i.e. cessationism.[2]

The Rev. Percy Dearmer

Dearmer and two other Anglican churchmen banded together to remedy the situation. This was done through a new organization, The Guild of Health, which was attached to the Anglican Church. (Anglican love doing their ministry through “guilds,” it grounds the group to the Anglican Church and its Episcopal oversight and besides sounds genteel.) The guild spread throughout the UK, sponsoring and organizing lectures and “missions” of three day teachings ending in a church service and the laying on of hands at the altar rail.

John Ganer Banks was born in England but later emigrated to America to get his doctorate in religious studies, and went on to be ordained an Episcopal priest. He determined to do the same for the Episcopal Church in America as the Rev Dearmer did in the UK. From his base at St. Luke’s Church in San Diego, he and his wife Ethel began healing services at his parish, and did healing missions wherever he was invited. While he pastored the parish, Ethel administered the OSL and wrote most of its literature. She began a mimeographed journal of healing testimonies and book reviews. The mailing list for this two page newsletter steadily grew to reach every part of the nation. Within two years it morphed into a more sophisticated printed journal with the name “Sharing.” It continues to this day as the official journal of the OSL.

Luke Timothy Johnson is a first-rate biblical exegete and a Roman Catholic. He takes the reader through Luke and Acts, seeing in both the fulfillment in Jesus of the prophetic in the messianic role of prophet, priest and king. Unlike a majority of scholarship grounded in the modern discipline of critical study of the text and background, Johnson sees Luke and Acts as complementary, in fact amounting to what Luke intended to be a single read, or at least read together. Jesus comes and fulfills the Torah in a way that seems to turn Torah on its head. This is contrary to how the Pharisees do Torah, who Johnson sees as seeking to fulfill it in more of a straightforward way.

Johnson sees Jesus’ radical fulfillment of the prophetic in Luke as continuing on in the church in Acts. What Jesus began to do in Luke he continues to do in Acts by the Spirit through the church. And Johnson sees the church’s fulfillment as being even more radical. Jesus began that step toward what was fulfilled later in the church and continues on to this day.

Johnson argues for a prophetic emphasis in both Luke and Acts, which he shows is demonstrated well in the texts themselves. He sees this emphasis grounded in certain prophets of the old covenant: Moses, Elijah, Elisha. Jesus was not like the writing prophets such as Isaiah, but like the prophets who by the Spirit spoke God’s word and embodied, enacted (signs and wonders, etc.) and witnessed to that word, a witness that resulted in suffering. The prophets listed in Luke-Acts is impressive: “Moses, Samuel, David, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary, John, Simeon, Anna, John, Jesus, and those followers of Jesus through whom the spirit of the resurrected one did signs and wonders” (p. 67). The prophetic word and work is to point to and give something of God’s vision ultimately for the world.

I find the thesis that Luke and Acts underscore the prophetic which is fulfilled in Jesus in calling the church back to its true mission and vocation healthy. Yes, the church is prophetic by nature in its calling and constitution. Johnson sees the Pentecostal/charismatic church as important in keeping alive the manifestations of the Spirit seen in Acts.

Youngmo Cho, Spirit and Kingdom in the Writings of Luke and Paul: An Attempt to Reconcile these Concepts (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2005), 254 pages, ISBN 9781842273166.

Youngmo Cho (PhD, University of Aberdeen) is currently an assistant professor of New Testament studies at Asia LIFE University, in South Korea. He has formerly been a pastor of an Assembly of God Church, as well as a missionary to the Philippines. He attempts in this book to explore the relation between the Spirit of God and the kingdom of God in the writings of Luke and Paul, which has been an uncharted territory up until now. The aim of the book is to depict the differences between Luke and Paul regarding their understandings, respectively, of the Spirit’s work. Cho dialogs, mainly, with three positions regarding the relationship between Paul and Luke, which could be characterized as them being in discontinuity with each other, in continuity with each other, or a mediating position of complimentarity with each other. In outlining these three positions, Cho interacts with three scholars prevalently: R.P. Menzies (an advocate of the discontinuity position), J.D.G. Dunn (an advocate of the continuity position), and M.M.B. Turner (an advocate of the complimentarity position). Menzies advocates that there are staunch differences between the pneumatologies of Luke and Paul, while Dunn advances the idea that they are the same but differently expressed, and Turner argues that the two are different but complimentary to each other.

Cho, however, diverges from all three of these generally recognized positions. He says that Paul’s pneumatology adds something entirely new to the pneumatology of the early church, as attested to by the gospel of Luke. He asserts that Paul speaks of the kingdom of God in new terms, primarily by speaking of the Spirit in a more comprehensive manner than Luke did. In so doing, Paul communicates the teachings of Jesus in a different way, focusing upon the works of the Spirit. He argues that Dunn’s position, which advocates the notion that the Spirit mediates the blessings of the kingdom in both Paul and Luke, is not precise enough to account for the texts in question. Instead, Cho argues that Paul develops the role of the Spirit more fully than Luke, arguing that the Spirit is the way that all people may participate in the kingdom presently. Cho maintains, however, that Luke asserts a more constricted view of the Spirit and the kingdom, one which only promotes the proclamation of the kingdom of God (as seen by, for example, tongues-speaking). Thus, Cho says that Paul taught that the Spirit is the source of life within the kingdom while Luke teaches that the Spirit merely enables proclamation of the kingdom.

First edition cover of The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke from Hendrickson (1984).

Roger Stronstad, The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke (Hendrickson, 1984), 83 pages.

For many years Pentecostals have been known as doers of the Word, but not as theologians who write of it. Roger Stronstad is among a growing body of scholars seeking to change this and provide a solid theological basis, within an evangelical hermeneutical framework, for Pentecostal preaching and teaching.

Stronstad assumes Lucan authorship, both for the gospel that bears Luke’s name and for the Book of Acts, and considers them to be two volumes of one book. He also correctly believes that Luke is not only a master historian, but also a theologian. In stating this, he does not avoid the issues regarding the relationship between Pauline and Lucan theology but argues brilliantly that Luke, who wrote more of the New Testament than anyone else, including Paul, must be taken seriously as a theologian in his own right. Consequently, he argues, Luke’s theology must not be subordinated to Paul’s, but stands on equal footing. Luke, not Paul, must therefore interpret Lucan phrases such as “baptized in the Spirit” or “filled with the Spirit”.

Second edition cover of The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke: Trajectories from the Old Testament to Luke-Acts from Baker Academic (2012).

He then moves to develop a theology of the Spirit within the Lucan corpus. Anchoring his pneumatology in the Old Testament, especially the Septuagint, Luke draws many motifs and comparisons regarding the activity of the Spirit, and explaining that Jesus was the ultimate anointed of God. He also contrasts the difference in the activity of the Spirit from the Old Testament to the New Testament, citing Joel 2:28 ff. as a watershed. Here he emphasizes that in the Old Testament the Spirit only came upon certain individuals, and in the New Testament he is poured out on the entire community of believers, regardless of gender or social class.

While the book has many strengths, there are two weaknesses; one theological and one practical. First, while he makes a strong case for the Baptism in the Holy Spirit being an experience separate from the initial experience of salvation, that it is vocational in nature, he does not adequately deal with the issue of initial evidence for the Baptism. One would expect more on this. Second, the author uses many difficult terms and large words, making the use of his book next to impossible for laymen and the growing number of preachers in developing nations who are trained by English textbooks but only speak and read English as a second, third, or even fourth language.

In all, this work is a solid contribution to Pentecostal theology and successfully answers the critics who claim that Pentecostal theology is exegetically weak. I recommend this book highly with the suggestion that it should be in the library of any serious student of the Holy Spirit and the Word .

Reviewed by Dave Johnson

Publisher’s page: http://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/the-charismatic-theology-of-st-luke-2nd-edition/340170