Author of The Third Force in Missions, Missionary-scholar Paul Pomerville speaks with PneumaReview.com about theologies and attitudes he believes have hindered the effectiveness of the church, particularly the church in the West. He urges Pentecostals to throw off the poisonous ideas of colonialism and the Enlightenment and instead be filled with the Holy Spirit of justice and peace.

PneumaReview.com: Please tell us about your experience in missions.

Paul Pomerville: After study in the national language of Indonesia, I started my service as an Assemblies of God missionary educating Indonesian ministers on the Island of Sumatra. I established a “theological education by extension” program that provided theological education for candidates for the ministry and active pastors in ten different areas of the island by way of independent study materials, a traveling faculty and weekly seminar-type training sessions. It was the first program of its kind in Southeast Asia; it was modeled after a similar program by missionary Dr. Ralph Winter in South America. When I was on furlough in the United States I started graduate education in missions. The next missionary service was in Brussels Belgium at the International Correspondence Institute, an arm of the Foreign Missions Division of the Assemblies of God. The Institute was preparing ministerial training materials and printing them on site for pastors and Christian educators via correspondence both in Western countries and also in the countries of the Southern Hemisphere. I wrote several courses and prepared an audience profile model of the developing countries for course writers for that part of the world, and also gave writers an orientation to that very different cultural audience. I also served as managing editor. On the next furlough in the United States I finished a Ph.D. in Intercultural Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of World Mission. I then served as professor and Department Chairman of the Missions and Cross-cultural Communications Department at the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary in Springfield Missouri.

PneumaReview.com: In your book you state that there are certain theologies that hinder the cause of missions. Please tell us what those theologies are and how they impede the missionary cause.

Paul A. Pomerville, The Third Force in Missions: A Pentecostal Contribution to Contemporary Mission Theology (Hendrickson Publishers, 2016).
Read the review by Anna M. Droll.

Paul Pomerville: The central thesis of The Third Force in Missions concerned the Pentecostal contribution to mission theology. At the time the first edition was written (1983) there were doubts as to whether there even was a Pentecostal contribution to mission theology. My contention at that time was that Pentecostal-charismatic Christians made up one-third of the world’s evangelical Christians and their growth was evidence of a potential Pentecostal contribution. However, the unprecedented Pentecostal-charismatic movement in the Southern Hemisphere today, the “third wave” of Pentecostal-charismatic renewal has proven the question of a Pentecostal contribution to be a “moot point.” Today, 800 million-plus Pentecostal-charismatic Christians are now a “first force” in Christian missions. It is clear that this unprecedented rapidly growing movement south of the equator was not due to “theology,” but rather the Pentecostal-charismatic experience with the Holy Spirit. Obviously, there is a “Pentecostal theology” undergirding the Pentecostal-charismatic movement that emphasizes the role of the Holy Spirit that two of the most influential theologies in the Northern hemisphere have not emphasized, but rather have neglected and outright denied—1) Western rationalistic scholastic theology of the post-Reformation period and 2) dispensational theology.

In the updated version of The Third Force in Missions: A Pentecostal Contribution to Contemporary Mission Theology (Hendrickson Publishers, 2016), Paul A. Pomerville offers an amplified reiteration of the major premises of his earlier work (Hendrickson, 1985), namely, that Pentecostalism is enacting a biblical reading which challenges theologies skewed by the claims of dispensationalism on mission theory and praxis, and that indigenous Christianity of the Southern Hemisphere offers viable examples of authentic engagement with the Bible. In fact, that engagement is unhampered by Western assumptions that threaten to contradict inherent Southern sensibilities regarding the existence of the spiritual realm. In regard to the vigor of the contemporary Pentecostal missions phenomenon, Pomerville offers that setting the movement apart as distinctive is in order. Not only does Pentecostalism don well its appellation as “The Third Force” of Christian expression after Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, Pomerville posits the justification of the term “first force” in twenty-first century missions as a possible descriptor pointing to the undisputed vigor of Southern missions today. That “force” manifests an impressive record of strides made within and emanating from that zone out to the world—much of which has been underreported. Its efficacy is also found in its potential to engage sensitively with the growing Islamic population. Pomerville sees the church of the South, rather than the church of the North, as the hope for Islam.

Paul A. Pomerville

In other words, what Pomerville does this second time around is to point to the undeniable vigor of the Pentecostal phenomenon in the Southern Hemisphere, and coming out of the South these past 30 years, where the movement is producing a contagious and enduring transcultural spirituality. Also, this time Pomerville reflects not just on the dangers of dispensational theology in terms of major blind spots counterproductive to sound hermeneutics (i.e., a hollow eschatology and an anemic ontology of the kingdom of God). As well, his concern targets the dangers to the ongoing mission of the Christian church that lay couched in an abiding silence on the role of the Holy Spirit and a suspicion of the concept of revelation as a dynamic activity.

Reviewed by Anna M. Droll

Paul Pomerville has produced an uncompromising argument against Christian Zionism. Drawing upon his extensive experience in police work, he detects a gap in the collection of evidence in the literature on Christian Zionism. He claims that no evangelical works have heretofore made a case against Christian Zionism based on New Testament evidence (xviii). Employing a creative methodology of simulating a criminal trial, Pomerville interrogates key witnesses in the New Testament and appeals to the reader as jury to find Christian Zionism guilty of the charge of perverting the gospel.

Dr. Pomerville holds a Ph.D. in Intercultural Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary. He served for two years as Graduate Professor and Department Chairman of Christian Missions and Cross-Cultural Communications at the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary. He is the author of The Third Force in Missions (1985), a groundbreaking work on Pentecostal missiology.

The aim of The Christian Case Against Christian Zionism is to establish guilt by association, correlating Christian Zionism with the Judaizers of the New Testament (48). The scope of the book modulates between the Judaizers of the first-century church and contemporary Christian Zionists of a dispensational bent who believe that the plan of God holds a future for national Israel. Pomerville identifies his target audience as theologians, pastors, Christians in general, and Christian Zionists in particular. As to its place in the world of literature, although claiming to represent a fresh approach, this book is another of the many works devoted to the repudiation of Christian Zionism. Pomerville upholds the thesis that the brand of Christian Zionism which is dispensational in its hermeneutical orientation and pro-Israel in its political stance constitutes a distortion of the New Testament gospel of the kingdom.

One of the strongest points of Pomerville’s argument is his critique of dispensationalists for an undue focus on the futurity of the kingdom, which marginalizes the present reality of the kingdom and detracts from the gifts of the Spirit as central to the gospel of the kingdom inaugurated by Jesus. He also indicts dispensationalists for distinguishing two tracks in the divine plan of redemption, Israel and the Church. Pomerville castigates the most extreme form of Christian Zionism as “pseudo-Christian Zionism” because of its “retro-theology” of expecting the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem and restoration of a Jewish kingdom in the land of Palestine during the end times. Pomerville raises important questions about the identity of the people of God and the place of Israel in salvation history. He favors a “fulfillment theology,” according to which Jesus Christ fulfills Old Testament prophecy and creates a new spiritual people of God composed of both Jews and Gentiles. He writes, “Those born of the Spirit, Jew and Gentile, are the people of God” (160). “Membership in the people of God is not determined by Jewish ancestry, but by faith in Jesus, spiritual rebirth, and by the transforming power of God” (161). In regards to the place of Israel in salvation history, Pomerville argues that it is inappropriate to apply Old Testament prophecies to the modern State of Israel (173). The Christ event marked the end of the temple order of worship, Israel’s ancestral privilege, and territorial rights. “Gospel values won out over national values” (178) when Jesus unleashed a new spirituality based on the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and an inner spiritual kingdom which made obsolete the old spirituality of the nation and land. Hence, the author avers that holding on to a vision of an exclusive Jewish kingdom is at odds with the plan of God for universal salvation, which is to say that Israel has retained no privileged place in God’s plan of redemption.

Perhaps the most significant of Pomerville’s contentions is that the Judaizing conflict in the first-century church exercised a formative influence on the view of Israel and the Church adumbrated in Luke-Acts, Paul’s letters, Hebrews, and the Gospel of John. This conflict was addressed at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15), yet not decisively resolved, as the church continued to struggle with the unification of Jewish and Gentile believers. Pomerville adeptly detects indications of this struggle between the lines of the writings of the New Testament books mentioned above. Concomitantly, he faults Christian Zionists for committing an offense analogous to the Judaizers by giving Israel a place in God’s plan of salvation separate from the Church. This is a charge worth pondering.

A subsidiary bone of contention intermittently raised by Pomerville has to do with the missiological implications of Christian Zionism. Pomerville argues that uncritical support for Israel among evangelicals has fomented “hatred” in the Muslim world, giving the impression that Christians are impervious to the injustices committed by the State of Israel, precluding acceptance of the gospel by Muslims. The barriers to evangelizing Muslims in the Middle East are complicated by Christian Zionism. My research found that the Pentecostal missionaries in Palestine who succeeded in planting sustainable churches in the West Bank had to distance themselves from Christian Zionism. They did so by contextualizing the Christian message, empathizing with the Palestinian reality, and speaking against the injustices committed against the Palestinian Arab population (Newberg 2012).