Also, please visit www.prayforbuddhists.com and consider signing up to be part of a prayer movement to reach Buddhists for Christ.

Many thanks,

Dave

At the time of publication, the full issue of the journal was available at: https://www.aptspress.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/AJPS-24.2-Full-Interior-as-of-AUG-20-Updated.pdf

This guest article by Christian historian William De Arteaga is not merely a historical and theological reflection. By way of introduction, he writes, “The end of the article contains specific, biblical ways of praying against viruses. I have done this for years with very good effect, but have not been allowed into a hospital to try it on COVID-19 patients. It would be great if some nurses and physicians (or even the cleaning crew) read this, prayed and anointed their patients in the manner I suggest. Let us see what miracles the Lord will work.”

One of my Facebook buddies recently commented that the COVID-19 virus was of demonic origins. Yes, it has done tremendous damage, economically and in taking many lives, including some in their prime of life. But it is problematic to call any created thing demonic. (I am assuming here that COVID-19 is a naturally occurring virus of animal origins and not from a Chinese lab as some believe.) Several years ago, my wife and I were giving a healing workshop, and a small roach meandered onto our book table. I disposed of it, but a lady nearby commented that she hated roaches and was sure that they were Satan’s creation.

Here we can definitely say, “no.” Roaches are part of God’s created order, even if we do not like them. When I see a roach in my kitchen I consider it a messenger telling me I have not disciplined myself on cleaning thoroughly or often enough. I say, “Thank you Mr. Roach, I will get to it, but if I see your sister I will spray the whole house.” Perhaps one of the roles of the COVID-19 virus is to remind the Church how poorly it is doing in its healing ministry after two thousand years. If I were a school teacher I would assign the Church a grade on the COVID-19 pandemic as a “C-,” barely passing.

Actually, God has provided Christians with means of countering infections from viruses and bacteria, and also the poisons of critters that sting like scorpions and spiders. The problem is that very few Christian know of this provision or take advantage of it. I will get to the specifics below.

The churches as a whole are still recovering from the long destructive period I have called “The Augustinian Consensus.” This was the period of the Church age when it functioned, by and large, without the gifts of the Spirit and did not know it had this deficit. Augustine of Hippo was a great theologian in many ways, as in explaining the idea of the Trinity for the Western Church, but like his contemporaries, he did not understand the functioning of the gifts of the Spirit as defined in the New Testament.

In the later years of his life he came to accept healing as part of the normal ministry of the Church, but never had a clue as to the other gifts of the Spirit as defined by St. Paul. Elsewhere I have explained how this lamentable situation arose and how it was compounded by later Catholic theology and especially by John Calvin’s theology of cessationism. Sadly, by the end of the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church stopped the laying on of hands for healing as a normal parish ministry and the anointing of oil for healing (James 5) was “spiritualized” as a safe passage past Purgatory.[1]

Various movements in the Church, from the Faith-Cure Movement (1880s) to Pentecostalism, to the Charismatic Movement, and the Anglican healing awakening have collectively regained most of the Church’s healing and Spirit-empowered ministries. However the situation is spotty and incomplete. That is, many churches, mostly Anglican, charismatic and Pentecostal, do have healing ministries within their churches with varying degrees of effectiveness.[2] But sadly, even many historic Pentecostal and charismatic churches still have very subdued healing ministries, as in only the pastor and a few in his staff, or a guest evangelist, doing healing prayer. The same is true of many “non-denominational” churches.

The recovery of healing prayer effectiveness is still going on and still faces opposition. In the last decade there has been a reactionary movement led by the prominent Bible teacher John MacArthur, whose immensely influential book Strange Fire, paints the gifts of the Spirit operating today as bogus.[4] Another example of resistance is the reluctance of many evangelicals to accept the ministry of deliverance/exorcism as needed for today. This continues to seriously hamper the effective healing ministry in many churches. In fact, every church that has an effective and robust healing ministry also does some deliverance/exorcism. This follows the Biblical pattern: Jesus and his disciples went around healing people, from both physical diseases or demonic disturbances, and sometimes both in the same person. (Lk 13:16) There was no separation of the ministries.

An example of the continued recovery of healing knowledge, one particularly important for the present discussion on the COVID-19 pandemic, is the recovery of “command healing.” That is, that all of the instances of healing and deliverance in the New Testament are shown as done by a command, as in “Stand up and walk.” or Ananias of Damascus saying to Paul, “Recover your sight” (Acts 22:12). This command mode of healing prayer was hidden in plain sight for centuries until pointed out by a humble Pentecostal couple Charles and Francis Hunter. Their books and evangelistic tours are largely responsible for showing this to the Church.[5] But they began doing this a mere forty years ago, and it is still resisted by some. Before that all the teaching and example given by the healing teachers was by way of prayers of petition, as in, “Father, in Jesus’ name, heal this arthritic knee.” That form of petition for healing is found in the Old Testament, as in the Psalms, but not in the New Testament. The change is that Jesus gave his disciples authority over disease and demons through the use of his name.

That response has been constantly carried out through the ages by devote clergy. Among many examples that could be cited was the ministry of several Episcopal nuns and priests, “The Memphis Martyrs,” who stayed in Memphis, Tennessee during the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1878, all of whom died during their ministry.[7] Many Catholic saints have been recorded in doing the same heroic “stay and minister” action.

However, there is no mention in these heroic accounts of these saints’ ministries that included healing prayer. So I grade these efforts with an “A” for love and courage, but an “F” on demonstrating the healing power of the Church. It evens out to a “C-.”

In truth, the response of the Church in America to the COVID-19 pandemic is filled with complexities, and I do not want to be overly critical for the various courses adopted by different ministers and pastors. The New Testament encourages obedience to civil authorities, so that a state or federal injunction against mass church services should normally be respected. Certain pastors have openly defied this, believing this a restriction of religious freedom and that the Lord will keep their congregation virus free.

Well maybe, but experience has proven otherwise in many cases. It has been to the sad reputation of the Church that occasionally some fundamentalist Pentecostals will refuse medication to a family member because that is “against faith” and the result is an unnecessary death. Here is an issue of “faith or presumption.”[8] A hypothetical example on the current pandemic: suppose a charismatic or Pentecostal church has a public service during the pandemic. Of the three hundred people attending only about ten have experience in the healing ministry, and most likely they are not sure as to how to specifically pray against a virus. Some in the group may sicken and die for lack of wisdom on praying against the virus. They have met presumptuously.[9]

The Church, even the Spirit-filled Pentecostal section of it, does not understand how to effectively pray to still a plague. Not that there have not been attempts at it. I have seen ministers prophesying and “judging” the virus, proclaiming it would disappear quickly. These ministers commanded a wave of warm weather across the United States to stop the spread of the virus, something that does disrupt the normal flu.

The following week a warm front did bring record highs over the Western and central parts of the country. But neither of these two prophetic moments left any noticeable effect. To the contrary, COVID-19 continues to spread in the United States, now in rural areas not hit before. Further, its continued spread in Africa and Latin America indicates that it will not subside because of warm weather.

I recall a report from years ago, when a coastal city in southern Europe was struck by an epidemic caused by eating contaminated shellfish. In response, the local bishop organized a procession in which the relics of a local saint were “uncovered” and processed around the city. This too was a sad exercise in futility.

In Acts we see the prophecy of a coming famine, but the church did not pray against it, but rather prepared for it in common-sense ways (Acts 11:27-30). Perhaps it is only possible to stop a virus plague by ministering prayer one person at a time. This may be God’s way of giving churches all over the world the opportunity of healing individual cases of the virus and witnessing to God’s mercy and power. Or there may be another way of praying and stopping a pandemic that we still do not know. We should not presume that we currently know everything about healing prayer.

An illustration of the coronavirus created at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

So how can we pray effectively against viruses and specifically against the COVID-19 pandemic? For now, we can pray for one infected person at a time using biblical models.

So let us look at the biblical evidence. The word virus does not occur in the Bible, as no one knew about bacteria or viruses until relatively recent times. But the Bible mentions “fevers” several times, and specifically how Jesus healed people experiencing fevers. In the following incident Luke and Matthew give us complimentary accounts of how Jesus ministered to Peter’s mother-in law.

Jesus left the synagogue and went to the home of Simon. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they asked Jesus to help her. So he bent over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. She got up at once and began to wait on them (Luke 4:38-39).

When Jesus came into Peter’s house, he saw Peter’s mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. He touched her hand and the fever left her, and she got up and began to wait on him (Matthew 8:14-15).

This is directly pertinent to the COVID-19 virus because we now know that most colds, flu and such are caused by viruses (sometimes bacteria). Viruses are very ancient, and so what was afflicting Peter’s mother-in-law was most likely a fever caused by a virus. Viruses that infect humans are all pretty much the same, whether polio, influenza, coronavirus, or something else. They are tiny globules that cannot exist by themselves but must find a host to replicate. So when Jesus came against the fever, He was really battling against a flu or cold virus of some sort.

Note that Jesus did two things. One, he touched her so that the healing energies of God would flow into her. He had done the same in many cases, including touching those with leprosy, whom everyone at the time recognized as contagious (Matt 8:1-3). The other thing was to speak healing, but in this case in the form of a rebuke to the fever (and underlying infectious agent).

It is important to note the rebuke. A rebuke is of course given in the command mode. Although we do not have Jesus’ exact words, we can assume they were firm and not “nice” to the fever. We have his exact words when he cursed the fig tree to death:

Early in the morning, as Jesus was on his way back to the city, he was hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, “May you never bear fruit again!” Immediately the tree withered (Matt 21:18-20).

Image: Kevin Kobsic

In the current pandemic I have not had the opportunity to pray for a patient with COVID-19 directly. Hospitals are not allowing even chaplains to minister directly to such patients. But over the decades I have prayed for many persons with colds and the flu with good effect following the command mode. I do that to myself when I feel the beginning of an illness such as a scratchy throat or drippy nose. I stand in front of a mirror and command: “In Jesus name, whatever virus or bacteria is infecting me die and disintegrate now!” I add an encouragement to my immune system, “Immune system, be strong and completely throw out whatever is infecting me.” I can truthfully say that in the past decade, using this command mode of prayer/curse, I have not had to take a sick day from work. I have prayed this over friends with the flu and it seems they recover much quicker.

Of course, this does not exhaust other forms of healing prayer for virus illness. James 5 encourages the elders of the church to anoint the sick with oil so that they will recover. It makes no distinction as to “fevers” (viruses) or other types of illnesses. I generally carry a small vessel of blessed oil, and many times when I pray for someone ill I finish with anointing the person’s forehead in the sign of the cross.

I am hopeful that the command mode of healing prayer continues to spread among Christians so that the Church will be better equipped to stem the next pandemic and earn a possible “B” or “B+” grade. There will always be churches that are stubborn and will not change the way they operate. They will say, “We never did such foolishness as cursing a virus, so why should we start now?”

I promised to talk about the way to stop insect sting poisons, and let me do that here. It is by command mode. The first time I used it was perhaps twenty years ago when I was walking on a wooded trail with my wife in the mountains of north Georgia. She has always been highly allergic to bee stings, and wham, she got stung by a yellow jacket. She did not have the packet of Benadryl she usually carries with her. We had just learned the command mode of prayer so I went right to it. “In Jesus’ name, I speak to the enzymes and poisons [injected by the bee] and command they disintegrate harmlessly, NOW! In Jesus’ name I command the [bee sting] bump to contract and the skin to go back to normal.” By the time we returned home ten minutes later, there was no sign of the sting and my wife did not have to take the usual Benadryl.

Let me construct a situation that might play out several years from now:

The church pastor gets a phone call that one of his church members, Mrs. Smith at 105 Elm St., has the first symptoms of COVID-25 virus, confirmed by the app on her smart watch. The Pastor considers how to minister to this and it occurs to him, “Oh, Mrs. Hernandez, of our healing team, lives nearby. I’ll give her a call.” Subsequently Mrs. Hernandez and one of her friends on the healing team arrive at Mrs. Smith’s home. They go in and anoint her with blessed oil, lay hands on her, rebuke the virus, and then speak strength to her immune system. They wash their hands and leave. Mrs. Smith goes to sleep and when she awakes three hours later, her symptoms are completely gone. The smart watch tells her she is no longer infected.

Image: Jonathan Borba

Church, do this. Let’s aim for a “B” in the next pandemic.

PR

Notes

[1] I explain how the Church became gifts deficient in both my earlier work, Quenching the Spirit (Lake Mary, Creation House, 1996) and my more recent one, Agnes Sanford and her Companions ( Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2015).

[2] An example of just how effective a church’s healing ministry can be is shown in my article on the Falls Church Anglican Church, “Falls Church Anglican: The Long March to Healing Excellence,” Pneuma Review, posted April 19, 2020. http://pneumareview.com/the-falls-church-anglican-the-long-march-to-healing-ministry-excellence/

[3] See my work Quenching the Spirit, on this issue.

[4] John MacArthur, Strange Fire (Thomas Nelson, 2013). Note the very fine responses to MacArthur’s awful hermeneutics by various authors in Pneuma Review, especially Craig S. Keener’s review, “John MacArthur’s Strange Fire,” posted Nov. 15, 2013. http://pneumareview.com/john-macarthurs-strange-fire-reviewed-by-craig-s-keener/

[5] William De Arteaga, “The Happy Hunters’ Revolution in Healing Prayer,” Pentecostal Theology, posted Oct 12, 2019. Recovered from a blog posted on Blogger but removed along with all of my blogs as “contrary to community standards.” http://www.pentecostaltheology.com/the-happy-hunters-revolution-in-healing-prayer/

[6] Emmy Yang, “What Martin Luther Teaches Us About Coronavirus,” Christianity Today, posted Jan. 20, 2020. https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/january-web-only/martin-luther-coronavirus-wuhan-chinese-new-year-christians.html

[7] Michael Finger, “The Martyrs of Memphis,” Memphis Magazine, posted April 8, 2019. https://memphismagazine.com/features/the-martyrs-of-memphis/

[8] The classic on this is Charles Farah’s, From the Pinnacle of the Temple (Plainsfield: Logos International, 1979).

[9] The church that I have mentioned above, Falls Church Anglican, has prudently cancelled its services and may not open for a while.

Robert W. Graves, ed., Strangers To Fire: When Tradition Trumps Scripture (The Foundation for Pentecostal Scholarship, 2014).

Strangers to Fire represents a phalanx of biblical responses by a variety of authors to the cessationism first developed by the serpent in the Garden: “Did God really say?” That was a challenge to the idea of revelation from God, a notion more fully developed by the cessationist scribes who opposed Jesus. Jesus said to them, “you have not heard His voice, you have not seen His form, the word of God is not in your heart, for you do not believe the one whom He has sent [to baptize in the Spirit of prophecy]. You search the scriptures because in them you think you have eternal life [but you don’t really believe or act on what the scriptures teach]” (Jn 5:36-47).

Cover for the November 2016 re-release by Empowered Life.

I have come to believe, however, that cessationism is only a reflection of the fact that Protestant theology is off center even in its soteriology, compared to the explicit mission and message of Jesus. The Reformation only slightly tweaked the Roman Catholic mass as the center of Christianity when it limited itself essentially to answering the question, “How much does it cost to go to heaven.” That isn’t the question upon which Jesus focuses. Rather, Jesus came to introduce the Kingdom of God—a synonym for the Spirit—that is, the New Covenant of Jer 31:31-34 (developed in 2 Cor 3 and Heb 8-12) and Isa 59:21 (the “punch line” of the most important speech in Christianity, cited in Acts 2:39). This new understanding of the goal of the Bible, that is, the mission of Jesus, revolutionized my understanding of Christian theology. Cessationism explicitly denies the core mission of the Bible that Jesus repeatedly commissioned his disciples to do: bring the people of God into the New Covenant of the Spirit of prophetic revelation and power. The very first paragraph of the “gold standard” of Christian theology, The Westminster Confession of Faith, explicitly denies the very core goal that the Bible itself affirms—the “prophethood of all believers”—the ideal state of the New Covenant. I spell out most of this in my new book, What’s Wrong with Protestant Theology: Tradition vs Biblical Emphasis (Word & Spirit, 2013).

Michael L. Brown, Authentic Fire: A Response to John MacArthur’s Strange Fire (Excel Publishers, 2013).

I would also recommend Michael Brown’s excellent response to MacArthur, Authentic Fire. The argument is clear, trenchant, and irenic by a skilled debater.

“This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

Jeremiah 31:33-34 NKJV

Are Pentecostals offering Strange Fire? (Panel Discussion)

Further Reading:

Interview with the editor: PneumaReview.com speaks with The Foundation for Pentecostal Scholarship President, Robert Graves, about their first published book, Strangers to Fire: When Tradition Trumps Scripture.

Read the reviews of Strangers to Fire from Tony Richie and John Lathrop.

“Are Pentecostals offering Strange Fire?” The panel discussion at PneumaReview.com about John MacArthur’s Strange Fire.

Craig S. Keener responds to a critic’s comment posted on his statement about the relationship between anti-supernaturalism and cessationism.

Excerpts from Miracles by Craig S. Keener

Are Pentecostals offering Strange Fire? (Panel Discussion)

John MacArthur’s Strange Fire, reviewed by Craig S. Keener

R.T. Kendall’s Holy Fire reviewed by Craig S. Keener

Craig S. Keener on Anti-supernaturalism and Cessationism

I find here, as in the book to which I originally responded, some strange lumping together of all charismatics’ beliefs to the detriment of any particular charismatic. What prompted me to write the review to begin with was a prominent figure’s extreme claim that the vast majority of charismatics are not saved, the implication that Pentecostals are a cult, and the claim that charismatic scholars have contributed nothing to scholarship. Cessationist and charismatic Christians often work together for the furtherance of the gospel; certainly I work with both. But when someone levels charges so outrageously polemical, it merits a strong response.

I took the time away from my exegetical work, and cannot do again in the near future, as between teaching and research I am embarrassingly far behind even on answering emails. Nevertheless, I took time to respond to the charge raised in the critic’s post partly because of another polemical statement: “Unconvinced that Keener is qualified to respond biblically and objectively.” In case someone could not tell based on my commentaries, most of my average day is spent working on Scripture and its context (and most of the exegesis is not distinctively charismatic; in fact, neither is much of the Miracles book).

Misconstruals of the original post

I have never claimed that moderate cessationists deny miracles today; in fact I stated the opposite. I recognize that moderate cessationists deny particular kinds of gifts rather than that God continues to sovereignly work miracles where he wills. Someone who has honestly read what I said will recognize that I myself agree “that God sovereignly heals when and how He chooses to.”

Furthermore, though I disagree with moderate cessationists about gifts, I agree with them that God sovereignly works miracles where he wills; we cannot generate or control them. One will also not find anywhere that I make the following claim that the post attributes to me: “does not follow how faith-healers can claim to work mass healings to the tune of thousands of people - which they themselves insist happens.” There are areas in the world where massive numbers of people are being healed, but this happens as often when they hear the gospel or see the Jesus Film as well as when they are specifically prayed for, and these massive cases for the sake of the gospel have to do with God sovereignly reaching a new area and not only with the agents that God sometimes chooses to use. I have explicitly affirmed God’s sovereignty in healing and criticized the prosperity teaching and its associated beliefs, so I am bewildered by the assumption that I doubt that miracles are God’s sovereign acts.

John MacArthur, Strange Fire: The Danger of Offending the Holy Spirit with Counterfeit Worship (Nashville, TN: Nelson Books, 2013), 333 pages, ISBN 9781400206414.

As we shall see, John MacArthur’s abhorrence of “further revelation” via prophecy and related spiritual gifts derives, not from scripture, but from the frustration of Calvinists under Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) of watching so many of their members defect to the Quakers, the crazy charismatics of the time. People were falling down, making a lot of noise and encountering Jesus in visions, prophecies, and healings. Sound familiar? Calvinist scholastics responded to this outrage with the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF)—often now regarded as the gold standard of Calvinist theology.

Despite the charismatic experiences of even some of the authors of the WCF, and especially their founder, John Knox, whose charismatic experiences were abundant and powerful, the dogmatists managed to ram through this narrow, unpopular paragraph in 1646, which, was to be imposed by threat of death on the British Isles—including Catholic Ireland. This curious history is thoroughly documented in a revised PhD dissertation by Garnet H Milne, The Westminster Confession of Faith and the Cessation of Special Revelation (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2007). See review in Pneuma 31:2 (2009), 318.

1. … It pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal Himself, and to declare that His will unto His Church [Heb 1:1] and afterwards for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing [Prov22:19-21; Lk1:3; Rom15:4; Mt 4:4]; which makes the Holy Scripture to be most necessary [2Tm 3:15; 2Pt 1:19]; those former ways of God’s revealing His will unto His people [miracles, prophecy] being now ceased [Heb1:1-2]. [Emphasis mine]

When the WCF was presented to Parliament for approval, the suspicious representatives bounced the document back, quite reasonably fearful that this document was asserting itself as a substitute for scripture itself. They demanded that the writers support every claim in the Confession with a clear grounding in the Bible. The writers grudgingly complied, though their exegetical skills fell far short of supporting their elaborate theologizing. If you can make sense of how these scripture verses they added [in brackets] support the dogmatic claims in this paragraph, then you are a far more insightful exegete than I.

There seems to be a move by some Evangelicals to engage more effectively today’s culture and society. This has been building for some time. Neither do these appear to be isolated incidents. Several Evangelicals are moving in similar directions. “An Evangelical Manifesto: A Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment” (see www.evangelicalmanifesto.com) is an especially significant example. First, several stalwart Evangelical leaders and thinkers, including Richard Mouw (Fuller Theological Seminary), Timothy George (Samford University), Dallas Willard (Southern California University), and others not only signed it but also helped shape it. Leith Anderson, President of the National Association of Evangelicals, was one of the charter signatories. Other notable signatories include Kay Arthur, Stuart Briscoe, Leighton Ford, Justo Gonzalez, Mark Noll, and Alvin Plantinga. Pentecostals will notice names like Jack Hayford, Cheryl Bridges Johns, Mel Robeck, Amos Yong, and others. (I just now signed it myself, and I encourage others to do so too.)

Second, among other things, “An Evangelical Manifesto” enumerates concerns for political and social action, ecological awareness, and ecumenical openness and even interreligious engagement – all without sacrificing or apologizing for continuing commitment to historic Evangelical principles regarding Christ, the Bible, or the Church and its mission. Its tone is quite positive, though perhaps just a bit defensive at times, but overall well balanced. Most of all, it is an intelligent and articulate presentation of Evangelical concerns for a wider arena of issues than previously typical. Additionally, it steadfastly resists and repudiates attempts to stereotype Evangelicals, maintaining a firm grip on a moderate posture between reactionary fundamentalism and reductionist liberalism, viewing both as undesirable, avoidable extremes. These Evangelicals see themselves, though perhaps not as “mainline,” yet as moderates, that is, as members of a movement more in the middle rather than to the far left or far right. Significantly, “An Evangelical Manifesto” is biblically and theologically sound while being culturally engaged. The steering committee and participants are to be commended for courageous work of exceptional quality. (NPR also has an interview about this with Mouw that is interesting. See http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90252763.)

Interestingly, there appears to be an expanding and, at times, energetic move among some Pentecostals toward cultural and social engagement that gels well with “An Evangelical Manifesto”. For example, Jerry Redman has written persuasively on “A Theology of Social Action” (http://www.faithnews.cc/articles.cfm?sid=8827) designed for Evangelicals and Pentecostals. Furthermore, Fleming Rutledge, in “When God Disturbs the Peace” (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/june/13.30.html), has connected Pentecostal and Charismatic understandings of the supernatural dimension and spiritual deliverance with social dynamics. Internationally known Charismatic speaker and writer Cindy Jacobs’s emphasis on working to achieve social transformation through intercession and prophetic ministry (The Reformation Manifesto: Your Part in God’s Plan to Change Nations Today [Bethany House, 2008]) comes to mind as well. From a sociological standpoint, the significance of the move toward Pentecostal social engagement has been studied by Donald Miller and Tetsunao Yamamori in Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007).

“An Evangelical Manifesto” is apparently an emphatic attempt to address contemporary concerns without abdicating traditional commitments. Likeminded Pentecostals can say “Amen!” Faith in Christ and life in the Spirit propels one beyond the borders of individual experience and interest into the wider arena of a needy if sometimes nasty world. Yet one does not forsake the former in favor of the other. Personal piety and social activity are, or ought to be, partners in Christ-centered, Spirit-filled living.

Rebecca Skaggs with Thomas Doyle lead us into a biblical and thoughtful look at the reality of suffering.

The Issue

Why is there suffering in the world? Further, why does it appear that often “good” people suffer when the “wicked” often thrive? Where is God when people suffer individually and collectively? For centuries, both philosophers and theologians have sought to analyze the issue and suggest a coherent and reassuring response to it. In the face of actual suffering, however, these philosophical and theological concepts often fall short.

Believers have a particularly difficult task in understanding suffering since they firmly believe that God cares and is able to alleviate suffering yet he often does not. C. S. Lewis, who himself cried out in anguish when his beloved wife died a painful death from cancer,¹ frames the dilemma for believers as follows: “If God were good, he would wish to make his creatures happy, and if God were almighty, he would be able to do what he wished.” The logical conclusion follows then that since the creatures are not happy, either “God lacks goodness or power or both.”² This perspective causes a seemingly irreconcilable paradox.

The problem of suffering is so difficult, that some choose to avoid the issue altogether. Oliver McMahan in his study of the Pentecostal view of suffering provides evidence that “unfortunately, the Pentecostals and charismatics in the United States have not historically allowed the world to observe its grief. [they have] neglected, avoided and even worked hard to deny the experience of pain and grief.”³ He makes the point that an emphasis has been made on miracles, healings, signs and wonders leading to “a parade of power without penance or pain.” According to McMahan, “a painless Pentecost” leads to power struggles, pride, and “puritanical doctrinal disputes.” He notes the obvious absence of accounts of those who were not healed, miracles which did not happen.⁴ Of course, there have been some Pentecostal scholars through the years who have called for the consideration of the issue of suffering, pain and grief.⁵

Postmodernism, The Church, and The Future
A Pneuma Review discussion about how the church should respond to postmodernism

Editor Introduction: Postmodernism, The Church, and The Future

I do have a few things to say about the postmodern discussion in The Pneuma Review. In my opinion, there has not been given any practical or relevant answers for how the church should engage our postmodern world. Many of the panelists have dealt with theory and not praxis. In many ways, there seems to be a denial that postmodernism even exists. If churches refuse to engage the culture whether they be Pentecostal, Baptists, even Catholic they will lose their ability to reach the lost with the gospel of Jesus Christ. The church is one of the last institutions to acknowledge and engage the new world of postmodernism. Many Pentecostal and Charismatic churches have chosen to respond to the changes in our culture with apathy and denial and therefore have become irrelevant to the culture around us. Once we begin to deny cultural change we fall into the danger of institutionalism.

The Holy Spirit calls and empowers the church to engage culture. God is culturally relevant, in the Old testament, New Testament, and now in the 21^st century.

PR

Read Pastor Bevin’s article, “Retro Faith: A Christian Response to Postmodernism,” in the Spring 2007 issue of The Pneuma Review.

Editor Introduction: Postmodernism, The Church, and The Future

Bob Dylan wrote a song in the 1960’s entitled “The Times They are A-Changin” that describes the changing times that we now live in. Change is all around us. There is rapid development and technology such as the world has never seen before. In the past 100 years we have learned how to fly, we have traveled to outer space, we have invented weapons of mass destruction, and we have witnessed the age of computer technology. As a result, we live in an age of revolutionary change.

Postmodernism, The Church, and The Future
A Pneuma Review discussion about how the church should respond to postmodernism

In the midst of these rapid changes, the old world of modernity is crumbling around us and a new world is emerging. Futurists, theologians, and philosophers call this new world “postmodernism.” What we are experiencing is a major paradigm shift from modernity to postmodernism. The tremendous paradigm shift that we are witnessing can be compared to previous time periods such as the reformation or the age of reason. In his book Soul Tsunami: Sink or Swim in the New Millennium Culture, Leonard Sweet writes, “The seismic events that have happened in the aftermath of the postmodern earthquake have generated tidal waves that have created a whole new world out there.”¹

There is no shortage of spirituality in our postmodern world. The postmodern world that we live in is a very spiritual place where people are looking for a spirituality that is real and relevant; a spirituality that is not dead and outdated. Many people in North America are actively seeking spirituality outside of the church by looking to alternative religions. Buddhism and other eastern religions are experiencing explosive growth in North America and around the world. In the marketplace of consumer spirituality, individuals are not choosing one religion over the other, rather they are weaving together their own patchwork spirituality.

The sad fact is that the church is one of the last places that people look for authentic spirituality. Most people say that church is boring, irrelevant, dry, complicated, even domesticated. How did this happen? Was it always this way? Part of the problem stems from the fact that many churches are still functioning the same way they were in the 1940’s. At the turn of the century the church became more rational than relational, more organizational than organic, more political than prayerful, and more structural than spiritual. Today, many of the churches in North America are anything but spiritual.

Author Brian D. McLaren declares, “If you have a new world, you need a new church, you have a new world.”² The changes of postmodern world are real, but the church has been slow to address it. The church is one of the last institutions to acknowledge and engage the new world of postmodernism. Many churches have chosen to respond to the changes in our culture with apathy and denial.

Differing with Walston, classical Pentecostal Robert Graves writes that the doctrine of initial evidence and the subsequence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit are taught by scripture.

 Editor Introduction  

 Part 1 of A Narrative-Critical Response

Rick Walston, The Speaking in Tongues Controversy: The Initial, Physical Evidence of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit (Fairfax, VA: Xulon Press, 2003), 235 pages.

Continued from Pneuma Review Fall 2005

Authorial Intent—the Doom of Pentecostal Theology?

For Walston, “Of all the arguments opposing the initial, physical evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit, that of authorial intent is, without a doubt, the most convincing …” (59). His methodology for proving this entails asking what he calls a “Guiding Question” of each incident where Luke describes someone experiencing salvation, “What importance does Luke give to tongues as evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit?” (pp. 61, 71). He then claims that there are twenty-six references in Acts of people being baptized in the Holy Spirit (126).¹⁷ Walston continues, “If Luke mentions the outward manifestation of tongues on only three of twenty-six soteriological occasions, with the number of people demonstrating this outward manifestation to be around 150 out of well over three thousand people, then the obvious question must follow, How important could it have possibly been to Luke?” (110). Thus, he reasons concerning the Jerusalem Pentecost and Acts 2:41, “It cannot be logically nor exegetically argued that all Christians who are baptized in the Holy Spirit should speak in tongues from a small sampling of only 120 out of 3,120 people” (126). “If it were as important an issue as Classical Pentecostals say it is, Luke would have used this three-thousand-person example to develop the concept. But, he does not” (71).

Throughout his chapter on authorial intent, Walston mentions a number of places where Luke, if he had wished to show that speaking in tongues is the initial, physical evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit, could have done so explicitly, and with great effect (e.g., the three thousand in 2:41, the Samaritans, the priests in 6:7, and Paul), but Luke is silent. Even if all of these believers did speak in tongues, the fact that Luke does not mention it is proof that tongues are not that important to Luke; thus, it was not Luke’s “intent to convey tongues as the initial, physical evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit” (73).

Just as Walston uses Acts 2:38-41 as the locus classicus to prove that to be saved is to be baptized in the Holy Spirit and vice versa, he also uses this passage as the locus classicus to prove that it is not Luke’s intent to teach that tongues are the normative, initial evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. After repeating his Guiding Question, he writes, “The issue is not, ‘Did the three thousand speak in tongues?’ The issue is, ‘Why does Luke not make a point of saying that they did (or did not) speak in tongues?’ He does not mention it because it is not an issue. What Luke does take the time and space to describe is the soteriological outcome on this unique day” (71). Walston calls the incident with the three thousand a “paradigmatic gold mine” had Luke wanted to establish tongues as the evidence of Spirit-baptism (72).