Roger E. Olson

This two-part article by the noted Evangelical scholar, Roger Olson, should be of interest to practically every reader of Pneuma Review. The article deals with two prominent theologians of the modern era who espouse very different views on the morality of the Christian’s participation in war. Olson’s article masterfully summarizes their opposite theologies. The first is that of Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) who formulated a modern variant of the Christian “just war” theology that traces its roots to St. Augustine (354-430). Olson then summarizes the Christian pacifist theology of Stanley Hauerwas (b. 1940) which has garnered a wide following in recent decades.

Olson is well credentialed for his attempt at describing these opposite positions. He is professor at Baylor University, and has been editor of Christian Scholar’s Review and Christianity Today, and as such is well acquainted with Christian thought of all persuasions. Olson declares he loves and has been influenced by the theology of both Niebuhr and Hauerwas. He admits it is a seemingly impossible task to reconcile these two theological views, but makes a valiant effort at it.

Christoph Blumhardt

For Niebuhr, war is a tragic necessity and never completely successful. Man’s sin nature would ensure that mistakes would be made in the course of the war or in the peace process. In fact, nothing would be definitively just until the Second Coming. Yet inaction and pious pacifism would lead to catastrophe. When Niebuhr began airing his view on war and the use of force, it was contested strongly by other pastors and theologians, as many were disillusioned by the failed peace after World War I. However, as the tragic history of World War II unfolded, his arguments seemed self-evidently true to most Christians.

All to the contrary, a resurgent Christian pacifism has been elaborated by the Duke University theologian Stanley Hauerwas. Hauerwas came to maturity during the Vietnam war, when the Berrigan brothers, two Catholic priests, were formulating a pacifist argument against the Vietnam War. For many, Vietnam seemed anything but a “just war.” Hauerwas was especially influenced by the Mennonite theologian Howard Yoder who preached a form of Christian absolute pacifism and non-violence.

Roger Olson was raised Pentecostal and now writes as an evangelical within the Baptist tradition. Although Baptist, he is neither a fundamentalist nor a Calvinist. Rather, he is one of the few Arminian evangelical theologians who have written an accessible text introducing theology.

Olson’s intention is for the book to serve as a “very basic, relatively comprehensive, nontechnical, nonspeculative one-volume introduction to Christian belief” (p. 7). Hence, Olson primarily aims to describe the various views that Christians have held in Christian history rather than arguing for any particular viewpoint. Aside from the first chapter, the book’s outline follows the key topics in systematic theology, like, creation, Jesus, and the Church. Each chapter includes a section explaining what the historical consensus of the church has been regarding the theme of the chapter, a section explaining alternative views (including both historical heresies and, in some cases, non-Christian views), and a section outlining diverse Christian beliefs regarding the chapter’s topic. This approach not only helps readers avoid heretical beliefs, but it also serves Olson’s irenic aim of helping readers realize that there is a core to Christian beliefs that also allows for authentic Christians to disagree on some points. Olson concludes each chapter by also proposing a brief “unitive Christian vision” of the doctrine under discussion, where he briefly recommends his own position, including an affirmation of the consensus as well as an attempt to take a “both-and,” rather than “either-or,” approach to the various theological issues regarding which Christian disagree.

Reviewed by Andrew K. Gabriel

Publisher’s page: http://www.ivpress.com/cgi-ivpress/book.pl/code=5125

Preview: https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Mosaic_of_Christian_Belief.html?id=WPakCgAAQBAJ

Olson’s main thrust is about the decline in Baptist churches to remain true to their theology of the sacraments and either not think about the issue, or think about it sloppily. Let me reinforce the point with my own observations as I have witnessed a variety Baptist or “non-denominational” (ex-Baptists) churches do baptism. One church in particular really stunned me when the minister immersed the teen aspirant, but said no words, as in the classic Trinitarian formula, or even the United Pentecostal “Onto the name of Jesus.” Nothing. That is an extreme case, but points to what Olson complains about. I hope many people read Olson’s article and give more thought to their sacramental ministry.

Roger Olson

Reviewed by William De Arteaga

Read Olson’s article online: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2016/05/why-i-think-baptists-and-baptists-have-it-wrong-about-the-sacraments/

This is a most interesting article. The author, a noted Evangelical scholar and pastor, was involved in the early charismatic movement where he saw some of the extremes of the early charismatic deliverance movement. For instance, in some meetings, charismatic evangelists/exorcists provided the audience with bags to contain their vomit, as airlines used to do, so that in the course of the mass deliverance ministry the floors could be kept sanitary. That of course was an extremism the sort of which Olson remembers and rebukes.

Roger Olson

But Olson’s thoughtful article should have given a more positive answer. Yes, there can be extremism in any ministry, as in some evangelical ministers that stress the altar call and forget about discipleship afterwards. But extremism does not negate the real ministry.

I believe Olson advocates for a biblically based awareness of the demonic and for ministers to be prepared to do exorcism/deliverance. But I wish he would have written the article with more clarity and with a less ambiguous tone. Perhaps his audience, predominantly Evangelical (and some cessationist) would not be ready for a straight forward endorsement of exorcism/deliverance.

From my perspective, and an Anglican priest with an ongoing healing ministry, I recognize the need for exorcism/deliverance. There are many issues about this ministry that would warrant long discussion. But in short, any Christian who does healing ministry needs to know something of deliverance ministry. I believe every Christian minister should be informed on the topic. Needless to say many seminary programs are remiss here. I would recommend Dr. Francis MacNutt’s Deliverance from Evil Spirits as a primer.

Reviewed by William De Arteaga

Read the full blog post for yourself: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2016/06/should-western-christians-rediscover-exorcism

If my mainline seminary education was typical, very little is taught about Pietism. When I found a dingy copy of Pia Desideria at a used book sale while on vacation a few years after graduation, I recognized the title and its author, Philipp Jakob Spener, but could not remember much else. Reading it, I had the reaction that quite a few people still have. The book was obviously written centuries ago, and while it doesn’t have that “contemporary air” that reviewers are always finding in old books, some of what Spener addressed had direct application to our present situation.

And so began my interest in “the flowering of the German Lutheran Churchly Pietists” a period from 1675-1725, roughly spanning the careers of Spener and August Hermann Francke. I still await the awakening of fellow clergy and our professors to its benefits. There have been a few stirrings. Bethel had a conference on “The Pietist Impulse” in 2009, and a collection of articles was released in 2011 as The Pietist Impulse in Christianity. The label Pietism is tossed around a bit in social media, and I was even interviewed recently for a podcast, but for the most part, pietism is spoken of as a form of legalism, basically. We also hear that pietists are anti-intellectual, are all about having a religious experience, they don’t care about the Sacraments, and all sorts of things that I do not see in my historical research. Of course, the problem here is we are talking about is a movement spanning four hundred years, and radicals who really were “enthusiasts” are included under that label, but we should follow the advice that a movement is known by its broad middle and not its fringes.

Roger Olson and Christian Winn have attempted to explain how a “good word got a bad reputation” in the readable, historical and theological work Reclaiming Pietism. It will have to be seen if this 2015 offering from Wm. B. Eerdmans is up to the task of its title. After all, as they say, not even religious scholars in the United States today know what Pietism is. That is a little odd since the two most influential forms of Christianity here were Puritanism and Pietism. No American history course is complete without a segment on the Puritans, yet as Olson and Winn point out there is a good case to be made that Pietism was just as influential if not more so.

It is as if Pietism fell off the radar. When mentioned at all, it is a pejorative term. It may be surprising for Americans to learn that Pietism studies are taken seriously in Germany. They see, as we should, that it was important to their development. It is perhaps worth noting that the Wikipedia page for the former dean of Pietism research in America is in German.

In Germany in the 1980s and 1990s Martin Brecht and Johannes Wallmann had a long debate whether the movement should be dated from the time of Johan Arndt and include Reformed thinkers from Britain and the Netherlands, or if it was begun by Philipp Jakob Spener and properly understood as having Lutheran roots. Germans followed the papers from Brecht and Wallman with great interest and academics took sides. Only a handful of people here know anything about this.

If for no other reason than giving educators a resource to fill that blank, Reclaiming Pietism meets a need. However, since it is a clearly written, historical survey taking advantage of the work of Stoeffler from about fifty years ago and the more recent work of Douglas Shantz, Jonathan Strom and others, it may well excite even more research. Olson and Winn are leading scholars themselves in the new Pietism research, Winn having been a student of Donald Dayton at Drew concentrating in the work of the Blumhardts before teaching at Bethel University in St. Paul, and Olson having a long career as an educator and author, now teaching at Baylor.

Roger Olson’s challenge to Western Christianity about the power of God is a bold and biblical one. Questioning the status quo of our current version of traditional Christianity, he rightly believes that it has, “absorbed the worldview of modernity by relegating the supernatural, miracles, scientifically unexplainable interventions of God, to the past (‘Bible times’) and elsewhere (‘the mission fields’).”^[1]

Roger Olson

Several years ago, Olson sounded a similar alarm: “It seems to me that belief in ‘the supernatural’ is an essential part of traditional, classical Christianity (and I mean that normatively and not only historically). That is to say, denying the reality of the supernatural is tantamount to giving up Christianity. However, of course, many people who believe they are Christians deny the supernatural.”^[2] Olson began a recent article with the same alarm: “My claim is that most contemporary American evangelical Christians only pay lip service to the supernatural whereas the Bible is saturated with it.”

The perplexity of this is shared by many who consider themselves Pentecostals and Charismatics. It is a strange thing indeed for one who claims to be a Jesus-follower to simultaneously deny that the same power we see Jesus and His followers exercising in our day is now obsolete two thousand years later. Ironic is not a powerful enough word to describe a mindset which claims to abide by the worldview of the Bible while concurrently embracing an anti-supernatural, Enlightenment sentiment regarding the existence of the miraculous today.

Thankfully, while this may be common among various versions and flavors of Christianity, it does not seem to be so common among the vast majority of Americans. According to A survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion five years ago (2010), nearly 80% of Americans believe in miracles.^[3] Three years later (2013), that number was down to 72% per the Harris Poll.^[4] Five years later (2015), the Today Show’s recent survey among 1,500 people revealed that 76% of those polled believed that prayer could heal, revealing a sustained depth of belief in the miraculous and our connection to it.^[5] This touches on the bullseye of Olson’s post.

Many Pentecostals and Charismatics today would have a theological splinter in their soul if at least the idea of miraculous healing, if not the offer to pray for it, didn’t follow a person’s verbalization of their pain, suffering, or illness. Yet strangely, Olson’s experience reveals that too many of those who claim to follow Jesus, “avoid asking God to heal them…avoid any mention of demons or demonic possession and strictly shun exorcism as primitive and superstitious…look down on churches that anoint the sick with oil and pray for their physical healing…suspect they are ‘cultic’ and probably encourage ill people not to seek medical treatment…make fun of evangelists who claim to have prayed for God to re-route hurricanes but never ourselves pray for God to save people from natural disasters…have gradually adopted the idea that ‘Prayer doesn’t change things; it changes me’ and…regard petitionary prayer as something for children.” How horrific. That was my own behavior prior to 2004, and is an accurate description of the treatment I’ve received from others in the camp I left.

I share a similar story of healing along with Olson. I’ve had pretty severe allergies during the Spring ever since I can remember. Last year I felt filled with the faith to just go and ask a friend to lay hands on me and ask God to heal me. My friend did. So did God. I did not suffer with allergies for the remainder of the season last year, and have not suffered one day this year. And to my surprise, a lifelong allergy to milk has also been healed and I have enjoyed ice cream multiple times now with seemingly no effects. While I have not been to a doctor to verify this, my assumption is that if I no longer have the allergic reactions I used to have all my life, then something happened to me. And I also assume that if I can trace it all back to that single point in time when someone prayed for me, then the connection is legitimate. I asked. I had faith that God would do it. My friend believed. Two of us agreed on a matter touching the kingdom. And God granted it. No problems immediately thereafter.

I felt a strange sensation last week, however, when talking to my dad about this. He asked me how I was holding up this Spring so far. I began to describe for him that I no longer seemed to struggle, and suddenly acquiesced. The force and joy with which I would have normally talked about it suddenly began to subside. That surprised me. My father is a cessationist to this day, and pastored as such for thirty years in the Southern Baptist Convention. Knowing his position seemed to create in me a bizarre sense of obligation toward his viewpoint. Thankfully I caught myself, reassured myself that there’s nothing wrong proclaiming the goodness of God even to a convinced cessationist, and finished the story by stating what happened to me in a matter-of-fact sort of way. My dad’s response was just what I had expected: “Hmmm. Okay, son. That’s great.” But with a tone of voice which seemed to belie his true feelings on the matter.

In the end, I share Olson’s suspicion that, “our contemporary evangelical avoidance of the supernatural in the physical realm of reality has little to do with intellectual questions and issues.” I also believe that, “it has more to do with wanting our religion to be respectable; above all we don’t want to be viewed by the world around us as fanatics. The abuses of the supernatural seen on cable television cause us to drop it entirely.”^[6] I think that’s the bizarre sense of obligation I felt when speaking with my dad. It was that feeling of “respectability,” yet obviously one based purely on culture instead of on the kingdom.

What is also just as obvious is that the abuse of a thing should never dictate the avoidance of that thing altogether. Yet strangely, this too, is a standard practice of cultural respectability. As Olson frames it, “the cure for abuse is not disuse but proper use.”^[7] I believe that Christians should labor diligently to not be conformed to the patterns of this world, but instead should continually place themselves in a place to be transformed by the renewing of their mind (Romans 12:1-2). The Enlightenment has poisoned our minds with the toxins of respectability and the genetic fallacy.^[8] The truth of Scriptures, contained especially in the life and ministry of Jesus and the early church as our lifestyle and pattern for the kingdom, provide the source material for this transformative renewal of our minds. This, along with an openness to miraculous experiences and participation in the power of God, will ultimately inoculate us from our cultural anti-supernaturalism and return the people of God to a place of effectiveness in the mission Jesus has called us to until His return.

Reviewed by Rob Wilkerson

Read the full article: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2015/04/embarrased-by-the-supernatural/

Notes

^[1] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/12/what-does-supernatural-mean-can-a-person-be-christian-and-not- believe-in-it/

^[2] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2015/04/embarrased-by-the-supernatural/

^[3] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124007551

^[4] http://secularpolicyinstitute.net/survey/americans-belief-in-god-miracles-and-heaven-declines/

^[5] http://www.today.com/news/there-afterlife-does-prayer-work-todays-survey-faith-spirituality-t14176

^[6] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2015/04/embarrased-by-the-supernatural/

^[7] ibid.

^[8] http://www.logicalfallacies.info/relevance/genetic/

Roger E. Olson, Pocket History of Evangelical Theology (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2007), 152 pages, ISBN 9780830827060.

In sixteen short chapters, Olson (Ph.D., Rice University) provides us with historical essays that cover the origination, development, and maturation of Evangelical theology within North America. The introductory chapter, composed of only fifteen pages, is worth the price of the book. Olson offers seven different possibilities of the meaning of the term Evangelical. Evangelical could merely refer to someone who proclaims the “good news” of Jesus Christ, a code word for “Protestant,” and historically refers to the “low” churches within the communion of the Church of England. The term Evangelical has similarly been used in the past to refer to the adherents to the Pietist movements within the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the early twentieth century, the term Evangelical generally referred to the fundamentalist movement. In the middle of the twentieth century, the term Evangelical was applied to the postfoundationalist school of thinking. The term Evangelical has also often been used as a term of derision in the twentieth century in reference to certain scholarly or historical figures that were deemed to be enthusiastic, fanatical, or aggressive. Finding these terms lacking, Olson offers the idea that an Evangelical is an orthodox Trinitarian who affirms the possibility of supernaturalism, who deems the Bible authoritative in all that it teaches and affirms, that Jesus of Nazareth is the unique revelation of the God of Israel, that humanity is fallen, and that the only way for humanity to be reconciled is through the agency of God’s Son (entailing His suffering, death, and resurrection). Moreover, Olson asserts that an Evangelical recognizes the necessity of personal conversion, the importance of regular devotional time, the urgency of evangelism amongst a decaying world, and the ultimate return of Jesus Christ that will usher in the Kingdom of God. Olson explains the roots of Evangelical theology coming from Pietism, revival movements, as well as Wesleyanism. He then goes on to demonstrate the relation between Holiness Pentecostalism and Evangelical theology. Olson covers the relation, if any, of fundamentalism and Evangelical theology. Olson mentions four representative theologians of the twentieth century within the Evangelical movement (Carl F. H. Henry, E. J. Carnell, Bernard Ramm, Donald Bloesch). In the later chapters, Olson offers a projection of where Evangelical theology may go from here (he mentions Postconservative theology in chapter 15), as well as mentioning several existing tensions found within Evangelical theology today. This small text would be ideal for adult studies at the local church, as it gives a succinct, accurate, and expandable introduction to the history of Evangelicalism.

Reviewed by Bradford McCall

Preview Pocket History of Evangelical Theology: http://books.google.com/books?id=nVfdAzBOUSIC

Roger Stronstad, The Prophethood of All Believers: A Study in Luke’s Charismatic Theology, Journal of Pentecostal Theology Supplemental Series, vol. 16 (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999). 136 pp.

There are at least three reasons why every Pentecostal and charismatic pastor, minister, or leader should read this book. Let me briefly attempt to convince the reader by elaborating on these in no particular order. First, the argument of the book is itself revolutionary for our understanding of what it means to be the people and church of God. The Reformation doctrine of the priesthood of all believers is commonplace, even among Pentecostals and charismatics. Not only can and should all believers be bold when they approach God, all believers are also commissioned by God to boldly be messengers of the gospel. This, Stronstad argues, is what the “prophethood of all believers” means. He goes through Luke-Acts in painstaking detail to show that the Spirit who anointed Jesus to go about doing good, to heal, to proclaim the Kingdom, and to deliver all oppressed of the devil (Luke 4:18 and Acts 10:38) is the same Spirit who has empowered all believers to do the same. Thus if Jesus is the eschatological prophet who is mighty in word and deed, why should not all believers be likewise, following not only the example and paradigm of Jesus, but also that of the earliest Christians, including Stephen, Philip, Barnabas, Agabus, Peter, and Paul (chapters 5 and 6)? Throughout, Stronstad weaves his argument paying close attention to the biblical texts, even while not neglecting the arguments of other Lukan scholars at important junctures.

The 2010 edition from Centre for Pentecostal Theology Press.

The second and third reasons for reading this book are connected, concerned as they are with Pentecostal-charismatic experience and hermeneutics. Along with many others, Stronstad has long argued that Christians interpret the biblical texts in part according to what they have experienced or not experienced (the lack of experience). In interpreting Luke and Acts, the Christian (lack of) experience—in this case, of signs and wonders, glossolalia and other charisms—is crucial. The first chapter of this book therefore serves as an excellent summary introducing the fundamental principles of Pentecostal hermeneutics, of the ways in which Pentecostal experience has led them to insights and understandings of the biblical text which would be more difficult to come by apart from such experiences. The rest of the volume then shows this hermeneutic at work. For those of us concerned with the sound interpretation of Scripture (as I hope all of us are), this book is thus not just an abstract “how-to” of reading Scripture, but a model of how to read the Bible in a manner faithful to itself, the believing community and the integrity of the experiences which make one Pentecostal or charismatic. Those looking to see how a authentic Pentecostal Christian (Stronstad has long been academic dean of Western Pentecostal Bible College in Abbottsford, British Columbia, and member of the Society for Pentecostal Studies) interprets Scripture in a manner worthy of the convictions, sensibilities and orientations central to Pentecostal-charismatic preaching and teaching will find a gold mine of homiletical and pedagogical resources in this book.

September 6, 1999 issue of Christianity Today

Roger E. Olson, “Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Arminian: My Reformed friends sometimes treat me like the enemy, but actually we need each other,” Christianity Today (September 6, 1999), pages 87-94.

Many remember the schism between George Whitefield and John Wesley as a microcosm of the debate between Calvinists and Arminians. Roger E Olson points out that although they made up before they died “ . . .their disagreement has lived on in American evangelicals’ waxing and waning debates about sovereignty and the doctrines of election and free will” (p. 87). He says that the unity enjoyed by the post-World War II evangelical coalition is beginning to wane with more and more Reformed Scholars, like R.C. Sproul and Michael Horton, questioning whether an Arminian can be a genuine evangelical. Horton goes as far as to say “An evangelical cannot be an Arminian any more than an evangelical can be a Roman Catholic” (p. 87).

Olson defines Arminians as “Protestants who deny unconditional election and affirm resistible grace” (p. 87). He further states “I hope for a new détente between those of us who believe in the soul’s ability to cooperate with regenerating grace (Arminians) and those evangelicals who believe that regenerating grace must precede even repentance and faith (Calvinists)” (p. 87).

Roger E. Olson is the Foy Valentine Professor of Christian Theology and Ethics at the George W. Truett Theological Seminary of Baylor University.

Working among many Reformed theologians, Olson learned that many equated Arminian with semi-Pelagian, a heresy named for a fifth-century British monk named Pelagius, who taught that men were born innocent and therefore could initiate salvation. Informed Arminians are quick to point out that they do not believe man can initiate salvation, for he is spiritually dead. They hold that God moved first through prevenient or enabling grace, which allows the sinner to make a decision to accept or reject the gospel.

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