The Palace narrates “a series of first-hand prophetic visions” involving the redemption of a street orphan whose curiosity about a fabled palace and its King drives him to set out on a journey of discovery. The boy encounters the king, who unexpectedly shows great interest in the boy over several visits until the king invites him into the palace and even into adoption as a son.

The boy trains for warfare for his king. In the process of training and actual mission, the allegory astutely explores a wide range of human motives of both those in service of the king and those who oppose it. The strength of the book mirrors the insights of the C.S. Lewis allegories as well as Pilgrim’s Progress, but offers a sense of intimacy, communication, and miraculous power with “the King” that, due to their traditional theological limitations, these famous classics lack. The Palace offers a sophisticated and nuanced appreciation for the spiritual obstacles, strengths and weaknesses of the young, commissioned warrior as he encounters the unique problems of an array of social groups. In this, the narrative becomes an effective “how to” manual for the normative New Testament disciple.

Jonathan Seiver

This allegory was a joy to read and apply its lessons. Reading this to each other would be a great intimacy builder for Christian families as well as an uplifting discipleship training exercise for any group.

Reviewed by Jon Ruthven

William De Arteaga has created a ground-breaking, major contribution that is foundational to the evolving understanding of the Pentecostal/charismatic movement projected to reach 811 million in only four more years.

The author offers a surprisingly sympathetic narrative of one whom he regards as the foremost, and ultimately, most influential theologian of the charismatic renewal, a woman nonetheless maligned as a “new age” heretic, Agnes Sanford.

De Arteaga’s work employs two metaphors to express its thesis that Sanford’s ministry overcame cessationism (the “Galatian bewitchment” 3:1-3, replacing the miracle power of God with human effort), by a series of “Marcion shoves” (a reference to a heretic pushing a truth into error in order to bring that truth to the attention of the mainstream). In Sanford’s case, hers was a trial-and-error sampling of various contemporary positions on healing, being dialectally “shoved” into a thoroughly biblical understanding.

In the early 1930s, the loudest voice against healing, however, was the heretical consensus doctrine of Protestantism of that time: cessationism, that is, miracles of healing simply do not happen today. Sanford began her God-given quest by having to reject the “Galatian bewitchment” of her cradle faith, Protestantism. In this De Arteaga showed how Sanford, in the total vacuum of Christian biblical scholarship on healing, was compelled to search a variety of fringe groups for any possible insight into the truth about the healings she had received from God. Through all this, Sanford held to the centrality of Jesus and his scriptures, but only gradually, with no help from the church, discovering how central was healing to the biblical mission and message of Jesus and the New Testament.

Agnes was the daughter of Presbyterian missionaries in China, educated in the US, who as an adult continued their ministry back in China briefly until she met and married an Anglican missionary, Ted Sanford. Against the growing destabilization of China by competing warlords in the 1920s and by the insurgent communists, the new family moved to the USA to minister in Anglican churches near Philadelphia. Upon the healing of her baby son of a severe ear infection and of her own deep depression by a fellow Anglican clergyman, Agnes Sanford’s life course was set. It was discerned that her depression derived from “violating her God-given nature” by trying to be an excellent housewife instead of the writer and minister of healing that God had called her to be.

At this point, since the Christian tradition at that time was unanimously cessationist (the “Galatian bewitchment”) Sanford decided to test (ever alert to the “Marcion shove”) the variety of competing ideologies on healing, Christian Science, occult “science,” spiritism, “New Thought,” New Age, etc. against the “standard” of Jesus described in the four Gospels.

Since she had personally experienced such miracles, Sanford’s curiosity was drawn to the only voices of the time, who seemed to affirm what she had seen so clearly. She skimmed Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health but found “it did not make sense.” She twice attended a “Christian” spiritist séance, “carefully keeping an open mind,” but discovered the leader himself was plagued by spirit-induced headaches. When Sanford prayed for the spiritist’s sick mother, she found herself in “deep depression” and “could taste in [her] own mouth” the foul odor on the breath of the spiritist. On top of that the spiritist’s mother immediately died. Sanford promised the Lord that she would “never go near a séance again.” Unwittingly, she came to understand that her prayer was mixing the “energy” of the demonic with that of the Holy Spirit. Thereafter, she would screen out for special attention and prayer anyone who admitted to involvement in spiritism. Despite her strict and clear repudiation of her experiment with “Christian” spiritism, critics pounced on her account as evidence of her “demonic” ministry, instead of it serving as a “Marcion shove” toward biblical truth. Sanford’s “scientific” and biblical process of “Do not quench the Spirit . . . test all things, hold fast to that which is good” (1Th 5:19-20) proved inflammatory for her critics.

Jon Mark Ruthven, What’s Wrong with Protestant Theology? Tradition vs. Biblical Emphasis (Tulsa: Word and Spirit Press, 2013), 314 pages, ISBN 9780981952642.

Books on Christian theology are often written by academic types: persons of seminary and university training, but with only marginal pastoral experience. This is not true of this work.

Dr. Ruthven is both a scholar and a pastor. He was a pastor for twelve years, and then a professor at Regent University for 18, besides taking numerous missionary trips to the majority world. He wrote the definitive book critiquing cessationism, On the Cessation of the Charismata: The Protestant Polemic on Postbiblical Miracles (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), which is still in print. He has since written or co-authored a half dozen other works.

Dr. Ruthven’s thesis is that the Bible has an overwhelming emphasis as to what the believer is to do: hear the voice of God and obey. This is not just a command to the religious leaders and elites, but to every believer.

This book establishes this thesis after outlining the key features of Protestant theology, by showing that the central emphasis of scripture involves the process of the prophetic word of God coming to mankind, directly and immediately into individual hearts. This emphasis of scripture is proven by the recurring, central plot line of biblical narratives; the central temptation to mankind (Gen 3; Matt 4 and Luke 4); the essence of the New Covenant (the prophethood of believers); and the central, explicit mission of Jesus: to bestow the prophetic Spirit.

At the end of the work, Ruthven summarizes the answer to his title, “What’s Wrong with Protestant Theology.”

Christian Epistemology. For all the emphasis the Protestants placed upon scripture as their ultimate doctrinal authority, they tended to use the Bible as a source for proof texts against Rome on the nature of “salvation” rather than allowing it to speak with its own voice and emphasis.

Signs and wonders, the central way God (and his Son) revealed himself in the Bible, were rejected by Protestants as obsolete devices to “prove” doctrine—as “signs” with no value except as they pointed to an accredited Gospel creed. This misconception resulted in …

The loss of the big picture of Jesus’ mission. The Protestant emphasis was on the free gift of Christ’s sacrifice. By contrast, the New Testament portrays Jesus’ kingdom mission as introducing, modeling, ratifying, vindicating, commissioning, and bestowing the New Covenant charismatic Spirit––a synonym for the kingdom of God––a concept traditional theology largely ignored.

By denying Jesus’ central kingdom mission, traditional Protestantism seriously messed up New Testament discipleship, by denying the essential work of the Spirit in the life and mission of the believer. Protestantism generally ignored the significance of the early commissioning accounts, e.g., Mt 10; Mk 6; Lk 9-10, relegating those to the apostles only.

Instead, in traditional theology, the believer’s role is essentially that of a consumer: to receive salvation, meaning a place in heaven, and to “be good” until then.

Jon M. Ruthven in 2012.

It is Ruthven’s view that traditional religion avoids the central point of scripture: the ideal of a believer in full communication and communion via the empowering Spirit. Tradition puts the task of hearing God into the hands of the religious leadership. In Judaism this is through the institution of rabbinical commentaries, and in the Christianity it is via the role given priests and preachers of expounding the Word of God––to the exclusion of layperson’s input. For instance, it would be shocking in most churches in Christendom for a layperson to stand up at the end of the sermon and say: “I believe the Spirit of the Lord would add these words to what Pastor Smith has said…”

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.

Jon Ruthven, On the Cessation of the Charismata: The Protestant Polemic on Postbiblical Miracles, Journal of Pentecostal Theology Supplement Series 3 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993 and 1997), 271 pages.

Those who are involved in friendly debates with cessationists should seriously consider this book as a gift in order to further conversation on the topic. Let me briefly identify the book’s highlights.

First, Ruthven provides a valuable overview of the history of cessationism, beginning with Jewish sect of the Pharisees in the period of the early church and continuing through the Reformers’ debate against the Radical Reformation and Roman Catholicism, Hume’s criticism of all supernatural miracles, and the emergence of Deism.

Jon Mark Ruthven

Second, against this background, the cessationist polemic of Princeton theologian, Benjamin B. Warfield (1855-1921), is critically assessed. An outstanding example of contextualizing a theologian’s ideas, Ruthven’s discussion not only establishes the internal inconsistency of Warfield’s concept of miracle in the latter’s Counterfeit Miracles (1918), but also reveals a clear irony in his methodology. In his zeal to uphold the authority of Scripture, Warfield actually misread the biblical data on the charismata even according to his own hermeneutical principles. Further, his a priori cessationism led him to discredit miracles documented in the history of Christianity by applying to this record the same historical method that Hume and the deists used to undermine biblical miracles themselves. In short, Ruthven demonstrates that Warfield’s ‘bibliolatry’ (my term) actually blinded him to the continuities manifest between Scripture and ongoing biblical revelation, thus motivating his polemic.

Cover from the 2011 revised and expanded edition from Word & Spirit Press.

Third, Ruthven challenges the ‘evidentialist’ doctrine of miracles and the charismata that claims these served only to accredit the foundations of Christian faith in the first century. He provides us with a thorough exegetical investigation of all texts related to the function and duration of the charismata, and argues convincingly the thesis that they are edificatory for the Church. The charismata concretely express and make relevant the Gospel, and equip the Church for mission. If in fact the Church’s mission continues until the end of this age, then cessationism is wrong.

Finally, Ruthven provides hints for extending the biblical theology of the charismata that he has developed into a systematic theology of charismata. These involve other areas of theological study such as pneumatology, eschatology and the Kingdom of God, ecclesiology and theology of ministry, and the doctrines of grace and revelation. The book includes an exhaustive bibliography that researchers on cessationism cannot afford to ignore.

Ruthven’s writing style is lucid and his argument persuasive. The book is informative for scholar, pastor and layperson alike. I highly recommend it.

Reviewed by Amos Yong

Gary S. Greig and Kevin N. Springer, eds., The Kingdom and the Power: Are Healing and Spiritual Gifts Used by Jesus and the Early Church Meant for the Church Today? A Biblical Look at How to Bring the Gospel to the World with Power (Regal Books, 1993), 463 pages.

Thirty years ago, when I graduated from a prominent evangelical divinity school, I prayed long and hard for a book like Kingdom and the Power to answer the objections that my seminary professors had raised against my Pentecostal experience. My parting shot from the seminary was a tutorial research paper that eventually evolved into my doctoral dissertation and later, book, On the Cessation of the Charismata. The cessationist professor read only about half of the project, assigned it a “B” and refused to dialog about its arguments and exegesis. At the same time, a close friend and fellow student with normally high grades, who is now the New Testament Professor at Edinburgh, fared even worse: he received a “C” on his thesis, “Signs and Wonders in the New Testament.” There was little discussion on the ideas presented, aside from an assertion from one committee member to the effect that along with Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons, Pentecostals should not have been allowed enroll at that school.

Times have changed since the 60s. The shrinking proportion of evangelicals who still maintain that spiritual gifts have ceased with the apostles are much more willing to dialog—if only because increasingly they now find themselves in a theological Alamo, where there are constant defections and increasing apathy on the part of the defenders. In the last decades, the debate over the gifts of the Spirit has become much more sophisticated exegetically and theologically. Many non-charismatic evangelicals today seem to be more willing to receive, or at least read, the new exegetically-grounded works of Pentecostals and charismatics.

The Kingdom and the Power is a work that represents a theology in transition from categories framed by traditional Protestant theology to ones more naturally expressed in scripture. Accordingly, Kingdom effectively avails itself of the breadth of scholarship from the last 60 years (see especially, pp. 24-28) as the numerous endnotes will attest, though without compromising the authority of its biblical grounding. The work presents itself as a polemic against critics of the Third Wave renewal generally, and cessationism in particular (p. 16). More significantly, the book’s extended scholarly argument represents a long step toward a comprehensive theology for the movement. Kingdom moves beyond its theological polemic, “Exegetical and Theological Studies,” in Part I, to Part II, to express its pastoral concern involving real-life application to ministry, and, in Part III, toward contributions from the disciplines of history, psychology, social anthropology and missiology. Seven appendices treat narrower issues dealing principally with cessationism.

Jon Ruthven, “What’s Right About the Faith Movement,” Ministries Today Volume 17, Number 1 (January-February 1999), pages 56-60.

One of the most respected scholars among charismatic circles has recently written briefly about what is perhaps the most controversial segment of the independent charismatic movement, the Word of Faith movement. His article appears in what is likely the most popular charismatic minister’s magazine, Ministries Today.

Jon M. Ruthven

Professor Ruthven gives a short background of what the Faith movement teaches and then challenges those outside this movement to hold their own traditional views in check before examining what the Faith movement does teach. He says that 1) Faith teaching has a better grasp of what the Bible says about the radical position the believer has in Christ than most of us do. The faith movement has a profound understanding of the majestic position of the believer before God. 2) The challenge to believe God to meet all our needs is heard clearly in Faith teaching. Aggressive, joyous faith is central to the Christian walk. 3) Faith teaching does much to establish or build faith. They accurately communicate that faith doesn’t just happen, it must be encouraged and built up. Ruthven says, “Faith teaching is right in that it has discerned what is perhaps the most important emphasis in the Bible: Faith is absolutely central to our relationship with God. Beyond that, faith teaching’s emphasis of developing and having faith is commendable” (p. 58, emphasis his).

Then, in a succinct way, Ruthven brings a greater Biblical balance to faith teaching by showing how easy it is to abuse the intent of Scripture by misapplying promises or statements not intended for our present circumstances. Latching on and holding God to do something He has not said He will do will only undermine true trust. Ruthven says, “This is the bottom line: If you want to build your faith, seek God in prayer to find out what God wants in that situation. When you receive the assurance of faith, and you have received it accurately, God will fulfill His Word” (p. 60).

Although in my opinion this article by Dr. Ruthven is especially gracious to the Faith movement, the response has not all been positive. One prominent leader (who is only mentioned favorably in the article) told Ruthven that he “obviously know[s] so little about” the Faith movement that he should not have written anything about it.¹ While Professor Ruthven does not claim to be an expert on the movement, what he says in this albeit brief article needs to be heeded. I pray that many will read his challenge and find a greater Biblical balance to their understanding of faith and learning to pursue and pray for God’s will.

Reviewed by Raul L. Mock

Endnotes

¹ Taken from an E-mail to the reviewer from Jon Ruthven, dated January 6, 1999.

This article has been republished online at numerous sites, including: http://hopefaithprayer.com/word-of-faith/whats-right-about-the-faith-movement (available as of August 12, 2014).