Read A Storm of Perfection

The Garden of Scripture

Illusions and Fullness

An enchanted Christian social imaginary will involve revisiting what it means to be human and the nature of the divine–human relationship.^[1]
—Cheryl Bridges Johns

I am a fan of the ocean, particularly the northeast Atlantic, where I spent many summers and lived for six years. Whenever possible, I would spend a whole day at the beach swimming, even though the water temperature averaged sixty degrees. When I got into my late teens and early twenties, I preferred to walk along the beach in the evening and look out at the ocean as if it had an answer I was looking for. I have to admit that I was looking for something. I was looking for purpose and inspiration to figure out who I was and thinking that, at any point, all the answers would pop into my head if I stared out at the horizon long enough. It didn’t happen, and it didn’t happen because I wasn’t looking in the right place.

So, where did I find those answers? It sounds cliché, but I found purpose and inspiration in reading Scripture and discovered who I was when I gave myself to Christ. And something happens; it’s like a path, a process, or a paradox. The more I give up my life to Christ, the more I discover who I am. It’s a continual growth in understanding my identity in Jesus.

Nevertheless, there are some things my time at the beach taught me. I found that crabs prefer to hide under seaweed on the clustered rocks by the water. I discovered that if shattered glass is in the sea long enough, it becomes smooth around the edges and strangely captivating to the eye, so much so that people collect the glass. I also learned that water often magnifies what’s beneath it, giving the illusion that what’s on the bottom is only a few inches or less from the water’s surface. As a child, I would test that illusion frequently in tidepools, thinking them to be only a few inches deep, but I often found that the water would go up to my knee. In school, we learn things under the water; even the surface under the water looks larger and closer because the light is being refracted, not traveling in a straight line anymore, slowing down, which causes magnification. Thus, the illusion comes to life.

In my time as a student, minister, and teacher, I’ve observed that a lot of people, both Christians and non-Christians, sometimes view the Bible the same way as the tidepool. Those who pick up the Bible for the first time, even veterans, might see something beautiful, like one would with the mini eco-systems in a tidepool, and reach their hand in only to find they are in over their head, barely treading water. However, people who oppose Christianity and have already made up their minds about it and what they’ve heard the Bible says only see the illusion of shallowness and don’t even bother to reach in.

Problems With Illusions

I think the illusion partly happens because we don’t always know how much of the Bible we should take literally. But the word “literally” is casually thrown around so often that we must try to discern what the word means in the sense of interpreting the Bible. That is no easy task because it has been bogged down by so much historical baggage from the last hundred and fifty years. Typically, a literal reading of Scripture is supposed to be tied to a type of interpretation called the historical-grammatical method that seeks to discern the meaning of a passage as the author intended it to be understood. Using this method, the setting and circumstances of why the biblical book was written need to be identified, including the historical aspect. The other element, the grammatical, determines what the words and sentences in a passage mean and what genre it is written in so that the passage can be “plainly” communicated.

“You actually believe God made the world in six literal days? You, poor dear. I hope you come out of your cave soon.”

“You don’t believe the number the Bible gives for the Israelites in the wilderness is accurate? I hear hell is hot this time of year.”

The problem is it seems like some Christians gave into the stereotypes. Eventually, those Christians began to interpret the Bible and apply things to their faith that a “literal” interpretation was never meant for us to apply. Suddenly, the Hebrew cosmology of a three-tiered creation seen in Hannah’s prayer, depicting a flat world, must be applied to our time despite a wealth of information that proves otherwise. However, others began dismissing parts of the Bible that a “literal” interpretation was meant for us to apply, such as belief in the resurrection of Jesus and sexual integrity.^[2] And now, a literal interpretation is synonymous with not allowing any other interpretive methods because they’re seen as sinful or worldly by those whose idea of literal interpretation is infused with rigid dogmatism. And those who have a much more nuanced view of a literal view are looked down upon. Then politics had to be injected, and that never helped anything. What’s worse is that the loudest voices in the room are the ones that are on the extreme fringes of each side, each vying for control of the “true” message of the Bible. Interestingly, one part of Christianity always tries to speak for the whole of Christianity.^[3]

I bring all of this up because it has made Bible reading more difficult for many people who already struggle, it makes it harder for those who are called to teach, and it turns people off from even picking up the Bible; it shouldn’t be like this. In the secular world, humanity has found many ways to maim and kill one another, but in Christianity, depending on who we listen to, it can seem like we are acquiring a lot of methods to maim and kill our faith.

Our obsession with time, not having enough, and not having good quality is, of course, symptomatic of our era. So many books and people tell us to slow down, reprioritize, simplify, and be mindful. Yet, we might not have enough time to read or listen to those voices. However, let’s say we do listen, and we then decide to read for fifteen minutes, but then we are overcome with the thought of that not being enough time. We wonder, is that even enough time to gain a worthwhile understanding of God? Can I get to know God more in just fifteen minutes? My answer is yes. God can do more in fifteen minutes than we can imagine, even if we don’t realize it until later. But we have to be okay with that small amount of time.

The reason I believe we need to be okay with only being able to give God a small amount of our time has to do with motive. When we reach our hand into the tidepool, our motive is to grab what’s at the bottom because we are eager to get an up-close look at whatever the object is, be it a starfish or a periwinkle shell; we’re curious. We will only learn so much through mere curiosity; we learn much more through faithful, consistent, and committed curiosity. The award for that accrues over time, and suddenly, we find we know that object at the bottom of the tidepool intimately. The dedication to reading the Bible consistently, even if it’s only for a short amount of time, is like that, but only sort of. It is only “sort of” like that because even though God is the object of our faith and study, and we are getting to know him more intimately, God is not an object like a periwinkle shell or a sand dollar. Instead, he reveals that we are one of his most prized objects and demonstrates how intimately he already knows us. So, over time, our motive must shift from genuine curiosity to one that accepts and tries to understand how God uses the Bible to form his people into an object, a living vessel that reflects his glory.

The issue of time can be healed when the above motive shifts along with the petition to God for more time. God is perfectly able to move us out of what restricts us from him, whatever our excuses, especially in the hyper-distracted West. Our job is to relent, sacrifice, and use that time wisely. Part of using time wisely is coming to terms with the fact that we will not instantaneously learn everything we need to know about the Bible and what God is saying to us in one reading. When we heed that wisdom, we become like the trusty characters in Jesus’ parable of the talents. In the parable, Jesus tells his disciples that a person who owns a lot of property needs to head out of town, so he asks three of his workers to manage the property, giving one worker five talents (an amount of money equal to 75 years’ wages), the second worker two talents, and the third worker one talent. While the property manager was away, the two with the most money invested what they had in unnamed things and doubled the amount given to them. When the property owner returns and the first two workers tell him the good news, he rewards them with more responsibility, which is joyfully received. However, the worker with only one talent buried the money in the field and attacked the property owner’s character upon his return (Matt 28:14–28). The parable ends with that worker being fired and evicted from the property. Jesus’ lesson is that those who receive from God and put it into action will receive more from him. When we ask God for more time to get closer to him, he’ll give it to us.

John and Rachel

Indeed, it will take time to read the Bible, as it should. Relationships take time, and finite humans encounter the infinite God in Scripture. We will not master the Bible over our lifetime either, even if we better understand it toward the end of our lives. That means it will not always be simple. We should probably be wary when people say the Bible has a “simple teaching” about God. A “simple teaching” is like looking at a flower and saying, “This is a flower.” Though it is true that the Gospel, the message of Christ, is simple enough for a child to understand, it by no means stays simple but grows more profound the more we mature as readers. So, while some are intent on staying at a simple teaching, the Bible continues to the depths God meant it for. It can be kind of like John and Rachel’s story here:

John was strolling through his neighborhood on a splendid midsummer evening. As he climbed a small hill, he saw a bush dotted with vibrant red shapes. The closer John came to it, the more he realized it was a rose bush. John then noticed that the owner of the home where the rose bush was, an older woman who appeared to be in her mid-fifties, was watering the lawn. John picked up his stride to reach her before she finished and went inside.

“Excuse me,” John said, panting.

“Hello,” she returned warmly. “You’re John, right?”

“Yes, that’s right,” he returned as he caught his breath. “I apologize; I don’t believe I’ve ever asked you your name.”

The woman chucked and batted a hand at him. “Don’t worry, I’m afraid I’m somewhat of a busybody, but my name is Beverly. Oh, but I prefer Bev.”

“Excellent,” John replied. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Listen, I stopped by because I was wondering if I could get a closer look at the rose bush? It’s magnificent!”

“Of course,” she said, smiling warmly again at him while waving him over.

The roses were even better up closer. Examining the lushness and vitality of the rose petals, John was mesmerized. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen such a healthy rose bush before,” he exclaimed.

“Ah, yes,” Bev replied kindly. “I bought them at a nursery on the other side of town at the recommendation of a friend. It’s called Vera’s.”

Still entranced by the roses, John replied, “I wouldn’t mind having these in my yard as well.”

“I can give you the address if you’d like? The owner is wonderful! She’s younger than I thought she’d be but packed full of knowledge,” said Bev.

Bev’s question put John on the spot, and he had to think it over briefly. John wondered if he said he wanted a rose bush like the one in front of him because he really desired it or said it because he was being friendly. He at least decided to take the address.

“Yes, thank you,” he replied as he got out his phone to type in the address.

When she finished, John politely said goodbye and continued his evening walk.

Later in the evening, as John was shaving after a shower, he found his mind becoming fixated on the rose bush again. He’d been telling the truth when he said they were magnificent. Perhaps it would be nice to step out into his yard and see something like that daily; maintaining them would be worth the effort. John then determined that he’d visit the nursery the next day, talk to the owner, and decide.

The following morning, John ate his breakfast, got dressed, and made good on the decision the night before to visit Vera’s. He pulled up the address on his phone’s navigation app and found it was only fifteen minutes from his home. Finally arriving, John discovered a modest-sized shop with an attached greenhouse a shade larger. He entered, and what he found surprised him. So many healthy flowers, both common and uncommon, were all arranged in humble but enchanting displays. Colors popped out at him from every direction, and plants in the greenhouse resembled a picturesque tropical island; there was even a place in the back of the property filled with young trees and various shrubs. It reminded John of the imagery in C. S. Lewis’s Perelandra, which he read back in college. No wonder the rose bush appeared so wonderful, coming from a place like this!

John then tried to track down the owner. The nursery was a bit busy with it being a weekend, but it wasn’t crowded. He asked one employee at the cash register, a young college-aged boy if he knew where the owner was. The boy was unsure and told him to ask the assistant manager who was in the greenhouse. Stepping down in the greenhouse, he spotted a young woman in a forest green polo with a badge bearing the name “Kristen.”

“Excuse me,” he said, walking up to her. “The cashier told me you might know where I could find the owner.”

The young Kristen looked up at him politely but uneasily. “Yes, she’s out in the back,” she replied. “I can take you to her.”

“Thank you,” John replied as friendly as he could.

As the two walked back into the shop, where the doors leading to the back part of the property were, John tried to strike up some small talk.

“So, how long have you been working here?” John asked.

“Oh, about two years,” she replied casually.

“Do you like it?”

“Yeah, I do. My aunt is the owner. Yay, nepotism!” She said jokingly.

They passed through the double doors into a sizable open-air but fenced-in area. Kristen spied around quickly and spotted her aunt, who had her back to them and was inspecting a few pots containing stargazer lilies. She then continued to escort John toward the woman.

“Aunt Rachel?” Kristen called out.

The woman turned around, revealing her somewhat bookish appearance, but had sun-kissed skin, deep brown hair, and a welcoming smile. To John’s embarrassment, he found himself quite taken with her looks.

“Aunt Rachel,” Kristen said again as they approached her. “I think this man had a few questions for you.”

“How can I help you,” she asked with a soft yet assertive voice, removing her glasses.

She had large and captivating blue eyes. John tried not to stare. “Hi, thank you. This place was recommended by my neighbor, Bev.”

“Oh, I love Bev!” Rachel replied. “She is a dream customer and so pleasant.”

“Well,” John continued, “I saw the rose bush in her yard, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. To be honest, I don’t think about flowers that much. I’m not exactly one for gardening, but the rose bush was brilliant, and she told me she got the bulbs from here. So, I thought I’d come by and check this place out and ask why those roses looked so good.”

Rachel blushed somewhat at his comments. “Well, a lot of that has to do with the gardener, but our website offers a lot of information on how to tend a garden.”

“I see. Did you go to school for all of this?” He asked awkwardly.

“Not exactly,” Rachel replied. “I spent my summers with my grandmother, the “Vera” in Vera’s Nursey, and she’s the one who taught me all I know. Although, to be fair, she was a botanist turned horticulturalist.”

“Does she work here as well,” John asked.

Rachel’s face became a bit downcast at the question, which made John feel a little stupid.

“No,” she said. “Unfortunately, she passed away a few years after I got out of college,” she trailed off. “But this shop is dedicated to her legacy.”

After a few more minutes of conversation, John decided to buy a bulb of a rose bush and try his hand at growing it. When he arrived home, he looked up the store’s website and followed its instructions on properly planting and maintaining it to ensure growth. Over the next two weeks, he watched it as it grew, noticing several healthy buds. John also thought of Rachel and how there was more of a story behind her relationship with her grandmother based on her solemn response to his question.

A few more days went by, and over that time, he prepared a place in his backyard to plant more flowers, following the website’s instructions. While genuinely wanting to grow more things, he also wanted to see Rachel again. When the garden bed was finished, he returned to Vera’s Nursery. John was able to track her down and thanked her for the success he experienced. He then asked if she had any advice on what else he could plant as a beginner, to which she suggested Daylilies. John did something else, though, something as risky as planting roses with no experience; he asked her out for coffee. Although she eyed him carefully when he asked, Rachel agreed.

To John’s amazement, they met several more times after their coffee date. During one meeting in particular, Rachel decided to share more about the relationship between her and her Grandmother, Vera. The relationship the two shared wasn’t just based on gardening but on the bond of love. Rachel’s grandmother passed on her wisdom as well as her skills. When she wasn’t with her grandmother in the summer, they’d talk on the phone several times a week. Rachel even shared how she’d gotten pregnant in college, thinking her grandmother was going to kill her, and admitted her parents were furious. Vera was upset with her, naturally, but continued to offer the love she always had. Then, through tears, Rachel recounted the care her grandmother gave her when she went through the devastation of miscarrying the pregnancy.

That admittance by Rachel marked a turning point in John’s relationship with her; it was a brave step to take in sharing with him. John knew then that he wanted to marry Rachel, and after a few more months, he popped the question, to which she answered with an excited “Yes!”

Soon after their marriage, the imagery of Perelandra became a reality. Rachel transformed his yard into a paradise. No, it was their yard now, their paradise.

In this story, John avoided the error of thinking he had all of the information he needed about the roses just by looking at them. Had he not taken the time to go on the journey of finding the owner of the nursery, he would have missed out on a world of meaning, on a grand story that spans generations, and John would have missed out on the person he’d spend the rest of his life with. John was faithful to his journey even though it led him away from himself and to another. However, he also finds a more complete version of himself when he develops a relationship with Rachel. Although it is not a perfect example, the story illustrates that a faithful reading—which keeps context in mind—of the Bible leads us away from ourselves and to the God who revealed himself in it. Yet, the more we are led away from ourselves and to God, the more we find a complete version of ourselves as we find that God has authored us. Like John and Rachel’s story and the way flowers unfold as they bloom, the story of Scripture unfolds as we take the steps that lead beyond the surface of a “simple teaching.” We must be humble then and not rush to conclusions, nor should we be intent on thinking we will understand everything correctly when the Bible is meant to consume a lifetime of study.

Prismatic Fullness

The unfolding of meaning in the Bible reflects another thing about God. In chapter 3 of Ephesians, the Apostle Paul says, “Through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” (Eph 3:10). The word Paul uses for “rich variety,” which can also be translated as “manifold,” is the Greek word polypoikilos. The word can mean many-sided or many-colored. We can think of God’s wisdom then as a jewel with many facets. When light passes through this jewel, the eye is treated to seeing the color spectrum when it’s cast onto a surface. The difference, though, is that God emits his own light. So, in this sense, he is both the jewel and the light. What God gives us in Scripture is layered; it is multifaceted because he is multifaceted, but everything he gives us leads to himself. That is why we must be careful of people who teach their method of reading Scripture as the only valid method and disregard what others can contribute. Not only does it smack of fundamentalism, which is more of an attitude than a denomination, but it isn’t humble either. God is more significant than even the most faithful reading we can devise.

Understanding God’s fullness might look like what theologian and pastor Tony Richie discusses in his book Essentials of Pentecostal Theology [Editor’s note: read the review by John Lathrop]. In it, he attempts to trace out the “theology of fullness” to support the Pentecostal practice of Spirit-baptism. While defending such a doctrine is not the focus of this section (even though I’m a Pentecostal Christian), Richie guides readers of the Bible by pointing out how the language of “filling” is a prominent and favored figure of speech throughout Scripture, especially relating to divine truth and spiritual experience.^[4] To do this, he teases it out in a few ways. First, Richie points out how God fills creation, citing several verses such as Numbers 14:21, where God says, “Nevertheless—as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD.”^[5] The author then points out that God even fills the homes of his people and their mouths with praise (Neh 9:25, Ps 71:8).

The nature of filling continues all the way through the New Testament in the disciples and onlookers reactions to Christ’s miracles and provision (Luke 5:26, John 2:7). Then, filling takes on another dimension in the book of Acts as the disciples are filled with the Holy Spirit who empowers them to preach the Gospel boldly and perform signs and wonders (Acts 2:1–4, 3:1–8, 5:12–16, 8:4–13, 9:40–41, etc.). Many whom the Apostles encountered, however, also experienced a filling/baptism of the Spirit, such as when Peter and John ministered to the same Samaritans as Philip (8:14–17) and when Cornelius came into the faith through Peter’s preaching (10:44–46).^[6] Richie gives several other examples, but his work recalls the words of King David when he says, “Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there” (Ps 139:7–8).

On the other hand, we must also acknowledge that we can be filled in different ways that don’t reflect God. To see this, we only need to look back to Genesis 1. At the end of the chapter, God gives Adam and Eve the divine mandate to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:28). Instead, they fill the earth with violence because they disobeyed God’s command of not eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.^[7] This indicates that it turns into negative behavior when humanity tries to supplement God’s fullness for their own. For example, when coming across Jesus, religious leaders were “filled with wrath (Luke 4:28).” The infilling of rage would continue as they schemed and devised (the harmful use of imagination) how to arrest and execute Jesus, which eventually culminated with his execution.

As the gospels tell us, however, Jesus is resurrected, thereby defeating sin, the power of death, and Satan. He then bestows his promise of the Spirit’s coming (Acts 1:8), fulfilled in Acts 2. While we see miraculous signs performed by the Apostles through the power of the Spirit throughout the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit is given to all believers. He inhabits our lives (Eph 1:13) and pours out God’s love into our hearts (Rom 5:5); He is “God with us.” The primary activity of the Holy Spirit in our lives is to sanctify and form our characters to resemble Christ, along with empowering our witness of Jesus. We are pressed by the Apostles to keep in step with the Spirit’s guidance (Gal 5:25), and in this way, we can be victorious over the works of the flesh that seek to fill us with the desires of a fallen world.

Nevertheless, we still see through a mirror darkly, as Paul says (1 Cor 13:12). We only know in part, so we don’t always understand we are surrounded by the fullness of God. This is because even though Jesus inaugurated the Kingdom of God at his resurrection, his return will fully realize the Kingdom of God. As the Apostle John wrote, “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is” (1 John 3:3). That is why, as readers of the Bible, we need to be dependent on the leading and filling of the Spirit of God. It’s in this filling and dependence that we experience the fullness of God in this life and in Scripture, in its rich variety, so that we can prepare for the face-to-face fullness of God in the eternal life to come.

As we grasp this fullness of God, which is experienced both temporally and spiritually over our whole life, the illusion begins to fade, and the truth becomes clear because we are consistently learning. The sea we had mistaken for a tidepool and had become over our heads then suddenly turns into the water of life whose depths we humbly explore.

PR

This chapter is an excerpt from Tim Tschida’s book, The Garden of Scripture: Growing Your Confidence in the Bible (Resource Publications, 2025). Used with permission.

Notes

[1] Johns, Re-Enchanting The Text, 43.

[2] The disbelief in the resurrection has existed since at least Enlightenment in some capacity but has become more widespread among those who promote Jesus only for his moral and ethical teachings.

[3] Lewis, God In The Dock, 217. In an essay featured in the book, Lewis confronts the idea of a Christian political party in England noting it wouldn’t be successful because as soon as it makes certain accommodations or takes money from non–Christian financiers, it would cease being Christian. It also wouldn’t be able to speak for the whole of Christianity simply because English Christianity is only part of the body of Christ, not the whole thing. The same can be said for Christian denominations who try to control the definition of a “true” interpretation of the Bible.

[4] Tony Richie, Essentials of Pentecostal Theology, 133.

[5] Tony Richie, Essentials of Pentecostal Theology, 133.

[6] Tony Richie, Essentials of Pentecostal Theology, 133.

[7] Tony Richie, Essentials of Pentecostal Theology, 133.

The Garden of Scripture

A Storm of Perfection

Concepts create idols; only wonder comprehends anything. People kill one another over idols. Wonder makes us fall to our knees.
—Saint Gregory of Nyssa

Growing up in Minnesota, experiencing thunderstorms was common. I can genuinely say that I enjoyed most of them for one reason or another. Sometimes, when I tell that to others, they give me a strange look, but I never let it bother me. As a child, I particularly enjoyed the storms I could see far in the distance. One of the cool things about living on the northern plains is that the land is level enough so that a person can see storms that are miles away. For whatever reason, my parents told me the lightning we could see from those storms in the distance was called “heat lightning,” which never entirely made sense to me but added to their mystique. Those storms always seemed to strike at dusk and in the deepest part of summer. There was just enough light left in the sky that when lightning illuminated the cloud, it took on a curious orangish-white marbled quality that clashed with the deeper blue parts of the thunderhead. Gazing upon those storms in the distance was like looking into a different world; it was great for inspiring the imagination.

The thunderstorms I usually preferred, however, were the ones that directly impacted us, especially the ones that hit at night. They were never dull. In these storms, one of the main things I enjoyed was how one bolt could light up the surrounding darkness. For the briefest instant, when the lightning struck, I could see every detail of my neighborhood almost as clearly as in the day.

Those childhood memories got put on the back burner. As I moved across the country to the East Coast, thunderstorms were less frequent, and my attention turned to creating and facing my own inner storms. Eventually, I would give my life over to Christ, get married, move to the Southeastern United States, get called into ministry, and go to college and seminary to study theology. With my arrival in the South came the return of natural thunderstorms, ones that, if I can be honest, are terrifying because cloud–to–ground lightning is more common. And trees are everywhere, frequently knocked down by heavy rain and bursts of wind. But they did bring back the memories of watching the lightning illuminate everything.

Then God did something that would make storms relevant in a way I never imagined; he showed me Psalm 119:105. The verse says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” When I say that God showed it to me, I’m not saying I wasn’t aware of the verse; it was a popular worship song when I was a kid and was commonly used as a memory verse in Sunday school. What I mean is that God illuminated it when I studied it in Hebrew. The word for light in Hebrew, Or, can mean lightning. Finding that out immediately brought me back to my childhood memory of seeing my surroundings lit up. It revealed to me that the light God provides through his word doesn’t just allow us to see a few steps before us but can illuminate our path almost entirely.

As good as that is, lightning is only temporary. Its clarity lasts for a second, and everything goes dark again. When it comes to the direction our lives should go, the major decisions we make, or even the everyday situations we face, we can make the case that we need this type of illumination from God, however brief it is. If we return to Psalm 119:105, God has much more light to give us. Or does not just mean the brightness that a flash of lightning offers. The word also denotes the light at daybreak, the full light of the sun, and the light of glory, and is even linked to the pillar of fire that Israelites followed coming out of Egypt.

The imagery of lightning and fire almost seems counterintuitive because they are destructive forces, but God is Lord over them and can use those powerful elements. Yahweh himself appeared to the Israelites as a terrifying dark cloud containing lightning and fire. In his ominous interaction with Israel, however, God gave them his Instruction, the Torah, that showed Israel how to love and honor him and each other’s lives (Exod 19:16–19), and that’s why Or also means the light of life. The overall lesson from Psalm 119:105 is that the light God provides through Scripture is supposed to be stable and consistently shining, leading to a life of love, joy, and eagerness.^[1]

Little things like the Hebrew word for light demonstrate how God’s word is perfect. In Evangelical Christianity, we have a strange relationship with that sentiment. By expressing that the Bible is perfect, we usually mean that it is without error and sum it up with a doctrine called Biblical Inerrancy. But that is such a limited view of perfection for Scripture. The Old and New Testaments are perfect not because they don’t make errors but because they are the perfect collection of books that speak to humanity’s need for salvation. Then it is perfect for speaking to every situation we face because it speaks to the root issues of what causes those situations, doesn’t offer a solution found in ourselves, and mainly because it reveals Christ. The little word Or implies that our light and lives are sourced and sustained by a perfect God.

Meditative Reading

Our perfect God is willing to give us as much light on his Word as we are eager to ask for, and we should ask. Sometimes, though, I think God nudges us in unexpected ways. He gives us seemingly perfect moments to reflect on. These perfect moments are typically not easy to define until an individual experiences them, and they are subjective. Perhaps your moment is hearing the first cry of your just-born child or the moment your spouse said “I do” at the altar, or maybe when you realized what you wanted to do for the rest of your life. Whatever those moments are, whenever they do happen, they are engrained in your memory forever.

In an important way, I believe the practice of meditating on Scripture can be described as a haunting of God’s Word that won’t let you go until you spend time with it. Or, at least, maybe that’s how we should treat it. When I was a child in the 1980s and ’90s, the word meditation certainly would have had a similar connotation with haunting because of its affiliation with Eastern spirituality and New Age practices. However, I have seen the Christian form of meditation become more widely accepted in churches that honor it as a practice within the historical church. But with us having built a society where instant gratification can be met on demand, I wonder if meditation is lacking in the lives of many believers. With so many ways to distract ourselves to prevent us from reflecting, is it any wonder that biblical literacy has significantly declined?

Whenever it’s done well, however, meditating on Scripture leads to powerful insights that we read about in some of our favorite classic Christian books, such as The Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer. In Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster describes the practice of meditation as the “ability to hear God’s voice and obey his word” out of a desire to fellowship with God.^[2] Foster pulls from the Bible to note the importance of meditating on Scripture by highlighting the word’s use in Psalm 119, where David declares, “Oh, how I love your law! It is my meditation all day long” (119:97) along with other Old Testament appearances.^[3] In meditating on God’s word, David found his wisdom had increased significantly and that he could sense his Lord’s sweetness, which we don’t often take the time to comprehend (119:103). This mirrors the church father Jerome’s account of his friend Marcella saying, “whatever in us was gathered by long study and by lengthy meditation was almost changed into nature; this she tasted, this she learned, this she possessed.”^[4] As a result, when Jerome left his station, Marcella was sought as an authority when issues of Scriptural interpretation arose.^[5] So, in a biblical context, meditation doesn’t require us to empty our minds or detach ourselves from reality, but it invites us to fill our minds with God’s truth to attach ourselves more deeply to him.^[6]

Something palpable happens to us after we begin meditating on God’s Word; Scripture starts to haunt us. Theologian and educator Cheryl Bridges Johns laments that in this modern age, Scripture doesn’t keep people up at night, nor does it seem to fill their days with “images and stories.”^[7] To cope with that, Johns notices that modern society, Christian or secular, has found alternatives to enchant themselves through popular media or activities driven by lust and has become disenchanted with Scripture. And so, instead, we let a plethora of other harmful things haunt us. With my whole breath, however, I would argue that what the Bible offers us, especially in the revelation of Christ, is beautiful beyond comprehension. We should let such beauty haunt us instead of pain and regret, and it is a shame when we consider the latter more real and tangible than the inhabiting of the Spirit and Word within us. I believe, however, that intentional (which is just a buzzword that means to do something on purpose) meditation is one way to alleviate the issues Johns raises.

But what do I mean by that? Out of contemplation will hopefully come the understanding that Scripture is multifaceted. Each line of Scripture tends to link to other portions of Scripture, forming a connective tissue we banally call themes. If we begin to comprehend specific themes, things like the nature of God’s love, faith, the beauty and glory of God’s Kingdom, other biblical riches begin to accurately take shape in our hearts and minds. Although the Apostle Paul promises us we’ll see through a mirror darkly until Christ’s return (1 Cor 13:12), the picture God is communicating to readers of Scripture can become more apparent in meditation.

When the Bible’s messages become visible, it’s easier to become swept up in its narrative. That is a good thing and arguably what God wants. A common belief among Christians in the West is that we must interpret God’s word objectively so that we don’t insert our own experience into the text; that would be something called eisegesis. However, the unintentional effect of objectivism is that faith becomes an intellectual ascent rather than one that permeates a person’s whole self. That is a problem since God is after a person’s entire being. Consider Moses’ command to the Israelites, saying, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deut 6:5), a command that Jesus echoes in Matthew 22. A question we can ask is, if we believe the God revealed in the Bible is powerful enough to create the universe, is he powerful enough to transform us through reading his word?

Several significant figures throughout the Bible suggest the answer to the question we just asked is yes. One prominent person is the Old Testament leader Joshua. Guess how Joshua says transformation through the Word should happen? He says, “This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth; you shall meditate on it day and night,” and in doing so, it will allow us to act in accordance with what it says (Josh 1:8). We must also remember the context of Joshua to understand the significance of how meditating on Scripture can impact the whole person. Joshua had inherited from Moses the role of leading Israel into the promised land of Canaan. He led the Israelites in battle after battle against kingdoms who thought it was perfectly fine to sacrifice children to their gods to receive a fertile growing season. We know this because Moses gives commands to the Israelites, saying:

When you come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you must not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations. No one shall be found among you who makes a son or daughter pass through fire, or who practices divination, or is a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or one who casts spells, or who consults ghosts or spirits, or who seeks oracles from the dead. For whoever does these things is abhorrent to the LORD; it is because of such abhorrent practices that the LORD your God is driving them out before you. (Deuteronomy 18:9–12)

The kind of thinking and practice of those pagan nations is symbolic of a fallen world. To change such a way of living, the Israelites weren’t just required to “know the rules” but to embody the word of God, which would lead to their prosperity and even the prosperity of their neighbors. It’s not so different for Christians in this day and age. Despite Christ inaugurating his Kingdom, we still live in a fallen world and have societies steeped in destructive sin. If meditation could significantly aid the ancient Israelites, we who serve the same God can also benefit.

Although meditation has a profoundly spiritual connotation, many can be turned off by the word or become intimidated. There was and is a long tradition of meditation within the church, often called Contemplative Christianity, a term that can sometimes be code for Christian Mysticism. Like meditation, mysticism can be a polarizing word in some parts of the church because there are other forms of mysticism in different cultures and religions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism. Historically, the church has been enriched by Christian mystics such as Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, The Desert Fathers (St. Anthony) and Mothers, Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, John of the Cross, and many others. Most of the men and women listed lived a monastic life. They dedicated themselves to Christian meditation and other Christian disciplines because it allowed them to be fully devoted to God. Their writings have catapulted them into legendary status with lasting influence.

Yet, if Tim, a close friend of mine who owns a landscaping business, does it while mowing a yard, surely we don’t all have to be monks and nuns at a monastery. For Tim, meditation is about asking the Holy Spirit questions about Scripture; a fantastic one that he returns to often is the question of what happened on the cross. One could argue that Tim’s question is answered directly in the pages of the four gospels. That is true, but meditation is less about seeing what’s on the pages and more about dwelling on what the pages reveal, so it’s what happens after we see it. That is because the “central goal of Christian mysticism is to experience the ineffable splendors of the mutual indwelling of the soul in Christ,” as implied by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 1:20.^[8] The Spirit who inspired the living word invites us to seek with our own spirits the depth of God’s communion with us.

Also, consider this: the Hebrew word for meditate, hagita, means “to mutter” or to “say under the breath,” which brings a kind of lightness to the practice. There is a reason for muttering. Since most Israelites learned God’s word orally, it only makes sense that lingering on it would also be verbal itself. So, those who meditated on the Law would walk around or perform their duties while muttering Scripture under their breath in the process of understanding. Lots of us mutter under our breath, and usually, it’s by saying something passive-aggressive. Imagine, though, if we instead directed our thoughts and words towards understanding a verse or a passage we long to comprehend. I believe it would bring significant change to our lives and compel us to do it more and more as we seek to commune with God and obey him.
How To Meditate On Scripture As A Christian

So, how does a Christian meditate on their Bible readings? In this section, I’m supposed to offer several tips on how to improve your contemplative life. The fact is that it is difficult to flesh out concretely. The Bible, of course, is primary. Having the verse or passage fresh in our minds helps the process significantly as we seek to ask and dwell on its meaning. Richard Foster, who I mentioned earlier, writes about developing an interior life aided by time, place, and posture.^[10] Time is crucial because we have the physical and the emotional competing with the spiritual. The place is significant because it might be impossible to get a moment’s peace depending on our environment. Posture also impacts us because we can’t think or reflect well if we’re uncomfortable.

I agree with Foster. I often meditate on Scripture when I’m alone and have ambient music playing while sitting at my desk with the blinds open so I can see my yard. That being said, I’ve also meditated when doing the dishes, cutting the grass, or vacuuming. Anything that relies on muscle memory, or a “mindless activity,” frees our minds to focus on what we’ve read and be receptive to the Spirit of God. Notice here, too, in all these instances, as well as what Foster suggests, that I am wide awake. I like to think of meditating as studying in that it’s a process of learning, and I’m giving it the kind of attention needed to study well. It’s probably not impossible to meditate on Scripture lying in bed, but it’s less fruitful because of the temptation to doze off. Additionally, in times of meditation, you may want to write down the verse or passage so that you can come back later and add anything that God has shown you or if any of your other readings have contributed to your understanding.
Getting Results?

So far, I have described meditation as seeking answers and communing with God. We do this expecting that God will speak to us in return. But when can we expect an answer or see results? Whenever. I mentioned above that I, and others, have meditated during purposeful times or when doing mindless tasks. God also spoke to me in those times by impressing a thought that directly addressed what I was searching for in meditation. However, God has also spoken to me while I was in the middle of teaching my students. As I was writing The Fruit That Turns The World Upside Down, I’d been doing a lot of meditative reading. While teaching my high school students about the flood in Genesis, a thought literally popped into my head about how the flood metaphorically applies to our lives before we meet Christ and how Christ’s peace changes the effect of water to sanctify us.^[11] I believe I said, “holy smokes,” out loud while writing on the marker board. All that to say, I wasn’t expecting such a thought at that time.

If our meditation is truly about God, I believe he also gives us a way to confirm it. Countless times after meditation, questions have formed in my mind about God and what he says in his Word, and numerous times, that question was answered via a pastor’s sermon or perhaps something another Christian said, and usually in the same week. It is vital to confirm what we’re getting from meditation so we don’t slip into false beliefs and share erroneous things outside the bounds of Scripture. We need to heed John’s words to “not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). Nevertheless, if we’re receptive to God, he will bless us in his timing, which, by our standards, may happen whenever.

We love mysteries, but more than that, we love solving puzzles. One of my favorite mystery-solving television series was Luther, starring Idris Elba, because it’s not Sherlock Holmes but is still set in London. As a detective, Luther faces off against some very dangerous and brilliant foes, especially Alice Morgan, but he always manages to crack the case. Part of what I love about mystery shows is misdirection. When the viewer thinks they’ve figured out who’s done it, the detective reveals who actually did the crime, and there is closure. Some people take the same approach when meditating on Scripture as if the rest of the church is getting specific passages wrong, but their meditation reveals what the Bible is really saying. We are not Gnostics who try to “unlock” secret truths in the Bible or who eschew our physical lives for a solely spiritual life. While Christian meditation involves a person’s mind and spirit, the practice rests in the God present in both Testaments. Through meditation, we embrace the tension of mystery, understanding that God may reveal some parts but not all.

It is like The Big Bang Theory episode called “The Closure Alternative.” In the episode, one of the main characters, Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons), is upset about his favorite show being canceled on a cliffhanger. Sensing his obsession with closure in many other parts of his life and thinking he needs to re-condition his mind, Sheldon’s girlfriend, Amy (Mayim Bialik), arranges a series of activities for him to complete but prevents him from completing each task just before he can finish. By the end of the night, Sheldon claims that her experiment worked and confesses, albeit somewhat falsely, that he doesn’t need the closure he sought.^[12]

Mystery is beneficial for our minds. Why shouldn’t we want to let our minds hold God and his love in awe and wonder? Because those two states of being lead to feeling overwhelmed, people often avoid such a crucial time of reflection. As the Norwegian Educator Paul Martin Opdal observes, awe and “Wonder…always points to something beyond the accepted rules.”^[13] That can be daunting, especially in the context of religion, where there are “rules” to prevent us from sliding into unorthodox beliefs. Yet, multiple times in Scripture, we are told that being in awe and wonder of God is more than acceptable. Opdal notes that wonder gives us “an inkling that there is more to it that tradition admits, and that this ‘more’ can be investigated.”^[14] The “more” can be described as the theology beyond denominational doctrine that can sometimes be too reductive in how it discusses God and what he does.

Therefore, meditation can and does serve as a direct link to awe and wonder. In fact, we could say that meditation allows us to dive into the depths, swim in the mysteries Scripture presents, and enjoy that God is wholly other than us and who makes us whole.
What Meditation On Scripture Isn’t

The spiritual practice of Christian meditation is not a trend either. Trends depend on the consensus of popularity and are driven by influencers. For example, at the time of this writing, it is 2023, and a famous haircut from the early 1990s, the mullet, is gaining popularity because of some musicians and professional athletes. God willing, the trend will die out again, too. Although Christian spiritual practices have ebbed and flowed within the church for the last two thousand years, and some believers have promoted spirituality for their own benefit, practices such as meditation are a core component of the faith. As I have already demonstrated, meditation has been part of biblical faith since its inception, with its first appearance in Genesis 24:63. For Christians, intentional practice within the church was emphasized in the patristic period, if not before. Christopher Hall writes:

The [church] fathers never split theology off from spirituality, as though theology was an academic, mental exercise best practiced in one’s study, while Christian spirituality was more appropriately focused on the heart and centered in a church sanctuary. Any split between mind and heart, theology and spirituality, study and sanctuary would have been met with scant toleration from the fathers.^[15]

Dietrich Bonhoeffer utilized meditation as well. A commonly shared quote from him states, “Why do I meditate? Because I am a Christian.”^[16] That is because Bonhoeffer believed it to be an excellent way to tame the flesh, the fallen nature that tries daily to creep up in believers and distracts us from forming good Christian discipleship.^[17] He knew that our spirits are all too willing to follow the path of discipleship, but the flesh is “fearful,” causing us to create distractions and excuses as to why we can’t grow in our love toward God and our neighbor.^[18] Carving out time for meditating on Scripture is a practical discipline for our faith as we humbly submit ourselves to “move forward with certainty upon the firm ground of the word of God.”^[19]

Lastly, meditation is not for our self-elevation and self-promotion. Social media can sometimes be a great place for Christians. Through it, I’ve gained a lot of relationships with people that wouldn’t be possible without the platforms. On the other hand, social media is also rife with temptation, which includes the temptation to appear more pious than everyone else. With the surge of re-discovering the patristic and medieval period of Christianity in Evangelicalism, one of my worries is that some believers would co-opt the spiritual practices and theology of the church fathers and lord it over others who were less informed or use their spiritual practices to skirt moral and ethical issues Scripture warns against. We do not have to look too far to see examples. However, the flaunting of Christian spirituality and its misappropriation makes it void. Meditation done well should drive our pretensions away rather than enable them. Therefore, the more we meditate on the Word, the more it can be mapped over our lives since the practice’s goal is the application of Scripture. In short, meditation helps us decrease as Christ increases.

PR

This chapter is an excerpt from Tim Tschida’s book, The Garden of Scripture: Growing Your Confidence in the Bible (Resource Publications, 2025). Used with permission.

Coming Next from Tim Tschida: “Illusions And Fullness”

Notes

[1] Kraus, Theology of the Psalms, 161–162.

[2] Foster, Celebrations of Discipline, 21. Foster dedicates a whole chapter to the discipline of meditation and deftly cites Scripture to support its use in the Christian life while dispelling misconceptions of the practice.

[3] Foster, Celebrations of Discipline, 20.

[4] Jerome, Epistle 108, CSEL 55.334, as quoted in Hall, Scripture with the Church Fathers, 44–45.

[5] Jerome, Epistle 108.

[6] Foster, Celebrations of Discipline, 25.

[7] Johns, Re-Enchanting The Text, 3.

[8] McColman, The Big Book of Christian Mysticism, 50.

[9] Foster, Celebrations of Discipline, 28.

[10] Foster, Celebrations of Discipline, 31–33.

[11] Tim Tschida, The World Upside Down, 13–14. In the end of the first chapter, I link God separating the waters of chaos in Genesis 1 to God flooding the world in Genesis 6 because our sin seems to desire chaos, so God gave the chaos they wanted by giving them the flood waters. In this day and age, the chaos caused by sin can flood our lives, and God lets us experience that.

[12] Lorre, The Big Bang Theory.

[13] Opdal, “Curiosity, Wonder, and Education,” 331.

[14] Opdal, “Curiosity, Wonder, and Education,” 331.

[15] Hall, Theology With The Church Fathers, 10.

[16] Bonhoeffer, Meditating On The Word, 22.

[17] Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 159.

[18] Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 159.

[19] Bonhoeffer, Meditating on the Word, 22.

PneumaReview.com: Your first book Speaking in Tongues: A Multidisciplinary Defense addresses a subject that is very controversial in some sectors of the church today. Why is speaking in tongues so controversial since it is mentioned in the Bible?

Timothy Laurito: Speaking in tongues can be a contentious subject for some within the church, especially for those who hold to a cessationist perspective (spiritual manifestations have ceased). While the cessationist position is losing the debate on the grounds of the biblical evidence, it is still hotly debated.

Additionally, speaking in tongues can be controversial, even among those who believe in its practice. The debate here centers on how speaking in tongues should operate within the church. Therefore, it is evident that the subject is controversial on multiple fronts.

PneumaReview.com: In your experience what is the most common objection to the contemporary practice of speaking in tongues?

Timothy Laurito: The most common cessationist objection to speaking in tongues (along with all spiritual manifestations) is that they are no longer needed within the modern church because we now have the Bible. The cessationists argue that spiritual manifestations were necessary in the 1st-century church because they did not have the New Testament. They suggest that spiritual manifestation became unnecessary once the New Testament was completed and the apostles had passed.

While there is historical evidence to show that the charismatic gifts did wane during the Patristic period, they certainly did not completely stop. The Patristic period can be seen to be a time when spiritual manifestations are active and varied. Additionally, the Christian’s ultimate guide for faith and practice should be scripture, and there is no biblical evidence to support the cessation of spiritual manifestations within the church age.

PneumaReview.com: Generally, how would you describe Pentecostal/charismatic believers’ preparedness to biblically defend the practice of speaking in tongues?

Timothy Laurito: My observation is that the average Pentecostal/charismatic Christian has not been properly equipped to defend the practice of speaking in tongues. While many Pentecostals can articulate the significance of their personal encounter with tongue speech, they feel inadequate to defend their experience biblically.

My doctoral research found that 16.7 percent of the several hundred Pentecostals interviewed strongly agreed that they understood the proper function of speaking in tongues within the church. Additionally, only 52.8 percent of Pentecostals interviewed felt confident in explaining the act of speaking in tongues to non-Pentecostals.

PneumaReview.com: What can pastors and church leaders do to help prepare Pentecostal/charismatics to better defend their doctrine?

PneumaReview.com: Do you think that classical Pentecostal churches gives less attention to Spirit Baptism today than they did in the past?

Timothy Laurito: Both from my personal experience and my study of Pentecostal history, I believe that it is evident that the modern Pentecostal church has put less emphasis on Spirit Baptism. This is not merely subjective observations, but a growing number of studies point to an alarming trend within the Assemblies of God (USA): our Pentecostal practice of speaking in tongues is in decline. Statistics reported by the Assemblies of God (USA) reveal that the major worship service attendance grew by 9.1% from 2009 to 2019. However, during this same period, the number of Spirit-baptisms reported was basically flat (1.0% growth). Additionally, the Acts 2 Journey research found that between 2016–2019, most of our conversions took place in our larger churches (200+). However, these same churches experienced a 13% decline in Spirit baptisms during this period.

While faced with the reality that the number of Spirit baptisms in the Assemblies of God USA is trending downward, this should not make us wish for “the good ole days” or cause us to settle for a new normal. Instead, it should drive us to action. It should motivate us to engage this issue with Spirit-inspired confidence and inspire us to see this generation experience Spirit baptism as evidenced by speaking in other tongues.

PneumaReview.com: In your second book Pentecostal Perspectives: A Guide for Faith and Practice you cover several different subjects including: a biblical worldview, Scripture, salvation, discipleship, missions, and prayer. How did you decide which subjects to include in the book?

Timothy Laurito: The book aims to introduce essential theological themes and then show what a Pentecostal perspective adds to the subject. With this in mind, I chose topics that are foundational for every Christian.

Additionally, I laid the book out with the intent that each chapter would build upon the previous subject. The book is designed so that the sequence of the chapters helps the reader see how a Pentecostal perspective integrates with the whole Christian faith and practice.

PneumaReview.com: Who is your intended audience for Pentecostal Perspectives?

Timothy Laurito: By presenting a Pentecostal perspective, I am not claiming to represent all perspectives within Pentecostalism. Since there are nearly 650 million Pentecostal adherents worldwide, it would be unwise to assume the content of the book describes all Pentecostals and their perspectives on matters. Like any group of this size, one should expect great diversity within Pentecostal thought.

Instead, the objective is to provide the reader with a clearer understanding of the unique perspectives Pentecostalism contributes to the Christian life. For the Pentecostal, my desire is for you to discover new depths to your experience in the Spirit.

The book also aims to bridge the divide between Pentecostal academia and the Pentecostal pew. My observation has been that the academy and the average churchgoer tend to operate in separate silos with little effort made to connect them. The book offers scholarly footnotes and additional recommended reading at the end of each chapter. However, the tone of the book is conversational and approachable.

PneumaReview.com: What would you say is the greatest need in classical Pentecostal churches right now?

PneumaReview.com: What are their greatest strengths?

Timothy Laurito: The greatest strength of the Pentecostal church has always been its radical openness to the Spirit. This one characteristic has accounted for the unprecedented growth of the Pentecostal movement. As we move forward in the 21st century, I pray that this strength will continue to be the catalyst for an outpouring of the Spirit in our day.

PneumaReview.com: How might Pentecostal Perspectives be helpful to a non-Pentecostal who reads it?

PneumaReview.com: In both of your books it is clear that you want your readers to be people who are biblically knowledgeable. What types of instruction or study can help believers increase their understanding of Scripture?

Timothy Laurito: I firmly believe that for Christians, there’s no replacement for understanding and applying the teachings of the Scripture in daily life. A key idea in Pentecostalism is that theology should be more than just theoretical concepts. It should, through the Holy Spirit, become a part of a Christian’s everyday life. For those seeking a deeper connection with their faith, I recommend viewing theology not just as a set of theories, but as a practical guide. This guide not only shapes your understanding of God but also influences your daily practice of faith.

Therefore, I would suggest that the Pentecostal study theology not only with the intent of knowing about God, but with the desire to become the type of person that scripture is calling me to be.

PR

Further Reading

Timothy Laurito, “Speaking in Tongues: Why and how we should seek God for a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit” Influence (June 1, 2022)

Publisher’s page: Timothy Laurito, Speaking in Tongues: A Multidisciplinary Defense

Publisher’s page: Timothy Laurito, Pentecostal Perspectives: A Guide for Faith and Practice

“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.  I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry” (2 Timothy 3:16-4:6).

Pentecost exploded onto the ancient world with such suddenness and power that it forever altered the work of scribes and the production of books. The overwhelming demand for the written account of Jesus had no precedent in world history. As a result, the New Testament numerically eclipsed all the combined works of Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Euripides, Homer, and other ancient writers. Here is a fact you should know: There are no original manuscripts of any of the following ancient writers, scholars today accept them without hesitation.

1. Plato: Greek philosopher. His writings are found in a mere seven manuscripts, the oldest copy was written twelve hundred years after his death.

2. Aristotle: Greek philosopher, a student of Plato, tutor of Alexander the Great. Only five copies of any one work of Aristotle exist, and none of these were written less than fourteen hundred years after his death.

3. Herodotus: Greek historian. Only eight manuscripts survive; these were copied thirteen hundred years after the original.

4. Euripides: Greek playwright. Nine manuscripts exist, dated thirteen hundred years after they were first written.

Papyrus 46: A portion of Second Corinthians.

One is immediately struck by the scarcity of copies of these authors and the vast time lapse between the originals and today’s reproductions. Yet no one questions their authenticity.  Contrast the scarcity of works done by these secular writers to the abundance of New Testament copies. Renowned scholar and professor, Dr. F.F. Bruce, verified approximately 4,000 ancient Greek New Testaments still in existence. Two complete manuscripts are dated less than three hundred years after the original. Most of the New Testament is preserved in copies written less than two hundred years after Jesus. Some existing manuscripts were composed about one hundred years after the originals. Part of one book came within a generation of the first-century.

If approximately four thousand ancient New Testament manuscripts survived the ravages of time, we are overwhelmed with this question: How large was the original number of others, now lost, that exploded upon the public in the first centuries? What was the motivation—the power—that excited early believers into mass production of this book? The answer, of course, is that the book itself was composed by the Holy Spirit and contained His miraculous anointing. Those who read it became motivated to copy and preserve it. The Bible’s claim to authenticity is totally beyond the reach of all other writers of antiquity. As believers, we stand secure in its reliability.

Questions: If thousands of New Testament books survived the ravages of time when secular ones did not, how many more must there have originally been written?!  What was the motivation behind such an explosion of books?

Answer: Pentecost impacted the world of its day with such cataclysmic power that the urgent copying of thousands of New Testaments was undertaken. For example, only 30 years after the death of Jesus, Christians in the city of Rome had become so numerous that when Emperor Nero set fire to the city, he blamed them for the destruction. In the frenzy that followed, thousands were crucified and slaughtered. These Roman Christians experienced the Holy Spirit’s same invincible power that had come upon disciples in the Upper Room. Bibles were desperately needed.

1. “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.” John 14:26-27

2. “No prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” 2 Peter 1:20-21

3. “I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different gospel, which is not another; but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed.” Galatians 1:6-9

4. And we have such trust through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. 2 Cor 3:4-6

Scriptures

Jesus said: “But he answered and said, ‘It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’” Matthew 4:4

Jesus said: “Heaven and earth shall pass away but My words will by no means pass away.” Matthew 24:35

God the Father said: “My Covenant I will not break nor alter the Word that is gone out of my lips.” Psalm 89:34.

Jesus said to the Father: “For I have given to them (the disciples) the words which You have given Me, and they have received them …” John 17:8

Peter said: “But the word of the Lord endures forever. Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you.” 1 Peter 1:25.

Paul said: “Be diligent … rightly diving the word of truth.” 2 Timothy 2:15

Peter said again: “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” 2 Peter 1:21

Paul said again: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable.” 2 Timothy 3:16

Paul said once more: “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed.” Galatians 1:8

David said: “Forever, O Lord, Your Word is settled in Heaven.” Psalm 119:89

“For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water, scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, ‘This is the blood of the Covenant which God has commanded you.’” Hebrews 9:19-20

John the Apostle said: “For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.” Revelation 22:18-19

Adapted from Charles Carrin Ministries monthly newsletter, Gentle Conquest (March 2019). Used with permission.

In 2002 I was contemplating an interstate move on the basis of a dream. ‘Move to Sydney,’ the Spirit had said, ‘and you will become the Academic Dean of Hillsong College.’ At the time, I had been working two part-time jobs – one at a local Bible college, and the other, pastoring a church in Melbourne. I was thriving in both positions, happily settled in a lovely home and had no plans to move to an unknown city a thousand kilometres away. In Sydney, Hillsong College wasn’t advertising a new position externally, nor was it their policy to do so. I was an unknown entity, connected only vaguely through my current networks. Still, the guidance had been spectacularly clear. Dreams and prophecies from six to seven independent sources all pointed in the same direction. The Spirit’s leading had checked all the boxes.

This excerpt is chapter 4 from Tania Harris, The Church Who Hears God’s Voice: Equipping Everyone to Recognise and Respond to the Spirit.

At the same time, the idea of leaving my jobs, friends and family with no possibility of employment was a radical one, particularly for a risk-averse single woman. When the time came to move, I was confronted with the ludicrousness of my situation and the all-consuming question: could I trust what God said?

At first, the answer seems obvious. Scripture assures us that God does what he says he will do: the word from God’s mouth does not return to him ‘empty’ but ‘achieve[s] the purpose’ it was sent for (Isa. 55:11); ‘God is not a human, that he should lie … Does he speak and then not act?’ (Num. 23:19; also 1 Sam. 15:29). But then the question comes: did those verses mean the same for me as they did back then for Samuel? Would God’s words ‘not return empty’ for me just as they wouldn’t return empty for Isaiah?

The answer depends on your theology. Some would say ‘yes’. Others would say ‘no’. Most Protestant theologians would say that my ‘hearing God’ experience was not as authoritative as those in the biblical accounts and could not be trusted in the same way. The experiences of the Bible are seen to be ‘special’ and unrepeatable, while contemporary encounters are seen to be more subject to human influence. Hence, the only reliable way to hear God today is through studying the Bible, listening to sermons, reading Christian books and obtaining the ‘wisdom of counsel’. Conversely, another group of theologians (largely from the Catholic tradition) would say that we can hear from God in the same way as the Bible characters did. So, if my Spirit revelation was authentic, I should follow it and believe for it to come to pass. Still another group would say that my experience was illegitimate from the outset: God doesn’t speak like that any more, so it was either the product of mental instability or, worse, diabolical influences.

My questions about moving to Sydney highlighted a theological problem that has existed ever since the Scriptures were canonised in the fourth century. It is the reason why many churches today reject the idea of direct Spirit-revelation. The problem boils down to how we view the relationship of our Spirit-talking experiences to Scripture: how do our Spirit encounters compare with those in the Bible?

Can you see our theological conundrum? The practical realities of contemporary revelatory experiences make them as authoritative as the Bible writers. This looks as if we’re placing our experience on par with the Bible, something most Protestant Christians would emphatically reject as illegitimate. The question is: how does the spoken word of the Spirit relate to the written word of the Scriptures?

Four answers to the theological problem

The answer to our theological problem is crucial because it shapes our understandings of how the Spirit speaks today, how we recognise it and how we respond to it. In turn, this frames our ideas about discipleship and ministry, as well as the nature and role of the Scriptures.

Four different frameworks have been proposed to address the problem of ‘Spirit versus Scripture’. In this chapter, we examine each of them closely. The first and third approaches assume that our contemporary experiences are discontinuous with the biblical experience. The second and fourth anticipate continuity with the biblical experience. We will see why the first three options are inadequate and why the fourth provides the only logical basis for a theology of hearing God’s voice.

1. God on mute

The first theological framework, ‘God on mute’, holds that the Spirit no longer speaks in the same way as in Bible times. As we’ve noted, this position, known as cessationism, holds to the belief that divinely inspired speech ceased with the close of the canon in the early centuries of the church (or when the original apostle died). Hence, the only way God ‘speaks’ today is via the Scriptures: God’s voice is heard through studying the Bible, listening to sermons and reading books that expound the Bible. Direct revelatory encounters are no longer plausible.

This perspective also holds that God can only speak about that which has already been said in the biblical past. The Spirit does not speak specifically on personal matters such as where to live or what job to take. Neither does God speak about his plans for the future or how to deal with ethical issues beyond the Scriptures. Instead, divine insight comes through careful application of the biblical text – we hear God best when we hone our hermeneutical skills. As evangelical theologian James Packer wrote:
While it is not for us to forbid God to reveal things apart from Scripture, or to do anything else (he is God after all), we may properly insist that the New Testament discourages Christians from expecting to receive God’s words to them by any other channel than that of attentive application to themselves of what is given to us twentieth century Christians in holy Scripture.¹
The cessationist perspective has ebbed and flowed in the church since its inception. Today it is typically found in the Reformed and dispensational segments of the Protestant evangelical tradition,² but it is becoming less popular under the influence of Pentecostalism and the Charismatic movement in mainline churches.³

The thinking behind contemporary cessationism largely stems from a desire to protect the authority, uniqueness and sufficiency of the Scriptures. This is not an unimportant concern, since history shows us that whenever the Scriptures lose their priority in the church, doctrinal compromise soon follows. For cessationists, then, any claim to extrabiblical revelation is invalid, subversive and even demonic. It is seen to ‘add’ to the canon and attack the Bible’s uniqueness. Any additional voice ‘weakens the power of the Word’ and results in a ‘spiritual free-for-all’, giving rise to heretical movements in the church.⁴ As one of cessationism’s leading proponents, John MacArthur laments: ‘New revelation, such as dreams and visions, are considered as binding on the believer’s conscience as the book of Romans or the Gospel of John.^’5

The cessationists have a good point. As we’ve seen, when we claim to hear God’s voice, we are invoking divine authority. The Scriptures themselves tell us that authority derives from the speaker (e.g. Jer. 23:29; Heb. 4:12). If God were truly speaking, we would be expected to obey his words to us as much as the biblical characters were expected to obey his words to them (e.g. Rev. 1:3). Any valid perspective on Spirit versus Scripture must acknowledge that a true word from God is authoritative, whether situated within the Bible or outside it.

However, the great tragedy of the cessationist position is that it silences the voice of the Spirit in the church, the very pinnacle of the New Covenant. It defies the words of the apostle Peter when he proclaimed that Pentecost represented the long-awaited fulfilment of God’s promise for the communicating Spirit. Peter made it clear that the ability to hear God’s voice in the manner of the Old Covenant prophets (Acts 2:16–17) was not just for those gathered in Jerusalem that day but was also for all those who were ‘far off ’ (Acts 2:39) – in Judea, Samaria and the nations beyond. It wasn’t just for the first generation, but for their children and all those who followed. As prophesied by Joel, the Spirit would remain for ever under the New Covenant.⁶

The promise of the New Covenant remains today. God has spoken and continues to speak by his Spirit. While the preservation of Scripture’s role is crucial, there is another way to maintain it.

2. Christians who don’t read the Bible

There is a tribe of Christians in Zimbabwe who are known as ‘Christians who don’t read the Bible’ – and proudly so. This group, known as the ‘Friday Apostolics’ (because Friday is their Sabbath), represents a second approach to the relationship of revelatory experience to Scripture.

Unlike the cessationists, the Friday Apostolics believe that contemporary experiences of hearing God are continuous with those of the biblical characters. That is, the outpouring of God’s Spirit meant that we can all hear from God in ways that are phenomenologically equivalent to the ways the Bible characters heard. Contemporary encounters are analogous to the biblical experience in purpose, manner and kind. At the same time, this capacity to hear from God directly is seen to make Scripture irrelevant. The reason the Friday Apostolics don’t read their Bible is because they say it ‘gets in the way’ of hearing from the Spirit.

To our ears, this perspective is an alarming one, but there is some sound reasoning behind it. The Apostolics recognise that God’s presence is always with them and cannot be limited to a material object. Rather than relying on a book, their emphasis is to live ‘like the apostles’ and have an experience of Christianity that is ‘as vibrant and alive as when Jesus walked the earth’. As leader Nzira says: ‘Here we don’t talk of Bibles. What is the Bible to me? Having it is just trouble. Look, why would you read it? It gets old. After keeping it for some time it falls apart; the pages come out. And then you can take it and use it as toilet paper until it’s finished. We don’t talk Bible-talk here. We have a true Bible.^’7

Anthropologist Matthew Engelke, who spent time studying the group, notes that part of the Friday Apostolics’ aversion to the Bible is that it is seen as a ‘white man’s book’. As such, it carries the baggage of colonialism that has plagued the tribe ever since the whites came. Moreover, the Apostolics say that the missionaries often said one thing and the Bible said another. Polygamy is cited as an example. For one elder, ‘We learnt that we could not trust the whites or their book.^’8

The Friday Apostolics also argue that because the Scriptures are culturally embedded, they are unable to adequately address the needs of modern-day Africa. The ancient Palestinian context of the New Testament means that it has limited relevance in a place that is haunted by AIDS and witchcraft. As they say, it is ‘out of date like a newspaper’. Instead, answers are found in hearing from the Holy Spirit live and direct.

The Apostolics even go so far as to say that the Bible acts as an obstacle to hearing from God. Like all religious artefacts, books are limited by their materialist nature. The very presence of the Bible, they say, threatens to detract from the immediacy of faith. When God’s voice is contained in a book, it takes away from the central focus of Christianity.

The position of the Friday Apostolics is not an option for those of us who place high value on Scripture. However, the Apostolics also raise some important questions. It is true that God’s presence cannot be contained in a material book. Whether a book, icon or building, God’s presence is never limited to a physical object. Solomon observed this in the building of the First Temple (1 Kgs 8:27), as did Paul with the Second Temple (Acts 17:24). People in our churches today can be guilty of this when they use their Bibles like a lucky charm or a magic tool, dipping into it whenever they want their wishes fulfilled. Like any object, the Bible can become an idol that is revered above its maker. Some scholars have even given this tendency a name: ‘^{bibliolatry’9} – described as worshipping the ‘Father, Son and Holy Bible’. As the Apostolics say, when treated in this way, the Bible can ‘get in the way’ of hearing the Spirit.

And yet, the Friday Apostolics put themselves in a precarious situation by giving the Bible such a low priority. When you discard the Bible, you risk displacing the church’s very foundations. We need the Bible. We need the Spirit. We must not dispense with one at the expense of the other.

3. Good, but not as good

The cessationists dismiss the Spirit; the Friday Apostolics dismiss the Bible. The third approach to our theological problem of ‘Spirit versus Scripture’ seeks to preserve both. This position says that contemporary revelatory experiences are valid, but they are phenomenologically inferior to the experience of the Bible-writing apostles and prophets. In other words, you can hear from God outside the canon, but just not in the same way as the Bible-writing characters did. Our Spirit encounters are ‘good, but not as good’.

The position is best articulated by Baptist theologian Wayne Grudem in his widely known book The Gift of Prophecy. Here, Grudem advocates for two types of revelatory experience. The first is the ‘special experience’ of the canonical writers, namely the Old Testament prophets and their ‘equivalent’, the New Testament apostles. The experiences of these characters are held to be flawless; God put his words directly ‘into their mouths’ and, as such, they are always accurate, infallible and authoritative. The second type is the ‘ordinary experience’ of New Testament and contemporary church members. For Grudem, these experiences are of lower quality and authority compared with those of biblical figures such as Paul and Peter. Contemporary revelatory messages are described as ‘a report in human words which God has brought to mind’. Because they cannot be God’s exact words, they are neither authoritative nor trustworthy. They can bring ‘strength, encouragement and comfort’ (see 1 Cor. 14:3) but should be treated in the same way as counselling and pastoral advice. As per the cessationists, Grudem argues that the only reliable way to hear God’s voice is via the Scriptures.

This ‘two-tier’ position is also reflected in the logos–rhēma schema so popular in churches today. Like Grudem’s framework, this envisages two different types of experience and is based on the idea that there are two meanings for the Greek term ‘word’ in the New Testament. The first term, logos (λÓγος), represents the ‘written word’ of Scripture, which is seen to be objective, infallible and fully authoritative. The second term, rhēma (ῥῆμα), represents the ‘spoken word’ of our contemporary experience, which is seen to be subjective, fallible and of minimal authority.

The goal of the two-tier schema is to preserve the role of the Bible while still allowing for the possibility that the Spirit can speak beyond the canon. As such, Grudem’s work was welcomed by Pentecostal–Charismatic Christians around the world. However, there are some real problems with this position. Perhaps the most obvious has to do with what Scripture says about the New Covenant in relation to the Old. While the two-tier position advocates for contemporary experience to be viewed as inferior to the Old Covenant experience, Scripture emphasises the opposite. The Old Covenant prophets, Jesus, Paul and the writer of Hebrews all strongly affirm the superiority of the New Covenant (see Chapter 6). The church era was long awaited because it was an upgrade of the old regime. This improvement would not just be for the leaders who were responsible for establishing the church, but for everyone. It cannot be that the New Covenant church has a harder time hearing from God than the Old Covenant prophets.

A second problem points to the biblical evidence used in support of Grudem’s position. His work has sustained heavy criticism from cessationist and Pentecostal–Charismatic scholars alike. This has largely been based on exegetical grounds and the grammatically unlikely notion of correlating the role of the Old Testament prophets with that of the New Testament apostles (in Eph. 2:20). It is also clear that Scripture reveals a spectrum of quality among the revelatory experiences of biblical characters. Most got it right, but some got it wrong (see Chapter 10). Furthermore, there is simply no textual evidence that God explicitly changed his way of speaking when the original apostles died out.

There are additional complexities with the two-tier position when it comes to its practical outworking. Some of them are seen in my own story as I contemplated relocation from Melbourne to Sydney. The question became: if what I heard was non-authoritative, should I move? And if I did move, should I believe for God to fulfil his word? Unfortunately, Grudem does not address the implications of his position in real-life experience since, as a New Testament scholar, his focus is on the text.

An additional problem lies in the fact that Grudem’s work is directed almost entirely towards prophecy (where a person hears from God for someone else), rather than the universal experience of hearing the Spirit first-hand. This means that most of his discussion is limited to the specialist gift of prophecy in church meetings, as described in the Corinthian letters (esp. 1 Cor. 12 – 14). While these passages are helpful in providing guidelines for the regulation of prophecy in the public service, they do not give us details about the universal experience in the context of everyday life. For that, we need to look

elsewhere.

It is in the books of Acts and Revelation that we find copious examples of the full revelatory experience. We learn how God spoke, how it was discerned and how it was then responded to. It is here that we see that the New Testament characters all treated their revelatory experiences as authoritative, irrespective of whether they were apostles or Bible writers (e.g. Philip, Stephen, Barnabas, Agabus, Ananias and James). Once God’s words were received and discerned, they were seen to be reliable enough to act upon in expectation of fulfilment. Their testimonies provide us with clear principles for hearing God in the contemporary church. We cannot ignore them.

And yet oddly we do. In spite of their prevalence in the Bible, these experiences are rarely addressed by academics in the Protestant arena.¹⁰ Grudem’s emphasis on the specialist gift of prophecy to the exclusion of everyday revelatory experience is typical of scholars. Part of it has to do with a tradition that values the teaching of the epistles over the New Testament narratives and a mistrust in deriving theology from stories. But if we are to talk about how to hear, recognise and respond to God’s voice today, we must take into account how the early Christians heard, recognised and responded to God’s voice. After all, it is their revelatory experiences that form the backdrop of the epistles.¹¹

In spite of the problems, the idea of an ‘inferior quality’ for contemporary experience has been adopted by most evangelical Christians in the West, including those in Charismatic and Pentecostal churches. This is a better place to land than cessationism. However, it is still a modified form of cessationism. It is good, but not as good. We maintain a belief in the ability to hear the Spirit’s voice but lose the fullness of its power. It also means that we don’t take hearing from the Spirit as seriously as we should. We make it an add-on rather than an essential part of the normal Christian life. It may bring ‘strength, comfort and encouragement’ (see 1 Cor. 14:3), but it has a low priority in the discipleship process.

As we’ve seen, the good-but-not-as-good position also leaves us with serious problems when applied to the practice of hearing God’s voice. Without a framework that assumes consistency with the biblical characters, people end up applying ‘discontinuous’ thinking to understand their experience and, in doing so, say one thing and practise another.¹² They say their experience isn’t ‘authoritative’, but then they act as though it is by obeying it and expecting it to come to pass. The good-but-not-as-good position simply doesn’t work. It’s as if one of our legs has been broken by cessationism but hasn’t been properly reset, and now we walk with a limp. It is time to adjust our thinking. Either we can hear from God in the same way as the biblical characters could, or we can’t. If we can, then we must follow the same practices as the biblical characters. Only then can the stories and testimonies of Scripture truly become our model.

4. ‘This is that’

The final theological framework in our discussion allows for the fullness of the Spirit’s voice to continue today without compromising the uniqueness of the Bible. This approach sees no phenomenological distinction between biblical and contemporary experiences. That is, we can hear from God today in the same way as the New Testament church did. It may be surprising to learn that this fourth perspective is found in the Catholic tradition.

Our reference point here is the Day of Pentecost when the apostle Peter proclaimed his famed words to the crowd: ‘this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel’ (Acts 2:16, kjv). God’s promise of the communicating Spirit was for people of all nations and generations. The voice of God that spoke to the Old Covenant prophets and the New Testament church is still the voice that speaks today. The Spirit speaks to continue the mission and ministry of Jesus. This means that the forms and patterns of revelation depicted in the early church continue in today’s church. The Bible itself is a collection of God-conversations – the ‘journals’ of people who heard from God and responded to it. It provides us with the models we need in order to understand and respond to our own experiences.

The ‘this is that’ position is based on the principle of consistency. This consistency applies first to God. It assumes that God’s ways of working haven’t changed. The God who spoke to the prophets aligns with the God who spoke through the incarnate Jesus and the Spirit in the early church. God continues to speak with love, power and authority. His voice still expresses the divine character, will and plans. Just as God spoke to the early church to apply the message of Jesus to the Greco-Roman setting, God speaks to the contemporary church to apply the message of Jesus to ours.

Where experience and theology meet

The fourth ‘this is that’ position was the one I arrived at when contemplating my interstate move back in 2002. It made sense that if God was the ‘same yesterday and today and for ever’ (Heb. 13:8), the divine principles embedded in the lives of the biblical characters could be applied to my life. So, I resigned from my two jobs, farewelled my home and moved to Sydney.

It wasn’t easy, but as I acted in obedience and faith, I saw God’s hand moving pieces of the puzzle together. One by one, the picture took shape. Watching God’s words come to pass was breathtaking. At every step, I witnessed his genius manoeuvres and piercing foresight. Even though my story was vastly different from that of Peter, Paul and other biblical characters, the same patterns remained. God was still faithful, sovereign and deeply personal. Hearing, recognising and responding to God’s voice not only helped to build the college in Sydney; it also transformed my life. The kingdom of God moved forward and I began to know God in ways I had never experienced before.

It was experiences like these that also led me to study for a PhD in practical theology. I longed to fill the gap between academia and practice that I had discovered as an undergraduate student in the Bible college library. Driven by a deep conviction that theology must work, my goal was to address the problems created by the ‘inferior position’, as well as to understand why the cessationist church believed as it did. From my vantage point, they have tragically missed out.

The field of practical theology is unique in that it takes Spirit-experience seriously. Practice and theology meet together as scholars bring the voice of everyday people into dialogue with experts. This approach is based on the simple idea that ‘everyone’s a theologian’.¹³ Whether we are aware of it or not, we are all constantly reflecting on how God is working in our lives. This ‘ordinary theology’ is worked out in the context of everyday circumstances and church traditions, rather than just by theologians, who may be removed from them.¹⁴ It values the insights people have gained from their experience because it assumes that the Spirit operates consistently in us all.

The data from my study was gathered over a nine-month period and involved listening to the ‘ordinary theology’ of people from three different Pentecostal churches as they reflected on their own ‘hearing God’ experiences. Each interview lasted up to an hour and involved questions such as: How did you hear God’s voice? How did you know it was God? What happened afterwards? After recording, transcribing and collating the findings, I identified notable patterns and themes. Then I examined them closely in the light of the four theological perspectives and the experiences of Scripture.

In the end, my research provided the answers to many of my original questions. Some were surprising; others were not. Many of them challenged the ideas of those I was raised with. Others provided solutions to the problems we face in our churches. The problems of Spirit-revelatory encounters have not gone away. My own experience with the ministry of God Conversations has been a constant reminder of the widespread confusion throughout the global church. I have seen evidence of cessationism and its impact. I’ve heard the tales of disillusionment and defeat. Experience continues to be held at arm’s length in the name of theology. We need to address the problems that Luther faced, deal with the dilemma of Joseph Smith and learn from the story of the murdered abortion doctor. We need to maintain the vital role of the Scriptures while still allowing the Spirit to speak as powerfully to us as he did to those in the first century.

***

Some people find theology a daunting topic. Perhaps it is because we tend to complexify what is really rather simple. Theology is simply our ideas of how God works. This is why this chapter, though theoretical, is so important. Whether we realise it or not, our thinking about hearing God starts with our theology of Spirit and Scripture.

In this chapter we’ve seen that there are four different approaches to the contemporary revelatory experience. These diverge at the point where Scripture comes to the fore. Either we see continuity with the experiences of the biblical characters or we see discontinuity with them.

Bringing experience and theology together also allows us to address the theological and ministry problems that threaten the potential of our prized New Covenant gift. Some of these solutions will become apparent in Part II. Others will be addressed in Part III, ‘Strategies for Building the Church Who Hears God’s Voice’. There are answers to our questions. There are solutions to our problems. Good theology always works.

PR

Notes

^[1] James I. Packer, God’s Words (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1981), p. 39.

^[2] Wayne A. Grudem, The Gift of Prophecy in the New Testament and Today (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2000), Kindle edition: location 98.

^[3] Douglas Oss, ‘A Pentecostal/Charismatic View’, in Are Miraculous Gifts for Today? (ed. Wayne A. Grudem; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1979), p. 239.

^[4] Tucker, God Talk, p. 64.

^[5] John F. MacArthur Jr, Charismatic Chaos (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992), p. 64.

^[6] See Jon Mark Ruthven, ‘“This Is My Covenant with Them”: Isaiah 59.19–21 as the Programmatic Prophecy of the New Covenant in the Acts of the Apostles (Part 2)’, Journal of Pentecostal Theology 17 (2008): pp. 219–37; and Jon Mark Ruthven, ‘“This Is My Covenant with Them”: Isaiah 59.19–21 as the Programmatic Prophecy of the New Covenant in the Acts of the Apostles (Part 1)’, Journal of Pentecostal Theology 17 (2008): pp. 32–47.

^[7] Matthew Engelke, A Problem of Presence (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007), pp. 1–2.

^[8] Engelke, Problem of Presence, p. 5.

^[9] James K.A. Smith, ‘The Closing of the Book: Pentecostals, Evangelicals, and the Sacred Writings’, Journal of Pentecostal Theology 11 (1997): p. 59; Daniel E. Albrecht, Rites in the Spirit: A Ritual Approach to Pentecostal/Charismatic Spirituality (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), p. 246.

^[10] As observed by Robert E. Sears in ‘Dreams and Christian Conversion: Gleanings from a Pentecostal Church Context in Nepal’, Mission Studies 35 (2018): pp. 183–203. Recent exceptions include Anna Marie Droll’s work on dreams and visions in Africa, ‘“Piercing the Veil” and African Dreams and Visions: In Quest of the Pneumatological Imagination’, Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 40 (2018): pp. 345–65; and John B.F. Miller’s work in biblical studies, Convinced That God Had Called Us: Dreams, Visions and the Perception of God’s Will in Luke-Acts (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007).

^[11] Paul explicitly mentions his own Spirit experiences on multiple occasions: 1 Cor. 9:1; 15:8; 2 Cor. 12:1–7; Gal. 1:11–16.

^[12] Cecil M. Robeck Jr highlights this disconnect between theory and practice in ‘Written Prophecies: A Question of Authority’, Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 2 (1980): pp. 26–45.

^[13] Pete Ward, Introducing Practical Theology: Mission, Ministry, and the Life of the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017).

^[14] For further discussion of this theory, see Jeff Astley, Ordinary Theology: Looking, Listening and Learning in Theology (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002).

Author’s bookstore page (where you may download and read an additional sample chapter): https://www.godconversations.com/product/the-church-who-hears-gods-voice/

Copyright © 2022 Tania Harris
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Roger Stronstad is probably best known for his master’s-thesis-turned-book, The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke (1985) [Editor’s note: See the review by Dave Johnson], which is considered by some to be the start of a new generation of Pentecostal scholarship and literature, and is possibly one of the most-assigned texts in Pentecostal Bible colleges and seminaries. Stronstad is also well-known for his book The Prophethood of All Believers (1999) [Editor’s note: See Amos Yong’s review of Prophethood].

Spirit, Scripture, and Theology: A Pentecostal Perspective was first published in 1995 as a collection of essays presented by Stronstad in a guest lectureship at the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary in Springfield, Missouri (chapters one, two, six, and seven) and papers presented at three different annual meetings of the Society for Pentecostal Studies (chapters three, four, and five). This updated 2018 edition includes the addition of a new, eighth chapter that investigates how Luke, John, and Paul present the ministry of Jesus (and His Spirit-empowered followers) as the “rebirth of the prophet’s ministry which was born in the leadership of Moses and his associates” (159).

The first chapter, “Trends in Pentecostal Hermeneutics,” provides a historical survey of the hermeneutical approaches practiced by various Pentecostals. Charles F. Parham’s “pragmatic” hermeneutic (also called the classical Pentecostal approach) focuses on the work of the Spirit as empowerment for service. Gordon D. Fee’s “genre” hermeneutic points out that the literary genre of a particular biblical text weighs heavily in how it should be interpreted. Howard M. Ervin’s “pneumatic” approach seeks to deal with the tension between faith and reason, the excessive rationalism that sometimes plagues critical-historical exegesis, and the mysticism of pietistic movements. Finally, William W. Menzies’ “holistic” hermeneutic, which looks at three levels: inductive (scientific exegesis), deductive (biblical theology), and verification (where experience, rather than establishing theology, verifies or demonstrates theological truth).

Chapter two deals with how hermeneutics is applied to Luke’s historiography. Stronstad points out that Luke is first of all a historian, and therefore, both Luke and Acts should be approached as two parts of one history, rather than the first as an evangelistic document and only the second treatise as a history. The similarities of Luke’s approach to that of his Jewish contemporary, Josephus, are examined, as well as the differences between the two writers. Whereas Luke’s contemporary, Josephus, laments the passing of prophetic revelation from the Jewish people, Luke celebrates the renewal of prophecy among faithful Jews that then spills over to Gentiles as they come to accept Jesus and be grafted into God’s people (23). Overall, the author views Luke as presenting the history of Jesus and the early Christian movement as the continuation of the chosen people of Israel.

Although Stronstad gives Pentecostal experience great importance in shaping interpretation, he consistently places primary importance on what the biblical texts actually say. He advocates strongly for using the Bible’s own terms for the Spirit’s activity, as evidenced in the closing paragraph of the fourth chapter, “’Filled with the Holy Spirit’ Terminology in Luke-Acts”:

Luke gives pride of place to the term, “filled with the Holy Spirit,” rather than to the term, “baptized with the Holy Spirit.” Thus, “filled with the Holy Spirit,” and not “baptized with the Holy Spirit,” is to be the center of our own pneumatology. Our task, therefore, is not to make our pneumatology Reformed, Wesleyan, or Pentecostal, per se, but, to make it biblical. In other words, rather than trying to conform Luke’s pneumatology to ours, we must conform our pneumatology to his. (77-78)

Chapter five, “Signs on the Earth Beneath,” consists of a discussion of hermeneutical method for interpreting Luke-Acts, followed by an in-depth exposition of Acts 2:1–21. According to Stronstad, hermeneutics has three elements: the interpreter’s presuppositions, principles that guide exegesis, and principles that guide application to Christian living today. He then goes on to demonstrate how these factors interact as he walks through the Pentecost narrative. This chapter is a useful guide for taking concepts and principles and making them real by showing them in action in Pentecostal exegesis.

In the sixth chapter, “The Holy Spirit in Luke-Acts,” Stronstad makes the case for Luke having the “most fully developed Christology, in that it is an Old Testament Christology, incarnational, and the most fully Trinitarian” (116). Luke has the fullest presentation of Jesus as the prophet promised by Moses, sent by the Father and anointed and empowered by the Spirit. The Spirit coming on Jesus at his baptism, and the Spirit descending on the disciples at Pentecost, are about anointing for mission, not initiation/incorporation as some interpreters present Spirit baptism (130).

Chapter seven is about “Unity and Diversity: Lucan, Johannine, and Pauline Perspectives on the Holy Spirit.” Whereas Protestant interpretation has often tended to emphasize the unity of these authors, Stronstad here examines how each of these biblical authors have a unity around the Christ event, yet at the same time their diverse religious backgrounds give them diverse perspectives. Luke deals with the Holy Spirit in terms of service; John writes about the Spirit’s role in service and salvation; and Paul involves the Spirit in service, salvation, and sanctification (155).

Chapter eight, “The Rebirth of Prophecy: Trajectories from Moses to Jesus and His Followers,” is the new material added to the 2018 edition of this work. Here Stronstad discusses how the ministries of John the Baptizer and Jesus restored the prophetic function to God’s people. He especially focuses on the parallels between Jesus and Moses (the Mount of Transfiguration as an echo of Sinai, and Jesus’ impending exodus in relation to Israel’s national exodus). Just as prophesying was the sign that the elders of Israel had received the spirit that was on Moses, inspired prophetic speech at Pentecost is the sign that the disciples have received the Spirit that anointed Jesus (171).

In conclusion, Spirit, Scripture, and Theology: A Pentecostal Perspective is an informative read on the subject of Pentecostal hermeneutics by one of the foremost writers in the classical Pentecostal tradition. It takes themes that Roger Stronstad first addressed in his classic The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke and further develops them. This updated edition of the book brings Stronstad’s insight to a new generation of readers in the Spirit-empowered tradition.

Reviewed by Brian Roden

Wipf & Stock page (N. American distributor): https://wipfandstock.com/9781532680311/spirit-scripture-and-theology-2nd-edition/

This is the second “misreading” book that E. Randolph Richards has written. The first one was Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes which he wrote with Brandon J. O’Brien. For this second volume he has teamed up with a different writer, Richard James (this is a pseudonym, it is used for safety reasons because of the part of the world where he works). As the subtitle of the book indicates the authors write about some concepts that were very well-known in the biblical world, but are not as well-known in Western culture. I am referring to: patronage, honor, and shame. They also write about kinship, benefactors and clients, and boundaries. The people of the biblical world understood these concepts and practices. As the authors point out on more than one occasion, these matters of culture did not need to be spelled out, the people of the biblical world understood them and could see them at work in Scripture (page x-xi, 8). However, Western readers do not see them or assume them (page xi). Because of this we may miss them when they are at work in biblical passages. As the authors articulate these concepts they point out the differences that exist between collectivists’ cultures and individualists’ cultures. America and modern Europe are individualist cultures, most African, Eastern, Middle Eastern, and South American cultures are collectivist (page ix). The cultures we find in the Bible were collectivist (page x, 8).

As the book unfolds the authors draw from Scripture and their own experiences. Since they have lived in different cultures they have first-hand examples of the thoughts and practices of people who live in a collectivist cultures. It makes for some interesting reading.

E. Randolph Richards

They offer some other interesting insights as well. For example, they point out the different ideas that people have about the story of Joseph in the Old Testament. People from individualist cultures focus on Joseph’s rise to power. In the face of all kinds of setbacks and obstacles he becomes a prominent person. That grabs our attention. People from collectivist cultures tend to focus more on Joseph’s restoration to his family than his rise to power (page 11).

The differences between individualist and collectivist cultures is further brought out with a contemporary example. A pastor in Beirut was concerned because someone from his church had stolen a book from the church library. He knew who had done it. In the West we would be concerned about getting the book back. This pastor’s concern was not so much about getting the book back as maintaining the good name of the church in the community. He did not want his church members to be known as thieves. He found a way to speak to the thief in a nonthreatening way that helped the man save face, be reconciled to his church community, and maintain the good reputation of the church in the community (pages 174-175, 186).

This book is filled with insights into the biblical texts, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. Many of these insights could be easily overlooked by Western readers because we are not familiar with the cultural constructs of Eastern, collectivist cultures that the people in the biblical world had. I like books like this. They open a window of understanding into the biblical text that we might not otherwise see. If you are interested in deeper Bible study or the cultural background of the Bible this is a book you will enjoy. One thing we as believers do not want to do is misread Scripture. Instead, we want to correctly interpret it (2 Tim. 2:15). This book will help us do that.

Reviewed by John Lathrop

Publisher’s page: https://www.ivpress.com/misreading-scripture-with-individualist-eyes

D. H. Williams (PhD, University of Toronto) is professor of religion in patristics and historical theology at Baylor University. He is the author of Evangelicals and Tradition and Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism and editor of The Free Church and the Early Church. Tradition, Scripture, and Interpretation is the second volume in the Evangelical Ressourcement series, which is grounded in the belief that there is a wealth of theological, exegetical, and spiritual resources from the patristic era that is relevant for the Christian church today, as well as the church of the future. This series aims to help church thinkers and leaders reappropriate ancient understandings of Christian belief, amid the current resurgence in interest in the early church, and apply these ancient understandings to ministerial foci in the twenty-first century. Readers of the series will see how Scripture and the early tradition were both necessary in the formulation of orthodoxy, that there is a reciprocal relationship between the life of the church and theology, and that the liberty of the Spirit in contemporary believers must be balanced by a continuity with church tradition. If these three things are done, it seems, the Protestant church could truly be considered the church catholic (i.e., universal).

In keeping with the dictum of Wesley that ‘true, genuine Christianity [directs] us to the strongest evidence of the Christian doctrine’, this sourcebook gathers key writings from the first through sixth centuries on various topics of concern to the church that illustrate the ways in which its confessions and worship were expressed during that time. The writings are arranged thematically into nine areas, including the rule of faith, baptismal formulations and instruction, creeds, and biblical interpretation. Within each theme, the writings are arranged chronologically, which reveals how the Christian tradition has developed over time. Explanatory notes by Williams provide historical background and theological context for each reading. In what follows, I shall point out some prominent points from Williams’ text.

Williams opens the proverbial anthology with an expansive introduction, entitled ‘Origins of Christian Tradition’, that examines the close interplay between Scripture and tradition in the thinking of the early church. He asserts that the early fathers would have known nothing of the contention of sola scriptura, as it was incomprehensible to isolate the bible from the tradition of the church (he recognizes that the bible is foremost a book of the church, for what the church believed was ‘canonical’ before the bible was codified). This integral association of the bible and church tradition need not be understood as a squelching of the Spirit, however, for the Spirit is present throughout both the bible and church tradition, Williams notes (18). It could be said, then, that the bible (revelation) and tradition are two sides of the same coin. Indeed, there is a co-inherence in this symbiotic (reciprocal) relationship. Scripture could be portrayed as the anchor, whereas tradition is the interpreter (cf. 27).

New Testament scholar Craig S. Keener speaks with PneumaReview.com about his new book, Spirit Hermeneutics.

PneumaReview.com: Please define for our readers what you mean by “Spirit Hermeneutics.”

Craig S. Keener: Spirit hermeneutics is listening for God’s voice and heart in Scripture. Obviously I do believe in doing our homework, exploring cultural background and understanding the context as best as we can. But at the end of the day, it’s not just an academic pursuit separated from life. We want to submit our lives to be transformed by Scripture’s message. Otherwise we’re like someone who sees their face in a mirror and goes off forgetting what they look like.

PneumaReview.com: One theme that you stress in the book is the importance of reading biblical texts in their contexts. In view of its importance why do you think that many Christians do not read the Bible this way?

PneumaReview.com: Why do Christians frequently have difficulty hearing God speak to them through the Bible?

Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in Light of Pentecost (Eerdmans, 2016), 550 pages. Publisher’s page.

Craig S. Keener: Some Christians don’t realize that this is partly what the Bible is for, but sometimes also we don’t recognize that God can speak to us in a lot of different ways. We should pray that we will hear Him, then read the Bible (in context, etc.) to see what we can learn about God and how He acts in real human situations. Some of those will surely relate to us and to the world we live in. Some passages do show us His heart more than others, or perhaps in more concentrated ways; we find that most clearly in the message of the gospel, the message about Jesus’s death and resurrection for us. What the Spirit speaks to us will be consistent with His heart as already revealed in the gospel; the Spirit helps activate that in our lives. (Of course, I am not saying that the Spirit does not guide us in day-to-day ways as well. But being grounded in Scripture helps us recognize His voice and His character.)

PneumaReview.com: Please give a couple of examples from Scripture to demonstrate that biblical texts are meant to address and have application to situations outside of their original context.

Craig S. Keener: For one example, continuing the above-mentioned topic: the Spirit tells Philip to run up to the chariot where the African court official is (Acts 8:29). That fits a consistent theme in the Book of Acts: the Spirit leads the church across cultural barriers. Ancient historians and biographers wrote to communicate accurate historical information, but information that was framed in a way that also taught moral, political, or even theological lessons. One lesson here should be pretty obvious from Luke’s inspired vantage point: we need to continue to depend on God, and God will lead us to cross cultural barriers to bring the gospel to others. Many of us live in communities where God has brought people from other cultures to us, some of them unevangelized in their homelands. Okay, that was just the first example that came to my mind; it might not actually be one of the examples in the book!

Kevin J. Vanhoozer is Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. He is the author of many books, several of which are recent works, including Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion and Authorship (Cambridge University Press, 2012), and Faith Speaking Understanding: Performing the Drama of Doctrine (Westminster John Knox Press, 2014). Daniel J. Treier is Blanchard Professor of Theology at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. He is the author of three books, including Virtue and the Voice of God: Toward Theology as Wisdom (Eerdmans, 2006) and Introducing Theological Interpretation of Scripture (Baker Academic, 2008), and Proverbs & Ecclesiastes (Brazos Press, 2011).

The present situation of theology in general calls for a fresh, galvanizing account of the ways in which evangelical theology can, and should, “mirror” the teaching of Scripture. In spite of contemporary trends toward fragmentation and factionalism, these authors assert that we can preserve the elusive center of evangelical theology, and perhaps even redeem the label, by retrieving the original meaning of it. The most basic boundaries marking the way of this healthy center is formed around a theologically faithful, ecclesiastically habitable approach to Scripture and doctrine. This book seeks to do just that. Evangelicalism, in their understanding, refers to a guiding hope and eschatological reality, not an already-accomplished achievement.

Perceptions that evangelicalism is crumbling or chaotic reflect at least four recent developments, which identify challenges that any evangelical theology must address: 1) more robust academic engagement, 2) an increased awareness of the tradition in the creeds, texts, and practices of early Christianity, 3) an interest in global Christianity, and 4) interfaces with emergent Christianity and culture. A central challenge for evangelical theology involves pursuing newfound engagement with different traditions, as the era of Reformed hegemony is now over (35). While the doctrine of the Trinity, and God’s self-revelation by Word and Spirit are vital components of evangelical theology, the doctrines of Scripture and the Holy Spirit increasingly reveal rather than resolve differences within the large evangelical umbrella.