Is Word-Faith theology only rotten apples?

In the midst of our last phase placing articles and reviews from all of our print issues online at PneumaReview.com, I came across a response we received and published almost ten years ago. If I remember how this went, the editorial committee felt we had to turn away a submission this writer made to us because of how he was responding in anger instead of trying to win over those that disagreed with him. Although we cannot usually explain our reasons for turning something away, and believe me when I say I never enjoy writing those rejection letters, we saw potential in this writer and pointed out some things he could improve. When we received his thoughtful response, we knew he had taken to heart what we had tried to communicate. Here is his response:

Thank you for looking at the article I submitted. I am now inclined to think that a more ‘humble’ piece of writing, coming from a little amateur theologian like me, would perhaps be more palatable for your website readers. At the time of writing, I had felt the need to produce something approaching a polemic in order to defend my continued theological studies from… well, from various people. And I believe my article is still useful for that purpose. But Pentecostal/charismatics, in general, need to be more gently wooed out of their errors. I have spent some time discussing various issues (in a friendly fashion) with some of the older WordFaithers and traditional Pentecostals (and trying to learn from them too) over the past year, and I think they’re just plain tired of having their heads smacked by aggressive apologists and supercilious theologians! Usually at the heart of the various errors and excesses we are all too familiar with, there is some valid insight or understanding—it may even be distinctive. When we fail to discern it, affirm it and extricate it from the general mess it has got itself into in our critiques, I think we probably end up doing more harm than good. I suspect that, more often than not, people tenaciously cling to various errors (regardless of how much we criticize) because there is something true that they have seen somewhere at the bottom—though they have perhaps made erroneous inferences from it.

I mention all this because you aren’t running an apologetics website per se, but a resource site for Pentecostals and Charismatics, in the hope of nurturing doctrinal maturity and curbing excesses. It has occurred to me that perhaps something gentler might be called for than my original article. I will try my hand on a revised article and submit it again. Thanks for the consideration.

– GTA

Although this comment was originally published in the print edition of the Spring 2005 issue of Pneuma Review, I think it is still a good reminder for me.

I do remember spending many long hours in numerous libraries researching the destructive errors I found in Word of Faith teachings. At the time, it had not been that long since God had freed me from a sectarian mindset. I was arming myself to argue against the ugliness I saw. Yet there were several individuals, mentoring voices including Ron Messelink, Paul King, William De Arteaga, Geir Lie and Jon Ruthven, who challenged me to look deeper than the charges laid against the Word-Faith movement by heresy hunters. No one claimed that the movement was not full of poor theology or even serious error on the fringes, though there was disagreement about how deep those fringes were. Ultimately, my layman’s research led me to conclude that despite serious problems, there were emphases and insights that could be gleaned from the movement. The new challenge I saw was what writer GTA pointed out, that while it is difficult to draw those caught up with error towards the truth, it is impossible to do so if they think you are angry with them and when they know they have seen something true despite the mess. I continue to learn how this is a good way to look at many controversial subjects, particularly when it is all too easy to exclude others because they believe differently.

If you agree that learning how to share the truth in love is a life long calling, join me in asking for a fresh filling of the Holy Spirit to carry it out.

Robert M. Bowman, Jr., The Word-Faith Controversy: Understanding the Health and Wealth Gospel (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001), 254 pages, ISBN 9780801063442.

When I came across Bowman’s book The Word-Faith Controversy, I was very interested in his approach and conclusions because I had earlier done my Th.D. dissertation on nineteenth and twentieth century “faith theologies.” Bowman’s book is a significant contribution to the study of the Word of Faith movement. While not uncritical of the movement, he takes exception to many of the conclusions of Hank Hanegraaff (Christianity in Crisis) and D.R. McConnell (A Different Gospel). Contrary to Hanegraaff, he does not portray the movement as monolithic, but recognizes diversity and disagreement within the movement.

Bowman prefers to call E.W. Kenyon the “grandfather” of the Word-Faith movement, citing what he considers three other “fathers”: William Branham and the Latter Rain movement, Oral Roberts (whom he does not classify as Word-Faith), and especially Kenneth Hagin. He recognizes that Kenyon would not accept all that is taught in the Word-Faith movement (e.g., that God has a body or that believers are little gods), nor would Word-Faith leaders accept all that Kenyon taught (e.g., that tongues is not the initial evidence of the baptism in the Spirit). He concludes, “Kenyon is the source of most, but not all, of the distinctive and controversial teachings of the Word-Faith movement” (p. 38). Further, the Word-Faith teachers have sometimes gone beyond anything that Kenyon himself taught.

Taking a more scientific approach than McConnell and Hanegraaff, Bowman lists and compares 23 standard New Thought concepts with Christian Science and Kenyon. From this statistical analysis, he concludes that while there is much in common between Christian Science and New Thought, there is “little resemblance” between Kenyon and New Thought. Further, he concludes that Kenyon is “far closer to orthodoxy than is Christian Science” (p. 46). Kenyon may share some similarity with metaphysical thought, but his views are “fundamentally different” (p. 48). He demonstrates that McConnell’s methodology is faulty, and thus his conclusions regarding Kenyon’s connections with metaphysical New Thought are deeply flawed. While there may have been some metaphysical influence, Kenyon’s views are more unlike such concepts than like.

Bowman goes on to show that Kenyon’s teaching was rooted more in the pre-Pentecostal Higher Life, Keswick, healing and proto-Pentecostal movements. He cites examples of such teaching including Andrew Murray, Hannah Whitall Smith, Charles Cullis, A.J. Gordon, and others, especially concentrating on the teachings of A.B. Simpson and John G. Lake. He is less critical of the Keswick/Higher Life stream than Dale Simmons (E.W. Kenyon and the Postbelllum Pursuit of Peace, Power, and Prosperity), seeing less similarity between the Keswick/Higher Life tradition and metaphysical teaching.