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Summer 2012Summer 2012Summer 2012 Volume 15Volume 15Volume 15, Number , Number , Number 333

The Pneuma Review

Volume 15, Number 3 Summer 2012 The Journal of Ministry Resources and Theology for Pentecostal

and Charismatic Ministries and Leaders. The Pneuma Review (ISSN 1521-6292) is published quarterly by the Pneuma Foundation. Publication of an article or advertisement does not necessarily indicate endorsement by the Pneuma Foundation. The views of the authors are their own.

EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Raul Mock BOOK AND PERIODICAL REVIEWS EDITOR: Michael Dies CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Ronald Messelink, Joseph Joslin,

James M. Dettmann, Kevin M. Williams, Amos Yong, C. J. Halquist, H. Murray Hohns

Indexed in the Christian Periodical Index.

For Pneuma Foundation membership information, contact Customer Service through E-mail at: [email protected]

Copyright © 2012 The Pneuma Foundation. All Rights Reserved.

The Pneuma Review

Volume 15, Number 3 Summer 2012

Contents

10 You Will Never Know Where You Are Going Until You Know Where You Came From: British Pentecostals’ past development and future challenges

By Neil Hudson Who are today’s British Pentecostals?

22 Hermeneutics in Modern and Classic Faith Movements

By Paul L. King What differences in interpretation can we see

between the contemporary Word of Faith movement and the classic Faith movement?

32 Miracles as Reality An interview with Craig S. Keener about the miraculous and his

recent book, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts.

40 Pietists as Pentecostal Forerunners By Eric Jonas Swensson Who were the Pietists? Were they forerunners of today’s Pentecostal/

charismatic movement? Excerpts from “The Petersens and the Silesian Kinderbeten Revival.”

50 Working for Others While in the Shadows By H. Murray Hohns Pastor Mur shares lessons about being cared for and the blessing we become

when many do not even notice what we do.

52 Book and Periodical Reviews Karl W. Giberson and Francis S. Collins, The Language of Science

and Faith . Reviewed by Amos Yong. William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and

Apologetics. Reviewed by Tony Richie. Tim J. R. Trumper, Preaching and Politics: Engagement without

Contributors to this Issue 6

Next Issue 78 Conversations with

Readers 9 Increase Your

Theological Vocabulary 8

A Glossary in Brief.

Departments

Artwork and Photographs By Stan Myers: The Dove, appearing on much of the

Pneuma Foundation literature; and Mailbox, appearing with “Conversations with readers.”

Scriptural quotations marked NKJV are from The Holy Bible, New King James Version. © 1982 Thomas Nelson, Inc. Scriptural quotations marked NIV are from The Holy Bible, New International Version. © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Interna-tional Bible Society . Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. Scriptural quotations marked RSV are from the Revised Standard Version. © 1946, 1953, 1971, 1973 by the Divi-sion of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Scriptural quotations marked NASB are from New Ameri-can Standard Bible. © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation.

Compromise. Reviewed by Steve D. Eutsler. Toby Jones, The Way of Jesus: Re-forming Spiritual Communities in

a Post-Church Age. Reviewed by David Purves. Amos Yong, The Spirit of Creation: Modern Science and Divine

Action in the Pentecostal-Charismatic Imagination. Reviewed by Wolfgang Vondey.

Martyn Percy, Shaping the Church: The Promise of Implicit Theology. Reviewed by Timothy Lim Teck Ngern.

Vern Sheridan Poythress, In the Beginning Was the Word: Language-Α God-Centered Approach. Reviewed by David Seal.

Es trelda Y. Alexander, Black Fire: One Hundred Years of African American Pentecostalism. Reviewed by Wolfgang Vondey.

Joe Carter and John Coleman, How to Argue Like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History’s Greatest Communicator. Reviewed by Steve D. Eutsler.

Other Significant Articles Tim Stafford, “Miracles in Mozambique: How Mama Hei di

Reaches the Abandoned” Christianity Today (May 2012). “It's Okay to Expect a Miracle: Scholar Craig Keener rediscovers

the reality of divine intervention” Christianity Today (December 2011).

Contents Continued 4

The Pneuma Review

Journal of Ministry Resources and Theology for Pentecostal and Charismatic Ministries & Leaders.

A quarterly printed publication of

The Pneuma Foundation PO Box 9072, Wyoming, MI 49509-0072 USA

www.PneumaFoundation.org

Neil Hudson has been involved in local church leadership for over twenty-five years. He was an instructor at Regents Theological College for eleven years. He is the director of the Imagine Project at The London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, encouraging churches to help whole-life disciples make a differ-ence wherever they are. He is a leader of the Salford Elim Church, Manchester and author of Imagine Church: Releasing Whole-Life Disciples (IVP, 2012).

Steve D. Eutsler, D.Min. (Assemblies of God Theological Seminary), M.Div. (Assemblies of God Theological Seminary), M.A. Biblical Literature (Assemblies of God Theological Seminary), B.A. Bible (Central Bible College), is professor of Bible and Practical Theology at Global University in Springfield, Missouri. He has extensive experience as a pastor, evangelist, and educator and is the author of numerous articles and books.

H. Murray Hohns is on staff at the largest church in Hawaii and has served on his denomination's investment committee since 1999. Hohns has two degrees in Civil Engineering, an MA in Theology from Fuller Seminary, and served as an instructor at Foursquare’s New Hope Christian College (formerly Pacific Rim Christian College) in Honolulu. He has written six engineering books and hun-dreds of articles in every type of newspaper, magazine and journal.

Craig S. Keener, Ph.D. (Duke University), is a professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary. He is best known for his IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (IVP Academic, 1993) that introduces the New Testament in its early Jewish and Greco-Roman settings. He is the author of numerous books including Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Ac-counts (Baker Academic, 2011). sites.google.com/site/drckeener

Paul L. King, D.Th. (University of South Africa), D. Min. (Oral Roberts Uni-versity), is an ordained minister with The Christian and Missionary Alliance, author of nine books, professor at Oral Roberts University, and a cancer over-comer. www.higherlifeministries.com

Timothy Lim Teck Ngern , M.Div., is a Ph.D. candidate Regent University School of Divinity in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Winner of the 2011 North American Academy of Ecumenists annual student essay contest, he has served as the assistant pastor of a Baptist church in Singapore and projects manager for Transworld Radio International (Northeast Asia Office). Before coming to Christ through a charismatic megachurch in Singapore. he worked in business development, specializing in organizational behavior, finance, and training. He is married with three boys.

David Purves is a Student Assistant Pastor with Bristo Baptist Church in Scot-land, where he is involved in pastoral and mission work, particular among peo-ple recovering from addictions. He is currently working on a Masters course at Oxford University, supported by the Oxford Centre for the Study of Christianity and Culture.

6 ContributorsContributorsContributors

to this issueto this issueto this issue 7

Tony Richie, D.Min, Ph.D., is missionary teacher at SEMISUD (Quito, Ecua-dor), guest lecturer at the Pentecostal Theological Seminary and Lee University (Cleveland, TN) and adjunct theology professor for Regent University Divinity School (Virginia Beach, VA). Dr. Richie is an Ordained Bishop in the Church of God, and Senior Pastor at New Harvest in Knoxville, TN. He serves the Society for Pentecostal Studies as Ecumenical Studies Interest Group Leader and Liai-son to the Interfaith Relations Commission of the National Council of Churches (USA), and represents Pentecostals with Interreligious Dialogue and Coopera-tion of the World Council of Churches and the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs. He is the author of Speaking by the Spirit: A Pentecostal Model for Interreligious Dialogue (Emeth Press, 2011) and several journal arti-cles and books chapters on Pentecostal theology and experience. www.pentecostalambassador.com

David Seal, M.T.S. (Cornerstone University), Th.M. (Calvin Theological Semi-nary), is currently pursuing at Ph.D. at Regent University, Virginia beach, VA and is adjunct faculty at Cornerstone University. He is employed at South Church Lansing, Michigan.

Eric Jonas Swensson is an author, blogger, historian, and social media director. He was a pastor for 17 years before resigning to go overseas on the trip that became the basis for his book, A Year in Tyr (CreateSpace, 2011). His disserta-tion has been published as Kinderbeten: The Origin, Unfolding, and Interpreta-tions of the Silesian Children's Prayer Revival (Wipf & Stock, 2010). [email protected]

Wolfgang Vondey, Ph.D. (Marquette University) and M.Div. (Church of God Theological Seminary), is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at the Regent University School of Divinity and an ordained minister with the Church of God (Cleveland, TN). His research focuses on ecclesiology, pneumatol-ogy, theological method, and the intersection of theology and science.

Amos Yong is J. Rodman Williams Professor of Theology at Regent University School of Divinity in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where he also is director of the PhD in Renewal Studies program. His graduate education includes degrees in theology, history, and religious studies from Western Evangelical Seminary and Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, and Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, and an undergraduate degree from Bethany University of the Assemblies of God. He is the author of numerous papers and books including Afro-Pentecostalism: Black Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity in History and Culture (New York University Press, 2011), Who is the Holy Spirit: The Acts of the Spirit, the Apostles, and Empire (Paraclete Press, 2011), The Spirit of Creation: Modern Science and Divine Action in the Pentecostal-Charismatic Imagination (Eerdmans, 2011), and The Bible, Disability, and the Church: A New Vision of the People of God (Eerdmans, 2011). For a full list of publica-tions, see regent.edu/acad/schdiv/faculty_staff/faculty/yong.cfm

conventicle — a secret or unauthorized meet ing, particularly a gathering of religious dissenters unsanctioned by religious authorities. From Lat in for “small assembly.”

élan — zeal or vigorous spirit. Often carries a sense of confidence

or creative style. Originally from French “lance.” epigraph — a phrase or quotation placed at the beginning of a

document or chapter to serve as a preface or summary. As a literary device, epigraphs often connect the work to a wider body of writ ing. Not to be confused with the archaeological discipline of epigraphy, the study of inscriptions.

Keswick Convention — an annual gathering of Evangelicals for

prayer and Bible teaching in Keswick, England. Begun in 1875 to promote holiness and as a focal point fo r the Higher Life movement, the week long conferences would have a significant impact on many individuals that would become early Pentecostal leaders.

moribund — dying, stagnant, or becoming obsolete. pabulum — simplistic food of only the most basic nutrition.

Metaphorically, “ food for thought” that is intellectually simplistic and unsatisfying.

Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700

-1760) was trained as a lawyer and civil servant but gave these up in 1727 to devote himself to evangelism and leadership of the Moravian Brethren that had settled his Herrnhut colony. Count Zizendorf’s Piet ist movement was begun with the desire to encourage renewal o f the Lutheran church and would sign ificant ly influence later renewal movements including the Methodism of John Wesley and the missionary movement of the 19th century.

Increase Your Theological Vocabulary

8

Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf

Via WikiMedia Commons.

CONVERSATIONS WITH READERS I am feeling so blessed to share with you that I have been reading your website for the last year. I always felt touched by reading from your precious website stuff. The material available on the website has become precious because God has used it to bless me and teach me how I might better follow Him. I do not know how to I thank you. I don’t have enough words to exp lain my feeling about your min istry and work. Finally I feel that more and more people should read it, so I sent your web address to my friends and they liked it too. Lord’s Blessings, — NG It truly is my p leasure to work with you and Pneuma Review. I appreciate your obedience to the Lord in founding the Review. I hope and believe that it benefits a readership that doesn't use the more academic and also the more pop periodicals (Charisma, e.g.) by and for Pentecostal-charismatics. I think of it as reaching a group similar to AG's Enrichment. — ME Just heard about you on the internet. Thank God you are here and for the work that you do. Please send me The Pneuma Review and more informat ion about your ministry and

how I can be a part of what you are doing. Thank you. — MF www.P neumaFoundation.org /

links_schools.jsp Thank you for your links to Pentecos tal/charis mat ic Bib le Schools. I appreciate all you have done for the Body of Christ in bring ing all o f these contacts together. — JDF Greetings in Jesus’ precious name. I am in receip t o f your journal Vo lume 15, Number 1, Winter 2012 this morn ing. Thank you very much for sending The Pneuma Review continually. Your Journal gives countless blessings to me and my ministry. — AE in Sri Lanka

E-mail the editor: www.p ne u ma fo und at io n .o rg /contactus.jsp Or write h im at : Pneuma Review Editor PO Box 9072 Wyoming, MI 49509-0072 www.PneumaFoundation.org

9

Printed responses may be edited for clarity of content and space.

One hundred years ago, the thought that there would be a new

grouping within Evangelicalis m that would spread throughout the world with a rate of growth that in certain p laces would outstrip countries’ birth rates would have been deemed to be a flight of fancy. Yet this is exactly what happened. However, for all their shared roots, the relationship between Pentecostalism and Evan-gelicalis m has often been distant and uneasy. Nevertheless, Pen-tecostals have increasingly been interested in examining their historical roots, recognising the points of contact and the diver-sions that have been part of their history. This article reflects this development. Emerg ing from the same parental stock, the Pente-costal child has grown into an adult with its own emphases, aspi-rations and dangers. This article will examine some of these as-pects of Pentecostalism. Pentecostalism’s Heritage

Pentecostalism’s formation and development looks to the nineteenth century Holiness Movement for its parentage. Perhaps every generation has looked at the Church they have inherited, compared it with the biblical account of the early Church and pronounced the diagnosis that something fundamental was awry. Certainly, by the late nineteenth century, Evangelicalism was ill at ease with itself and had spawned many agencies seeking to kick start the Church back into life.

Neil Hudson

You Will Never Know Where You Are Going

Until You Know Where You Came From

British Pentecostals’ past development and future challenges

The Pneuma Review 11

In Britain, the Holiness Movement, particu larly as mediated through the Keswick Convention, became a significant breeding ground for proto-Pentecostals. The theology surrounding this ecumenical event (its motto was ‘All one in Christ Jesus’) fo-cused on the desire for a victorious Christian life that many of its delegates desired above all else. The answer to this overwhelm-ing desire was to be found in an experience of a life lived in the ‘fullness of the Spirit’. Rejecting the more extreme views of ‘sinless perfection’, the clear expectation was that the believer, once justified by faith, could have a distinct divine experience which would become the gateway into leading a ‘life of overcom-ing’. This life would then be transformed into service—the work of the Spirit would provide the disciple with power to witness.

For many Evangelicals, convinced of the fact that too often the Church was leading a spiritually substandard life, this was deemed to be the obvious answer. Many early proto-Pentecostals became frequent visitors to the convention in Keswick, returning to their mission halls and prayer meetings having claimed this experience of sanctificat ion by faith. That this was the answer to the problems of the Church was given credibility when the Welsh

Revival broke out in 1904. Led by the trio of Holiness revivalists: Seth Joshua, Joseph Jenkins and Evan Roberts, the freewheeling dynamis m of the Revival awakened many people’s imaginations to the possibility of a much wider spiritual renewal. The Welsh Revival was to be a significant precursor to Pentecostalism for a number of reasons. Some future Pentecostal leaders were con-verted in the Revival; others, such as Rev. A. A. Boddy, visited Wales and returned to their home churches having witnessed the radical freedom of the services, believing this to be a hallmark of the Spirit in action. A third reason related to the fact that the post-revival period was marked by small home-groups that delineated themselves as ‘Children of the Revival’. It was amongst these groups that Pentecostalism would break out. They had experi-enced the freedom of the Revival, were convinced that this was what churches had been missing for years and were not content to return to the formalism of non-conformist churches.

It is far more accurate to speak about Pentecostalisms, even in Britain.


Pre-denominational Pentecostalism

The central British Pentecostal before World War One was Rev. A. A. Boddy, vicar of All Saints Church, Monkwearmouth, Sunderland. An inveterate traveller, he consequently had contacts all over the world. He was intrigued by any mention of churches being revived, and was therefore a natural visitor to Keswick as well as to Wales to witness the Revival first hand. But when he paused from h is travels, he was well-loved by the pa-rishioners in the working class parish he represented. On hearing of the out-break of tongues in Azusa Street, Los Angeles that had taken place in 1906, he contacted T. B. Barratt, the leader of a Methodist Church in Oslo, Nor-way that was reportedly manifesting charismat ic gifts. Barratt was an Eng-lishman who had moved to Norway during his teenage years. In Septem-ber 1907, he visited Sunderland, and a small number of English believers began to claim to have received the baptism in the Holy Sp irit with the initia l evidence of that being an ability to speak in tongues.

As had happened at Azusa Street, news of this event was ini-tially, and most effectively, spread via the secular press. Gradu-ally, others who had entered into a similar experience, or were anxious to, made contact with Boddy and the initial phase of the

Pentecostal Movement in Britain was underway. Many of these early Pentecostal leaders were members of Mission Halls, inde-pendent prayer groups or Brethren churches where laity had been given greater freedom to participate in the work of the ministry. They were more often likely to be entrepreneurial businessmen, often self-employed. They were able to take the time, and had the money, to travel to the annual European Conventions that Boddy

Evan Roberts in 1905, during the 1904-1905

Welsh Revival. Via WikiMedia Commons.

Pentecostalism looks to the nineteenth century Holiness Movement for its parentage.


hosted; able to establish Pentecostal ‘centres’ (the use of church was often deemed to be too restrictive to this new move of the Spirit), and they were willing to use the existing Holiness net-works to share their new experiences of the Spirit. The period prior to World War One was one when Pentecostalism was deter-minedly ecumenical, non-hierarchical and based on relationships rather than any denominational structure. Although Boddy was the natural person to establish a new Pentecostal denomination, he refused to do so on the grounds that he believed the Spirit was being poured out for the whole Church, not simply for the sake of the emergence of a new denomination. Th is somewhat idyllic infancy was shattered by the First World War. Boddy’s patriot-ism, wh ich resulted in him becoming a padre in the trenches in 1915, clashed with the radical pacifist stance taken by younger Pentecostals such as Smith Wigglesworth, Donald Gee, John and Howard Carter. Boddy’s moment in the limelight had come to an end. The next development would see the organization of Pente-costal denominations. The development of denominations

Three Classical Pentecostal denominations emerged between 1914 and 1924, each with their own distinctive emphases. The Apostolic Church founded in 1916 by the Welsh brothers Daniel Williams and William Jones had emerged from the Apostolic Faith Church, a group that was dominated by the increasingly

eccentric William Hutchinson. Their emphasis related to the res-toration of the offices of apostle and prophet to the church. The Elim Pentecostal Church began in 1915 in Monaghan, Ireland under the leadership of another Welshman, George Jeffreys. He was an outstanding revivalist and the Elim Church structure re-volved around his evangelistic campaigns and the subsequent establishing of churches. Between 1915 and 1922 they were largely confined to working in Ireland. In 1922 they moved their

Perhaps every generation has looked at the church they have inherited, compared it with the biblical account of the early church and pronounced that something was awry.


headquarters and the substance of their work to England and Lon-don, in particular.

The Assemblies of God eventually became a distinct group in 1924, after a failed attempt two years previously. The denomina-tion was determined not to become a centralized group, wanting to preserve and safeguard the independence of local churches. However, the need for a new body was acknowledged if the Pen-

tecostal distinctives were to be maintained and churches guarded from sliding into heresy by being disconnected from other assem-blies. Although there was an early attempt to incorporate Elim’s vigorous evangelistic work into their new group, it was deemed too bold a step, the preference being expressed for two vigorous Pentecostal works in Britain rather than one larger body.

Each denominat ion viewed the others with slight suspicion. The Apostolic Church was felt to be fanatical by the Assemblies of God and Elim in its desire to be led via the prophetic gift and apostolic authority; Elim’s dependence on Jeffreys’ evangelistic gifts was viewed as being unhealthy whilst the Assemblies of God’s insistence on independence was believed to have led to an uneasy denomination. Need less to say, the new denominations led by highly charismatic figures, operating in the same towns and growing with the same types of people sometimes produced the unfortunate picture of competing meetings occurring on the same street at the same time.

The golden years for Pentecostalism were the late 20’s—1930’s, when the revivalists packed their tents, town halls and auditoria with people hungry for a rev italized spirituality. Post-War Pentecostalism

However, the outbreak of the World War Two saw the dimin-ishing of Pentecostalism’s vigour. Internal d issension led George Jeffreys to leave Elim and set up an alternative group that re-mained small and insular in its significance; the Assemblies of God and Apostolic Church had survived the period of suspicion, had seen churches develop and be established but would struggle

The desire and purpose of Pentecostal services is that the God of the Bible be experienced, not just known about.


to function in post-war Britain. The desire for ongoing revivalis m exp lained the ongoing at-

tempt to recapture the past by enshrining the practices that had become ritualistic. The choruses that had been written to be used spontaneously to produce a non-threatening environment and introduced alongside the hymns were collected into bound song-books. This ensured that the post-War generation found them-selves destined to sing spiritual songs set to pre-war popular melodies. Healing, the successful means by which many came to faith, was no longer solely located in the revivalists, but in the local pastors who would advertise evangelistic meetings with the promise of miracles, even though these were less forthcoming than they had expected. The doctrine of the baptism in the Holy Spirit, for many years conflated with the subsequent experience of sanctification, became a doctrine that was preached, believed and expected but often the emphasis on tongues as initial evi-dence gave way to the gift of the tongues being centre-stage

rather than the fuller experience of life in the Spirit. Expectant that the Lord would return at any time, Pentecostals became sec-tarian, whilst being suspected by many Evangelicals of being ‘holy rollers’. The Sixties, shock and suspicion

The 1960’s proved to be a decade of shock for Pentecostals. In general society it was, of course, the decade when the world talked more about sex, permissiveness and youth than ever be-fore, listening to the soundtrack of rebellion, epitomized by the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. Within the small Pentecostal cir-cles, it was a time when it became apparent that the Spirit’s work was being accepted in mainstream churches, something that would never have been expected previously. Initially the reports came from Anglican churches. John Collins, vicar at St. Mark’s, Gillingham, Kent, was the first Anglican parish to become a focal

In the 1960s, something completely unexpected was happening—the Spirit’s work was being accepted in mainstream churches.


point for the Charis matic Renewal. His two curates, David Wat-son and David MacInnes would become leading figures in the Charismat ic Renewal in years to come. The other figure that would have an impact on British Pentecostalism was Michael Harper, curate at All Souls and the first leader of the Fountain Trust, a service agency for the Charis matic Renewal.

Initia l Pentecostal reactions to the Charis matic Renewal were a mixture of astonishment and pleasure. This was followed by confusion and suspicion, since these new “Pentecostals” did not feel the need to join with the historic Pentecostal churches, nor even to consult with them about their new found experiences. These feelings of uncertainty were only heightened after reports were circu lated that Catholics had also experienced Pentecostal phenomena, yet had not renounced their church, but rather, in some cases, were testifying that their experiences had led them to a greater appreciation for their traditions. Although some more radical Pentecostal leaders were happy to join with these Charis-mat ic gatherings, for the most part Pentecostal churches contin-ued in their revivalist traditions.

The changes happened when a harder-edged form of the Char-ismat ic Renewal was propagated through the House Church Movement, particularly that epitomized in the ministry of Bryn Jones and Arthur Wallis. There were a number of Pentecostal churches attracted to teaching that related to the authority of the church, and by implication the authority of the church leaders. The emphasis on covenant relationships within church that took

the place of denominational hierarchical relationships, and the relaxed, more flowing and contemporary worship styles were also attractive to many younger Pentecostals. After a number of Pen-tecostal churches moved across to these newer groups, the Pente-costal denominations realized that they had to address these new issues and did so, moving to a close approximat ion of their ser-vices and styles of worship and leadership. By the time changes had been introduced, the House Church Movement began to be

Some Pentecostal theologians are pushing at the boundaries to more fully explore the very experiences that the doctrinal formulations were created to protect.


seen to be less radical and threatening. However, their influence and that of the wider Charis matic Movement, had changed Brit -ish Pentecostal churches fundamentally.

Influenced by the general acceptance of Pentecostal beliefs, through events like Spring Harvest and the new-church-influenced Evangelical Alliance, Pentecostal churches became far less sectarian. Many dropped their denominational title and the word Pentecostal from their church titles, mov ing to ‘Christian Fellowship’, echoing their Ho liness roots where the world ‘church’ was rarely used in an attempt to demonstrate their eccle-

siastical freedom. Pentecostals joined and led local church frater-nals, were accepted as full members and able to accept other churches as friends in terms of mission. Pentecostals grappled with the emphases that moved through Charismat ic churches—inner healing, spiritual warfare, positive confession, deliverance ministries, the Toronto Blessing and Pensacola revivalist preach-ing, youth congregations, alternative worship, cell church form of church.

But if Pentecostals now feel they were at the table as full and equal members of the Evangelical fraternity, there was a price to pay. Brit ish Pentecostals became a group in search of an identity. At present, many Christians accept that charismat ic gifts were not limited to the early Church, but are a vital component of contem-porary church life. It is also a time when globalisation has af-fected worship so that worship styles are increasingly mono-cultural so that one can no longer be sure to which denomination the church one is attending is attached. Similarly, praying for revival is done in massed gatherings obliterating denominational differences. With so many distinctive theological or ecclesiologi-cal differences dissolved, Pentecostal denominational leaders are leading their churches into a very different future than their predecessors would have imagined possible. So who are we now?

If British Pentecostals feel they are at the Evangelical table as full and equal members, there was a price to pay: they became a group in search of an identity.


One of the byproducts of the Charismatic Renewal is that

there are now far more theologically trained thinkers who have experienced renewal by the Spirit, in a Pentecostal understanding of that phrase. Whilst for the first couple of years, the Pentecostal explanation of subsequence was paramount, it was only a matter of time before Michael Harper, Tom Smail, Dav id Pawson and more latterly Max Turner and John Wimber would present alter-native explanations for the experiential engagement with the Spirit. Pentecostals could not dismiss them as people who did not believe/understand. They patently did. They just explained their experience in a d ifferent way. So, for example, the significance of tongues changed. For most of the last century, tongues was viewed by Pentecostals as the initial evidence of being baptized in the Spirit. Now Pentecostals are having to come to terms with the implications of alliances they have made.

In the light of these challenges to classical Pentecostal theol-ogy, some Pentecostals have responded with a call to return to a form of ‘radical Pentecostalism’. This is more than a mere rhe-torical flourish. It is aimed at getting back to the roots of Primi-tive Pentecostalism—an emphasis on holiness linked to power,

rooted in a subsequent experience of the Spirit. The temptation for Pentecostal denominations is to merely insist on their accep-tance of their doctrinal formulation even whilst acknowledging that the doctrine itself may be inadequately formulated to carry the weight of experience that many of their constituency have had. So Pentecostal theologians such as Frank Macchia, Simon Chan and Amos Yong are pushing at the boundaries to more fully explore the very experiences that the doctrinal formulations were created to protect.

Naturally, globalisation does not help this sense of a lack of self-identity. Many of the largest churches in the world are Pente-costal in pract ice and theology, though many are not part of wider

There is a growing feeling that Pentecostalism might succeed in evangelising a postmodern generation more effectively than they ever did in the rationalistic modernist era.


Pentecostal denominations, and even if they are, they are linked together on a supra-denominational basis. Peter Wagner has writ-ten about the new networks of apostolic churches—based in every continent with leaders in relationship with each other not primarily on the bans of doctrine or history, but on the foundation of shared vision and ecclesiology.

For Pentecostals, the search for the perfect ecclesiological shape has always been their holy grail. From the days when the Assemblies of God were obsessively alarmed by fears of central-

ized bureaucracy, and George Jeffreys was prepared to shipwreck his own successful denomination in order to reconstitute the or-ganization, there has been a fallacious equation that anything that approximates to the New Testament expression of church life will result in the same spiritual power portrayed in the New Testa-ment. The number of false assumptions exhibited here are clear. However, when this is allied to a pragmatism that wants to use in God’s service whatever ‘works’, it can mean that Pentecostals are too often desperately experimenting with church structural change. At its best it means that Pentecostal churches are dy-namic, evangelistically minded groups wanting to express their relationships. At worst, Pentecostal churches can be insecure places always looking for the new model.

At the heart of Pentecostalism is an emphasis on a God who does intervene and do surprising things in people, a God who performs miracles both as a sign to his own people and a cause of wonder for non-believers, a God who is to be encountered. Therefore, worship for Pentecostals is not a framework in which one is to taught something but is where one experiences some-thing. So if the classical format of an Evangelical service is one where the didactic elements are to the fore, with the Bib le being central and centrally used, for contemporary Pentecostals the

At the heart of Pentecostalism is an emphasis on a God who does intervene and do surprising things in people, a God who performs miracles both as a sign to his own people and a cause of wonder for non-believers, a God who is to be encountered.


worship band and the display of worship songs is central. This is not to say that the Bible is not honoured, but the desire and pur-pose of Pentecostal services is that the God of the Bible be ex-perienced, not just known about. Furthermore, whilst this encoun-ter can occur during sermons, in practice, it is more likely to be experienced in sung worship or in the ministry time fo llowing the sermon where indiv iduals receive prayer. For some, grappling with evangelizing amongst the sensory nature of a postmodern generation, this emphasis on experience resonates with the de-sires expressed in society. It is no surprise that there is a growing feeling that Pentecostalism might succeed in evangelising a post-modern generation more effect ively than they ever did in the ra-tionalistic modernist era. Though we are many, we are one

Throughout this paper Pentecostalism has been referred to as though it were a monolithic group. It is far more accurate to speak about Pentecostalisms, even in Britain. The development during the past fifteen years of strong, innovative and resourceful African and Hispanic Pentecostal churches has provided a new landscape to be considered. These churches are exuberant in wor-ship and preach a gospel which is a liberating this-worldly em-phasis where Jesus wants to bless every area of one’s life so that one can enjoy life to the full. The challenge to Brit ish Classical

Pentecostalism is to develop relat ionships with these newer churches, and where possible to learn from them. Increasingly, with the numerical strength of Pentecostalism ly ing with the southern hemisphere, Pentecostal theologies are being shaped by worldviews very different from the western enlightenment influ -enced ones.

Pentecostalism has come of age. From very inauspicious be-ginnings, it has grown to be a global movement of considerable significance. Part of the development of any new religious move-ment is the questioning that happens once the first and second

Pentecostalism has come of age. From very inauspicious beginnings, it has grown to be a global movement of considerable significance.


generation of adherents has passed. British Pentecostals are in a position now where they want to celebrate their past and all that God did, even whilst also having the confidence to recognize the weaknesses that were apparent even then. There is a also a re-envisioning happening of theology as the old formulat ions are re-examined, and reapplied to a changed world. Moreover, there is a confidence that is more than insecure triumphalistic blustering. It is a confidence based on the belief that that which has been shaped and developed through the last century should and can make a contribution to the ongoing life of the Church in Britain in the new century.

Bibliography William K. Kay, Inside Story: A History of British Assemblies of

God (Mattersey Hall Publications, 1990). Keith Warrington, Pentecostal Perspectives (Paternoster Press,

1998). books.google.com/books?id=zDYMAAAACAAJ Peter Hocken, Streams of Renewal: Origins and Early Develop-

ment of the Charismatic Movement in Great Britain (Paternoster Press, 1997).

Andrew Walker, Restoring the Kingdom: The Radical Christian-ity of the House Church Movement (Eag le, 1998).

Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas, The New Inter-national Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Move-ments: Revised and Expanded Edition (Zondervan, 2010). books.google.com/books?id=_Qtv7gJMIFUC

If we want to live our lives according to the Bible, how we approach Scripture means everything. What differences in interpretation can we see between the contemporary Word of Faith movement and the classic Faith movement?

Many, perhaps even most, of the controversies regarding con-temporary faith theology and practice have involved the interpre-tation of various passages of Scripture. Regarding the “health and wealth gospel,” Fee affirms: “The basic problems here are herme-neutical, i.e., they involve questions as to how one interprets Scripture. Even the lay person, who may not know the word “hermeneutics’ and who is not especially trained in interpreting the Bible, senses that this is where the real problem lies. The most distressing thing about their use of Scripture … is the purely subjective and arbitrary way they interpret the biblical text.”1 Hermeneutics and the Contemporary Faith Movement

James W. Sire, in his book Scripture Twisting, addresses ways in wh ich cults misuse the Scriptures: inaccurate quotation, twisted translation, ignoring the immediate context, collapsing contexts of two or more unrelated texts, speculation and over-specification, mistaking literal language for figurative language (and vice versa), selective citing, confused definitions, ignoring alternative exp lanations, among others.2 Many of these misuses of Scripture in the contemporary faith movement have been pointed out by their critics. However, this does not mean that the contemporary faith leaders are cult ic as some have claimed them to be, but it does demonstrate that there is a serious problem with some contemporary faith exegesis.

Paul L. King

Hermeneutics in Modern and Classic Faith Movements

This art icle is an excerpt from Only Believe: Examining the Origins and Develop-ment of Classic and Contemporary Word of Faith Theologies (Tulsa, OK: Word and Spirit Press, 2008). Used with permission.


Copeland appears at first glance to have a concern for proper interpretation of Scripture when he asserts “that we are putting the Word of God first and foremost throughout this study, not what we think it says, but what it actually says!”3 However, Fee responds:

This is nobly said; but what does it mean? Implied is the hint that interpretations that differ from his are based on what people think, not on what the Bible says. But also implied is the truth that good interpretation should begin with the plain meaning of the text. The plain meaning of the text, however, is precisely what Cope-land and the others do not give us, text after text. . . . But “plain meaning” has first of all to do with the author’s original intent, it has to do with what would have been plain to those to whom the words were originally addressed. It has not to do with how some-one from a suburbanized white American culture of the late 20th century reads his own cultural setting back into the text through

by Paul L. King

Available through the author’s website, http://higherlifeministries.com, and through online sellers, such as Amazon: http://amzn.to/OnlyBelieve. Only Believe: Examining the Origin and Development of Classic and Contemporary Word of Faith Theologies by Paul L. King. Published by Word & Spirit Press, Tulsa, OK, 2008 & 2009; 408 pp. Softcover, retail, $24.95 ISBN: 978-0978535261 Hardcover, retail $39.95 ISBN: 978-0981952604.

Only Believe


the frequently distorted prism of the language of the early 17th century.4 To illustrate Fee’s apprehension, a popular saying in the con-

temporary faith movement proclaims, “God said it; I believe it; and that settles it.” That statement is true as far as it goes. But it leaves something out: what is it that God really said, and what does it mean? Often this is presumed, rather than thought through and studied exegetically. Lovett, formerly a pro fessor at Oral Roberts University, also writes of his concern, explaining, “The problem with exponents of the Rhema [word of faith] interpreta-

tion is their biased selection of biblical passages, often without due regard to their context. The self-defined phrase ‘confessing the Word of God’ takes precedence over hermeneutical principles and rules for biblical interpretation. This approach not only does violence to the text but forces the NT linguistic data into artific ial categories that the biblical authors themselves could not affirm.”5 Simmons concludes that the shaky hermeneutical foundation of the contemporary faith movement stems from its acknowledged founder: “In Kenyon’s hands, even the texts that were a major focus of Keswickeans in general proved to be remarkab ly elastic. . . . Kenyon’s tendency was to stretch a term or metaphor to a literal extreme that the original word or figure of speech did not intend.”6

In addition to Kenyon’s influence, Pentecostal circles gener-ally had an aversion to formal education due to rejection of Pen-tecostal belief and practice by academics. As a result, some char-ismat ic and word o f faith leaders eschew theology and biblical exegesis as being traditional and not Spirit-led. James Zeigler, himself a former Rhema student and former d irector of the Holy Spirit Research Center at Oral Roberts University, pointed out that many of the Word of Faith teachers, not being schooled in the biblical languages, hermeneutics, and theology, rely heavily upon a literalistic rendering of the King James English version of the Bible.7 They have mostly secondhand knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, based on helps such as Strong’s Concordance or Vine’s Expository Dictionary, Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible and the Amplified Bible (which some scholars believe is deficient

There is a serious problem with some contemporary faith exegesis.


because it gives so many options, rather than defining a term within its context). One of my professors when I was a student at Oral Roberts University astutely remarked many years ago, “A litt le bit of knowledge [about Greek and Hebrew] can be a dan-gerous thing.”

Derek Vreeland, a defender of the basic principles of contem-porary faith theology, nonetheless acknowledges, “The writings of E.W. Kenyon lack theological sophistication and, in part, re-veal a departure from the most sound of hermeneutical principles. However, the whole of his teachings falls with in the bounds of historical orthodox Christianity, on the fringe perhaps, but still within orthodoxy.”8 Vreeland, even though a now and again sup-porter of contemporary faith leaders, also admits that Hagin uses a “loose pragmatic hermeneutic” and a “selective hermeneutic.”9 To illustrate this lack of theological and exegetical sophistication, a few examples of hermeneutical flaws in contemporary faith teaching include:

Referring to Hebrews 1:6 where Jesus is called in KJV Bible “the first begotten,” Copeland asserts, “He’s no longer called the only begotten Son of God. He is called the first born from the dead, the first begotten of many brethren. … The next thing He does is include you and me in the begotten of God.”10 This appears to denigrate the deity of Christ and deify mankind. However, I do not believe Copeland is intentionally propagating heretical v iews here. Rather, he is showing his theological and exegetical ignorance by failing to distinguish between “first begotten” (prototokos—firstborn, prototype) and “only begotten” (monogenes—unique, one-of-kind).

As mentioned earlier, Capps interprets Matthew 7:7 in light of his assumptions regarding other passages of Scripture, deny-ing that it can mean to keep on asking and seeking. Ignorant of what the text really says and means in the original lan-guage, he comes to an erroneous conclusion. Barron points out correctly, “Capps’s inflexib ility demonstrates a major flaw in positive confession teaching: it attempts to make universal laws out of isolated texts.”11

Regarding Hebrews 11:1, I have several times heard contem-porary faith teachers claim, “Now faith is. . .—that means faith is NOW.” However, the problem with that interpretation is that the Greek word translated “now” (de) does not mean


“now in time.” Rather, it is a transitional word that can be translated, “therefore.” It is valid to say that sometimes faith is now, but it cannot be claimed arbit rarily that faith is always now, nor can this verse legitimately be claimed as support for the teaching.

As has been cited earlier, inferring from the word ing in the KJV Bible, some contemporary faith leaders mistake the sub-ject of Romans 4:17, believ ing that believers can “call those things which are not as though they are,” when, in fact, God is the person being referred to in the context.

MacGregor notes that Copeland “interprets Isaiah 40:12 in precisely the same manner as Mormon hermeneutics: ‘The Bible says [God] measured out the heavens with a nine-inch span. Well . . . my span is eight and three-quarter inches long. So God’s span is a quarter of an inch longer than mine. So you see . . . God . . . stands around 6’2”, 6’3”, weighs some-where in the neighborhood of a couple hundred pounds, little better.’”12 While MacGregor believes that Copeland is inten-tionally borrowing from Mormonism, I think it is more likely that Copeland, if he was being serious when he made the statement, was slavishly adhering to a literalistic word ing of the KJV Bible, not comprehending Isaiah’s hermeneutical use of anthropological metaphorical language to describe God in terms that ancient man could understand.

These are only a handful of the many erroneous interpreta-tions pointed out by contemporary faith critics. Having pointed out these flaws, we must also recognize that Hagin before his death in 2003 acknowledged this problem in the contemporary faith movement and emphasized the need for interpreting Scrip -ture in its context and not mistaking figurative for literal (though he needed to go farther with it).13 It should also be noted that there are some contemporary faith leaders such as Bob Yandian and Rick Renner of Tulsa, Oklahoma, who have studied the origi-nal languages and seek to apply sound exegesis and exposition, bringing moderation to contemporary faith movement interpreta-tion and praxis.14 Hermeneutics and the Classic Faith Movement

In contrast with most contemporary faith teachers, the major


classic faith teachers and their predecessors, by and large, had received a scholarly theological education, as was customary at the time. George Müller was a brilliant scholar, fluent in six lan-guages, yet merged together scholarship and a vibrant faith. John Wesley, Andrew Murray, Thomas Upham, A.B. Simpson, Oswald Chambers, and R.A. Torrey were all seminary-educated and studied the classical languages, such as Greek, Hebrew, and Latin. Simpson won academic awards for his scholarship. Jona-than Edwards was president of Princeton in its early days. Charles Finney was trained in law. Torrey was highly educated as a graduate of Yale Un iversity and Yale Divin ity School, and read the Bible in Greek, Hebrew, and German. Charles Blanchard served as president of Wheaton College. A.T. Pierson wrote a book on hermeneutics.

Others who themselves were not scholars nonetheless availed themselves of academic materials and submitted and confirmed their teachings with academics. Phoebe Palmer conferred with

her husband who was a medical doctor and theologian. D.L. Moody became close friends with renowned professor Henry Drummond. Hannah Whitall Smith consulted pastors and theolo-gians and pastors regarding her teachings, and wrote a booklet on interpreting the Bib le. Amy Carmichael studied the Greek New Testament and scholarly reference material and commentaries. A.W. Tozer and John MacMillan, though never completing high school, read voraciously the church fathers, mystics, reformers, and classical writers and theologians. MacMillan learned Greek and Hebrew through self-study, conversing with rabbis, consult-ing with professors, and attending college and seminary classes. Spurgeon obtained a working knowledge of Greek and Hebrew and read broadly a variety of c lassic writings.

Still, these classic faith leaders were not stodgy academics or ivory tower theologians who had little vital experience in a walk of faith. Rather, they walked close to God and practiced a life o f daring faith, yet studied intensively, pract ically applied exegesis to life, and relied upon the Spirit to illuminate interpretation.

Before his death in 2003, Kenneth Hagin acknowledged there were problems with some prosperity teaching and emphasized the need for interpreting Scripture in its context.


Seminary-educated Murray counseled both the need for study and for revelation, saying, “As all the Word of God is given by the Spirit of God, each word must be interpreted to us by that same Spirit.”15 Simpson was concerned with grammatical-historical hermeneutics, but also perceived that God had provided much divine symbolism in Scripture: “ It would be a great mistake to read the Bib le only symbolically. But it is beautiful to see h idden truths beneath the history.”16 This is not to say that classic faith writers all had interpretations that would be accepted by scholar-ship today or that they would always agree with one another’s interpretations in all matters. Reflections and Conclusions

Spirit-guided revelation and hermeneutics are not mutually exclusive entities that oppose each other. Again, this is not a case of “either-or” but “both-and,” two polarities that are maintained in dynamic tension in the ellipt ical nature of truth. Scholarship and Spirit-led knowledge go hand-in-hand. Exegetical and her-

meneutical study provides the banks needed to contain and main-tain the flow of the river of God’s Spirit. Th is is not to say that a person must be a scholar to be used by God or to hear from God. Moody, Smith Wigglesworth, Tozer, and MacMillan had not completed a high school education yet were greatly used by God and received genuine insights from God. Tozer stressed the need to be not just Bib le taught, but Spirit taught.17 Torrey, though a Yale graduate, did not denigrate lack of education. He too under-stood that a person may be well-educated but not Spirit -taught: “Prayer will do more than a theological education to make the Bible an open book. Only a man of prayer can understand the Bible.”18 Torrey balanced human education with divine educa-tion:

The man who can be most fully taught of God is the one

who will be most ready to listen to what God has taught others. … But we should not be dependent on them, even though we can learn much from them. We have a divine teacher: the Holy Spirit. We will never truly know the truth until we are taught by

Spirit-guided revelation and hermeneutics are not mutually exclusive.


Him. No amount of mere human teaching, no matter who our teachers may be, will give us a correct understanding of the truth. Not even a diligent study of the Word, either in the Eng-lish or in the original languages, will give us a real understand-ing of the truth. We must be taught by the Holy Spirit.

The one who is thus taught, even if he does not know a word of Greek or Hebrew, will understand the truth of God better than someone who does know the original languages, but who is not taught by the Spirit. The Spirit will guide the one He teaches “into all truth”—not in a day, a week, or a year, but one step at a time.19

There is a need, therefore, on the one hand, for contemporary

faith teachers to accept, learn and apply sound principles of her-meneutics, and, on the other hand, for those from a non-charismat ic background to recognize that God does speak to peo-ple today and give special insight—whether it is called revelation or illumination or whatever. Those of us who are evangelical and/or charis matic scholars need to be open for the Holy Sp irit to give new insights and fresh application to Scripture.

Contemporary faith people need to be willing to submit all supposed revelations to the tools of sound hermeneutics. (I once had a friend and colleague who was a Christian education direc-tor in a church where I was serving as assistant pastor. She often received insights into the Scriptures that could be described as revelations. However, since she had not studied the Bib le in the original languages, she would come to me and say, “I believe

God is saying to me that this passage means this. Does this square with the Greek or the Hebrew?”). I wou ld recommend this ap-proach to contemporary faith leaders. Whenever they believe they have received a special revelation from God, it would be biblical and appropriate to submit it for confirmat ion to scholars of like mind who are open to the realm of the supernatural—for instance, professors at charismatic or Pentecostal colleges and seminar-

“If there is any truth that the Holy Ghost has impressed upon your heart, if you do not want to push it to the extreme, ask what is the counter-truth, and lean a little of your weight upon that.” — William Lincoln


ies—like Oral Roberts University, Regent University, Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, Church of God Theological Semi-nary, etc., or Pentecostal/charismatic scholars at other evangelical seminaries, such as Gordon Fee and Wayne Grudem.

Ult imately, Tozer’s “truth has two-wings” principle is needed in the issues of faith and hermeneutics to maintain a healthy ten-sion of the contra-polarit ies. A.J. Gordon cited William Lincoln’s insightful commentary on the need for balancing polarit ies of truth: “The only way for a believer, if he wants to go rightly, is to remember that truth is always two-sided. If there is any truth that

the Holy Ghost has impressed upon your heart, if you do not want to push it to the ext reme, ask what is the counter-truth, and lean a litt le of your weight upon that; otherwise, if you bear so very much on one side of the truth, there is a danger of pushing it into a heresy. Heresy means selected truth; it does not mean error: heresy and error are very different things. Heresy is truth; but truth pushed into undue importance to the disparagement of the truth on the other side.”20 I once heard Dr. Costa Deir, Dean o f Elim Bib le Institute, a Pentecostal school, proclaim this balance in a perceptive motto: “It is good to be highly educated; it is bet-ter to be educated from on High; it is best to be both.”

Notes 1 Gordon Fee, The Disease of the Health and Wealth Gospel (Cosa

Mesa, Calif.: Word for Today, 1979), 3. 2 James W. Sire, Scripture Twisting: 20 Ways the Cults Misread the

Bible (Downers Grove, Ill. : InterVarsity, 1980). 3 Kenneth Copeland, cited in Fee, 3. 4 Ibid., 3, 4. 5 L. Lovett, “Positive Confession Theology,” in Stanley M. Burgess and

Gary B. McGee (ed.), Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988), 720.

“It is good to be highly educated; it is better to be educated from on High; it is best to be both.” — Costa Deir


6 Dale H. Simmons, E.W. Kenyon and the Postbellum Pursuit of Peace, Power, and Plenty (Lanham, MD and London: Scarecrow Press, 1997), 108.

7 Personal conversation with Zeigler, Tulsa, Okla., 1997. See also Vree-land, “Reconstructing Word of Faith Theology,” 13.

8 Derek E. Vreeland, “Reconstructing Word of Faith Theology: A De-fense, Analysis and Refinement of the Theology of the Word of Faith Movement.” Paper presented at the 30th Annual Meeting of the Soci-ety for Pentecostal Studies, Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, Okla-homa, Mar. 2001, 5.

9 Ibid., 12, 19. In fairness to Hagin, it should be noted that his most re-cent book, The Midas Touch, does show more concern for sound hermeneutics.

10 Kenneth Copeland, “The Prayer of Binding and Loosing,” sound re-cording. Ft. Worth, Tex.: KCP Publications, 1987.

11 Bruce Barron, The Health and Wealth Gospel (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP, 1987), 102.

12 Kirk R. MacGregor, “The Word-Faith Movement: A Theological Con-flation of the Nation of Islam and Mormonism?” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 75, No. 1, (March 2007), 89.

13 Kenneth Hagin, The Midas Touch: A Balanced Approach to Biblical Prosperity (Tulsa, Okla.: Faith Library Publications, 2000), 147, 150-153, 161.

14 I have heard Renner admit publicly, “We faith people have done some crazy things,” and then he proceed to teach a balanced approach to faith.

15 Andrew Murray, The Spirit of Christ (Springdale, Penn.: Whitaker House, 1984), 162.

16 A.B. Simpson, Divine Emblems (Camp Hill, Penn.: Christian Publica-tions, 1995), n.p.

17 A.W. Tozer, The Root of the Righteous (Camp Hill, Penn.: Christian Publications, [1955] 1986), 34-37.

18 R.A. Torrey, How to Obtain Fullness of Power (New Kensington, Penn.: Whitaker, [1982] 1984), 77-78.

19 Ibid., 51. Simmons (E.W. Kenyon, 93-94), however, misunderstands Torrey’s statement as an anti-intellectual claim for not needing her-meneutics, perhaps not realizing that Torrey himself was a scholar and had studied biblical criticism at a German university.

20 A.J. Gordon, The Ministry of Healing (Harrisburg, Penn.: Christian Publications, n.d.), 261-262.

The Pneuma Review: As a New Testament scholar you have a

great interest in the meaning of the biblical text but you also seem to have a great interest in miracles. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Craig Keener: Some estimate that 31 percent of Mark’s Gospel, or roughly 40 percent of h is narrative, addresses miracles. To ignore the question of miracles is to ignore a hefty portion of the biblical text . Perhaps one-fifth of the Book of Acts addresses miracles, almost as much as the speeches, yet scholars often com-ment on the topic of the “speeches in Acts” while comparat ively ignoring the miracles. I think this is a b lind spot in our Western readings of the text since David Hume. Since Hume, scholars have often treated the miracle accounts in the Gospels as an em-barrassment, neglecting them, exp lain ing them away, allegorizing them in ways we wouldn’t do with most other narratives. Those are culturally circumscribed readings: when someone in the first century heard a healing report o f Asclepius, fo r example, they understood that it was meant to invite faith in Asclepius’s power to help supplicants. Reports that the New Testament writers ex-pected to generate faith are often treated very differently by scholars today, who are often captive to a very different world -view. PR: How have the arguments of David Hume contributed to anti-

supernatural thinking in the West? Keener: Hume borrowed arguments of some earlier Deists against miracles, and some of the apparent gaps in his arguments are because he is taking some conventional Deist arguments for granted. In his own day, his essay about miracles was overshad-owed by other works, especially one by Conyers Middleton. De-ism eventually faded from fashion, but Hume’s prestige, based on his other essays, led to his miracles essay being widely influen-

Miracles as Reality

An Interview with Craig S. Keener on the Miraculous and his Recent Book, Miracles: The

Credibility of the New Testament Accounts.


tial. Many today do not realize the historic pedigree of their views, but their ready dismissal of the plausibility of miracles simply repeats Hume’s claim. PR: What is the fallacy in Hume’s thinking? Keener: There is more than one. Foundational is his argument from un iform human experience. The first part of Hume’s essay appeals to laws of nature, presumably extrapolated from human experience, in a prescriptive way that does not fit current under-standings of laws of nature. In Hume’s own era, in fact, most English scien-tists speaking about laws of nature affirmed the reality of biblical mira-cles; it was not scientific evi-d e n c e b u t Hume’s ph i-losophic argu-ment that even-tually led much of culture to reject miracles, often (wrongly) in the name of science.

The second part of h is essay appeals to uni-fo rm human experience to rule out eyewitness evidence for miracles. Of course, as many philosophers have pointed out, this is a completely circular argu-ment: humans don’t experience miracles, therefore humans who claim to experience them are incorrect, therefore there is no suffi-cient evidence for humans experiencing miracles. In constructing his understanding of uniform human experience, he dis missed miracle claims from other parts of the world; his other writings show that he was racist and pro-slavery, so his attitude is not sur-prising. He also dis missed miracle claims from the West when


they came from religious people, whom he accused of bias and sectarian polemic. If his construction of uniform human experi-ence was problematic in his own day, it should be completely rejected in our own. A Pew Fo-rum survey suggests that roughly 200 million Pentecos-tals and charismatics in ten countries claim to have wit-nessed or experienced divine healing; roughly one-third of “other Christians” in these ten countries claimed the same. The survey did not even include countries like Ch ina, where some argue that half or more new converts to Christianity over a period of two decades became Christians as a result of “faith healing” experiences. Roughly half of U.S. physicians surveyed claim to have witnessed treatment results they consid-ered miraculous. Whether or not one believes in miracles, and

regardless of how many of these claims might represent actual miracles, one cannot make claims about “uniform human experi-ence” excluding miracles without assuming what one hopes to prove.

This set the default often used today, even in dismissing medi-cal documentation for miracles: no evidence is adequate to make the case, and any naturalistic exp lanation, no matter how weak (even, “Someday we’ll have an exp lanation”), is preferred to a miraculous exp lanation. In other words, the anti-miracle approach is not falsifiable, and therefore it does not even enter into dia-logue with its detractors; it simply rules them out by fiat, assum-ing its intellectual superiority. To illustrate: one of my professors

David Hume (1711-1776), a historian and philosopher known

for his skepticism and empiricism. Via WikiMedia Commons.

Reports that the New Testament writers expected to generate faith are often treated very differently by scholars today—scholars who are captive to a very different worldview.


told me that he would not believe in God even if someone were raised from the dead in front of him. I asked him why he consid-ered himself open-minded. PR: What role did faith play in the healings and miracles you

wrote about in the book? Keener: Although the question you are asking was not part of the book’s focus, I did pay attention to the stories that were shared with me. Often miracles happened in the context of faith. I should

also point out, however, that the majority of those I interviewed believed that God is sovereign and that faith does not necessarily guarantee a miracle. Miracle reports included instant healings of blindness and raisings from the dead, but those who shared these reports acknowledged that these events do not always happen. For example, one physician who reported that he witnessed a man raised when he prayed also reported that his own son died and was not raised when he prayed for him. A friend told me that he only ever prayed for two people to be raised from the dead. One was a boy brought to him by neighbors in a place where he was evangelizing; the boy returned to life. The other was his close friend; the friend did not return to life. PR: Do you think that Christians in the West have greater diffi-

culty accepting the reality of miracles than our brothers and sisters in the Majority World?

Keener: Certainly many of us do; I know that I did. I think that the legacy of Hume is a major factor in academia. In many disci-plines we rule out divine exp lanations a priori; while that ap-proach introduces does helpfully force us to rigorously exp lore natural causes, it sometimes screens out the best explanation (and often screens out compatible ones). Much of Western academia moves from that method, wh ich from the start refuses to discuss divine exp lanations, to simply assuming that miracles have been

How to dismiss healing: no evidence is ever adequate and any naturalistic explanation, no matter how weak, is always preferred to “miracle.”


disproved, but it is back to Hume’s circular argument. Most of the world does not share the frequent Western assumption that what we would call miracles cannot happen. It also seems that God lav ishes miracles where they are most needed, among the needy physically and spiritually, part icularly in places with the least exposure to the gospel. PR: Your book contains accounts of healings and miracles that

have taken place through the ministries of Pentecostal and Charismat ic believers and through the ministries of non-charismat ic believers. Could you speak briefly to that?

Keener: I recount a number of concrete examples of miracle claims from around the world. Some of these could be explained in multip le ways, so in chapter twelve I turn to some particular categories of miracle claims, especially the healing of blindness and raisings from the dead. In some of the reports of healed

blindness, cataracts visibly d isappeared during prayer. In some cases, we also have medical documentation, even of eye scarring disappearing. I received a number of reports of raisings from the dead, even from my own circle. Th is is significant because some people dismiss miracle claims as merely statistical anomalies. I don’t know how one would quantify the statistical probability of someone apparently dead returning to life specifically during prayer for raising in a g iven person’s circle. But whatever that improbability would be, it must be compounded ten times over if there are ten such accounts from my own circle (there are in fact more than that). I believe that the odds of coincidence are so low at that point that a skeptic might have to postulate that I am the only person in the world with such a co incidentally high inci-dence of these reports, and this is not true. Rather, the statistical coincidence argument has an abysmally low probability. Some, though only a minority, of these raising reports in my circle in -volve Pentecostals. PR: What is the most significant thing that you have learned in

the process of writing this book?

Some people dismiss miracle claims as being mere statistical anomalies—but the math doesn’t work for that.


Keener: For me personally, the book challenged my own unbe-lief. By unbelief, I don’t mean that I was not a believer in Christ or in spiritual gifts; but not every claim is accurate, and I was placing a heavy burden of proof on any particular miracle claim. In princip le I did believe in miracles, but I was working with a fair degree o f methodological skepticis m toward indiv idual ac-

counts. I eventually had to surrender that approach to the burden of proof when the ev idence that I found became overwhelming. There were too many sincere people reporting too many amazing occurrences. That forced me to go back and think about incidents that I myself had experienced or witnessed, such as a woman that I knew could not walk being able to walk after she had been prayed for. She continued walking thereafter. That is not quite on the level of raisings from the dead or cataracts disappearing, but both kinds of incidents fit a coherent worldview in wh ich God sometimes does do miracles. Whether we describe this as “intervening” or believe that in most cases God works through nature (e.g., the Bible says that He blew back the sea with a strong east wind all night), God somet imes acts in ways that make a point to most open-minded people. The point got through to me and challenged some of the methodological skepticis m I had picked up over the years. PR: What do you hope will be the lasting legacy of this book?

Keener: I am under no illusion that my book will persuade the majority of those firmly entrenched in Humean convictions. In the Bib le, even the raising of Lazarus did not persuade everyone present, and I have not raised Lazarus in front of anyone. But I

believe that many people are open-minded enough to listen to evidence they had probably not heard before. I hope that the book will g ive more people the permission to tell their stories and more

Even the raising of Lazarus did not persuade everyone present.

God sometimes acts in ways that make a point to most open-minded people.


scholars the conviction to take a stand rather than thinking that this is just something we are not allowed to talk about in acade-mia (or in certain circles of academia). Of course we must be gracious and dialogue with scholars who have different interpre-tations of the evidence; God does not coerce people. But I hope that this book will open new lines of research, with more younger scholars pursuing dissertations and other research on healing claims around the world. We can use such research in various

disciplines such as theology, sociology, missiology, and we can certainly use input from medical professionals. The accounts are so abundant around the world that there is virtually no limit to what can be explored.

For Further Reading:

Craig S. Keener, “Are Miracles Real?” Huffington Post (Feb 25, 2012). www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-s-keener/miracles-in-the-bible-and-today_b_1274775.html

Craig S. Keener’s homepage: https://sites.google.com/site/

drckeener/home More about the book: https://sites.google.com/site/drckeener/

home/miracles

The accounts of miracles are so abundant around the world …

Special Thanks to John Lathrop for his assistance with this interview.

Editor’s Note: Read the full article by Eric Swensson, “The

Petersens and the Silesian Kinderbeten Revival” PneumaReview.com/eswensson-petersens

Lutheranism is a tradition born out of a dispute within the

Roman Catholic Church. The b looming of German Lutheran Pie-tism, 1675-1725, a period commencing with Phillip Jakob Spener’s Pia Desideria and ending with the death of his protégé August Hermann Francke, was a movement with less bloodshed than the Reformat ion, but nevertheless one of great upheaval. … Martin Brecht, one of the deans of German Pietist history, … said that he thought the future direction of Piet ist studies would be how the Pietists were forerunners of the Pentecostal movement.

I found this really interesting, delightful in fact, because it is something I always suspected; however, this is significant be-cause it was made by the main editor of Pietist studies. That Pie-tists were Pentecostal is not a recent discovery, it is actually basis of the charges against the Charismatic movement made nearly thirty years ago, one made in a book by a Lutheran historian, Dr Carter Lindberg, who said that the Spiritualists of the time of Luther, the Spener-Francke Piet ists and the participants in the Lutheran Charis matic Revival were all cut from the same cloth.1 Lindberg’s book is interesting, but it is problematic. In my opin-ion he is correct in making the connections; however, it is obvi-ous that it is an attempt to discredit both Pietis m and Pentecostal-ism. Clearly there is much more work to be done on the subject,

Pietists as Pentecostal Forerunners

Excerpts from “The Petersens and the Silesian

Kinderbeten Revival”

Eric Jonas Swensson

Eric Jonas Swensson’s paper, “The Petersens and the Silesian Kinderbeten Re-vival,” was originally presented at the 2011 Society for Pentecostal Studies con-vention held in Memphis, Tennessee.


but it is work which may have to wait as there is very little inter-est in the subject by scholars of Lutheranism and little interest in

anything involving Lutheranism outside of Lutherans. … The Petersens

German historian and Piet ist scholar Emmanuel Hirsch called Johann Wilhelm Petersen (1649-1727) and Johanna Eleonora Petersen (1644-1724) “two of the most fascinating representa-tives of Pietist fanatics.”5 Johann studied theology, philosophy, and poetry at leading German universities Gießen, Rostock, Wit-tenberg, Leipzig and Jena. He was pastor at Hannover in 1677, was quickly made Superintendent and Hofprediger (court preacher) in Eutin (1678), in 1686 he returned to Rostock for the Doctor of Theology degree, in 1688 he returned to being a Super-intendent until 1692 when he was in t rouble again fo r his teach-ings. Besides being a “ fanatic,” which of course, is all in the eyes of the beholder, Petersen was a respected man of letters who was a professor of poetry, which at that time meant teaching composi-tion of poetry in Latin. Petersen was respected by intellectuals such as Leibniz, who suggested he write a long poem on the his-tory of the world up to its consummation. The year 1692 proved to be the only time he was “fired” for h is beliefs, and he spent the next thirty five years free to study, pray and write under the pa-

Phillip Jakob Spener (1635 – 1705), known as the “Father of

Pietism.” Via Wikimedia Commons.

August Hermann Francke (1663 – 1727), pastor and professor of theology, leader of Lutheran

Pietism. Via Wikimedia Commons.


tronage of pious nobles. Peterson forms an important link be-tween Spener and Radical Pietists for historians.6 Radicals were those who left the Church so they had some freedom to engage in speculative theology, and while they must be viewed indiv idu-ally, all were motivated by millennialis m. Hans Schneider wrote, “In dealing with radical Pietis m, it is impossible to miss the fact that the great significance eschatology was afforded in Piet ism only in-creased in Pietis m’s radical repre-sentatives. For some figures and groups, it almost became the focal point of their theology and piety.”7

His wife, Johanna Eleonora Petersen von Merlau … was a thinker and theologian in her own right. She began to write devotional literature. We have no previous autobiography by a woman in Ger-many before hers, and she was in many respects a pioneer in human rights. She and her husband trav-eled across Germany, were re-ceived into sympathetic circ les of nobles, theologians, clerics, and other Ph iladelphians, and they both taught and preached. She made a careful distinction here:

when attacked by male clergy, she wrote in her defense that she “was a prophet, not a teacher” that is, she had a gift from God.9

Both Petersens wrote autobiographies in wh ich they document their bib lical hermeneutics as well as interpreting dreams and visions.10 They were both Biblicists, which p layed no small part in their process, but they consistently exp lain how they come to their understanding through their reading of Scripture and how this is verified through experiential assurance. For example, they both wrote about receiving simultaneous, but independent mes-sages and interpretation. Two instances of this in their writ ings, and both are times when they make rather large divergences in their beliefs. The first was in 1685 while they are in separate

Johann Wilhelm Petersen (1649 – 1727).

Via Wikimedia Commons.

Being a “fanatic,” of course, is all in the eyes of the beholder.


rooms of the house and both were studying Revelation. Schneider calls this their “discovery of chilias m.” The second simultane-ously, independent discovery was in 1694 when they came to believe that eternal damnation only meant “a very long time”. Their views on apocatastasis were influenced by Jane Leade, but it is one that freethinkers of the past have put forward since Ori-gen. …

Petersen, like many Pietists and Puritans of the time was inter-ested in signs of revival in other countries. He was in contact with the Huguenot refugees after the Edict of Nantes in 1685. It was at this time that he came in contact with Jane Leade and the Phila-delphians in England, etc. These, along with political events like the “Great War against the Turks” (1683-1699) and the approach of the year 1700, meant that Petersen was part of a large move-ment that was “scouring the heavens for signs.” Researchers such as Schneider see the concept of Philadelphianism as the most significant for Petersen and the radical Pietists.

The term “Philadelphia” appears again and again in Der Macht der Kinder. It symbolizes their theological and apocalypti-cal speculations concerning the unfolding of history … The Silesian Kinderbeten

The “Praying Children” (Kinderbeten) touched off a larger revival which endured in Silesia for decades.15 The children re-sumed meeting for prayer in various areas at times of renewed trouble until the Prussian invasion of 1740. The Silesian revival spread and had direct influence on other Central European coun-tries,16 especially Moravia and Bohemia. The children’s revival in one of Zinzendorf’s settlements for Morav ian refugees two dec-ades later was one of their two format ive events,17 and those chil-dren had the story of the Silesian Kinderbeten told to them by adults who had experienced it (the Zinzendorf estates bordered Silesia and he had traveled through Silesia to learn more about the Awakening there). There are records of children’s revivals occurring in Europe through the 19th century, and there are, of course, contemporary reports around the world, but the Silesian Kinderbeten seems to have no direct predecessors and a case can be made that it is a more pure form of rev ival than any examined so far, i.e., it really hadn’t been organized or “gotten up” by any revivalists.

This unusual awaken ing of the Kinderbeten began in the mountains in 1707, creating a sensation as it spread, giving birth


to numerous eyewitness accounts bearing remarkable similarity. A dozen of these appear in a report made in the spring of 1708, Gründliche Nachrichten, which are translated here with the mate-rial common to each conflated for the following:

It had begun in the Silesian mountains and thereafter gone forth from one place to another. By it the children show such an un-common reverence and zeal that neither their parents nor anyone else are able to hold them away. Sometime after Christmas, around December 28, Holy Innocents Day, it began spreading through Silesia reaching f ive provinces in f ive days. The children, male and female, 4 to14 years in age, with an unusual devotion for their age, assemble themselves in a certain place to pray to-gether with childlike devotion daily. They come together in the morning about 7, around Noon and around 4 [it was winter]. These poor, hard-pressed children, out of their own desire and without their being given some prescribed method, began to assemble to pray. Indeed, without any direc-tion from any adult, not only were they not given help, but were even having to act against the com-mands of the religious and civil aut horit ies, and against their parents, who made threats and laid hin-drances in their way. The children init iat ed t his within their villages, towns, and cities; however, when their gatherings were not tolerated, they chose to keep to themselves [outside the city] in open fields and under the open sky. They hold orderly prayer meet-ings, singing, reading the Bible; they fall on their knees, and at some places it is reported they fall on their faces praying and repenting. It had begun sparse but in many places it grew to 3,000-4000 people. The places have crowds of people coming to regard the unusual devotion of the tender children. The children kneel on the ground almost the whole time of the prayer meeting. They have chosen from their midst a reader for this purpose who a stands in the middle, reads aloud and leads not only the songs but also the prayers which are clearly audible from a distance.” [One fairly typical but more detailed description stated] “Ordinarily

Outline of historic Silesia region which is today mostly within the borders of Poland.

Images via Wikimedia Commons.


they sing seven songs, and a prayer comes between each one; they have a psalm of repentance, and they read a chapter from the Bible; in the end the children lift hands together upwards and sing [two more hymns]. The bystanders cannot regard it without being moved to tears hearing the prayers. Truly, one can hear the sing-ing nearly a quarter mile away. They have among their prayers also one which is to ask that the dear God give their churches back to them. No one knows how the children would have gotten such a longing without the parents’ knowledge.18 The awakening exacerbated the controversy between Pietis m

and Lutheran Orthodoxy. Both churchly Lutheran Pietists and Radical Pietists saw the revival as a work of God and placed it within the broader framework of salvation history over what they

perceived was a lukewarm reception by Lutheran Orthodoxy. Pietist’ millennialism saw the history of salvation in terms of continuous divine intervention, which led them to see the prayer revival as a sign of God’s activ ity in antic ipation of the end o f all things. Lutheran Orthodoxy simply declared Pietist conventicles a heresy, something the Lutheran Confessions does not do, ignor-ing what Luther h imself wrote on the subject in his German Mass and Order Of Service, 1526, “But those who want to be Chris-tians in earnest and who profess the gospel with hand and mouth

should sign their names and meet alone in a house somewhere to pray, to read, to baptize, to receive the sacrament, and to do other Christian works.”19 …

It is clear from the 1712 decree that Confessional Lutheranis m was being protected whereas Pietism was labeled “foreign” and to be exterminated. The decree makes the charge that Pietists only “externally confess our Augsburg Confession,” which is serious because Pietists would have no legal protection without being recognized as Lutheran. The decree says the Pietists were “everywhere coming and going,” and that the authorities were serving notice that they would no longer allow th is “to be propa-

The Silesian revival spread and had direct influence on other Central European countries.

… but the awakening also exacerbated the controversy between Pietism and Lutheran Orthodoxy.


gated.”22 The major allegations against the Pietists in this decree were that they taught direct inspiration (unmittelbare Eingebung), that one could become so perfect one did not need to go to Com-munion (Stillestand), that they had secret gatherings (heimliche Winkelversammlungen), and that there was going to be a new kingdom of Christ on earth (Chiliasmus). …

Prayer meetings were seen by Lutheran Orthodoxy and Piet ist alike as having potential for change; Orthodoxy saw risk, Pietists saw the coming of Christ. It is hard for us today to imagine how controversial prayer meetings were, but they were the cause for the phrase “this pietistic evil” coined by Löscher, a phrase still used to disparage pietism.

The Silesian controversy illustrates the nature of religious conflict. It continues to this day in Lutheranism, i.e., Piet ists have a bad name and all sorts of things are blamed on them, but it is emblematic of what happens in innumerable denominations. Something new happens, it begins to catch on, something about it

is threatening to the status quo, charges are made, proponents of the new respond, it becomes personal, each round gets a little sharper, responses deal with characterizations and a generation later proponents of one side or another retail the characterizations made in the heat of a rhetorical battle as factual. The revivalists are hardly ever innocent, and often they work very hard to earn their enmity. No Christian appreciates being called, co ld, dead, indifferent, or a Christian in name only, yet this is what happened over and over and it still happens today. It seems to be fuel to the fire. Beyond that, we would not want to give the impression that there is something unusual or untoward about defending Ortho-doxy. No, it is most necessary. It is the way in which it is done, and of course, even how history understands the defense that is at issue.

Pentecostalism, both in its birth just over 100 years ago as well as in its current forms, shares things with both the Petersens and the revival that caught their attention. Obviously, they both placed a great emphasis on prayer. Both broke with the tradition in which they began though some or their innovations may sim-ply have been a return to earlier trad itions. The Petersens were

Pentecostalism shares things with both the Petersens and the revival that caught their attention.


forerunners of Pentecostalism in their emphasis on a desire for direct, unmediated contact with God. Piet ists and Pentecostals share a negative view of the established Church and paid a price for their alienation, and at the same t ime benefited from associat-ing with those who were drawn by the desire for new wine. It should be clear by now that this is a sword that cuts both ways. It would be better if we could have both freedom of religious con-science and a nuanced understanding towards those who hold to different beliefs, and at the same t ime seek faithfu l d iscernment about the core of religious orthodoxy and its necessity, if we are to teach Christian doctrine free from error.

Read the full article: PneumaReview.com/eswensson-petersens Notes

1 Carter Lindberg, The Third Reformation? Charismatic Movements and the Lutheran Tradition. The Third Reformation? Charismatic Move-ments and the Lutheran Tradition (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1983).

5 Hans Schneider, German Radical Pietism (Landham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2007), 21.

6 Ibid, 22. 7 Ibid, 6. 9 The following is from 1691: “I respect what the Holy Ghost has said

through Paul and with reference to a woman’s dutiful submission I do not claim to teach in God’s community. But this I know very well: that there is no difference between man and woman (Gal. 3:28), God’s grace cannot be dampened nor be suppressed … Therefore the Holy Ghost has given witness (through Joel 2:28 and Acts 2:17-18) that not only the sons but also the daughters of Israel may prophesy and that the Lord will pour out his Spirit not only over the male but also over his female servants. And Paul himself who has forbidden women to teach in the community attributes the gift of prophecy to both men and women in that very Epistle (1 Cor. 2:4-5). Since the Lord in his grace has given me the gift of such illumination from his spirit, I do know my humble place in that community, but I do also know that I have received the Lord’s gift not in order to hide it but in order to make the most of it, to apply it for his honor and to the benefit of my neighbor. And I know that no one who with God’s blessing holds a just opinion will accuse me of teaching. This I leave to the judgment of God’s


community for examination.”(27). According to her own writings, Johanna was a spiritually awakened person who had visions and dreams. In her autobiography she tells of a dream with 24 paintings. The last one was of a man, woman and child, which she interpreted as the Trinity, using Hebrew to show that the Spirit as feminine: “I came before a door leading into a chamber with a great secret. But when I stood in front of this door, I had forgotten what to do so that the door would open, and I could see the secret in the room (in which there were a father, a mother and a son). Since I could not remember at all what I had seen in the picture, I became very sad and thought all trou-bles had been in vain. When I prayed with sighs to God, I remembered that I had seen a nightingale in the picture and that I learned from the picture to raise my voice like a nightingale. When I raised my voice louder and louder, the door opened and I felt very well … I have un-derstood to a certain extent what the pictures meant and interpreted them: in the very same year the secret of the kingdom was revealed to my dear husband and to me, about which we had to suffer much and to descend deep into humility. With our confidence we had to ascend high to the Lord, who has stood by us in all our distress” (98). Johanna Eleonora Petersen eventually wrote fifteen to twenty volumes (15 according to her biographer and 20 according to her husband).

10 J.W. Petersen’s autobiography reported in 1719 that he had written 67 printed works and another 101 manuscripts.

15 See W. Reginald Ward, Protestant Evangelical Awakening (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 182.

16 For example, compare this report from a remote mountain community in the parish of Bern to reports of the Silesian revival thirty years ear-lier: “Children there banded together to live a devout and loving life and seek Jesus. To this end they meet every morning and evening for prayer and singing. Some have an astonishing gift of prayer which cannot be observed without tears. They keep excellent order...the wildest children are becoming quiet refined lambs. No one has tried to persuade them into doing it, and they have such an impulse that they can scarcely wait for evening.” Sammlung auserlesener Materien zum Bau des Reiches Gottes 5 (1736) 1044-5, as quoted in Ward, Protestant Evangelical Awakening, 182.

17 Pia Schmid, “Die Kindererweckung in Herrnhut im Jahre 1727 ist eines der Ereignisse in der Geschichte der Brüdergemeinde, das jedes Jahr mit einem eigenen Fest begangen wurde und wird: das Chorfest der Kinder, besonders der Mädchen am 17. August.” and “Die Kindererweckung in Herrnhut am 17. August 1727,” in Neue Aspekte der Zinzendorf-Forschung. Arbeiten zur Geschichte des Pietismus, Bd. 47, ed. Martin Brecht and Paul Peucker (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2006), 115-133.

18 Anonymous. „Gründliche Nachrichten Von derer Evangelischen Schlesier Kinder Andacht/ Oder Denen/von denen Kindern in Schlesien/unter freyem Himmel/auf offenem Felde gehaltenen Bet=Stunden.“ (AFSt 121 A17). 2-4.


19 Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, (2000, c1959) vol. 53, 52.

22 Gerhard Meyer, Gnadenfrei, (Hamburg: Ludwig Appel Verlag, 1943), 21–3.

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My wife and I have recently been showering together, and I

thought I would share what that has meant. I realize that at first glance such activity may not seem proper to mention in a theo-logical journal, but it is.

My story starts when I turned awkwardly to look at the new score board in the nearby University Arena, someplace where we have regu-larly attended various athletic events for the past 17 years. Our current season started in August, and we were there. The an-nouncer was introducing the glorious new score board, and the

thousands in attendance all looked at it as the lights came on. I was sitting directly under and some-

what to the side of the new score board, and when I stretched my neck to see it I knew right away I had hurt myself.

That was eight months ago, and I have struggled with my neck and the discomfort it has since presented everyday. I have been to all kinds of doctors and trainers, prayed for relief as have others on my behalf, and while I am somewhat better, I have not had complete deliverance from my woes. I simply hurt all the time, just a dull ache that transverses my shoulders and my neck. The pain never goes totally away.

The discomfort climaxed in January when my wife took me to the ER around 1:00 AM one night. They took some X-rays, gave me an injection of morphine, a prescription for valium, and sent us home where I slept for two weeks. As that season came to an end, I found that I had lost all my leg strength, and that I could not stand. My balance was gone, and I was in danger of falling— I did fall five t imes.

I weigh more than I should, and more than my wife can lift, so she needed help to get me upright or seated. My wife somehow came up with two men to lift me each t ime I fell. She followed that up with a wheel chair, then a walker as I started to improve, a chair for the shower and a cane. Now I walk almost like I always did.

My plight meant I needed help for the simplest things, and I

Working forWorking for Others WhileOthers While

in thein the

By H. Murray Hohns

ShadowsShadows


watched with gratitude and admirat ion as my wife assumed the responsibility to provide all I needed. That included getting into the shower with me and washing me. Th is went on for three or four weeks.

We have been married a long time, and I wondered what I would have done without my bride who took care of me with a tender grace—an expression of care that meant I was important. Jesus told us about the difference between a shepherd and a hire-ling. I get to talk to people about their lives and marriages, and I have experienced the value of a spouse who cares. We have one daughter who lives on the island near us, and she told me that she thought she was losing her dad, that I was on my deathbed. My wife told me she too believed that I was dying.

God was gracious, and has restored me almost back to where I was before they lit up that scoreboard. While I now expect fu ll restoration, I experienced some significant learn ing in this inci-dent.

I learned how valuable, wonderful and good it is to have someone who cares for you when you are down, when there is a crisis and you need help. I urge you not to wait until crisis comes, but to begin to express that caring for your spouse starting right now and by so doing, to build a relationship that will reward both of you all day everyday.

I am 81 years old, and my wife is 80. We have enjoyed our years together; we learned early to respect and allow the differ-ences that are part of each of us to be there without causing seri-ous division. We have learned that it is good for us to do different things together, to have some space and time for ourselves, and to have the courage to talk to each other when it would be easier to be silent.

Scripture tells us that God works for us in the darkness. We too can work for our spouses in the darkness. How? By doing litt le things and big things, by putting them and their desires ahead of yours. They do not have to know that we are doing this, but if you do put your spouse first, I know that you will receive the blessings of God. I know this for I have been a recipient o f His b lessings (and my wife’s, too) for the past months and so many years before and beyond.

Karl W. Giberson and Francis S. Collins, The Language of Science and Faith (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2011), 250 pages, ISBN 9780830838295.

The “conflict” between science and faith within North American evangelicalis m contin-ues to rage, unfortunately. This book will no doubt further fan the flames, even if it is in-tended to shed some light on these matters, largely because it sets out a position defending “theistic evolu-tion” as compatible with evangelical commitments, and detrac-tors of this view are resolutely resistant and aggressively opposed to it. My hunch is that readers of The Pneuma Review who have already made up their minds that evolution is anti-Christian will not find much of value here, and they might even be upset that the editors of this periodical have agreed to review this book. My hope, though, is that those who are genuinely looking to under-stand the issues will give this very accessible book a fair read. I do not necessarily agree with all of what is in here, but I do think that books like this do raise the literacy of the broader public, and we certainly need more, rather than less, literacy. Pentecostal pastors and church leaders who are concerned about their stu-dents and the next generation of pentecostal faith in our thor-oughly scientific world need to be equipped to help their church members navigate these waters.

Francis Co llins is the world-renowned geneticist who spear-headed the human genome project and Karl Giberson teaches physics at Eastern Nazarene University in Quincy, Massachu-setts. Both have written other books on science and faith that have been well received by the wider public. Most important for our purposes is that few, I think, can doubt their evangelical com-mitments. Yet they are probably among a minority of evangeli-cals who publicly advocate embracing the consensus of main-stream science, including the neo-Darwinian synthesis, as being consistent with a robust Christian faith. Co llins founded The

Book and Periodical

Reviews


BioLogos Forum (http://biologos.org) in large part to provide a vision for how Christians can not only be at peace with but also support the contemporary scientific enterprise.

This book under review derives from the BioLogos website FAQs (“Frequently-Asked-Questions”) that has been operating for the last few years. Readers pose questions and BioLogos fel-lows (usually scientists, biblical scholars, or theologians) provide some responses or suggestions to think about the issues. Thus the nine chapter titles, while suggestive of the content of the volume, still do not fully signal all of the topics discussed in the book. Questions about evolution and faith, the age of the earth, the rela-tionship between the Bible and scientific claims, the existence of God, the fine-tuning of the universe, the origins of life, the emer-gence of human beings—these and many other topics are covered in the volume. All in all, readers interested in what the BioLogos

Forum is about and how it recommends the reconciliation of mainstream science and Christian faith will p robably not find a more succinct and accessible introduction than this book.

Of course, since much of the book emerged from the FAQs on the BioLogos website, the treatments are short, perhaps in some cases, a bit too short for some readers who may be ready for more. Further, I can imagine that some readers will wonder what all the fuss is about within the evangelical world. In many cases, the volume compares and contrast the BioLogos model with al-ternative positions held by evangelicals, including young earth creationism, old earth creationism, and intelligent design. Those looking for a sort of “four v iews” point-and-counterpoint will need to keep waiting.

As a pentecostal theologian, I am grateful for this book. Pen-tecostals inhabit modern science and its technologies but their long history of anti-intellectualis m renders them very suspicious about mainstream science. This book does not answer all of the questions, but it shows us how evangelical Christians can be committed to the Bible and yet engage fully in the contemporary

Pentecostal pastors and church leaders who are concerned about their students and the next generation of pentecostal faith need to be equipped to help their church members navigate these waters.


scientific enterprise. We need more models like this that show us how to interact with the issues so that we will not continue to hypocritically take advantage of the advances of science while rejecting its foundational theories. Collins and Giberson are hum-ble and gentle guides in this regard. Reviewed by Amos Yong

Preview The Language of Science and Faith: books.google.com/books?id=QxLKbwUY7zYC William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, third edi tion (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008), 416 pages, ISBN 9781433501159.

A third edition of what has become some-thing a classic work in the field of Christian apologetics since its original (1984) and second (1994) versions is well worth the reading (or re-reading). The author insists it has only expan-sions of content and minor updates rather than any retractions of arguments that didn’t stand up to the test of time. In a word, it still packs quite an intellectual punch. And no wonder. It is the signature book of a very pro lific scholar and writer. William Lane Craig is research professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology (La Mirada, Californ ia) and founder of Reasonable Faith (www.reasonablefaith.org), a web-based apologetics minis-try. He has been publically debating with detractors, including the infamous former (subsequently) atheist, Anthony Flew, and de-fending a Christian worldview against all comers for more than twenty years. He’s especially noted for his unique take on the cosmological argument for God’s existence and also for his phi-losophy of time and critic isms of the Jesus Seminar movement and postmodernism. He’s authored more than twenty books, about half of which are scholarly in nature with the other half aimed at a more popular audience.

Craig freely admits that Reasonable Faith represents his per-sonal approach to Christian apologetics. Accordingly, he recom-mends other, supplemental, texts on the history and development of apologetics for readers desiring a well-rounded understanding.


Craig understands apologetics (Greek, apologia) to be “that branch of Christian theology which seeks to provide a rational justification for the truth claims of the Christian faith.” Accord-ingly, apologetics is primarily a theoretical discipline. However, this is not a concession that apologetics is of no practical benefit. Christian apologetics has a major role in shaping culture, strengthening believers, and evangelizing unbelievers. While he distinguishes between offensive or positive and defensive or negative types of apologetics, and affirms the validity of both, he explains that Reasonable Faith is more in the offensive or posi-tive mode. That is, it seeks to present a positive case for Christian truth claims rather than to nullify objections to them.

A question which guides Craig and his readers in Reasonable Faith is “How do I know Christianity is true?” Craig surveys major representative thinkers who have struggled with this

thought, including Augustine, Aquinas, and, more recently, John Locke, Karl Barth, and contemporaries such as Wolfhart Pannen-berg and Alvin Plantinga. Craig admits that the question becomes particularly acute when Christians are faced with those who are either atheists or adherents of another world religion. However, he distinguishes between “knowing” that Christianity is true and “showing” that Christianity is true. On one hand, in knowing that Christianity is true the Christian can give priority to the self-authenticating role of the Holy Spirit while rational arguments and evidence become secondary. This is of course an “in-house” approach that doesn’t apply to non-Christians. Nevertheless, the Holy Spirit does work in unbelievers to prepare them for the truth of the gospel. In any case, for Craig the Spirit-filled Christian has a unique knowledge of Christian truth. He has some interesting discussion of why the religious experience of the Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist, which he doesn’t necessarily assume is sim-ply spurious, that is, it may be authentic at some level, neverthe-less doesn’t qualify as the witness of the Spirit to the truth of their scriptures. For him, someone who refuses to believe in Christ is deliberately reject ing the Holy Sp irit.

On another hand, showing Christianity is true gives more pri-ority to rational argumentation and evidence while expect ing the

It is refreshing in a book on apologetics that there is such an energetic emphasis on the effective agency of the Holy Spirit.


Holy Sp irit to work in hidden ways as well. Craig is confident that there are good arguments that can demonstrate the intellec-tual credibility of Christian truth claims to an honest and open-hearted hearer. Yet, it is refreshing in a book on apologetics, carefully defined as “providing rational justification” for the Christian faith, that there is such an energetic emphasis on the effective agency of the Holy Spirit in that process. This is possi-ble in part because at its root unbelief is not only an intellectual but also a spiritual problem. Accordingly, the most effective

apologetic is one which trusts in the agency of God’s Spirit even while it builds on rational arguments.

Nonetheless, Reasonable Faith does indeed readily utilize weighty rational argumentation. Arranging the discussion in a classical format , Craig presents positive evidence regarding the Christian faith (De Fide), humanity (De Homine), God’s exis-tence (De Deo), creation or the natural order (De Creatione), and Jesus Christ (De Christo). Then, in a quite pastoral tone, Craig concludes by suggesting that “The Ultimate Apologetic” involves faithfully living out one’s relationship with God and with others in holy love. He is sure that “who you are rather than what you say” has more impact on unbelievers. The u ltimate apologetic is the Christian life well-lived.

Most of the usual topics are covered in Reasonable Faith. For example, in its discussion of creation it presents a logical view affirming the possibility and reality of miracles. Miracles are of-ten one of the major object ions of the skeptic. Craig argues con-vincingly that far from being baseless superstition to believe in miracles, it is actually gross arrogance, intellectually speaking, to deny them categorically. It’s surprising that Reasonable Faith doesn’t straightforwardly take on the topic of religious pluralis m or the reality of world relig ions. However, it does here and there address these somewhat as they come up as a matter o f course during the ongoing conversation. Accordingly, Craig sometimes briefly discusses the views of, for example, Jews on Jesus Christ and the “Jewish reclamat ion of Jesus”, especially of h is ethics, and their objections to his resurrection. In fact, his kalām cosmo-logical argument is drawn in large part from Islamic theologians, especially al-Ghāzalī, as he responds to Aristotelian challenges.

The ultimate apologetic is the Christian life well-lived.


Notably, Craig describes the cosmological argument positively in terms of its roots in ancient Greek thinkers, such as Plato and Aristotle, and its development by Islamic, Jewish, and Christian thinkers through the ages. However, he insists that the centrality and essentiality of the person of Jesus Christ is quite unique to Christianity and completely apart from the perspectives on Moses in Judaism, Buddha in Buddhism, or Mohammed in Islam. And Craig clearly rejoices when a former Muslim who had become something of an atheist converts to Christ after reading Christian apologetics on Jesus’ resurrection. One of the recurring ideas of Reasonable Faith is that apologetics is an aid to evangelism.

In something of a departure from C. S. Lewis’s well-known argument that the repeated occurrence of “a dying and rising god” in ancient pagan myths may have pointed ahead to the truth of the dying and rising again of the Son of God in an actual his-torical occurrence, Craig denies that ancient religions actually had such a mythical tradit ion and suggests the examples com-monly used of their existence aren’t all that credible. Craig seems to be intent on demonstrating the utter uniqueness of Christ’s resurrection so as to underscore its greater likelihood of not being fabricated while Lewis and others have seen more of a promise-fulfillment/precedent-occurrence pattern as positive evidence of

the rationality and validity of Jesus’ bodily resurrection. In any case, one of the better parts of the book is where Reasonable Faith turns the tables on scoffers and skeptics in exposing the weaknesses of their arguments against Jesus’ own self-understanding of his identity and their obviously biased objec-tions to the reality of h is resurrection.

Craig is concerned that secularists, in the aftermath of 9/11 terrorist attacks by Muslim jihadists, have become aggressive in denouncing religious belief in general. He never misses a chance to point out the dangers of secularism or to poke fun at the ra-tional inconsistencies of secular skeptics like Richard Dawkins and others on, for example, topics like Intelligent Design. He charges that the well-known atheistic scientist often ridicules but never refutes Christian arguments for theism. Again, Craig al-most gleefully exposes the inconsistencies of skepticism’s great-

Secularists have a problem: it is far easier to ridicule than ever actually try to refute Christian arguments for theism.


est thinkers, such as Nietzsche and Sartre, who wished to reject moral absolutes and their witness to God even while they spoke and acted as moralists in rejecting, for example, the anti-Semit ism which at its root denies human dignity and value. Again and again Reasonable Faith argues that Christianity is consistent with a rational worldview, and that atheism and agnosticism are often embraced under quite irrat ional terms.

As stated above, Craig freely confesses that he is writing for Christian theism. Nevertheless, the majority of the book’s argu-ments could be construed simply as a case for theism in general. In other words, much of it would be just as applicable for Juda-ism or Islam as for Christianity. The most notable exception is the section on Jesus’ self-understanding and resurrection. The chapter on “How do I know Christianity is true?” also stands out as distinctively Christian. This overlap is quite understandable

and not at all problematic since these are all theistic, and even monotheistic, faiths which would necessarily share a similar ra-tionale. It is quite natural that theism in its various forms would join forces against atheism in all its forms. However, the book would perhaps have had a bit more of an honest ring to it if the shared intellectual turf had been humbly and openly confessed.

Reasonable Faith covers heavy material but is written in com-parably clear language. When the material gets too technical, personal examples help too, as do line drawn figures. Footnotes are kept to a minimum, but Cited or Recommended Readings at each chapter’s end and an Index are helpful aids for researchers. Reasonable Faith should be an eminently useful text for semi-narians and perhaps university philosophy students and teachers. Reviewed by Tony Richie

Preview Reasonable Faith: books.google.com/books?id=DZ8XzHSJpd4C

Reasonable Faith argues that Christianity is consistent with a rational worldview, and that atheism and agnosticism are often embraced under quite irrational terms.


Tim J. R. Trumper, Preaching and Politics: Engagement without Compromise (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2009), 97 pages, ISBN 9781606080085.

How do you avoid extremes in the pulpit on

controversial affairs of state? As a Reformed Calv inist pastor, Trumper

writes for conservative and Reformed evangeli-cals. He advocates for a middle position be-tween not preaching on politics at all and making preaching alto-gether political. He calls his position ‘the biblical-political ap-proach.’ His research incorporates both liberal and conservative writers on the subjects of politics and the Bible. In fo llowing his father’s advice, he wishes to follow Christ more than any party or personality. Since he is both a citizen of Great Britain and a resi-dent of the United States, he covers the political spectrum in both countries.

According to Trumper, expository preaching best allows preachers to address the strengths and weaknesses of both politi-cal parties in the light of Scripture. In the three chapters of his short book, he maintains the biblical-political approach is a mid-dle way, a spiritual way, and a practical way. He rightly main-tains some preachers over-engage politics in the pulpit, while others never engage political issues at all. His contention that the Fox television channel does not speak adequately for the church might rile some conservative readers. Its owners, in h is view, also tend to worry more about ratings than objectivity. He sounds the alarm against the dangers of generalizations of either party. He argues correctly, in the opinion of this reviewer, that avoidance of political preaching altogether is irresponsible and unbiblical. The Old Testament prophets certainly addressed political issues.

Why does expository preaching, in particular, serve as the most effective approach in the pulpit? For the following reasons: it comprises the most comprehensive approach, best covers the biblical world view, keeps the preacher away from hobby horses, and broadens the possibilities of application (pp. 22-4). The bibli-cal–political preacher will encourage examination of both the issues and methods of debate (p. 51).

Trumper wisely reminds his readers that equally sound and committed Christian thinkers take different sides on the same issues. He discusses how various preachers deal with congregants


who disagree with their approach. Often, unfortunately, they are subtly encouraged to leave, despite the fact that Scripture never endorses any political party. In a thorough fashion, the writer evaluates the pros and cons of the three current approaches taken and concludes that the middle way of expository preaching has the best chance to make converts and save the culture.

The research done for this volume was thorough. The foot-notes and bibliography refer the reader to a wealth of resources from the left and the right, politically and theologically. In this way, the author serves as an excellent example of the stance he advocates. The biblical-polit ical approach demands more exact-ing scholarship out of the preacher in terms of both the study of Scripture and society than either of the other two approaches (pp. 56-7). Of course, preachers who follow the likes of James Ken-nedy, the former pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, will disagree with this author’s middle of the road stance, as will sup-porters of the likes of Jerry Falwell, former founder of the Moral Majority. Both of these evangelical p reachers tended to address political issues in the pulpit more often than most of their peers and tended to side with only the Republican Party.

The middle way is destined to please and displease all in-volved. Naturally, advocates from the partisan and apolitical sides will find fault with much said in this book. The person in the middle is always attacked from both sides. This reviewer does agree with the author; however, he maintains this approach is easier said than done. More examples, maybe even a few from his own actual sermons, might have clarified some of the concepts discussed and served as useful models for readers to follow.

The final major chapter suggests useful ways of carrying out the biblical-political approach. The book concludes with a helpfu l and clear summary of the points made throughout its pages. The very prospect of preaching depends to a certain extent upon the morals of a culture and the freedom it permits for interaction within its confines. Preachers, as well as believers in general, are taught to pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,’ and to work to see it done.

Overall, the author is fair in his assessments, clear in his ex-amples, orderly in his organization, and balanced in his approach. His analysis should encourage the apolitical to speak up occa-sionally and the party-political to tone it down a note.

This reviewer especially appreciates the author’s attitude, il-lustrated by the following quote: “Enlisting under Christ’s ban-


ner, the biblical-polit ical preacher understands that it matters not only what battles we choose, but how we fight, and what forces we engage” (p. 50). Discussion questions are provided at the end of each chapter and a useful bibliography on the subject from a wide variety of sources is included in the back. The author has done preachers of the gospel everywhere a genuine service. His recommended approach is worthy of emulat ion because it is both spiritual and impartial, b iblically and politically. Reviewed by Steve D. Eutsler Toby Jones, The Way of Jesus: Re-forming Spiritual Communities in a Post-Church Age (Eugene: Resource Publications, 2010), 133 pages, ISBN 9781608991525.

Toby Jones is a former Moderator of the Presbytery of Mackinac, who parted ways with the Presbyterian denomination in order to found Living Vision, a community attempting to offer an “authentic path to those seeking an appren-ticeship in the Way of Jesus.” Jones encourages the creation of communit ies based on the seven practices he identifies as vital for such a community: open theology, authentic discipleship, embracing risk, radical inclusiveness, ‘Serv ice. Period!’, no paid leader, and intentional homelessness in terms of a church build-ing. These seven practices form the backbone to the book’s main chapters and each is illustrated by a discussion of a community visited by Jones which demonstrates the principles. The core chapters end with a number of helpful d iscussion questions, re-minding the reader of the issues raised and meaning the book could be used as a resource for group study.

Jones challenges much traditional church thought and prac-tice, and readers may well find themselves both heartily agreeing at one moment, then sharply disagreeing at the next. In particular Jones does not have the most optimistic outlook for the so-called ‘institutional church’ as hinted in the title with its mention of the ensuing ‘Post-Church Age.’ Jones, however, sees church decline as an opportunity for authentic community, as the institutional church has often actually hindered discipleship. The opening chapter seeks to highlight that the Greek verb pisteo should be


properly translated and interpreted as an action verb that denotes a dynamic sense of following, including nuances such as clinging to, pouring oneself into, and putting absolute trust in. He seeks to contrast a risk-taking ‘pisteuw faith’ with more tradit ional, static translations of the Greek, which focus solely on the belief aspect. This focus on action naturally flows into the second chapter on discipleship, where Jones helpfully discusses some inspiring sto-ries, notably that of the well known speaker Shane Claiborne, who in an attempt at radical discip leship ended up founding The Simple Way community through ministry among and support of a homeless community.

The chapters on embracing risk and radical inclusiveness are full of insight on how to avoid settling into complacency, al-though not everyone will be content with some of Jones’ conclu-sions on various controversial issues, including the place of ho-mosexuality within the church. Similarly the dichotomy he pre-sents between an inward looking church that emphasises holiness, and an outward focussed yet accepting church, perhaps does not adequately allow for the possibility of both an emphasis on holi-ness and outreach: Jesus after all called people to repent and fol-low h im. His chapter entitled ‘service.Period,’ where he high-lights the transformative power o f merely serving the poor and vulnerable, rather than tying this to verbal evangelism, is moving and resonates with reality, however Jones perhaps ought to ac-knowledge that the gospels portray Jesus as both proclaiming the kingdom and enacting it. The final two chapters highlight the financial and spiritual gains both of avoiding the focus on church buildings, and of ministers fostering tent-making skills. These reflections constitute the most challenging and thought provoking of Jones’ insights given trends in church decline and troubled economic times. He points out that with no church building to maintain or pastor to pay, the church will have vastly greater re-sources to channel into practical min istry.

Finally, from a Pentecostal perspective, I would suggest that this book would benefit from greater attention to the transforma-tive power of the Spirit in Christian community, and not simply an emphasis on action. Both are needed for a balanced Christian discipleship, wh ich is empty without the power and leading of the Spirit, but there is minimal mention of this in the book. Reviewed by David Purves


Amos Yong, The Spirit of Creation: Modern Science and Divine Action in the Pentecostal-Charismatic Imagination, Pentecostal Mani-festos 4 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 256 pages, ISBN 9780802866127.

As one of the most prolific Pentecostal theo-logians, Amos Yong is no stranger to the science and relig ion dialogue, although this volume is his first independent monograph dedicated to Pentecostal contributions to the debate. Yong’s previous writings on the topic are distributed across a variety of academic essays and articles and not always readily accessible. The Spirit of Crea-tion assembles a collection of these texts into a deftly argued Pen-tecostal manifesto that calls Pentecostals out of the dark ages of the pre-modern world. For Yong, Pentecostals have a significant place in the scientific discussions due to their emphasis on the dynamic presence and activity of the Holy Spirit.

Yong’s primary rationale for insisting on the Pentecostal en-gagement of the sciences (and vice versa) emerges from a reading of the forces of modernizat ion that have enabled the prospering of both the sciences and Pentecostalism. For Yong, it is a mistake to equate Pentecostalism with a pre-modern movement or anti-modern tendencies. Instead, Pentecostals are also impacted by the advance of the scientific worldview and both worlds do not have to be seen in contrast to one another: science and Pentecostalism are different linguistic and cultural outlooks on the natural world that both declare the fullness of God’s truth. For Yong, a with-drawal of Pentecostals from the conversation would damage their credibility not only from the scientific perspective but from the entire v iewpoint of the late modern world. In contrast, Yong sug-gests that the Pentecostal perspective offers a unique contribution to the dialogue of science and theology.

The book consists of six chapters. Yong begins with a discus-sion of the Pentecostal encounter with the sciences and the possi-bility of a Pentecostal contribution. The second chapter ap-proaches the kind of Pentecostal sensibilities Yong has for some time termed the pneumatological imagination: the start with and the engagement of the world from the perspective of the Holy Spirit. This perspective represents for Yong a methodological advantage to engage theology and science. The third chapter pro-poses a Pentecostal perspective on the Divine Action Project or-


ganized by the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences at Berkeley, Californ ia, and the Vatican Observatory. Yong’s par-ticular proposal suggests that the Pentecostal emphasis on both the Spirit (i.e., pneumatology) and the existence in the last days (i.e., eschatology) can lead to a pneumatological and teleological framework for the explanation of div ine action. This framework is developed in chapter four into a model for understanding mira-cles in a world governed by the laws of nature. Yong’s goal is to speak of divine action in a manner that takes seriously the mi-raculous without violating the laws of nature. He concludes that the pneumato-eschatological framework necessitates a rethinking of the laws of nature in non-necessitarian terms. Yong’s meth-odological and theological proposal is examined in chapter 5 as a

case study on the cosmic “h istory” of the world. He adopts and modifies the theory of emergence to include the Spirit of God and re-narrates the standard evolutionary account of the world into a teleological narrat ive. It is due to the central figure of the Sp irit that this cosmogony can be told from both a scientific and theo-logical perspective. The final chapter takes this potential dialogue into a programmat ic direct ion and proposes a pneumatological cosmology that speaks of all creation as filled with the Spirit.

The Spirit of Creation is a unique contribution by a Pentecos-tal scholar. As a theologian who engages the natural sciences, Yong and the potential reader find themselves in small company. There are few alternative resources from Pentecostals, and while that may suggest that Yong’s position cannot be generalized to the Pentecostal community at large, it should first of all alert Pen-tecostals to take this proposal seriously. The book is, on a founda-tional level, an invitation to Pentecostals to engage in the conver-sation. At this level, the work should be widely read by Pentecos-tals. At the same time, non-Pentecostals can learn from this book not only what a Pentecostal thinks about the science and theology conversation but also how a Pentecostal might engage this con-versation in a constructive manner.

On the sophisticated level of that constructive conversation, Yong’s work approaches a variety of topics in a programmat ic manner without pursuing one particular d imension in full depth.

The pneumatological imagination: envisioning and engaging the world from the perspective of the Holy Spirit.


This approach is partly necessitated by the absence of existing proposals from Pentecostal theologians or scientists on the sub-ject matter. The reader already acquainted with Yong’s previous work, however, will find no new ideas in this volume, which is a collection of existing or rev ised publications. Yet for most read-ers, this collection will likely be the first exposure to the material. The programmatic nature of the argument, distributed across a field of originally disconnected topics, is perhaps the single weakness of the book. The uninformed reader, only marginally acquainted with the vocabulary and discourse of the natural sci-ences and perhaps unaware of the relationship of science and theology today, will find the text alternating between introductory dialogue to a non-scientific or non-Pentecostal audience and aca-demic scientific d iscourse. The reader should not dismiss this tension lightly, fo r it represents the state of affairs of the Pente-costal engagement with the sciences today. In other words, Pente-costals can hardly avoid the dilemma in which Yong finds him-self if they wish to engage the sciences as Pentecostals. Similarly, non-Pentecostals cannot afford to dismiss the dilemma if they wish to engage in conversation with Pentecostals.

The image of a spirit-filled cosmos—a pneumatological cos-mology—marks the current conclusion of Yong’s proposal. Thinking about divine, human, and other spiritual realities, Yong is sensitive to the Pentecostal imagination of the Holy Spirit, an-gels, demons, and other spiritual powers. At the same time, he aims at arriv ing at a more complete understanding of the emer-gence of a spirit-filled world that reimagines the cosmos consult-ing bib lical, theological, and scientific resources. The resulting pluralistic image of the cosmos accounts for personal, corporate, institutional, embodied, and disembodied spirit-beings that en-gage the world creatively or destructively all the while moving towards the new creation of all things. This image is the core of the Pentecostal-charismatic theology of creation envisioned by Yong. It is sophisticated, imaginative, and challenging; whether it speaks for the Pentecostal world at large remains to be seen. For most readers, it is a wake-up call. Reviewed by Wolfgang Vondey Preview The Spirit of Creation: books.google.com/books?id=gdqJa863XsQC


Martyn Percy, Shaping the Church: The Promise of Implicit Theology, Explorations in Practical, Pastoral and Empirical Theology Series (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 193 pages, ISBN 9780754666004.

Martyn Percy, Principal of Ripon College Cuddesdon and professor at King’s College and Heythrop College London, and the Church of England’s Oxford Ministry Course (for equip-ping ordinands), adds to his publications on theology and the Anglican Communion. Shaping the Church is presented as a se-quel to his interdisciplinary ecclesiological p roposal, Engaging with Contemporary Culture (2005). The earlier publicat ion pre-sents ecclesiology in conversation with anthropology, sociology and cultural studies whilst the book currently under review ex-plores ecclesiology in relation to sacramentality, church growth, and ministry/practical pastoral theology particularly when these areas concern church missions, leadership formation and church polity within the Anglican Communion, especially in England. This book makes at least three important contributions to ecclesi-ology: Percy offers his insights on constructing an ecclesial theol-ogy (that listens to culture, theology, pastoral and congregations), on reframing church growth in a culture of consumerism, and on

sustaining Anglican unity amidst problems that threatened to di-vide this global communion.

First, Percy argues for the importance of theologizing from the ground up (what he calls implic it theology) rather than the domi-nant approach of theologizing from offic ial documents and texts, and with this proposal, he indirectly corrects a common perspec-tive that theology is meaningful only when performed by clerics and/or professional theologians. According to Percy, “implic it theology … is deduced from operant relig ious practice rather than formal religious propositions” (p.6). Official theological state-ments often do not determine how churches engage culture. Percy rightly observes that beliefs and practices at the ground are often a result of theology lived in culture (albeit without passing the rigor of theologians’ processes) and as such the churches’ emer-

Practical theology has much to say to ecclesiology.


gent experiences are “natural texts” for theological reflection. Implic it theology opens up vistas for examining the perplexing reality of church life, thereby providing possibilit ies for reconfig-uring ecclesial life and a theology of the church. Simply put, practical theology has much to say to the systematic theological reflection of ecclesio logy because culture interfaces with theol-ogy and church life more often than has been acknowledged by academic theologians. For instance, Percy traces three different views of baptism and shows that each position reveals a nascent theory of how churches shaped their own identity, which is not written in offic ial documents. Percy also shows how culture in-fluences churches’ views on the theology and practice of confir-mat ion and/or conversion—which becomes crucial as churches think about their role in the process of discipleship.

Second, Percy reframes a theology of church growth against the backdrop of recent alternative church growth practices found in England (known by the name, “Fresh Expressions”). As secu-larity becomes the dominant character that defines society and as Christian signs and practices lose their grip on society (which is fast becoming secular), declining church attendance is to be ex-pected. But the Principal suggests that the data is no cause for alarm. Even if people do not attend churches, they still relate to the church indirectly. While Grace Davie (1994) describes this ambivalent group as those in the camp of “believing but not be-longing” (p.47), Percy calls them those who are “relating and mutating” (p.52). Even if people do not attend churches, they implic itly relate to the church; only very few people would choose to have absolutely no relationship with the church; and so the statistics of declining church attendance barely paints an ac-curate picture of membership and/or the organic growth of Chris-tianity in these churches. He further demonstrates from the his-tory of English Christianity that the English believe in God but are not active in the church—they support the church from out-side and not as pillars of the church (p.60-61). On that note, Percy urges that churches should relax rather than to be uptight about employing aggressive church growth strategies; they should trust the resilience of relig ion to work itself out. He however reminds the churches that they must respond to society by offering minis-try to those in need.

In examin ing contemporary alternative church models (known under the umbrella of Fresh Expressions), Percy finds these ap-proaches wanting—these churches, notwithstanding their rhetoric


of out-reach, and so forth, are mere examples of church in-reaching activities (p.72). For a sustained critique of these alter-native approaches, read chapter 4. Also, against some who argue that only conservative churches grow, Percy proposes that the ‘liberal church’ too experiences growth (p.94)! He takes Loren B. Mead’s sociological-theological examination of four paradigms of growth—numeric, spiritual, organic and incarnational—and the ideas of a number of other church growth proponents to strengthen his argument that liberal churches are alive because these communities are open, inclusive and justice-centered. Churches will grow organically as long as churches engage cul-ture in the dual methodology of accommodation to and resistance to culture without becoming impatient, and as long as churches seek to live out a fourfold priestly min isterial function of becom-ing sacramental-transformat ional, reciprocal-representative, sacri-fic ial-receptive, and pastoral-prophetic (p.108-109)!

Third, Percy affirms the “mild and yet ardent temperate Angli-canism” (p.172) as the model for resolving the “hurricane of con-troversy” (p.170) wh ich threatens to divide the Anglican Com-munion, and for harnessing the conflicts positively towards ful-filling the overall mission of the church. Percy argues that the Anglican via media exh ibits the wisdom necessary for reframing conflicts. This is because the method of via media combines ro-bustness and suppleness, reflexiv ity and directionality, intensity and extensity, and reactivity and proactivity—all of wh ich are qualities needed to deal with “a complex nexus of competing convictions and emotions that cannot be easily resolved” (p.139). Furthermore, Percy urges that ordinands learn the “Anglican gen-ius of ‘directed plurality’” (p.141) wh ich is essentially an open-ness and vulnerability to the multiple interpretative possibilities within the church: these postures, he suggests, may be learned when leaders exercise courtesy, hospitality, service and deep lis-tening, and when they recognize clarity, precision and resolution takes time to unfold. Those of us who have experienced church conflicts will know that emotions (such as anger) float around in conflicts. Those who loved the church, i.e., those who have strong feelings for the church, will use church polity and pastoral praxis to either protect or move the church forward. Here, Percy encourages his readers to embrace the Anglican posture of “passionate coolness” (p.144). “Passionate coolness” does not mean the avoidance of conflict (which can result in atrophy) or the enabling of strong feelings (p.153). Rather, the goal in eccle-


sial polity is the management of emot ions. He writes, “Extreme feelings, when voiced, can lead to extreme reactions. And ex-treme reactions, when allowed fu ll-vent, can make situations un-stable” (p.144). The recommendation is a “delicate infusion of polarit ies,” realizab le by a communication “characterized by reti-cence, temperance and openness” (p.144) which is “not driven by anger or react hastily to its outpouring” (p.151). While some may not agree with Percy’s disposition to prefer “heresy over schism”—Percy argues that heresies may be corrected more eas-ily than schism (p.154) and that “fragmentation is to be avoided at all cost” (p.156)—few in the Anglican Church would doubt that the Anglican Communion could maintain its unity without

the recovery of biblical and Anglican qualities of “patience, for-bearance and catholicity, moderation and a genuine love for the reticulate blend of diversity and unity that forms so much the richness of Anglican life” (p.172).

To the readers of Pneuma Review, I would ask, if Pentecostal-ism is truly a harbinger of plu rality and unity, to what extent would Percy’s proposal for the Anglican Communion be applica-ble for the churches of the Renewal movement that derive from the Azusa Street Revival? At one level, Renewal Christianity is a liv ing expression of Percy’s first and second thesis for an implic it theology and for an alternative church growth theology: the global Pentecostal and Charismatic movement develops from the grassroots, continues in the convictions and practices of churches on the ground, and remains one of the most expansive outreach movements in the history of Christianity. At another level, lead-ers of this diverse movement may find it helpful to re-evaluate its church growth dynamics, and how churches in the movement negotiate unity and fragmentation. If Renewal fo lks claim (though not exclusively) the filling, anointing, and fullness of the Spirit to be operating in discipleship, missions, and in the life o f the church, then, in some ways, we may argue that Percy’s third contribution (reviewed above) should resonate with pneuma-tological sensibilit ies: and by implication, we have to ask, how

How may we facilitate diversity and unity among Pentecostals and Charismatics even as the movement seeks an ecumenical role with other Christians?


may we facilitate diversity and unity among Pentecostals and Charismat ics even as the movement seeks an ecumenical ro le with Christians from other Christian tradit ions? I am not implying here that renewalists would readily embrace Percy’s proposal. Very likely, renewalists would read Percy’s call as an example of a methodological liberalis m. Still, Percy’s sharp observations (on some of intersubjective relational and church growth dynamics within the Anglican Communion) would have resonated with some of the issues facing renewalists in the diverse pneuma-tological movements. In that sense, Percy offers a parallel lens for renewalists to evaluate their own traditioning. I hope Pneuma Review readers will be open to Percy’s theological reflection.

Reviewed by Timothy Lim Teck Ngern

Preview Shaping the Church: books.google.com/books?id=my4Y4Og4ePkC Vern Sheridan Poythress, In the Beginning Was the Word: Language-Α God-Centered Approach (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2009) 415 pages, ISBN 9781433501791.

In the Beginning Was the Word: Language—

A God-Centered Approach, authored by Vern Sheridan Poythress, intends to articulate a Chris-tian understanding of language and demonstrate how language reflects God’s character (9).

In the Beginning is organized into six parts. The first part ad-dresses the relationship between God and language. Here Poythress states that language reveals the divine attributes. For example, the beauty of God is revealed in language because it allows for beauty in communication such as through the medium of poetry (75).

In part one, Poythress also notes the significance of the exis-tence of language prior to creation, emphasizing it was not cre-ated, nor did it evolve (25–28). Language existed eternally and was a part of God’s being. People have language because it is part of being created in the image of God—it is not a human con-struct or cultural phenomenon as is often argued (29–30). Lan-guage is a gift of God through which God h imself can speak.


Part two of the book discusses language in the context of his-tory. Some of the topics covered in this section include the impli-cations of the fall on language. People often use language to de-ceive and manipulate others (103). From a b iblical perspective, Poythress also looks at the diversity of languages among the many cultures of the world.

Part three is about discourse. Here Poythress acknowledges the imprecision that is present in communication and the varia-tion in the meaning of words and sentences (169). However, the author asserts that the existence of impreciseness does not negate the stability of language and our ability to communicate with others with some level of effect iveness. Poythress also includes in this portion of the text a discussion on biblical interpretation. He offers some princip les for b iblical Interpretations such as us-ing the clear parts of Scripture to interpret the unclear ones (182). He also allows for some level of creativ ity in adducing meaning if that meaning is not in tension with other clear passages of the Bible.

Part four is about stories. The author discusses the value of biblical narratives, to communicate God’s work of redemption, even noting that myths are min i-stories of God’s work of redemp-tion. Part five of the work analyzes the smaller units of language, sentences and words. For Poythress, even the smaller units of language are derived from God (256).

Part six addresses application. Poythress concludes this sec-tion of the book by moving beyond the study of language to dis-cussing its relevance for living. God requires truthfulness and moral responsibility in a person’s use of language. The author stresses that moral standards with respect to language need to be embraced; otherwise, communication would be useless and un-trustworthy. The book concludes with many appendices engaging various modern and postmodern concerns related to philosophy of language, including speech-act theory and deconstruction.

The primary weakness of In the Beginning is the topics it does not address in relat ion to language and speech. First, Poythress discusses phonemes, which would have been an opportunity for the author to address the sound-meaning relationship associated with words. However, this area of study is not even mentioned. Second, the author emphasizes the role of the Spirit as both “hearer” of the divine message and as the “breath,” thereby serv-ing as carrier of the message to recipients. Here would have been an occasion to deal with the neglected study of how the Spirit


takes the ancient sacred text and generates its meaningfulness for the present day reader. This topic is only briefly mentioned (22).

The main strength of this book is its potential for apologetic use. The study of language and linguistics can provide discussion points with those who doubt the existence of God, for Poythress has demonstrated how language reveals certain aspects about the reality and nature of God. Reviewed by David Seal

Preview In the Beginning Was the Word: books.google.com/books?id=_AOerDoVxeIC Es trelda Y. Alexander, Black Fire: One Hun-dred Years of African American Pentecostal-ism (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2011), 406 pages, ISBN 9780830825858.

At a time where books on the first one hun-dred years of modern-day Pentecostalism are published with frequency, Alexander reminds us of the important heritage of African Ameri-can Pentecostals. African and African American origins of classical Pentecostalism remain a neglected topic of study, and even African American Pentecostals often know little of their own heritage. Despite the influence of the black preacher William J. Seymour and other African American leaders on the origins and development of Pentecostalism in North America, few scholars have traced the story of African American Pentecos-tal origins or developed a comprehensive account of the racial landscape of Pentecostals. The recovery of African American contributions was hindered for many decades by the dominance of two competing theories of Pentecostal beginnings that identi-fied either white or black orig ins. Interracial orig ins and the di-versity of influences within different racial traditions are only recently becoming a topic of study, and the much larger questions of the relationship of particular racial theories of Pentecostal ori-gins to the racial composition of global Pentecostalism are only in their infancy. Black Fire closes this gap with a rich account of the untold story of African American Pentecostalism.

In ten lucid chapters, Alexander recounts Pentecostal reten-


tions from African Spirituality, the legacy of the nineteenth-century Black Holiness Movement, the impact of William J. Sey-mour and the Azusa Street revival, the rise of African American trinitarian Pentecostal denominations, development of Black Oneness Pentecostalism, the presence of Black Pentecostals in predominantly wh ite denominations, women’s leadership in Afri-can American churches, African American Neo-Pentecostals and Charismat ic Movements, and the theological challenges of Afri-can American Pentecostalism. Two bibliographies of historical and contemporary sources complete the work.

While first impression might suggest that Black Fire is a his-torical work, A lexander’s study blends historical presentation with theological arguments. Never dispassionate in her writ ings, she has recently produced a number of works on African Ameri-can Pentecostals, including a focus on Afro-Pentecostalism, in general, and women leaders in African American Pentecostalism, in particular, that confront the lack of attention given to African American Pentecostalism. At the core of Black Fire are the twin concerns of gender and race that characterize North American Pentecostal denominations. Interrogating the racial div ide and gender paradox that affected the format ion and ongoing develop-ment of African American Pentecostalism, Alexander explores the racist attitudes of black and white Pentecostals and attempts to repair the damaged relations. Similarly, the challenges of sex-ism and the suppression of women in positions of leadership are confronted in various accounts of black, Holiness, women evan-gelists, women as denominational leaders and organizational in -novators woven throughout the historical and theological discus-sions. The black Pentecostal consciousness Alexander endeavors to instill is egalitarian and ecumenical, not without self-critic ism, and always protecting the genuine validity of the variety of voices emerging from Pentecostals.

The book does not offer a continuous story, as one might ex-pect, of one hundred years of African American Pentecostalism. Each chapter stands on its own, with some inevitable connections emerging from the historical and theological voices. This choice has its advantages, since the reader can follow the development selectively and with emphasis on the key themes of the century. Each chapter carries its own inherent argument, connected by the interwoven theme of African spirituality, Africanisms, and Afri-can American characteristics that influenced theological, practi-cal, polit ical, organizat ional, and denominational choices. The


disadvantage of this approach is mostly evident on the macro-level historiography and felt most likely by those who look for a standard account of a century of Pentecostal history. Here, the reader will not be able to find quick references to events and fig-ures or other historical markers without engaging the text itself. The name and subject indexes are surprisingly short and offer less direction than most historians desire. Alexander’s strengths are in the thematic presentation and analysis as well as the theo-logical observations throughout the book.

Alexander’s overarching concern is perhaps best characterized as identifying the legacy of African American Pentecostalism and the individual movements that can be considered under the larger umbrella of b lack Pentecostalism. Racial inclusion, equality of gender, spiritual v itality, and socio-political consciousness belong clearly to this legacy, with a wide range of responses that are also typical for the Pentecostal movement as a whole. Easily lost in the shuffle are the variegated theology, the unique worship forms, and the prophetic social activ ism that also characterize African

American Pentecostals in Alexander’s account. The result is an invaluable resource that belongs on the shelf next to the select group of works on Black Pentecostalism in Britain, Africa, Lat in America, and the Caribbean. This growing genre of Pentecostal studies is destined to catch up with the standards of predomi-nantly white and western accounts of the movement. Together, a racially and ethnically diverse Pentecostal scholarship can shed new light on the true state of affairs of the Pentecostal movement worldwide.

Black Fire adds a loud voice to the cadre of writers who sug-gest that the story of global Pentecostalism cannot be told without the story of African American Pentecostals. More precisely: the story of white Pentecostalism cannot be told without the story of black Pentecostalism. Much work remains to be done until both accounts can fully merge. Some of this work must happen in the scholarly academy, in which Pentecostals are still a minority and which knows few African American Pentecostals. However, the black fire burns most brightly in the churches, homes, and schools, in the ordinary and pedestrian dimensions of the Pente-

The story of global Pentecostalism cannot be told without the story of African American Pentecostals.


costal movement. Most of the labor to shape a joint account of Pentecostal beliefs and practices, past and contemporary, will have to happen in these realms. Perhaps then we can one day expect to read a book on the “pentecostal fire” that distinguishes neither black nor wh ite but lets the flame shine in all its colors. Reviewed by Wolfgang Vondey

Preview Black Fire: books.google.com/books?id=QsT7z0Y6GGEC Joe Carter and John Coleman, How to Argue Like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from His-tory’s Greatest Communicator (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2009), 174 pages, ISBN 9781433502712.

Ever since Augustine said, “For since by means of the art of rhetoric both truth and false-hood are urged, who would dare to say that truth should stand in the person of its defenders un-armed against lying, so that they who wish to urge falsehoods may know how to make their listeners benevolent, or attentive, or docile in their presentation, while the defenders of truth are igno-rant of that art?” (Saint Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Book Four, paragraph 11), Christian scholars have attempted to utilize the best of rhetoric to promote the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The authors of this book agree with Augustine. They have concluded the reason Jesus used parables more often than argu-ments was because they are more persuasive. His parables appeal to logic, passion, and ethics. They made sense, addressing as they do the pressing needs of life and showing Jesus’ understanding and care for His hearers.

As evangelical believers, these authors have written for the general public—Christian and non-Christian alike. Their work is a rhetorical analysis of the communicat ion practices Jesus used in His teaching and preaching. It incorporates and applies the well-known divisions of public speaking set forth by Aristotle in his book On Rhetoric—pathos, logos, and ethos—to analyze Jesus’ persuasion skills.

This reviewer appreciates how the authors provide specific


scriptural or secular examples to illustrate the general concepts of rhetoric. They encourage the use of common ground and emo-tion, if the latter is properly kept in check. They remind their readers that repetition can both emphasize a point and inspire. Rhetorical questions engage the minds of listeners more than mere data alone. The authors discuss and define various forms of argument. The recommendations they make for their appropriate use and the warnings they issue against their misuse need to be heeded. They demonstrate, furthermore, that Jesus Himself used logic and appealed to reason.

The authors’ discussion of Jesus’ ethos is thorough, following Aristotle’s break-down of this concept into three divisions: skill and wisdom, virtue and goodness, and goodwill toward the audi-ence. Each d ivision is discussed in turn and excellent examples of the trust Jesus developed in His listeners are provided. Skill and especially goodwill remain necessary to communicate effect ively in the contemporary world. W ithout goodwill, it is impossible to persuade. For a case in point, people seldom if ever like a brag-gart.

A minor problem surfaces when the authors’ turn from the indicative mood to the imperat ive in the prose of their writing without any warning, requiring unnecessary labor on the reader’s part (e.g., p. 39). On occasion, their use of Scripture appears taken out of context (pp. 57-8). This reviewer is not convinced the Sadducees presented an either/or argument to Jesus as the authors claim. The members of this sect seemed more likely to have argued with Him on the basis of evidence. They could not find any proof of resurrection in the Torah for themselves, so Jesus showed them where it was clearly implied. The Lord won the argument by means of better scholarship.

This book should be considered a short primer on the subject compared to standard textbooks on logic, suitable for review by veterans or introduction for novices. It will inspire readers to add more logic to their gospel presentations. Why make the gospel any harder for nonbelievers to accept than it already is? As many hindrances should be removed as possible, especially logical fal-lacies.

The first five chapters of the book deal with methods; the sixth chapter deals with rules of thumb. Chapter five on ‘Spread ing and Sustaining the Message’ did not seem to fit the thesis of the book—how to argue like Jesus. The content of the chapter was sound, but off the subject. It covers the discipleship of patrons


rather than the dialogue of persuasion. It does not even address the issue of how to persuade people to become disciples. Instead, the stress falls on things like the importance of small groups and the preparation of future trainers.

Each chapter concludes with a help ful review of concepts cov-ered and discussion questions. The book also includes a useful glossary, Scripture index, and general index. Most of the exam-ples from the ministry of Jesus do fit the Aristotelian categories without manipulation. Th is reviewer especially appreciates the two case studies at the end of the book, the first of which is par-ticularly interesting. Reviewed by Steve D. Eutsler

Preview How To Argue Like Jesus: books.google.com/books?id=cdMSUeWakp8C

Other Significant Articles Reviewed by the Editors

Tim Stafford, “Miracles in Mozambique: How Mama Hei di Reaches the Abandoned” Christianity Today (May 2012), pages 18-26. The tag line for the art icle offers an excellent summary : “There are credible reports that Heidi Baker heals the deaf and raises the dead. One thing is for sure: She loves the poor like no other in this forgotten corner of the planet.” christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/may/miracles-in-mozambique.html See also: morect.com/heid i “It’s Okay to Expect a Miracle: Scholar Craig Keener redis-covers the reality of divine intervention” Christianity Today (December 2011), pages 34-37. This interview by Tim Stafford may be read here: christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/december/okay-to-expect-miracle.html


Coming in the Fall 2012 (15:4) Issue: In another excerpt from his book Only Believe, Pau l King pre-sents “Claiming God’s Promises Today: Classic and Modern Word of Faith Views Compared and Contrasted.”

Some reviews to look for in the Fall 2012 issue:

Professor Malcolm Brubaker rev iews Gary Tyra, The Holy Spirit in Mission: Prophetic Speech and Action in Christian Wit-ness (InterVarsity Press, 2011).

The collect ion of essays of Afro-Pentecostalism: Black Pente-costal and Charismatic Christianity in History and Culture (New York University Press, 2011), edited by Amos Yong and Estrelda Alexander, are rev iewed by Wolfgang Vondey.

The Holy Spirit & the Christian Life

A conference focusing on emotion, desire and the Spirit

Hosted by the Regent University Center for Renewal Studies Dale M. Coulter & Amos Yong

March 1 & 2, 2013

Bradley

Nassif North Park University

With plenary sessions by:

Call for Papers: www.regent.edu/holyspirit

Michael J.

McClymond St. Louis

University

Elizabeth

Dryer Fairfield

University

Paul Lim Vanderbilt University

Randy

Maddox Duke

University

summer 2012 - the pneuma reviewpneumareview.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/pneumareview_su… · 32...

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