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Editor’s Note
One of the
highlights
of the 29th Annual
Meeting
of the
Society
for Pentecostal Studies held at Northwest
College
in Kirkland,
Washington
on March
16-18,
2000 was the Presidential Address in the
opening plenary session. Dr. Frank D. Macchia’s
paper
on “Justification and the
Spirit: Pentecostal Reflection on the Doctrine
by
Which the Church Stands or Falls” was a blockbuster. Frank charted fresh
territory
in forging Luther’s Doctrine of Justification and the Catholic Decrees of Trent on Justification into a
pneumatological rendering
of
justification
that resonated with Pentecostal
experience
and biblical
teaching.
It was
a joy
to watch a con- structive Pentecostal
theologian
at work at his craft.
Professor Macchia’s address is printed as the lead article in this issue of the journal. This article is the address as it was delivered at the annual meeting.
Frank is
working
on revisions of the
paper
for
publication
in other
theological
forums in which a dialogue with the Pentecostal view he espouses may
further extend our
understanding
of the role of the
Spirit
in justification.
Even
though
Frank’s work will
go
into different
venues,
I am
personally pleased
that Frank consented to continue the tradition of having
the
society’s
annual Presidential Address
published
in the journal.
During
the
proceedings
of the 29th Annual
Meeting,
Father Kilian McDonnell asked for the
privilege
to address the
membership
of the soci- ety
in one of its plenary sessions.
Only
a matter of days before the meet- ing date, Pope
John Paul II confessed the sins that Catholics had commit- ted
against
others in the last millennium as the third one dawned. Father McDonnell
applied
the
Pope’s
confession to sins that Catholics had com- mitted
against
Classical
Pentecostals,
and asked the Pentecostals for for- giveness.
On the next
evening, during
the Annual
Banquet
at which Dr. Gordon Fee was honored with the
society’s
Lifetime Achievement
Award, SPS President Frank Macchia
responded affirmatively
to Father McDonnell’s confession and
request
for
forgiveness,
and then confessed the sins that Classical Pentecostals had committed
against Catholics,
and asked that the mutual
forgiveness expressed
would be a
sign
of God’s grace
at work
among
Pentecostals and Catholics.
Four articles follow the Presidential Address and the Confessions and Responses by
Father McDonnell and Professor Macchia. The
article, “Pre-Lucan Occurrences of the Phrase
‘Tongue(s)
of
Fire,”‘ by
Dr. Glen Menzies traces the connection between the
Holy Spirit
and fire in the Old Testament in order to shed fresh
light
on New Testament references to the Baptism
with the
Holy Spirit
and fire. Dr. Nils-Olov Nilsson’s
article, “The Debate on Women’s
Ministry
in the Swedish Pentecostal Movement: Summary
and Analysis,”
provides
both a historical overview of the debate in the Swedish Pentecostal Church over the role of women in church
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leadership positions
and an analysis of the biblical
arguments
used
by the two
major
factions in
support
of their
divergent
views. Geir Lie’s article on “The
Theology
of E.W.
Kenyon” argues against
Daniel
Ray McConnell’s view that
Kenyon’s theology
reflected Christian Science and New
Thought teaching. Instead,
Professor Lie
argues
that
Kenyon’s thought
is reflective of the
evangelical
Holiness movement of his
time, although-due
to space constraints-Dr. Lie does not
provide
a compara- tive
analysis
to buttress his claim. Dr. Allan H. Anderson’s
impressionis- tic
piece
on “Pentecostalism in East Asia” in the
Dialogue provides insightful comparative
work between African and Latin American forms of Pentecostalism and the forms it takes in East Asia
bring
flashes of insight
into the nuanced
variety
of “non-western”
indigenous
forms of Pentecostal
Christianity.
Ten book
reviews,
under the editorial
supervision
of Dr. Amos
Yong, round out this issue. Professor
Yong
is now the new Book Review Editor of the journal. On behalf of the
society,
I welcome him aboard and thank him for his
energetic approach
to his work,
already
demonstrated in this issue. With this
issue,
I complete my tenure as the Editor of the journal, and
pass
the baton on to
my colleague,
Dr. Frank
Macchia,
Associate Professor of Christian
Theology
at
Vanguard University
of Southern California. I am enthusiastically supportive of the editorial
leadership
that Frank will
bring
to the journal. He and Amos, and other members of the editorial team
they
will
assemble,
are
postured
to take the
journal
to the next level of its professional and academic
development.
I pass on the editorial mantle to Frank with the
hope
that he receives the same
joy
that I experienced in contributing to the
scholarly
work of the society through
the
editorship
of its journal.
Despite
the constant
juggling act
required
to carve out time for
voluntary
editorial work on the main articles,
the sense of fulfillment
always
was reward
enough
when I held in my
hands a new issue off the
press.
I
truly enjoyed working
with Dr. Augustus Cerillo,
Jr.,
as the Book Review
Editor,
Dr.
Jerry Camery- Hoggatt,
as the
Managing Editor,
and Rev.
George
Paul
Wood,
as the Editorial Assistant. What
great
times we had in editorial
meetings
and luncheon celebrations when we
finally got
a new issue off the
press.
We will be
having
our last
hooray
as
you
read this issue. Thanks to the Executive Officers who entrusted me with the editorial
responsibilities
of the journal, and to the
membership
who were
always
so generous in their comments about the
quality
of the jourhal in the annual business
meetings. It has been a great six and one-half
years.
Murray
W. Dempster Editor
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