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Presidential Address 2012
It Seems Good to the Holy Spirit and to Us: The Ecclesial Vocation of the Pentecostal Scholar
Brother Jeffrey Gros, FSC
Catholic Studies Scholar in Residence, Lewis University, Romeoville, Illinois
Abstract
The members of the Society for Pentecostal Theology have made significant contributions to ecu- menical reconciliation, to the promotion of the intellectual life in the Pentecostal and Charismatic communities, and to service to the classical Pentecostal churches in their development from a movement into mature churches in the community of Christians. For this leadership we are grateful. The Pentecostal scholar in whatever church has a calling to be of service to the whole people of God and to the churches in their task of preaching, handing on the faith and nurtur- ing the faithful. This Society has been a place where this ecclesial vocation has been and can be nurtured. There are many intellectual challenges before the Pentecostal community as it moves into its second century as a renewal movement among Christians worldwide. This presidential address suggests three of these challenges: (1) a renewed understanding of the two thousand years of Christian history and the role of renewal movements within it, including the last cen- tury of Pentecostal service; (2) an understanding of the sacramental character of Pentecostal worship, using the example of healing as a ritual where Pentecostals have unique gifts to offer other Christians and a long heritage of sacramental thinking from which to learn; and (3) the doctrine of the church and its call to visible unity, as the institutions that serve the Pentecostal churches mature into their second century and begin to become more theologically grounded, self-reflective, and ecumenical.
Keywords
ecumenism, academic ministry, church, sacrament, history, healing, gratitude, leadership, authority
A few years ago I was engaged in an ecumenical project that involved Pentecos- tal and Catholic scholars, among others, presenting five approaches to the Lord’s Supper.1 One of our colleagues, a Baptist, wanted to insure that the
1 Gordon Smith, ed., The Lord’s Supper: Five Views (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press Aca- demic, 2008).
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI: 10.1163/157007412X639870
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Pentecostal colleague was certifiably Zwinglian like himself. Now our Pente- costal colleague, trained in a Lutheran context researching the Catholic dia- logue, was quite capable of differentiating the unique Pentecostal witness and contribution without the help of a sixteenth-century rationalist or a twenty- first century Baptist!
As a Society we can celebrate the fact that the ecumenical contribution of the Pentecostal renewal informs the church catholic with a scholarly project as serious as the piety it has energized by the power of the Holy Spirit in the lives of so many in all of our Christian communities.
We are grateful to you as a community of Pentecostal scholars, and to this Society for its ecumenical vocation among the expressions of the faith of the church through the ages.
We are grateful for your ecclesial service to the ecumenical movement and to the classical Pentecostal churches. I would like to express my personal grati- tude to this community for its mentorship, especially to Kilian McDonnell, Donald Dayton, and Mel Robeck, more for the questions they have raised for us than for any particular conclusion.
My theme for today will be “The Vocation of the Pentecostal Scholar in Ser- vice to the Church.” I know that many of our members define their vocation in academic rather than ecclesial terms. Many move on to be nurtured by the SBL or the AAR. The focus today, however, will be on those of us whose identities and vocations are nurtured by the calling of both academia and the church. We are a welcoming society in which scholars with a variety of religious commit- ments or none are nurtured, but my focus will be on those of us with a church vocation in academic life.
And, by the way, the recent Lutheran-Pentecostal dialogue has helped clar- ify, for us, a more nuanced position on the Lord’s Supper than our Baptist col- league might understand:
Because of their consistent emphasis on the real presence of God in worship, Pentecos- tals expect the Lord to be present in his Supper. Pentecostals have at times claimed a version of Zwingli’s understanding of the Supper, often over against the dominant sac- ramental church culture, but practical experience and piety indicate that Pentecostals do actually believe in some kind of real presence beyond a strictly symbolic or memo- rial understanding of the Supper.2
2 Lutherans and Pentecostals in Dialogue (Strasbourg/Pasadena/Zürich: Institute for Ecumeni- cal Research/The David Du Plessis Center for Christian Spirituality/The European Pentecostal Charismatic Research Association, 2010), 17. On the Zwingli question, see Daniel Tomberlin, Pen- tecostal Sacraments: Encountering God at the Altar (Cleveland, TN: Center for Pentecostal Leader-
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In this challenge as your president, I want to reflect for a moment on the voca- tion to which we are called in the church, as scholars of the Pentecostal move- ment and the wider biblical, historical, theological, and spiritual traditions of the churches.
The originating intent of our society in 1970 was the somewhat pretentious: “to serve the church world by providing an authoritative interpretation of the Pentecostal Movement.” By 1975 a more modest purpose made the likes of me more welcome: “to serve the church world by providing a scholarly forum to interpret the Pentecostal movement.”3 The third part of this address will pick up on this commitment to “interpretation/hermeneutics” as essential to our vocation together.
Today I would like to reflect on our common calling to serve the kingdom in this world by the gift of scholarship, dialogue, and communication. It is my conviction that the hard intellectual work in which we are engaged is a gift to the church equal to any of the other gifts enumerated in 1 Corinthians 12. For this gift the whole community is grateful. Even if ours is a humble task, we per- form it in prophetic and interpretive service to the whole people of God. We are not all called to serve the unity of the church, our own classical Pen- tecostal or other denominations, or the clarification of the Christian faith for its witness in the world, as the theme of this year’s convention proposes so vividly. I would suggest, however, that even those of us who are specialized, technical scholars with little ecclesial interest are called to support and chal- lenge those of us with an ecclesial vocation as we work together in the Society in pursuit of evangelical truth, however we define it.
To this end, I will make three modest points: (1) the importance of this Soci- ety to the classical Pentecostal churches in the modern ecumenical movement, (2) the challenges faced by academics if we see ourselves called to critically serve the church, and (3) some areas of reflection that recommend themselves to Pentecostal scholarship.
ship and Care, 2010), 167; also, Kenneth Archer, “The Fivefold Gospel and the Mission of the Church: Ecclesiastical Implications and Opportunities,” in J. C. Thomas, ed., Toward a Pentecostal Ecclesiology: The Church and the Fivefold Gospel (Cleveland, TN: CPT Press, 2010), 37, and “Nourish- ment for our Journey: The Pentecostal Via Salutis and Sacramental Ordinances,” Journal of Pente- costal Theology 13, no. 1 (October, 2004): 79-96. Cf. A Treasure in Earthen Vessels, No. 182 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1998), #49-66 (available at http://wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/faith/ nature1.html).
3 The Society for Pentecostal Theology, Commemorating Thirty Years of Annual Meetings: 1971- 2001 (Lexington, KY: Society for Pentecostal Theology, 2001), 4-5.
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Those of us who work in Christian universities have a special calling about which I will not speak in detail. I would, however, recommend John Henry Newman’s The Idea of the University Defined and Illustrated,4 which Jaroslav Pelikan characterizes as “the most important treatise on the idea of the univer- sity ever written in any language.”5 This meditation will be of particular interest to the Pentecostal academic community as it emerges out of its twentieth- century marginalization into global leadership, just as Anglophone Catholics were emerging, in Newman’s day, from four hundred years of Protestant perse- cution and intellectual isolation in Ireland and Britain.6
Gratitude for Pentecostal Contribution to Ecumenical Reconciliation
All Christians need to be grateful to the Holy Spirit for the contribution of this Society to the worldwide ecumenical community on its journey to that biblical reconciliation for which Christ prayed (John 17). This Society has provided leadership, mentorship, and corporate support far beyond what might have been envisioned forty years ago by its founders.7
It was no surprise that a former president of this Society was chosen to key- note the opening of the Global Christian Forum when it was inaugurated in 2007.8
It was no surprise that a former president of this Society was selected as the first Pentecostal president of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) in 1995. He challenged the white evangelical ecumenical community to move beyond its partisan political position and its “too gray, too male and too white” leadership. It was a surprise, however, that reservations about his leadership came from the fact that his wife was in active ordained ministry, a practice not traditional among the more Reformed members of the NAE.9
4 John Henry Newman, The Idea of the University Defined and Illustrated (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1927).
5 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Idea of the University: A Reexamination (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992), 8.
6 See ibid., 147.
7 See, for example, Wolfgang Vondey, ed., Pentecostalism and Christian Unity: Ecumenical Docu- ments and Critical Assessments (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2010).
8 http://globalchristianforum.org/.
9 http://nae.net/about-us/history/62.
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It is no surprise that the U.S. Catholic-Pentecostal dialogue has been nur- tured in the annual meeting of the Society since 1996.10
It is no surprise that the Pentecostal president of the American Bible Society was a speaker here.11
It is no surprise that the chairs of the Pentecostal dialogues with Reformed, Lutheran, and Catholic churches are all former presidents of this Society. It is no surprise that major initiatives in Pentecostal ecclesial racial recon- ciliation have been promoted and documented by members of the Society.12 It is no surprise that the World Council texts on The Nature and Mission of the Church13 have a stronger focus on mission because of Pentecostal presence and the responses of this Society.14 The Council’s work on interpretation has a more robust pneumatological focus because of Orthodox and Pentecostal input.15 Since the 1986 meeting of the Society, the contributions of Society rep- resentatives have been central to the work of the U.S. National Council discus- sions in Faith and Order.16
It is no surprise that two members of the Society are building bridges between non-traditional Pentecostal pastor/researchers and the academic scholars of this Society, even before finishing their own PhD studies.
It is no surprise that the only Pentecostal response to Pope John Paul II’s 1995 invitation to a “patient and fraternal dialogue” on the future reform of the papal office as a ministry of service to the unity among Christians by ecumenical
10 For example, Dale Coulter, “Are We Kin? Reflections on the Dialogues Between Catholics, Methodists, and Pentecostals”; Ralph Del Colle, “Catholic-Methodist-Pentecostal: A Trialogue?”; Ted Campbell, “Ecumenical Relations between Catholic, Pentecostal, and Methodist Churches”; all in Ecumenical Trends 37, no. 8 (September 2008): 4-11. Dale Coulter, Glen Menzies, and Teresa Francesca Rossi, “On Learning to Read the Fathers Together: Reflections on Becoming a Christian ,” Ecumenical Trends 39, no. 1 (January 2010): 1-6.
11 http://americanbible.org/about/leadership.
12 Frank Macchia, “From Azusa to Memphis: Evaluating the Racial Reconciliation Dialogue
among Pentecostals,” Pentecostal Theology 17, no. 2 (Fall 1995): 203-18; Cecil Robeck, “Racial Reconciliation at Memphis: Some Personal Reflections,” Pneuma: The Pentecostal Theology 18, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 135-40.
13 http://oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/wcc-commissions/faith-and-order- commission/i-unity-the-church-and-its-mission/the-nature-and-mission-of-the-church-a-stage- on-the-way-to-a-common-statement.html.
14 See Vondey, Pentecostalism and Christian Unity.
15 http://oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/wcc-commissions/faith-and-order- commission/iv-interpretation-the-meaning-of-our-words-and-symbols/a-treasure-in-earthen- vessels-an-instrument-for-an-ecumenical-reflection-on-hermeneutics.html.
16 Jeffrey Gros, “A Pilgrimage in the Spirit: Pentecostal Testimony in the Faith and Order Move- ment,” Pentecostal Theology 25, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 29-53.
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colleagues was produced by members of this Society and in the context its annual meeting.17
It is no surprise that the ecumenical dialogue between Oneness and Trinitar- ian Pentecostals has been pioneered in the context of the Society consultation, building on decades of trust nurtured here.18
It is no surprise that the educational leadership in the largest African-Amer- ican classical Pentecostal church is directed by one of our former presidents. Not all of the classical Pentecostal churches have yet to take up the biblical imperative to build unity among the followers of Christ; however, this Society has provided an irreversible contribution to building bridges among Christians grounded in the truth of the Gospel and the experience of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, including the gift of scholarship to which this Society is called. In fact, the transformation of the understanding of some of the classical Pen- tecostal churches from an evangelical cultural and fundamentalist isolation- ism to a more Christian, if cautious, openness to other Christians has been pioneered by members of this society and by the calling of the Holy Spirit to mission in the world, as documented so eloquently by our opening address at Mason Temple in last year’s meeting.
All Christians can be grateful for the ecclesial vocation of this Society in its service to the unity of all Christians.
The Challenge of the Church for the Academic Vocation
The academic culture and the culture of ecclesiastical leadership emerge from different styles of formation, a different calling, and differing gifts of the Holy Spirit. Whatever the tension between those in pastoral, institutional, and eccle- siastical leadership roles within the Christian community, the long heritage of Christianity tells us that these are complementary gifts for the building up of the body of Christ.
In my tradition, we make the distinction between charism and office in the church and emphasize the roles of movements, often — but not always — rep- resented by the religious orders and by the hierarchical callings within the one
17 Terry Cross, “Possintne Omnes Unum Esse? A Pentecostal Response to Ut Unum Sint”; Glen Menzies, “A Pentecostal Response to Ut Unum Sint”; and Jeffrey Gros, “Can They be One?” all in One in Christ 41, no. 1 (January 2006): 4-41.
18 David Reed, “Origins and Development of the Theology of Oneness Pentecostalism in the United States,” Pentecostal Theology 1, no. 1 (1979): 31-37. “Oneness-Trinitarian Pentecostal Final Report, 2002-2007,” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Theology 30, no. 2 (2008): 203-24.
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baptismal priesthood. When perceived as a dynamic tension within the one life of the Holy Spirit drawing the community forward on a pilgrimage toward that kingdom, we can live with a certain human friction in service of the unity of the community and the discernment of God’s call for us in service to the world. For another era, a historian writes: “A striking aspect of all the Reformation theologians examined in this volume [Catholic and Protestant] is that each and every one of them focused on ministry. Theology for them was not an abstract academic enterprise, but rather was always related to ministry through Word.”19 This understanding of our enterprise is certainly true of many Pente- costal scholars gathered here.
Theology, however, need not be reduced to its utility, either in pastoral ser- vice or in renewal of the church, as Newman notes:
If Theology, for instance, instead of being cultivated as a contemplation, be limited to the purposes of the pulpit or be represented by the catechism, it loses — not its useful- ness, not its divine character, not its meritoriousness — but it does lose the particular attribute [as one of the liberal arts]; . . . for Theology thus exercised is an art or a busi- ness making use of Theology.20
When new issues arise in the life of the church or in the culture in which it car- ries out its mission, the scholar is called to help church leadership discern appropriate directions for mission, ministry, and authentic teaching. This means that the scholar in the church will often be caught up in dialogue, dis- cernment, and occasional conflict.
Even when the scholar is called to question regnant interpretations and to utter a prophetic challenge, this evangelical calling is a humble service. The last two presidential addresses of this society demonstrate how such a challenge is envisioned as a service to renewal that calls not only the scholarly community but also the ecclesiastical community and its leadership to discern new direc- tions on the Gospel path.21
In this society we support, mentor, and correct one another in the presenta- tions of the truth of the Gospel, the interpretations of our biblical and ecclesi- astical testimony, and our prophetic witness to the world. The theme of this year’s meeting calls us to look again at the role of the church in the world. We
19 Carter Lindberg, The Reformation Theologians (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), 380. 20 Newman, The Idea of the University , 108.
21 Kimberly Ervin Alexander, “Standing at the Crossroads: The Battle for the Heart and Soul of Pentecostalism,” Pentecostal Theology 33, no. 3 (2011): 331-49, and Estrelda Alexander, “When Liberation Becomes Survival,” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Theology 32, no. 3 (2010): 337-53.
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reflect here theologically, biblically, and ethically, not to enhance our academic careers, but to enhance the witness of the church and its prophetic proclama- tion, on behalf of the Holy Spirit; to the role of the church in promoting peace, justice and solidarity with creation in a sinful and exploitive world. In our prophetic witness to the world and to church members, we as schol- ars need to have a humble and dialogical approach to the ecclesiastical and pastoral leadership that nurtures the faith of our people. We can equip our stu- dents as they prepare for ministry with alternate ways of reading our common scripture and ecclesial heritage. However, we can also serve ecclesiastical and pastoral leadership by drawing them into new perspectives on reading the scripture, understanding the church, and facing the world.
At an earlier period of Christian renewal, in the thirteenth century, one rep- resentative of the great evangelical restorations movement of the day, the Fran- ciscans, felt the call to move out of his academic career at the University of Paris to take up leadership in the movement to help it clarify its theological basis and its eschatological vision. He was eventually made a central leader, a cardinal, of his church. St. Bonaventure found no conflict between his ecclesial vocation as a scholar in the golden age of Scholasticism and his academic voca- tion as master general of his order and member of the papal court, in service of both reform and renewal in all three dimensions of his Gospel calling. Are not some of us called to serve ecclesiastical discernment processes in the classical Pentecostal churches with the academic gifts that have been lav- ished upon us by our years of research and study? Many of you could publish a great deal more were you less engaged in directing the educational programs of your churches, in supporting the ecclesiastical leadership and pastoral minis- try of your denominations, and in working in ecumenical dialogues. Finally, as gifted academics, we are called to be humble and strategic in our service to the leadership of our churches. I reflect on my years of service on the board of the Catholic Theological Society during the difficult days when Vati- can statements on the authority of teaching about the ordination of women needed clarification (1992).
This was not an easy task for theologians, given the variety of points of view: (a) in the interpretation of what the official teaching was; (b) how it was to be placed in appropriate biblical and theological context — whether or not, as a scholar, one agreed with the formulations; and (c) how press distortions, for or against the texts and their conclusions, could be corrected.
On the board it was extremely difficult to (a) keep the focus on the issue at hand — authority and not the substance of the issue; (b) keep the focus on the text at hand and not the conclusions of each one of us as particular scholars
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around the table; and (c) keep the focus on a strategic approach to communi- cating the results of the study and the judgment of the Society and its board in a way that would make clear our conclusions to our various audience. The issue under discussion was the authority of the Vatican judgment that the non-ordination of women was an infallible and therefore irreversible teach- ing of the scripture, enunciated by the unbroken tradition. The issue was not the ordination of women or whether it was being taught by the church author- itatively. However, I use the debate here, not to attend to the substance but to focus on the scholars’ service to the church.
Needless to say, we may not have been very successful on any of these points, but the calling of the Holy Spirit to that community of scholars to be loyal to the truth of the Gospel, to the community of the church that we were called — ever so reluctantly — to serve, and to the communication of our results to the world was as rigorous a spiritual discipline as any tarrying for the gift of the Spirit in an all-night vigil.
Yes, we are called to rigorous scholarship, we are called to a gentle and robust dialogue with the sources and with the Christian community, and we are called to a strategic and pastoral approach to testing our prophetic proposals with that community who may not have the academic gifts with which we have been gifted, but with whom we share the pilgrimage in the Holy Spirit which is the calling of the church in service to the kingdom.
Relational Challenges before Us in Our Reconciling Calling
Finally, there are many areas of biblical and theological research that we as scholars serve, of which I will single out only three.
Pentecostal scholars serve the churches by deepening the Holy Spirit’s wit- ness in the Word of God. It is my hypothesis that the debates on biblical inter- pretation/hermeneutics are well developed in Pentecostal scholarship.22 This includes attending to the ecclesial dimension of biblical hermeneutics based in the conciliar communion witness of Acts 15.23 Pentecostal voices have also
22 See, e.g., Kenneth Archer, A Pentecostal Hermeneutic: Spirit, Scripture and Community (Cleve- land, TN: CPT Press, 2009), 1: “The Pentecostal tradition, although still relatively young when com- pared with other historic Christian traditions, is now in a position to examine critically its own identity, hermeneutical posture and its relation to other Christian communities.”
23 See J. C. Thomas, “Women, Pentecostals and the Bible,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 5 (1994): 41; Archer, A Pentecostal Hermeneutic, 212 ff.
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made an important contribution to the World Council volume on interpreta- tion/hermeneutics: Treasure in Earthen Vessels.24
The Acts account of the Council in Jerusalem is the biblical grounding for subsequent councils in Nicea and Chalcedon and for the World Council pro- posal for the visible unity of the church.25 With this in mind I will not treat biblical interpretation, but rather three other challenges.
Here I will suggest deepening reflections on (1) the interpretation of history, (2) the interpretation of ritual, and (3) the nature and visible unity of the church.
Invitation to a Hermeneutics of History
The Pentecostal scholarly community is called, by our ecclesial vocation, to provide an interpretation of history, of the movement and of the two thousand years of Christian witness, as a service to the churches. As Charles Taylor asserts of our understanding of the modern: “Our past is sedimented in our present, and we are doomed to misidentify ourselves, as long as we can’t do justice to where we come from. This is why the narrative is not an optional extra, why I believe that I have to tell a story here.”26 Pentecostal scholars have provided important contributions to giving fine detail to the stories behind the move- ment, to the historical and interpretive grounding of classical Pentecostal churches, and to the charismatic movements within the variety of Christian communities. Our ecumenical work with the historic Peace Churches, for example, would be impossible without the work of Murray Dempster, David Hall, and others.27 We only know who we are by unearthing these sedimented identities and their historical origin.
24 See Cecil Robeck, “Ecumenical Hermeneutics: Some Reflections from a Pentecostal/Evan- gelical Perspective,” in Alan Falconer, ed., Faith and Order in Moshi (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1998), 135-39. See also Peter Bouteneff and Dagmar Heller, Interpreting Together (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2001); Paul Avis, “The Hermeneutics of Unity,” in Reshaping Ecumenical Theology: The Church Made Whole? (London: T & T Clark, 2010), 39-59; and S. Sinn, “Hermeneutics and Ecclesiology,” in G. Mannion and L. Mudge, eds., The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church (London: Routledge, 2007), 567-93.
25 http://oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/wcc-commissions/faith-and-order- commission/i-unity-the-church-and-its-mission/the-unity-of-the-church-gift-and-calling-the- canberra-statement.html.
26 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (London: The Belkamp Press, 2007), 29.
27 David Hall, Essays to the Next Generation: An Interpretation of Church of God in Christ Faith and Practice (Memphis: Church of God in Christ Publishing House, 2004). John Rempel and Jef- frey Gros, eds., The Fragmentation of the Church and its Unity in Peace Making (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001).
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As one would expect of an evangelical movement, however, the first three generations of Pentecostal scholars have been primarily interested in biblical studies and in spirituality, where the resources for renewal studies are found in the Christian tradition. Some contemporary systematic theologians character- ize the transition in their discipline:
Whereas the first generation of Pentecostal scholars . . . [applied] the tools of their . . . trades . . . [to] Pentecostalism, . . . the second generation . . . bring[s] a Pentecostal per- spective to bear on . . . questions . . . that are concerns . . . for the whole church . . . con- tributing to . . . the conversations of the wider theological academy.28
When there is any interest in history, it is often research on the heritage of clas- sical Pentecostal denominations, the movements from which they spring, especially Methodism, and the particular distinctives: healing, the role of the Spirit, eschatologies, charismatic preaching, and the like.
Let me suggest, however, that the time is right for attention to the whole sweep of two thousand years of Christian history and how the renewal is an outgrowth of this larger tradition and contributes to it. For example, I use Stan- ley Burgess’s important Christian Peoples of the Spirit in my History of the World Christian Movement class in Chicago.29 It is deftly subtitled A Documentary History of Pentecostal Spirituality from the Early Church to the Present, which entails in itself an interpretation of the Pentecostal tradition and of the faith of the church through the ages.
Likewise, the most recent round of the Vatican-Pentecostal dialogue was On becoming a Christian: Insights from Scripture and the Patristic Writings.30 This is an important text because: (1) it introduces a sacramental theme, baptism, but in the broader shared context of initiation, (2) it gives a common interpretation of Scripture and tradition, which helps scholars with very different methodolo- gies to understand how authority operates by dialogue and drafting, and (3) it begins to take seriously a segment of history, the Fathers and Mothers of the Church, that is marginal to the interest of most Pentecostals. A text like this one on patristics would probably not emerge without the stimulus of the dialogue with fellow Christians.
28 James K. A. Smith and Amos Yong, eds., “Pentecostal Manifestoes,” in Frank D. Macchia, Justified in the Spirit: Creation, Redemption and the Triune God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), i.
29 Stanley M. Burgess, ed., Christian Peoples of the Spirit: A Documentary History of Pentecostal Spirituality from the Early Church to the Present (New York: New York University Press, 2011). 30 http://prounione.urbe.it/dia-int/pe-rc/doc/e_pe-rc_5-contents.html.
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Of course, many scholars are correct that more work needs to be done on the fourth century: the myth of the “Constantinian fall.” But in pursuing this task together, we need to recall three facts about our common past:
First, not all Christians then or now are heirs of the Roman Empire. Eusebius is not our only interpreter of this period.31 We share the faith of Armenians, Copts, Ethiopians, Indian St. Thomas Christians, and Persians (now Assyrian Church of the East), who carried the testimony of the Holy Spirit outside of the Empire then, and in the face of new Imperial-type forces today.32 We are Chris- tians together whatever our political burdens and privileges.
Second, the Anabaptists have won, on the religion and society theme! In the modern (post- or para-, if you will) world we are all functionally free churches,33 whatever our sacramental claims or historical misadventures.34
Third, there are substantive ecumenical dialogues that can help us tease out the religion/society, church/politics legacies from the evangelical, theological, and church achievements of the fourth century.35
This heritage, the story of the renewal in its multiplicity of forms in the last century, and the story of the Holy Spirit’s action in the Christian community through its two-thousand-year pilgrimage, are what we have come to call tradi- tion. As scholars, however, we help the churches realize that “as a practitioner of a tradition, one is engaged in the constant correction of [its] understanding and application.”36 The interpretation of history is a great gift scholars can offer to our people in a very ahistorical and unbiblical age.
Invitation to a Hermeneutics of Ritual and Symbol
In addition to biblical and historical interpretation, worship also needs to be a focus of our attention together.
31 See, for example, Lamin Sanneh, Encountering the West: Christianity and the Global Cultural Process: The African Dimension (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993), 123-29.
32 Dale Irvin and Scott Sunquist, History of the World Christian Movement: Earliest Christianity to 1453, vol. I (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001).
33 See Steven Bevans, SVD, and Jeffrey Gros, FSC, Evangelization and Religious Freedom: Ad Gentes, Dignitatis Humanae (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2008), 192-234.
34 http://lutheranworld.org/lwf/index.php/council-reconciliation-mennonites.html “Toward a Reconciliation of Memories,” http://prounione.urbe.it/dia-int/r-rc/doc/e_r-rc_2-1 .html.
35 S. Mark Heim, ed., Faith to Creed (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991); Marlin Miller and Barbara Nelson Gingrich, eds., The Church’s Peace Witness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994); and Rempel and Gros, eds., The Fragmentation of the Church.
36 Vincent Miller, “History or Geography? Gadamer, Foucauilt, and Theologies of Tradition,” in Gary Macy, ed., Theology and the New Histories (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999), 77.
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When I taught sacramental theology in Berkeley a couple of years ago, my Jesuit, Arab, Maronite Church student wanted to do a paper on sacramental foot-washing for Muslim, Christian, and Jewish reconciliation in the Middle East. He was amazed when I sent him to Thomas and Ferguson as the best resources. He had never so much as heard of churches called Pentecostal, much less been aware of the quality of research that evangelical and Pentecostal scholars were giving to the biblical and patristic texts on foot washing.37 The Pentecostal scholarly community is called, by our ecclesial vocation, to provide an interpretation of its worship life, its rituals and symbols, for the movement and for the wider Christian community, as a service to the churches. Some classical Pentecostal churches have inherited an antisacramental rheto- ric from their evangelical culture.38 In looking at the rituals and symbols central to our lives together, it may be time to reassess the sacramental ordinances.39 It is my thesis, nevertheless, that the theological heritage of symbolic/sacra- mental thinking, from Augustine through Rahner, Tillich, and Dulles, is a rich resource for Pentecostals.40 These can help us (a) to understand the tangibility of these rites, (b) to recognize a high doctrine and experience of the Holy Spirit acting in the Christian community and its rituals, and (c) to interpret the thor- oughgoing confidence in God’s ability to use the material world as a vehicle for his action in our lives, all theological affirmations that are at the root of classi- cal sacramental understanding.41
37 From the Catholic point of view, I can see the importance of linking foot washing to ordina- tion and the ministry of teaching, as suggested by Tomberlin, Pentecostal Sacraments , and Veli- Matti Kärkkäinen, “ ‘The Leaning Tower of Pentecostal Ecclesiology’: Reflections on the Doctrine of the Church on the Way,” in J. C. Thomas, ed., Toward a Pentecostal Ecclesiology: The Church and the Fivefold Gospel (Cleveland, TN: CPT Press, 2010), 267.
38 John Jefferson David, Worship and the Reality of God: An Evangelical Theology of Real Pres- ence (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic 2010).
39 See A Treasure in Earthen Vessels, #35.
40 Wesley Scott Biddy, “Re-envisioning the Pentecostal Understanding of the Eucharist: An Ecumenical Proposal,” Pentecostal Theology 28, no. 2 (2006): 228-52. In Chile there are three Pentecostal denominations who have signed on with Catholic, Orthodox, and sacramental Protestants to a joint recognition of baptism, a truly historic ecu- menical breakthrough, one not likely to be repeated in the USA or other parts of global Pentecos- talism. See Jeffrey Gros, “Struggle and Reconciliation: Some Reflections on Ecumenism in Chile,” International Review of Mission 97:384 (January/April 2008): 385.
41 Frank D. Macchia, “Tongues as a Sign: Towards a Sacramental Understanding of Pentecostal Experience,” Pentecostal Theology 15, no. 1 (1993): 63, “May not Rahner’s view of ‘sacrament’ help Pentecostals to understand why they regard tongues as such a significant medium for the realization of God’s presence to empower believers for service? Per- haps a Pentecostal appreciation for the term ‘sacrament’ in relation to tongues would be helped by a stronger emphasis on the divine initiative in freely granting tongues its role of signification,
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Whether we use the traditional canon of two sacramental ordinances from the Protestant enumeration, the three rites canonized in Holiness Pentecostal practice, or the five rites singled out by Tomberlin and Thomas,42 there is much that Pentecostal scholars can contribute to the understanding of God’s action in these rites.
There is so much residue of misunderstanding around the central dominical rites of baptism and the Eucharist43 that I suggest starting elsewhere, especially with healing and anointing. There are three reasons for this: (1) many Pentecos- tals are shifting from a magical approach to healing often imbedded in a liter- alistic religious world view to a scientific medical openness; (2) it may help the Catholic recovery of the rite as really about healing the body (not simply the soul as it slips into eternity) as we continue to move away from a “last rites” model;44 and (3) Catholics and Pentecostals share a common biblical basis in James, without a history of polemical overlay.45 As an aside, the recapturing of the pneumatological emphasis in all of Catholic sacramental theology makes it imperative for the Pentecostal experience and theology to become integral to any authentic Catholic presentation of these rites.46
in the sense of ‘making present’ divine empowerment.” See also Tomberlin, Pentecostal Sacra- ments, and Karl Rahner, “The Theology of Symbol,” Theological Investigations, IV (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966), 221-52.
42 Tomberlin, Pentecostal Sacraments, and Thomas, ed., Toward a Pentecostal Ecclesiology.
43 See, e.g., Smith, The Lord’s Supper.
44 See, e.g., the late Cardinal Bernardin’s admonition to Charismatic Catholics, “Come Holy Spirit: A Pastoral Statement to the Charismatic Catholic Renewal,” Pentecost, 1988, in A. P. Spilly, C.PP.S, ed., Selected Works of Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, vol. I (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2000), 198-99.
45 “This examination has been able to correct a widespread misapprehension about Pentecos- tals who are far from the nonsacramental Christians they are sometimes assumed to be. Laying- on of hands, anointing with oil, use of anointed handkerchiefs, and even ceremonial giving of a cup of cold water in the name of the Lord have all emerged as important and regular practices within the movement.” Kimberley Alexander, Pentecostal Healing: Models in Theology and Practice (Blandford Forum: Deo Publishing, 2006), 227. See Lizette Larson-Miller, The Sacrament of Anoint- ing of the Sick (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2005). Cf. Thomson Matthew and Kimberly Alex- ander, “The Future of Healing Ministry,” in Vinson Synan, ed., Spirit-Empowered Christianity in the 21st Century: Insights, Analyses, and Future Trends (Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House, 2011), 313-38. Also Macchia, “Tongues as a Sign,” 75.
46 See, e.g., Lieven Boeve et al., eds., God’s Sacramental Presence in the Contemporary World: Festschrift Lambert Leijssen (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 10. Pneumatology and experience have been important theological sources in moving Catholic sacramental thinking from mechanistic, juridi- cal, and even magical interpretations to a more biblical understanding of the Spirit’s action through the church in these rites. George Worgul, From Magic to Metaphor (New York: Paulist Press, 1980). For an attentive voice to this Catholic transition, see Macchia, “Tongues as a Sign,” 73.
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It is fascinating to go to different Pentecostal congregations and see their approaches to healing. Of course, oil abounds and laying on of hands is pro- vided for many concerns, including healing. In some churches, however, you still hear preachers excoriating the use of scientific medicine as a demonstra- tion of faithlessness. In other, affluent megachurches there is a video clip on breast or prostate cancer or other scientific approaches to health management, and a clinic offered by doctors and nurses from the congregation, as well as the Wednesday night healing service.
It is my thesis that the long heritage of sacramental understanding of heal- ing and anointing of the sick by the community is a helpful middle term that honors medical science as a priority while not precluding the possibility of divine intervention. Understanding Christ’s healing ministry mediated through the community can easily be recognized, phenomenologically, in any Pente- costal healing service, whatever theological or interpretive weight is given to the rite.47 This is precisely what classical theology has interpreted as “sacramental.” (I am fascinated by Tomberlin’s suggestion of associating foot-washing as a ritual with ordination. This would be a great ritual-interpretative tool for my church, if the rite of foot-washing were to be required to precede ordination, so that its sacramental symbolism of service might become more biblical and clearer about the role to which the one to be ordained was called!) I think a sacramental approach to the ritual life of classical Pentecostal wor- ship can contribute both to clarifying one’s self-understanding and to building bridges in recognizing the faith of the church through the ages in one another’s worship.
Ecclesiology
In addition to work on scripture, history, and ritual, we are also called to help the churches clarify their understanding of the place of their movement in the biblical call to unity among all Christians.
The Pentecostal scholarly community is called, by our ecclesial vocation, to provide an interpretation of the doctrine of the church, for the classical Pente- costal churches and for the wider Christian family, as a service to the churches. As a movement barely a century old, the classical Pentecostal churches are only
47 For a discussion of the cultural base in African culture and its challenge to enlightenment rationalism, see Daniela Augustine, “The Empowered Church: Ecclesiological Dimensions of the Events of Pentecost,” in J. C. Thomas, ed., Toward a Pentecostal Ecclesiology: The Church and the Fivefold Gospel (Cleveland, TN: CPT Press, 2010), 207-18.
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gradually developing clarity on their self-understanding as churches, their rela- tionship to one another as a common movement, and their ecumenical profile.48 There is a traditional tension between dynamic movements in the church, between a restorationism that is a contribution to the church catholic, as with the renewals of John Wesley and Francis of Assisi, and a restorationism that would reject the Christian heritage of two thousand years on behalf of a new, “true” and separate church. Both tendencies can be found through Christian history, from the first Gnostics to contemporary entrepreneurial messianic evangelists. The distinction between restorationism as renewal and primitiv- ism, however, is an important decision to be made in service to the church, its unity, and its renewal.49 For Catholic Charismatics, the late Pope John Paul challenged the renewal to see itself as “a very important component of the entire renewal of the Church.”50
There are internal Pentecostal ecclesiological tensions between, on the one hand, a continuity/tradition approach to the church and a sacramental self- understanding that can be found among the Pentecostal denominations that emerged from the Wesleyan Holiness movement with Methodist-Anglican roots,51 and, on the other, finished-work, Baptistic churches with a more con- gregationally focused, collaboration-for-mission, restorationist ecclesiology. Some of the former have bishops and are even sacramental in their theology of baptism, for example. Some of the latter do not see their denomination as “church” in the proper sense, but rather a collaborative mission movement serving the congregations.
As a movement, your denominations have been enriched by the scholars who document the ecclesial concerns of your heritage, by the relational con- cerns that have characterized their churches in more ecumenically open peri- ods of their life, and by looking to the dialogues as a source for clarifying your
48 Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, An Introduction To Ecclesiology: Ecumenical, Historical and Global Perspectives (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), and Kärkkäinen, “The Leaning Tower of Pentecostal Ecclesiology,” 266.
49 Archer, A Pentecostal Hermeneutic , 152.
50 December 11, 1979, in Bernardin, “Come Holy Spirit,” 199. Or as Cardinal Bernardin himself said, “It is my firm conviction that one of the greatest fruits of the Second Vatican Council was the rise of the charismatic renewal of the Catholic Church” (391).
51 Dale M. Coulter, “The Development of Ecclesiology in the Church of God (Cleveland, TN, TN): A Forgotten Contribution?” Pentecostal Theology 29, no. 1 (2007): 76.
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own ecclesiological option and its relationship to the longer history and broader reality of the church.52
Visible unity, especially as the classical ecumenical movement understands it, will not soon be the goal of most classical Pentecostal denominations and your ecumenical agenda. The common study of biblical koinonia, however, and a common recounting of the long history of the visible Christian community and the Holy Spirit’s role in the development of this tradition will: (a) lay the groundwork for deeper understanding, (b) generate Pentecostal scholarship on ecclesiology, your own and ecumenical, and (c) instruct us in the historic churches how better to discern the Holy Spirit’s role in the variety of catholic renewal movements in history.53
One of our more critical colleagues has noted: “Although Pentecostalism is now over a century old, its theology of the church is sorely underdeveloped. In practice, Pentecostal churches eclectically borrow from other theological tradi- tions and apply their practices in pragmatic and technical ways, but with little understanding of their philosophical and theological implications.”54 As an outsider, I would say that this moment in history is truly a kairotic one for the Pentecostal scholar to contribute to interpreting the identity of the classical Pentecostal churches, their contributions to the ecumenical unity of all Chris- tians, and our common potential for witness to the prophetic ministry of the Holy Spirit to a hurting world. The ecclesial role of the Pentecostal scholar is a great calling. These theologians contribute to the centuries ahead, to the classical Pentecostal churches, to the wide renewal of the Holy Spirit in the church, and to the mission and witness of all Christians together in the world.
I am more patient in tarrying for what the Holy Spirit might do with our humble scholarship and relationship building. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen reminds us of “the journey-like nature of all theology, including the theology of the church. As long as theology is in via, it has the potential for development,
52 Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., “The Holy Spirit and the Unity of the Church: The Challenge of Pente- costal, Charismatic, and Independent Movements,” in D. Donnelly, A. Denaux, and J. Fameré, eds., The Holy Spirit, the Church, and Christian Unity (Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters, 2005), 417. Also Veli- Matti Kärkkäinen, Spiritus ubi vult spirat: Pneumatology in Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue (1972-1989) (Helsinki: Luther-Agricola-Society, 1998).
53 See, for example, “Perspectives on Koinonia: Final Report of the International Roman Catho- lic/Pentecostal Dialogue (1985-1989),” in Pentecostal Theology 12, no. 2 (1990): 117-42.
54 Peter Althouse, “Ascension — Pentecost — Eschaton: A Theological Framework for Pente- costal Ecclesiology,” in J. C. Thomas, ed., Toward a Pentecostal Ecclesiology: The Church and the Fivefold Gospel (Cleveland, TN: CPT Press, 2010), 227.
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self-correction, and learning.”55 However our churches finally define them- selves theologically and situate themselves along the ecumenical journey, we are all a pilgrim people of God, praying to be open to the Spirit and to be enabled by that same Spirit to serve the church and its unity by our spiritual discipline in the intellectual life.
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Thank you for the opportunity to serve together with such a vital theological community. As we are reminded by the World Council in our quest:
One way of describing the one Tradition is by speaking about the ecclesial capacity of receiving revelation. This capacity is nothing less than the gift of the Holy Spirit, received by the apostles at Pentecost and given to every Christian community and to every member of the community in the process of Christian initiation. This capacity is the gift of the Holy Spirit who “will guide you into all the truth” (Jn 16:13), who is the Spirit of truth; that truth is Jesus Christ himself (Jn 14:6), the perfect image of the Father from whom the Spirit proceeds.56
My own work, as member, as seminar leader, and as president, has been enriched by those here present who truly demonstrate the ecclesial vocation of scholars called by the Spirit. It has been enriched by disciples of the great heri- tage of Christian scholars — from Luke and Paul through Aquinas and Calvin to our own day — who serve to build up the body of Christ. We are called to enrich our preaching and our ability to tell our story to the world, to under- stand the presence of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit in our worship life, and to be faithful to Christ’s prayer “that they all might be one, as you Father in me and I in you, that they all may be one in us, that the world might believe” (John 17).
I can leave us with no better admonition as scholars than that of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin to his own Charismatic Catholics shortly before he died:
My friends, always remember what you as a community continue to offer to the whole church of Jesus Christ and to a society so desperately in need of the fire of God’s love.57
55 Kärkkäinen, “The Leaning Tower of Pentecostal Ecclesiology,” 263.
56 A Treasure in Earthen Vessels, #37.
57 “Homily: Annual Archdiocesan Charismatic Conference,” Pentecost Sunday, June 4, 1995, in Bernardin, “Come Holy Spirit,” 392.
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