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Lee Roy Martin, ed.
A Future for Holiness: Pentecostal Explorations(Cleveland,tn:cptPress, 2013).
371 pp. $17.95 paperback.
This volume consists of papers delivered at “the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Theology” (3–4). Like that meeting, the overarching focus hereison“holiness,”butthesubtitleofthevolumeismorepreciseinitsdescrip- tion of these essays as “Pentecostal Explorations” on the theme. Martin intro- duces the volume, noting that holiness is a “significant, if at times contentious, feature of the Pentecostal movement” (1). He hopes that in the wake of reac- tionary attacks on “perceived legalism” (2), this volume will “stimulate conver- sation regarding Pentecostal approaches to the theology of holiness,” will point the way toward a “constructive theological agenda,”—one that commends “a fresh look at holiness in its individual, communal, institutional, and global experiences” (3).
There is little analytic treatment of the word in question: holiness. Because there is no definition—not even a working definition—it is not always clear when the object of inquiry is holiness, and when holiness is the intellectual frame for another topic. This means that the reader must infer the definition of holiness from the relevant material in each of the essays. Sometimes this simply requires the reader to make connections to related terms like “sanctification,” (though this tells us more about the holiness of persons than it does about holiness as such). Other times the task is much more difficult and requires the reader to abstract from arguments about other topics, theological loci, or moral practices to construct a plausible meaning of “holiness.”
We may infer something about the term in a given essay by noting its placement in one of the subdivisions of Biblical Studies, Theology, or Practical Theology. Many of the contributors in each section are well known to Pneuma readers, and many of the various subthemes are unsurprising. However, in the first section, there is some new and welcome diversity of concentration on biblical material. Three essays focus on Old Testament texts, and neither of the two New Testament essays center on Luke-Acts; instead, they point us to the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Apocalypse of John as texts that do, or at least should, inform Pentecostal conceptions of holiness. The final essay in this section, by Scott A. Ellington, helpfully bridges the Biblical Studies and Theology sections. Ellington concludes his essay by suggesting a more experiential understanding of sanctification, and while this does not provide an immediate analysis of holiness in either the biblical texts or contemporary theology, it does helpfully point the way from the first section to the second and third.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi: 10.1163/15700747-03702009
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The essays in the Theology section are some of the more provocative, if for no other reason than that “holiness” as a theme more naturally fits within doctrinal reflection than, say, Biblical Studies. Be that as it may, though, these essays offer no theology proper: we read little about the nature of God. Instead their focus is on holiness and humans, sin and salvation (three of the five focus on some aspect of salvation). Daniela Augustine’s plenary address from the 2013 conference, on “Holiness and Economics” appears here, and it is she who articulates some of the most properly theological arguments (about the life of God as worked out in the eucharistically infused economy she proposes). But hers is still clearly a work in moral theology rather than theology proper.
Daniel Castelo attempts to remedy some of the under-definition of the term holiness: firstly by pushing back against older “sanctification” traditions of “prohibitions” (“including mixed bathing … and movie going”) and secondly by arguing that “prohibitions have no place in communal forms of life apart from an enacted and sustained exercise in practical reasoning” (225 and 230, emphasis original). He concludes that, “Holiness is more faithfully and compellingly shown rather than proclaimed, recognized rather than asserted, and embodied rather than conceptualized” (234).
Here again the essays have been ordered well, because this serves as a tran- sition to the “Practical Theology” section of the text. It is not exactly clear what makes each of these essays exercises in “Practical Theology” rather than “The- ology” as such, especially given the nature of the “Theology” essays described above. The only essay that describes the disciplinary methodology of practi- cal theology is Marcia Clarke’s, “A Future for Holiness in Pentecostal Practice.” There she describes the contours of current disciplinary debates that revolve around the emergence of practical theology as a discipline sui generis, rather than as dependent upon biblical studies, theology, and church history—as in the older university model.
It seems that these essays are grouped together because they are issue- oriented rather than speculative in nature (if we might consider the “Theology” essays as speculative). They treat, variously, political cooption of American churches, immigration, psychological development, youth ministry, and moral theology from a Pentecostal perspective. Because these are all roughly practical rather than speculative, it comes as no surprise that there is no more develop- ment of the definition of holiness than in the previous section. But because of the practical nature of the issues, we are given some tools by which to recognize the contours of the term by reference to the practices that the authors take to be constitutive of “holiness” people and/or congregations. There are repeated references to the Wesleyan hinterland of Pentecostal congregations, as well as to the so-called “holiness codes” that arose from these related ecclesial groups.
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And this brings us to what might be considered the biggest contribution of this volume. There seems to be broad agreement that “holiness” should remain a constitutive element of Pentecostal identity. But what some earlier Pentecostals called “holiness” is insufficient and must be reshaped by being more fully integrated into theological claims about God and the practices of God’s people. On this front, the book goes a long way toward fulfilling Martin’s hopes that it will “point the way” toward a “fresh look at holiness.”
Dallas J. Gingles
Ph.D. Candidate, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas
PNEUMA 37 (2015) 281–311
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