Click to join the conversation with over 500,000 Pentecostal believers and scholars
| PentecostalTheology.com
Doing Theology
in Isolation
were dissenters
become a
growing
1
contributions to what would
dissent. It was a time of
The Church in North America is
unique
in the world. Descendant from
European Christianity, many early
North American Christians
from established and State churches. The Puritans and Quakers
both leaned toward dissent. William
Penn,
Ann Hutchinson and
Roger
Williams made
significant
tradition of
religious
change;
a time of movement.
Many
old
patterns,
forms and ties were
with the Old World as
pilgrims
and
immigrants
moved across
Atlantic. There were
gains
in this, of course, but there were also
broken
the
losses.
The American
ited. There
which the Church
America,
though,
could
particular person
or
group
didn’t ular
person
frontier was vast, and
portrayed
as
largely
uninhab-
was room for
spreading
out.
Open space
was a
luxury
in the Old World had
long
since
forgotten.
In North
there was
plenty
of room to ensure that a
person
find a place to be
by
him or herself. It was soon evident that if a
want to associate with another
partic-
or
group
the solution was a fairly simple one.
They
could always.
move on. There was
always
room in the next
valley
to do it
their own
way.
Individualism,
Each new
valley
offered better
opportunities. exerted. Controversial ideas
understanding
were the rule of the
day.
and
perhaps
D.C. are four
pluralistic for the scores of
creativity,
and
escapism
new
possibilities-different
Personalities could be expressed. Power could be
could be embraced.
Opinions
no
longer held valid could be
ejected.
Little wonder that within this
environment, thinkers like Thomas Jefferson could be nurtured.
Today
inscribed on the wall inside the Jefferson Memorial in
Washington
ideals which Jefferson held. One of these ideals was that
religion
is a matter of one’s own conscience.
In a newly emerging country it was a thought which was consistent with the democratic ideal-itself an ideal which
placed
a premium on the worth of each individual’s ideas. It was a
genuinely
of religion. And it helped pave the
way
American-born churches which would follow.
Many
of these were
vibrant, adaptable,
and
nurturing
to life on the
frontier-Methodists, Baptists,
Holiness churches, even Pente- costals
ultimately
made a contribution here. The
rapid spread
of Chris- tianity
in North America was
surely
a product of this
thinking,
but so were some less than orthodox ideas-Christian
innovative,
challenging,
Jehovah’s Witnesses and others.
Science, Mormonism,
so was the theol-
didn’t have to wait for a magisterium
If
religion
were a matter of one’s own conscience,
ogy
which
supported
its
diversity. Everyone
became a theologian-in some sense both a blessing and a curse of the Reformation.
True,
one
a passage could
to
speak
before
1
2
be
properly understood,
but then, one didn’t
necessarily
feel the need for
any
kind of
community
in order to
interpret
the Bible.
Any person or
any group
could
interpret
and
theologize
in
complete
isolation from any
other
person
or
group. Doing theology
could be viewed as forming one’s own
opinion
on the text. It was a task which when used
posi- tively
addressed hard
questions, pushed
on to new
frontiers, and set timely
new
agendas.
Viewed
negatively
it was sometimes
thought
to be the
plaything
of a select few who
played
an esoteric
game
in some ivory tower,
untouched
by
real life around them. In some
cases, it was used to avoid the hard
questions
of life and
ministry,
and it
yielded
a sectarian outcome. In still others, it bordered on
banality.
Benjamin
B. Warfield didn’t
begin by being
a sectarian. But in some respects
he ended
up
there. His individual
quest
was a search for real answers. On the one hand he had an invalid wife who was not healed. On the other, he was confronted
by
the countless claims of Roman Catholics, Irvingites,
Christian Scientists and numerous “faith healers” that “miracles of
healing”
still occur. In his life and
experience they didn’t. And his book
Counterfeit
Miracles was a logical outcome. He chose to lift
up
a theology which reflects the concerns of one
aspect
of the
Church,
an
aspect
in which the
age
of miracle is banished to the past
but which ascribes to
suffering
a purposeful role in the Christian life. The
pastoral problem
of unachieved miracles and dashed
hopes is, therefore,
avoided.
The claims of the “Word-Faith”
theologians
come at the same issue, but from another
equally
sectarian
perspective.
Miracles are as com- mon as
you
want them to be. Just
name
the
miracle,
and claim it in faith. This
theology judges people
like Warfield as faithless-as
typi- cal of a
generation
who
possess
the form of
godliness
but lack in power (2
Tim.
3:5). Any
failure of a miracle to be manifest is a direct result of some other
personal
or moral failure. It is a failure of
faith,
or the
presence
of some sin in the life of the one
seeking
the miracle. In some
ways,
this
theology
seems to thrive on the
very pastoral
issues which Warfield
sought
to avoid. But it avoids the truth that Warfield preserved-there
is a Divine reason for the miracle or the
suffering
to take
place.
God has now become a genie. “Miracles” have trivialized the Miracle Maker.
Each of these
theologies
is sectarian. Each of them is exclusivist. Each of them has become a fortress
designed
to preserve “truth” as it is perceived by
those who hold the
position,
and to
protect
it from
any competing
“truth” claim. Both of them
attempt
to defend God
and
the way they
understand God to be at work in the world. Each of them misses the truth that both of them are
seeking
to lift
up.
“Jesus Christ is the same
yesterday
and
today
and forever
(Hebrews 13:8).”
Jesus did heal and
perform
miracles. But He didn’t do it
everywhere
and for everyone.
Jesus still heals and
performs
miracles. But He doesn’t do it everywhere
and for
everyone.
But individualism and sectarianism,
2
3
aided and abetted
by doing theology
in isolation, even the isolation of
a tradition whether Reformed or Pentecostal, or
Wesleyan
or Catholic
yields
less than the whole
Gospel
on the
or for that matter.
°
subject
of miracles and heal-
ing, any subject,
Theology
and the work of
doing theology belongs
to the whole
Church. It cannot be done without
dialogue.
It must be done in relation
to the whole Church in the whole world. North American
theologies
of
all kinds need to be
tempered by theologies
of the rest of the Christian
world. And twentieth
century theologies
must take into account the
foundations laid
by
Christian thinkers of
previous generations
as well.
Anti-intellectualism and the lack of a historical
perspective yield
ulti-
mately
once more to sectarianism.
This issue of Pneuma
carries
three
warnings
about
doing theology
in
isolation and its
resulting
sectarianism. Mel Dieter reminds us of the
sectarian debates which have
very effectively separated
two fraternal
movements for
nearly
a century. Feelings and emotions still run
high . between the Holiness and Pentecostal Movements. Each one of them
holds to a “theological” distinctive. Each one has buttressed this “ulti-
mate truth” claim with a carefully argued theology. But the
theologies
have been
largely
exclusivist in
nature, making
no room and
offering
no
hearing
for the distinctive of the other.
Similarly,
Jon Ruthven
shows’ the biases in Warfield’s work which allow no room for Pente-
costals and Charismatics while Terris Neuman
highlights
the confused
sources which lie behind the
theology
of the Word-Faith teachers
which leave out
many
Reformed and
Dispensationalist
sisters and
brothers. Both Warfield’s cessationist views and Kenneth
Hagin’s
Word-Faith views fail to inform the whole Church because
they are.
theologies developed
in isolation.
It is time for Pentecostals and Charismatic Christians of all kinds to
look at the masses around them and ask what kind of
theology
the
whole
Church
needs.
Only
when we come to that
point
will it ever
become
possible
for us
together
to “attain to the
unity
of the faith
(Ephesians 4:13).”
Sectarianism is
only
as
good
as its
ability
to lose
itself once
again
in the whole Church while it raises to our conscious-
ness a
long
overlooked truth of the
Gospel.
To dwell too
long
in the
land of sectarianism is to move toward the horizon of
heresy.
North
America is
virtually
out of new
valleys,
and sectarianism in a
post-
modem and
pluralistic
‘
society
is a
luxury
the church can no
longer
afford.
Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. Editor
3
