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Pneuma 31 (2009) 275-282
One, One, One . . . One Way to God?
A review essay of “In Jesus Name”: The History and Beliefs of Oneness Pentecostals
Marlon Millner Azusa Imani Ministries, Norristown, PA 19401
Abstract
“In Jesus’ Name” is a groundbreaking work on Oneness Pentecostalism. It seeks to be an exhaustive study, which historically situates OP culturally and theologically within a long tradition of Pietism dating back hundreds of years in Europe, and Christocentrism found in American Evangelicalism of the 19th century. However, in lifting up an African-American as the exemplar of Oneness Pentecostalism, the book introduces the person’s “black heritage” as an interpretive key, but then fails to follow through on this insight, despite several works around Oneness Pentecostalism, in particular, and race. This leaves open the possibility that there is a signifi cant hole in an otherwise comprehensive monograph. Indeed, closer attention to social location and the theological problem of race, would have paid off with material that indeed moves the tradition from so-called heterodoxy to a more robust, if contested, conversation with the dogmatic tradition, which the author seeks.
Keywords
Pentecostal, Oneness Pentecostalism, African-American religion, the Trinity, racism, Pietism, Evangelicalism
A debt of gratitude is owed to David Reed for the work “In Jesus’ Name.” 1 The book represents a magnum opus on at least two levels. First, it refl ects more than 30 years of scholarship, research, writing, and refl ection on Oneness Pen- tecostalism by the author, who himself was nurtured within this religious tra- dition as a youth. The book is a result of studies begun in graduate school and
1
David A. Reed, “In Jesus Name”: The History and Beliefs of Oneness Pentecostals (Blandford Forum, UK: Deo, 2008). All references to this book will be made parenthetically in the text as IJN followed by the page number.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009 DOI: 10.1163/027209609X12470371387967
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continued on and off in years of teaching, researching, and participating in scholarly sessions within the ecumenical and charismatic world of Christianity.
Second, the book is a magnum opus because it is simply one of the very few in-depth, (almost) exhaustive, and sympathetic-yet-critical treatments of One- ness Pentecostalism that we have. Most other works, specifi cally on Oneness Pentecostalism, are polemically written by Evangelical Christian scholars or presented triumphantly and apologetically by the movement’s participants. Reed mediates a strong path between those two poles.
The book has three movements. Part I is the legacy of Oneness (or Apos- tolic) Pentecostalism, which in painstaking details seeks to situate the move- ment within a longer and larger strain of christocentric, evangelical Pietism, with roots in Europe and North America. Here Reed attempts to provide a rich theological backdrop to the emergence of Pentecostalism generally and Oneness Pentecostalism in particular over against the view, often held by insiders, that the movement spontaneously generated as a latter rain revival.
Part II is the birth of Oneness Pentecostalism where Reed focuses on central characters within the birth of the modern Pentecostal revival. Reed off ers crit- ical insight into William Durham’s fi nished-work teaching, Durham’s views of the atonement, and his overarching idea of “identifi cation with Christ.” Reed speculates on possible infl uences on Durham, such as E. W. Kenyon. He also meticulously traces how Oneness pioneers who were followers of Durham — Howard Goss prominent among them — take up these themes as a precursor to formulating early Oneness Pentecostal doctrine. In particular, Reed attempts both to nuance the emergence of the “New Issue” around water baptism by immersion in the name of Jesus and to illuminate the theological wrestling in light of the various solutions immediately off ered by looking at E. N. Bell’s rebaptism and refl ection upon it as well as the 1915 compromise in the Assem- blies of God, which preceded the much better known schism around the New Issue just a year later.
Part III outlines a theology of Oneness Pentecostalism in terms of a theol- ogy of the Name. In so doing, Reed posits a Jewish Christian theology, and suggests Oneness Pentecostalism is at least in part reaching back to a very early period in post-New Testament Christianity before the church cut itself off from its Jewish roots and began to refl ect on scripture and practice in light of Hellenized philosophical concerns. Foci in this part of the book include devel- opment of the idea of a “dwelling” Christology, and discussion of strands of the “identifi cationist” position that are not as sectarian as those who see Acts 2:38 as normative for salvation. And fi nally, Reed often suggests a
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way forward, suggesting areas of development for a theology of the Name, refl ecting on the role of the Holy Spirit, and still expressing hope that Oneness Pentecostals might be viewed as heterodox, rather than heretical.
Yet it is not entirely clear how repositioning Apostolic Pentecostalism as heterodox rather than heretical changes the theological debate around the movement. The book’s inherent strength — longterm and in-depth analysis and engagement — is juxtaposed to the reality that Reed rejected Oneness Pentecostalism years ago and is fully committed to and rooted in the dogmatic tradition. Reed, who is now an Anglican theologian, has not had counterparts within the Oneness Pentecostal tradition who could or would engage him in the discursive path he sets forth in the book — a path that recasts possibilities of Oneness Pentecostalism in light of orthodox, Trinitarian theology. I fear that of the few Oneness Pentecostal scholars that do exist, too many will be interested only in those scholarly bits in the work, which they feel buttress their position (such as citations by Reed of Lars Hartman or Emil Bruner; IJN 281, 321). Or at worst, Oneness Pentecostals will take off ense at an attempt to defi ne them as heterodox, when they see themselves as the central preservers of Biblical truth and they will simply dismiss the work. A dismissive response is certainly possible, given how Reed routinely refers to certain Oneness teach- ings as “crude” or lacking understanding (IJN 291, 298), or as inherently something less than as a popular theology (versus systematic Trinitarian ortho- dox theology) (IJN 332).
It is an open question whether my fears — as one who himself was nurtured in Oneness Pentecostalism — are justifi ed. But my upbringing in a non-Anglo form of Oneness Pentecostalism also causes me to wonder whether or not Reed’s work might have been strengthened by deeper engagement with the complexities of social locations among early Oneness Pentecostals and the role such locations — or identities — served to produce a set of claims that might naturally lead to the critical refl ection and ecumenical dialogue the author earnestly desires. I sense that Reed, perhaps more than any recent North American Pentecostal scholar, realizes the role that identity (particularly racial identity) plays in forming notions of what it means to be Christian generally and Oneness Pentecostal in particular. But as Reed develops the terms Ortho- doxy and Heterdoxy in his book, he seems to neglect the very question he raises about how race informs these terms.
For example, Reed states in the introduction, “I am convinced that in theo- logical vision and ministry, [Garfi eld] Haywood exemplifi es a holistic breadth of perspective and spirit that is likely formed and informed by his black
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heritage” (IJN 4). Yet, Reed describes the work of Roswith Gerloff on Oneness and blackness only as a “sub-theme” (IJN 4),
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and refers to Charles Parham as William J. Seymour’s “theological mentor” (IJN 80). Reed often routinely points out race on those far fewer occasions when he cites a non-Anglo writer or preacher. Non whites are the theological exception not the rule in this work. Both the glaring absence of an interpretive lens of identity and the representa- tion of Anglo-American perspectives as the norm indicate this book could be a local history and theology. The book might be better sub-titled, “the history and beliefs of White Oneness Pentecostals.” Is Reed satisfi ed to subsume the identities of all non-whites under a norm of Anglo-Americanism? Most Anglo theology is white because it presumes its perspective, its particularity, as nor- mative. Reed does nothing to disrupt this discourse by robustly defi ning what he means by “black heritage” or deeply explicating how such a heritage informs Haywood as an exemplar of Oneness Pentecostalism. Neither does he explore whether the theological tradition is moved forward by this “black heritage” by off ering a counter narrative to the hostilities among white brethren who parted ways in 1916 in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Could this be an oversight, given the work of Gerloff and others like Iain MacRobert who have paid such deep attention to identity, race and the emergence of Oneness Pentecostalism?3 The existing work on race and theology in Oneness Pentecostalism is so developed that it’s dificult to ignore Reed citing Haywood as an exemplar but not using more refi ned methodological tools to explicate him and those who follow him.
I want to suggest where Reed generally laments the lack of theological engagement in the Anglo sources, one fi nds such engagement in the African- American and other non-Anglo sources. But these are not the norm in the book. Dr. James Clark, former presiding bishop of the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith, one of the largest Oneness Pentecostal denominations in the U.S., has written on “The relationship between theology and social action in the Black Apostolic Tradition.”4 And of course there is the work of Dr. Manuel Gaxiola-Gaxiola, which Reed cites, if not engages (IJN 350). Tese works, like all theology, arise out of historically constituted
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See Roswith I. H. Gerloff , A Plea for British Black T eologies: The Black Church Movement in Britain in Its Transatlantic Cultural and T eological Interaction with Special References to the Pente- costal Oneness (Apostolic) and Sabbatarian Movements (Frankfurt and New York: Peter Lang, 1992).
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Iain MacRobert, The Black Roots and White Racism of Early Pentecostalism in the USA (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1988).
4
James I. Clark, “The Relationship between T eology and Social Action in the Black Apos- tolic Tradition” (MDiv thesis, Union T eological Seminary [New York City], 1990).
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contexts that demand engagement, not further isolation from Orthodoxy, racially or theologically understood. In the case of the strongest written mate- rial among African American Apostolic Pentecostals, their work centers around a corporeal ethics, where the Oneness of God must translate into a Oneness of God’s people, which is why one fi nds a history of interracial fellowship pursued by the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, the trenchant critique of racism by Robert Lawson in the 1920s,5 and even refl ection upon Oneness Pentecostal participation in the “ecumenical” movement by Smallwood E. Williams in the 1950s and 1960s.6 This strain of black Oneness Pentecostal- ism might be identifi cationist, if that can be glossed by saying it’s liberationist.
Likewise in Mexico, Manuel Gaxiola-Gaxiola is working within a dominant Catholic identity over against which everything else is defi ned. T erefore, in some Mexican Apostolic circles it is advantageous to defi ne oneself as Evan- gelical, not in the Anglo-North American sense, but over against the prevailing Christian identity of Catholicism. And this applies even to Gaxiola-Gaxiola refl ecting on language that might bridge the Trinitarian-Oneness divide.
7 Marginalization as other in both African-American and Mexican arenas pro- vide a context for robust engagement because naming someone heretical has clear theological implications that are social, economic, and political. But then again, this is precisely the point of most contemporary challenges to supposed Orthodoxy by, say, black, feminist, queer, and postcolonial theologies, just to name a few.
Tese non-Anglo Oneness Pentecostals are doing more than engaging in doctrinal ripostes attempting to defi ne themselves as good Evangelicals. Gerl- off may have a point in suggesting that the break between Oneness and Trini- tarians should be read racially, because if University of Chicago theologian Kathryn Tanner is right that the church is a community of argument about Christian materials,8 then persons in the Assemblies of God and the United Pentecostal Church defi nitely know each other much better than they know their respective partners in the Church of God in Christ or the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World. Evangelical as a term in North American theology is
5
Robert Lawson, The Anthropology of Jesus Christ Our Kinsman (New York: Church of Christ Publishing, date uncertain).
6
Smallwood E. Williams, This is My Story: A Signifi cant Life Struggle (Washington, DC: Wil- liam Willoughby, 1981).
7
Manuel Gaxiola-Gaxiola, “Reverberations from Memphis,” PNEUMA: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Theology 18 (Spring 1996): 125-28.
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See Kathryn Tanner, T eories of Culture: A New Agenda for T eology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997).
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bound up in racial identity. It’s a term that non-Pentecostal African American Christians do not use and by which they do not defi ne their Orthodoxy. More- over, black academic theologians, in a way consistent with black Oneness theologians, are typically neither overly concerned about their orthodoxy nor endless abstractions and speculation of ecumenical and philosophical theolo- gians. This lack of interest in Orthodoxy has caused more than one theologian to marginalize theologies by people of color as contextual over against their universal theologies.9
Right worship is about more than saying the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or Lord Jesus Christ. It’s about who gets to say it, where, when, and why. So, when Reed works so hard to put Oneness Pentecostals on the heterodox margins of North American Evangelicalism, it’s a place where non-Anglo Apostolics may have no interest in locating themselves because they have no voice there.
Finally, this concern about the absence of framing theology around identity (or at least off ering multiple readings of North American Oneness Pentecostalism(s) in light of varied identities) is most obvious not in the neglect of African- American or Latin American sources, but in the claim that Oneness is a Jewish Christian theology of the Name. One could argue it was anti-Jewishness that led to Hellenized ideas overtaking Hebraic thought patterns and forms about Jesus and God. If indeed Oneness Pentecostals are engaging in a theology based on Jewish identity, one might expect that such a quest might be fecund for dialogue between Oneness Pentecostal Christians and Jews. But this is highly unlikely, because Reed locates his renamed Jewish theology of the name with Evangelicalism, which can be anti-Jewish, with theologies of superses- sionism and the like.
Most of Anglo-Oneness Pentecostalism’s polemical engagement with Chris- tian theology is a defense against accusations of heresy from Evangelicalism, as they attempt to out-evangelicalize Evangelicals. Here, Oneness Pentecostals follow their Trinitarian Pentecostal counterparts in attempting to establish their bona fi des — in other words their whiteness. It is precisely this vicious, idolatrous cycle that Oneness Pentecostals of color attempt to break as they assert that in the Jewish fl esh of Jesus dwelled the fullness of the Godhead bodily.
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See J. Deotis Roberts, Africentric Christianity: A T eological Appraisal for Ministry (Valley Forge, Penn.: Judson Press, 2000). Interestingly enough, Roberts, who criticized the critique that black theology has little interest in the Trinity, is himself trained as a philosophical theologian.
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Duke University T eologian J. Cameron Carter gets to the heart of this matter when he writes, “My fundamental contention is that modernity’s racial imagination has it genesis in the theological problem of Christianity’s quest to sever itself from its Jewish roots.”10 How does Carter propose to solve this problem?
Doing theology from within crises of life and death requires that Christian theology reconceive itself as a discourse. T eological learning must be reconceived as a labor of life and death, a labor tied not simply to the resurrected Christ but to the Christ who was resurrected from the dead and in whose Jewish (nonracial) fl esh, Christian thought claims, all creation lives and moves and has being (cf. Acts 17:28).11
Carter continues:
T erefore, as a twenty-first century discourse, Christian theology must take its bear- ings from the Christian theological languages and practices that arise from the lived Christian worlds of dark people in modernity and how such peoples reclaimed (and in their own ways salvaged) the language of Christianity, and thus Christian theology, from being a discourse of death — their death. This is the language and practices of by which dark people, insofar as many of them comported themselves Christian subjects in the world, have imagined and performed a way of being in the world beyond the pseudotheological containment of whiteness. To the extent that they have done this, they mark out a diff erent trajectory for theology as a discourse. The language and practices, therefore, of dark people who have lived into a Christian imagination can no longer be deemed theologically irrelevant nor made invisible, which is what white intellectuals in the theological academy have tended to do.12
So, though Reed lifts Haywood up as an exemplar, he either overlooks or remains unwilling to excavate his black heritage, or what Carter would call his dark fl esh. In brief there is good reason to believe that Gaxiola Gaxiola, Robert Lawson, Haywood, and others see their own fl esh at stake when the read the fl esh of Jesus and develop doctrines of salvation, baptism, and Oneness of God.
13 If Reed fi nds Oneness examinations of the humanity of Jesus so thin and underdeveloped, it may be because he neglects some of the most fruitful sources.
10
J. Cameron Carter, Race: A T eological Account (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) 4.
11
Carter, Race, 377.
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Carter, Race, 378.
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Elsewhere, I have critiqued the thinness of Pentecostal theology’s attention to the bodies of interlocutors in the movement’s development; see my “Resurrecting Bodies, Resurrecting Mem- ories: Azusa and the Archaeology of Pentecostal T eology” (paper presented at the 35th annual session of the Society for Pentecostal Theology, Pasadena, California, March 2006).
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Nevertheless, we can thank Reed for pointing the way in admitting and highlighting the neglected narrative of Haywood and others like him in order to understand fully the potentialities of Oneness Pentecostal theology and the capacity of a Jewish Christian theology of the Name to reclaim the Jewishness of Jesus and of the Church. Ironically, this neglected aspect in an otherwise stellar work undermines a typical claim sung in many Oneness Pentecostal churches, “One, one, one . . . one way to God. Baptized in Jesus name!” Even among Oneness Pentecostals, there is more than one way.
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