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Saul’s Armor: The Problem and the Promise
D. Lyle Dabney
Catholic theology has arrived at a turning point in the international Pentecostal/Roman Catholic dialogue. In this dialogue, I will explore some of its implications for Pentecostal theology today.
Like young David of old, Pentecostalism has reached a turning point in its history; and not unlike that boy who would be king, it is faced with the problem of Saul’s armor. This is the conclusion one is forced to draw upon reading two excellent volumes by Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen on the Theology implicit in this dialogue.
In this dialogue, I will explain that conclusion and explore theology today.
The problem of Saul’s armor was revealed for David in his encounter with the first king of Israel – Saul – having been sent by his father to visit his brothers in the camp of Israel’s army. Young David, in what his siblings dismiss as “childish presumption” (and what the text makes clear is anything but), stands before Israel and demands to know, “Who is [this Goliath] to defy the armies of the living God?”
As 1 Samuel 17 narrates, equipped in a parody of Goliath’s armament by Saul himself, David suddenly finds himself appointed Israel’s defender against the fearsome champion of the Philistines. In Saul’s powerful shepherd – the very weapons that enabled David to slay the lion and the bear – he recognizes his own true hope of triumph over the foe, declaring in the name of the Lord. The words of Zechariah might well have been written as a reflection on just such a story as this: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the LORD of hosts” (Zech 4:6).
There are few events in life more revealing than a genuine encounter with an other; and as Kärkkäinen’s work demonstrates, this is as true for movements and institutions in the present as it is for figures from the past. Kärkkäinen has rendered a signal service to everyone who is involved in Pentecostal or Charismatic theology or simply interested in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit by presenting an analysis of almost three decades of dialogue between Pentecostal and Roman Catholic theologians.