'Delivered by the power of god': Toward a Pentecostal understanding of salvation

International Journal of Systematic Theology

Volumn 10, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 447-467

  Coulter, Dale ^a  

^a REGENT UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61149234851     PISSN: 14631652     EISSN: 14682400     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2400.2008.00380.x     Document Type: Review

References (60)

1. See Steven J. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom, JPTsup 1 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), pp. 32-57, 182-5, who grounds his revisioning of Pentecostal spirituality in the recovery of holiness as affective integration through eschatological orientation;
2. Frank D. Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), pp. 11-18, who wants to broaden Spirit baptism so as to encompass both the initial conversion to God and a second conversion to the world;
3. Amos Yong, The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), pp. 81-120, who sees soteriology as 'the beginning thematic locus of any world pentecostal theology' (p. 81);
4. and Edmund Rybarczyk, Beyond Salvation: Eastern Orthodoxy and Classical Pentecostalism on Becoming Like Christ (Milton Keynes: Paternoster Press, 2004), p. 16, where he claims that 'theology is always soteriological' for Orthodoxy and Pentecostalism.
5. This problem has been catalogued by numerous persons both inside and outside the movement. In particular, Walter Hollenweger has consistently pointed to such a discrepancy. See W. Hollenweger, 'Pentecostals and the Charismatic Movement', in C. Jones, G. Wainwright and E. Yamold, eds., The Study of Spirituality (London: SPCK, 1986), pp. 549-54;
6. W. Hollenger, 'The Black Roots of Pentecostalism', in A. Anderson and W. Hollenweger, eds., Pentecostals After a Century: Global Perspectives on a Movement in Transition (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 33-44. Hollenweger has maintained that despite doctrinal plurality, one can find a common spirituality in the Black roots of Pentecostalism.
7. See Sallie McFague, Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1982), p. 117.
8. Smith Wigglesworth, 'Himself Took Our Infirmities', in Ever Increasing Faith, revised edn, ed. Wayne E. Warner (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1971), p. 62.
9. Smith Wigglesworth, 'Have Faith in God', in Ever Increasing Faith, p. 13.
10. Smith Wigglesworth, 'Realizing Your Ambition and Fulfilling Your Desire', in Wayne Warner and Joyce Lee, eds., The Essential Smith Wigglesworth: Selected Messages by the Legendary Evangelist (Ann Arbor: MI: Servant Publications), p. 249.
11. John G. Lake, 'The God-Men', in Gordan Lindsey, ed., Spiritual Hunger, the God-Men, and Other Sermons by John G. Lake (Dallas, TX: Christ for the Nations, 1976), p. 20.
12. John G. Lake, 'The Ultimate Test of True Christianity', in Spiritual Hunger, p. 65.
13. See John G. Lake, 'Consciousness of God', 'Evolution of Christian Consciousness' and 'Christian Consciousness', in John G Lake: The Complete Collection of His Life Teachings, compiled by Roberts Liardon (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 1999), pp. 232-40, 303-17, 318-28.
14. J.H. King, 'The Old Time Religion', in B.E. Underwood, ed., Christ - God's Love Gift: Selected Writings of J.H. King, vol. 1 (Franklin Springs, GA: Advocate Press, 1969), p. 109.
15. J.H. King, 'The Three Births of the Sons of God', in Christ - God's Love Gift, p. 139.
16. G.T Haywood, The Birth of the Spirit in the Days of the Apostles, as found in The Life and Writings of Elder G.T. Haywood, ed. Paul D. Dugas (repr. Stockton, CA: Apostolic Press, 1968), p. 18.
17. Haywood, Life and Writings, p. 24.
18. See also G.T. Haywood, The Victim of the Flaming Sword, in Life and Writings, pp. 5-9;
19. and The Finest of the Wheat, in Life and Writings, p. 43.
20. Rybarczyk, Beyond Salvation, pp. 324-53. I should note that I make a distinction between Eastern Christianity and Eastern Orthodoxy. The former designates all forms of Christianity originating in the eastern Roman empire and into Persia whereas the later refers to the autocephalous churches who have historic connections to the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
21. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, p. 197.
22. Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit, p. 97.
23. Many other Pentecostal theologians have pointed toward the holistic nature of its soteriology. For example, see Yong, The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh, pp. 79-98.
24. For example, see Jonathan Edwards, 'A Divine and Supernatural Light', in Selected Writings of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Harold P. Simonson (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1970), pp. 65-88. Edwards attempts to make just such an argument in support of a Reformed understanding of conversion as involving divine monergism rather than synergism.
25. J. H. King, From Passover to Pentecost, fourth edn, revised and enlarged (Franklin Springs, GA: Advocate Press, 1976), p. 103.
26. King, From Passover to Pentecost, p. 116.
27. David K. Bernard, The New Birth, Studies in Pentecostal Theology, vol. 2 (Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame Press, 1984), p. 16.
28. Bernard, The New Birth, pp. 16-17.
29. Robert Clarence Lawson, The Anthropology of Christ Our Kinsman Redeemer, ed. William Howard Collier (1925; repr. Piqua, OH: Ohio Ministries, 2000).
30. Lawson, The Anthropology of Christ Our Kinsman Redeemer, pp. 1-33, 47. Lawson employs the idea of miscegenation, the mixing of blood from different races, in order to argue that Jesus' blood was a mixture of Jewish, African and European bloodlines.
31. David (Paul) Yonggi Cho, The Fourth Dimension (Plainfield, NJ: Logos International, 1979), pp. 36-66;
32. The Fourth Dimension, vol. 2: More Secrets for a Successful Faith Life (Plainfield, NJ: Bridge Publishing, 1983), pp. viii-x.
33. Cho, The Fourth Dimension, vol. 2, p. ix.
34. David (Paul) Yonggi Cho, When I Am Weak, Then I Am Strong, A Sermon Series, vol. 3 (Seoul, Korea: Seoul Logos, 2003), pp. 105-6.
35. See also David (Paul) Yonggi Cho, Salvation, Health & Prosperity: Our Threefold Blessings in Christ (Altamonte Springs, FL: Creation House, 1987), pp. 19-25. Cho describes humans as in bondage to the devil because sinful existence closes the human spirit off to God. This is one way Cho interprets death. Once closed off to God, humans become servants of the devil or they become 'sourish', by which Cho means that a person is closed in upon himself or herself through sinful drives and desires.
36. James Anquandah, 'Can the Church be Renewed? Experiences of an African Independent Church', Ecumenical Review 31 (1979), p. 255.
37. Kingsley Larbi utilizes this quotation at the beginning of his description of Pentecostal churches in Ghana as a way of encapsulating their theology. See E. Kingsley Larbi, Pentecostalism: The Eddies of Ghanaian Christianity, Studies in African Pentecostal Christianity (Accra, Ghana: Centre for Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies, 2001), p. 97.
38. E. Kingsley Larbi, 'The Nature of Continuity and Discontinuity of Ghanaian Pentecostal Concept of Salvation in African Cosmology', Asian Journal of Pentecostal Theology 5 (2002), pp. 87-106 (p. 94).
39. See also Larbi, Pentecostalism, pp. 12-13.
40. See Mercy Amba Oduyoye, 'Jesus Christ', in Susan Frank Parsons, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 153.
41. Afua Kuma, Jesus of the Deep Forest: The Prayers and Praises of Afua Kuma, trans. Jon Kirby (Accra: Asempa Publishers, 1981), pp. 5, 7, 11, 14.
42. Kuma, Jesus of the Deep Forest, p. 29.
43. See also Elizabeth Amoah and Mercy Amba Oduyoye, 'The Christ for African Women', in Virginia Fabella and Mercy Amba Oduyoye, eds., With Passion and Compassion: Third World Women Doing Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1989), pp. 41-5. Amoah and Oduyoye use Afua Kuma's thought to make that point that for African women: Death and life-denying forces are the experience . . . and so Christ, who countered these forces and who gave back her child to the widow of Nain, is the African woman's Christ. This Christ is the liberator from the burden of disease and the ostracism of a society riddled with blood-taboos and theories of inauspiciousness arising out of women's blood.
44. Paul Gifford, Ghana's New Christianity: Pentecostalism in a Globalizing African Economy (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004), pp. 83-112.
45. Gifford, Ghana's New Christianity, p. 109.
46. 'Nature of Continuity and Discontinuity', pp. 96-9.
47. Andrew Sung Park, The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian Concept of Han and the Christian Doctrine of Sin (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1993), pp. 15-30.
48. Walter Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel, repr. Library of Theological Ethics (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1997), p. 61.
49. Some Reformed theologians such as William Perkins have pointed toward a development of sinfulness even while maintaining total depravity. See Perkins, A Golden Chain, chapter 12, in The Work of William Perkins, ed. Ian Breward, The Courtenay Library of Reformation Classics (Appleford: Sutton Courtenay Press, 1970), pp. 191-4. However, the theological rationale for total depravity is that humans are entirely sealed off from God from birth. This is part of the curse for the offense against God.
50. See also Kingsley Larbi, 'Nature of Continuity and Discontinuity', p. 99;
51. Cheryl Bridges Johns, 'Healing and Deliverance: A Pentecostal Perspective', in Jürgen Moltmann and Karl-Josef Kuschel, Pentecostal Movements as an Ecumenical Challenge (London: SCM Press, 1996), p. 48, who also discuss this dualism.
52. J. Louis Martyn, Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1997), p. 87. Martyn describes this view as 'apocalyptic rectification'.
53. Juan Sepúlveda, 'Pentecostalism as Popular Religiosity', International Review of Mission 78 (1989), pp. 80-88 (p. 83).
54. See Beverly Roberts Gaventa, 'God Handed Them Over: Reading Romans 1:18-32 Apocalyptically', Australian Biblical Review 53 (2005), pp. 42-53. Gaventa argues that 'handing over' is Paul's shorthand for God actively turning humanity over to anti-god powers, namely, sin and death. Judgement is in the handing over to other powers.
55. For brief summaries of Messalianism, see 'Messalians', in EL. Cross and E.A. Livingston, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, third edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1997), p. 1075;
56. T. Spidlik, The Spirituality of the Christian East: A Systematic Handbook (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1986), p. 72;
57. and George Maloney, 'Introduction', Pseudo-Macarius: The Fifty Spiritual Homilies and the Great Letter (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press. 1992), pp. 8-9.
58. As cited in Spidlik, The Spirituality of the Christian East, p. 72.
59. K. Ware, The Orthodox Way, revised edition (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1999), p. 100; my emphasis.
60. D. Staniloae, Orthodox Spirituality: A Practical Guide for the Faithful and a Definitive Manual for the Scholar, trans. Archimandrite Jerome and Otilia Kloos (South Canaan, PA: St Tikhon's Seminary Press, 2002), p. 97.