A Few Comments About a Recent Dialogue Between Pentecostals and the World Communion of Reformed Churches

As a former Pentecostal I sometimes look around at what is going on theologically with the scholarship side of things in Pentecostalism.  One of the reasons, though not the only reason, I left the Pentecostal movement was the discovery of the disconnect between the more fundamentalist and classical side of Pentecostalism on the local and congregational level and the upper echelons of Pentecostal denominational leadership, college and seminary education, and the theological scholarship and journals of the movement.  Many of the pastors in the classical Pentecostal denominations have little to no theological education other than basic Bible college training and even among those there are many who never graduated.  Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker, for example, never got past one or two semesters of Bible college and both were at one time ordained with the Assemblies of God.

However, because of the stereotypes of Pentecostals and Charismatics as ecstatic loons who howl like dogs and moo like cows during evangelist revivals conducted by Rodney Howard Browne or the late Oral Roberts, it is not known that many Pentecostal scholars went on from Bible college to get theological degrees from very liberal seminaries where their Pentecostal views were more acceptable because of the emphasis on existential and experiential theology.  I consider this to be true due to the emphasis on neo-orthodoxy and the existential theology of Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Schleiermacher and others.  I could name a few of these Pentecostal heavyweights with whom I became familiar with during my time as a Pentecostal because I did my undergraduate training at Southeastern University, Lakeland, Florida where I graduated in 1991.  The previous name of the school was Southeastern College of the Assemblies of God, which was at the time primarily a ministerial or Bible college but has since that time become more of a Pentecostal liberal arts college.  One of the Pentecostal scholars to whom I refer is Dr. Cecil M. Robeck, Jr.    Robeck has apparently been a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary since 1974.

Honestly, I was terribly disappointed to learn that the Assemblies of God has many ties to theologically liberal ecumenical movements in the years subsequent to my time as a student at Southeastern College of the Assemblies of God.  When I was a student we were told that Pentecostals were at first ostracized by Evangelicals because of their alleged ties to cultic faith healing and other extremes.  It was emphasized that the National Association of Evangelicals had at that time recently accepted Pentecostal denominations into membership and that the NAE had in fact elected an Assemblies of God minister as president.  Since that time the NAE has moved in a decidedly social justice direction.  The most recent president of the NAE is a Korean pastor from the Presbyterian Church in America, which is now ordaining allegedly "celibate" gay men who still identify as being sexually oriented to the same sex.

When I was a student at Southeastern one of my professors, Dr. Terris Neuman, who retired in June of 2020.  Neuman did his seminary training at Fuller Seminary in California, apparently because of the presence of Dr. Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. there.  Neuman taught a class in New Testament exegesis at Southeastern when I was there and during one of the classes Neuman actually said that the Bible is not the word of God but that the Bible "becomes the word of God" after you are born again and able to read it as a born again Christian.  This is the neo-orthodox position, not the Evangelical or even the Reformed position.  To his credit, however, Neuman rejected the Word of Faith movement and encouraged his students to read A Different Gospel by D. R. McConnell, a professor at Oral Roberts University, a book which documented the plagiarism of E. W. Kenyon by Kenneth Hagin, the father of the WoF movement.  But I digress.

Fuller Seminary was originally founded by solid Reformed scholars, including the late Baptist, Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, who was also a student of Dr. Gordon H. Clark, whose theology and apologetics helped me to clarify my Calvinist and Reformed theological thinking from a more biblical and axiomatic and confessional point of view after I left the Pentecostal movement around 1995.  The late Harold Lindsell, however, had to write a book called The Battle for the Bible after later faculty members at Fuller repudiated biblical inerrancy and postulated a limited inerrancy view instead, sparking the more liberal neo-evangelical movement, which included a former student of Dr. Clark's named Paul King Jewett.  Clark later refuted some of Jewett's views including the ordination of women in Presbyterian churches.  The irony is that Jewett early on wrote a book against the neo-orthodox theology of Emil Brunner, a book which Dr. Gordon H. Clark lauded.  The title of that book was Emil Brunner's Concept of Revelation, published in 1954.  Ironically Jewett would move later in the neo-orthodox direction himself.

Getting back to the original title of this post, however, it was no surprise to me to learn that Cecil Robeck participated in yet another dialogue with a theologically liberal ecumenical council or communion, The World Communion of Reformed Churches.  The name communion is misleading, however, since Presbyterian polity does not allow for an ecclesiastical communion which presides above church congregations and presbyteries.  The ecumenical conference to which I refer was posted in an article at an online journal of Pentecostal theology, Cyberjournal for Pentecostal-Charismatic Research, July 2020 #27,  "Called to God's Mission": Report of the Third Round of the International Dialogue Between Representatives of the World Communion of Reformed Churches And Some Classical Pentecostal Churches and Leaders: 2014---2020, [PDF].  Dr. Harold Hunter of the Pentecostal Holiness Church is the sponsor of the website and the online journal.  The late Rev. Oral Roberts was also ordained by the Pentecostal Holiness Church, although ironically Roberts was more of a Word of Faith and prosperity preacher than a Pentecostal holiness preacher.  The Pentecostal holiness churches areWesleyan in their theology and adhere to the Wesleyan view of entire sanctification as a second work of grace after conversion and baptism of the Holy Spirit with the initial physical evidence as the third definite work of grace, according to which Pentecostal believers are supernaturally empowered to witness in evangelistic mission by means of the supernatural gifts such as divine healing, words of knowledge, speaking in foreign languages they do not know, etc.  But the anecdotal accounts of such supernatural gifts are never independently substantiated.

Unfortunately the account of the things discussed during the Pentecostal/Reformed dialogue goes way beyond mere mission and evangelism as it is understood by the typical Pentecostal church goer.  In fact, according to the paper posted in the Cyberjournal, evangelism also includes social justice and environmental concerns that relate to ecology and the alleged abuse of natural resources by multinational corporations.  Under the head of Mission and Salvation we read:

16. Evangelism of individual people, that is, proclaiming the message about the gift of being “born again” (John 3:5-8) is part of the mission of the church, but it cannot be limited only to that. Evangelization includes evangelism, but it is more than evangelism. Evangelization also includes proclaiming the message about God’s rule or reign over the whole of human life, and the message about the possibility of human flourishing as a gift from God in the midst of suffering, weakness, poverty, and illness. It also includes the call to act responsibly for our fellow human beings and for all of creation.  ("Called to Mission," Cyberjournal 2020, #27).

I am only highlighting a couple of areas but the reader can go to the posted article and read it in its entirety for himself or herself.   Another point of interest is the affirmation of the dialogue between the Vatican and liberal Protestant denominations on the issue of justification.  The original Protestant Reformers insisted on the doctrine of justification by faith alone or sola fide.  But the dialogue today between liberal Protestant denominations and the Vatican changes the Protestant position to accommodate to the papist position by removing the one little word that makes all the difference:  sola or "only".  Even the Assemblies of God does not include the word only in their 16 Fundamental Truths statement.  The A/G position just says that we are justified by faith, which any papist or high church Anglo-Catholic could affirm.  Even the modern liberal Lutherans can affirm justification by faith and agree with the papists because they no longer believe in justification by faith alone or sola fide:

Justification and Justice: The Reformed Understanding of Mission and Salvation

21. For the Reformed, there is an integral relationship between justification and justice. This has been prominently expressed in the association with the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification.[ii] Reformed Christians express the strong conviction that the renewal of life (sanctification) that accompanies justification strengthens us to live (more fully) in gratitude and joyful obedience to God. This is a gift of God’s grace at work in our lives. We may have confidence that the good work that God has begun in us, will be brought to completion (Philippians 1:6). We have nothing that we have not received. Even our capacity to respond to God is God’s gift to us. So also is our perseverance in faith. Good works reflect the effect of God’s grace in us, faith that is active in love.

 

22. Justice is not simply the ethical outworking of justification as a kind of second step; rather it is already entailed theologically in justification, as such. Justification is both a “declaring righteous” and a “setting right.” This insight may be at the root of John Calvin’s insistence that justification and sanctification are inseparable (Institutes, III.2.1); they are to be thought of as a two-fold grace (duplex gratia).[iii]

 

23. In their emphasis on the sovereignty of God, Reformed believers affirm that God is sovereign over all of life, not just the narrowly religious or spiritual aspects of individual lives. They assert with the Psalmist that, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it” (Psalm 24:1). God has entered into covenant with all of creation (Genesis 9:8-12), and God’s covenant of grace intends a “setting right” that is world embracing, including even political, economic, and ecological realities. All of God’s covenantal acts are acts of justification and justice.[iv]

 

24. We acknowledge that justice, like justification, is God’s work in and among us. Our understanding of justice has been obscured and our enactment of justice hampered by our sin. It is God, who will bring about the fulfilment of justice. Even so, we understand ourselves to be called to join in God’s world-transforming work. This has been underscored in such modern-day confessions as the Accra Confession (Covenanting for Justice in the Economy and the Earth) and the Belhar Confession.[v] 

(Ibid., "Called to God's Mission").

The reader will notice a duplicity of emphasis in the quoted section.  The quotes appear at first to be in line with the traditional and confessional view where sanctification is the purpose of justification by faith alone.  But then it is stated that justification is not just imputed righteousness but a "setting right".  Unfortunately the setting right part is in fact the papist view of an infused righteousness or  justification.  Whereas Protestants recognize that only sanctification is infused while justification is imputed.  Justification is about a forensic and legal declaration of elect believers and their individual salvation and has nothing to do with setting the world right through sociological methodologies like social justice, climate change, or the false dignity of homosexual perversion or the hatred of the physical and biological sex that God created a person with as it is promoted by the sex change industry and the ideology of the so-called transgender movement.  It is disturbing that Pentecostalism has so easily gone in the direction of theological liberalism in its scholarship.  But unfortunately this emphasis will eventually trickle down to the laity as well.  Already we are hearing the Pentecostal megachurches emphasize ecstatic experiences over and above biblical doctrine and the inerrancy of Scripture.  The fundamentalist roots of Pentecostalism have long since been rendered to the trash heap of history.  

Moreover, if the Presbyterian Church in America and the National Association of Evangelicals is any indication, Evangelicalism as we once knew it is becoming increasingly neo-evangelical and even outright liberal.  Ironically, even the late Cornelius Van Til was harshly critical of neo-evangelicalism, which he wrongly attributed to Gordon H. Clark.  Even in the Reformed Baptist circles we see apologists like James R. White attacking Reformed conservatives for criticizing the modernist textual criticism movement and for speaking out against self-acknowledged Federal Visionists like Doug Wilson.  At one time Evangelicals were identified as Fundamentalists.  But now it is popular to attack solid Evangelical and Reformed conservatives as those nasty "Fundamentalists".   If defending the axiom of Scripture, biblical inerrancy, the Byzantine majority text, confessional theology, and the Westminster Standards makes me a Fundamentalist, then so be it.  I refuse to compromise with any form of ecumenicity which requires me to jettison the fundamentals of the Calvinist and Reformed faith.