[I no longer believe that Dr. Gordon H. Clark's book, The Incarnation, is an endorsement of the Nestorian view. Charlie J. Ray. 1/5/2014]
The comments over at the official blog for Regent University were closed after I posted a comment there. However, Dale Coulter was generous enough to post my comment. You can see the original article and the comments at Westminster Captivity. However, I would like to briefly respond to the comments made after mine. I will admit first of all that I did over-generalize when I mentioned the link between Christian Science and the charismatic movement's theology of healing. Having spent almost ten years in the Pentecostal/charismatic movement and having been a graduate of an Assemblies of God bible college, as well as at one time having been a member of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, I am well aware of the different historical schools of thought on the origin of the classical Pentecostal movement and its offspring, the modern Charismatic movement.
The comments over at the official blog for Regent University were closed after I posted a comment there. However, Dale Coulter was generous enough to post my comment. You can see the original article and the comments at Westminster Captivity. However, I would like to briefly respond to the comments made after mine. I will admit first of all that I did over-generalize when I mentioned the link between Christian Science and the charismatic movement's theology of healing. Having spent almost ten years in the Pentecostal/charismatic movement and having been a graduate of an Assemblies of God bible college, as well as at one time having been a member of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, I am well aware of the different historical schools of thought on the origin of the classical Pentecostal movement and its offspring, the modern Charismatic movement.
Donald Dayton, for example, traces the theological roots of Pentecostalism to the Wesleyan holiness movement, a thesis popular among Wesleyan Charismatics and classical Pentecostal denominations which came from the Wesleyan holiness movement. That would include the Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee and the Pentecostal Holiness Church among others.
Others see a link between the Keswick higher life movement and the outbreak of Pentecostal teaching within the Christian Missionary Alliance churches, which were a mix of both Presbyterian and Arminian churches dedicated to missionary outreach. One of the movement's leaders was A. B. Simpson and his focus on divine healing, etc. The crisis which developed over the baptism of the Holy Spirit as a second work of grace and an empowerment for missionary and evangelistic outreach and the ongoing "practice" of spiritual gifts led to the formation of what is known today as the Assemblies of God. Hence, the similarity between much of the theology within the Christian Missionary Alliance and the Assemblies of God. There are indeed pockets of Reformed theology within both the Christian Missionary Alliance and the Assemblies of God even today. However, both denominations are predominated by Arminian theology. A good example of that is Ravi Zacharias of the CMA.
Of course there were instances of healing movements and teaching prior to the influence of E.W. Kenyon via Kenneth Hagin and others. However, even in these movements the theology of healing has more to do with what the believer does to get healing than with trusting God's absolute providence and will. If you do not do your part, God will not do His part. This is inherently a synergistic and cooperative emphasis on healing from an Arminian perspective at best. At worst, it reduces to the syncretism of Christian Science/New Thought with Pentecostal theology. I observed this strain even in officially approved books from Gospel Publishing House, the official organ of the Assemblies of God. One book on the required reading list from GPH was a book on the spiritual gifts by Harold Horton, a British Pentecostal within the British Assemblies of God. I cannot remember the exact title or the page number of the quote but I clearly remember Horton comparing kittens as little cats, puppies as little dogs, and Christians as "little gods" or little "Jesus'". This is not Christian doctrine but is borrowed from Christian Science. Anyone who studies New Thought and Christian Science will be immediately struck with the similarities, not the differences. Most of the language used in charismatic circles today about "believing" for a miracle, etc., actually has more to do with visualization and other concepts from Christian Science than with biblical theology.
While I do recognize that pentecostals have developed a sophisticated and intellectual defense of their experiential theology, it is alarming to me that in doing so many current Pentecostal scholars are scuttling justification by faith alone, sola Scriptura, confessions of faith, creeds, and other necessary doctrines recovered and restored at the Protestant Reformation. What these scholars fail to see is that both the Wesleyan holiness movement and the Keswick higher life movements were still within the realm of Protestant theology. Both of these movements gave rise to the Pentecostal/charismatic movement. Essentially, the Pentecostal/charismatic movement has moved beyond Evangelicalism, despite their desire to claim that heritage as well, and has moved into radical Anabaptist theology and heterodoxy.
There are several areas where this is observed. One that stands out in my mind is the push for a re-unification between oneness Pentecostals and Trinitarian Pentecostals. In 1916 when the "New Issue" controversy threatened to tear the new fellowship, the Assemblies of God, into division, the A/G decided to guard itself against the charge of heresy. Most of the founding members were from traditional mainline Evangelical churches and understood that sabellian modalism or monarchial modalism was a denial of the biblical doctrine of the tri-unity of God as one Godhead or divine nature and three eternally existent and subsistent persons within that one God. Today, however, that is not seen as an obstacle to fellowship and the Society for Pentecostal Studies does not require belief in the Trinity as a necessary doctrine for membership. This is partly due to the influence of Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. an Assemblies of God scholar, and other Pentecostals from the Trinitarian side reaching across the aisle to the Oneness Pentecostals like David K. Bernard, who is now the General Superintendent of the United Pentecostal Church International.
D. William Faupel, a former A/G member who is now an Episcopalian and is a librarian at Asbury Theological Seminary, has clearly outlined the historical situation within the Assemblies of God over this issue in this quote:
The newly organized Assemblies of God immediately encountered a second theological crisis, which was also set forth in a restorationist context. The second person of the Trinity had been the focal point of the five doctrines restored to the church. Jesus was the Savior, Sanctifier, Baptizer, Healer and Coming King. Furthermore, as Pentecostals looked to the Acts of the Apostles in an effort to follow the apostolic patterns of the early church, they noted that converts were baptized in water in "Jesus' name." As a result, it had been a common practice in the movement's initial years to practice water baptism using either the trinitarian formula found in Matthew or the christological formula noted in Acts. A fresh revelation now came to some that Jesus was not the second person of the Trinity but rather the Name of God, who revealed himself as Father in the Old Testament, as Son in the New Testament, and as Holy Spirit in the church age. The message swept the newly formed fellowship as one leader after another embraced the new teaching, including E. N. Bell, the first general superintendent.
The controversy raged for two years, the final showdown coming in the 1916 General Council, where trinitarians won by a decisive two-thirds vote. J. Roswell Flower, general secretary and managing editor of the Pentecostal Evangel, led the fight for the orthodox position. He charged that the new teaching was a form of modal monarchianism, which had been condemned as heresy by the early church fathers. Patient argument and shrewd political maneuvering paid off, although the cost was heavy. Of 585 ministers, 156 withdrew from the fellowship, taking their churches with them. They would move on to found such "Oneness" denominations as the United Pentecostal Church and the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World.
The decision to exclude the Oneness teaching forever changed the nature of the Assemblies of God. Its leadership adopted a "Statement of Fundamental Truths," established a strong central executive and abandoned the restorationist understanding of church history. [From: The Restoration Vision in Pentecostalism].
Apparently, the modern Charismatic movement has decided that denying the trinity is no longer a heresy. T. D. Jakes is welcomed with open arms and Oneness Pentecostals are even studying in Ph.D. programs at the Regent University School of Divinity. (See Daniel Segraves' profile at his blog, Center for Oneness Research and Education).
Most Evangelicals still view the Oneness Pentecostals as modalists and therefore a cult that is not part of Protestant Christianity. But under the influence of the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement the heresy is now being ignored as if it were not a major issue. This is because Charismatics view their doctrine of the Holy Spirit and the ongoing supernatural gifts as the measure of fellowship and doctrinal orthodoxy over and above the five solas of the Protestant Reformation and the catholic creeds as a proper understanding of what we believe the Holy Scriptures teach. While the Scriptures are the only infallible rule for faith and practice, for Protestants who seek to maintain both Evangelical and catholic orthodoxy, the Reformed confessions and the ecumenical creeds establish what is authoritative doctrine for congregations who wish to be in fellowship on earth and in the invisible communion of saints.
The current trend among Pentecostal/Charismatic scholars is to reject the traditional Wesleyan quadrilateral and the Anglican trilateral and to instead place their ecstatic experience above biblical theology and Holy Scripture. Like the Roman Catholics, Charismatics place their doctrinal tradition above Scripture and use both their experience and their tradition to interpret Scripture rather than seriously drawing out the meaning of the text as it was intended by the original human authors and as the original hearers and readers would have understood it in their own cultural and historical context. In other words, the allegorical approach to hermeneutics trumps the historical-grammatical approach along with a healthy systematic and biblical theology.
What is particularly alarming for Reformed scholars who study the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement is the heterodox and even heretical compromises made in the pragmatic attempt to spread their ecstatic, enthusiastic theology at the expense of biblical truth, confessional commitments to the magisterial Reformation, and Christian orthodoxy as it is expressed in the ecumenical creeds. For this reason one has to question the entire movement.
I strongly disagree with Dale Coulter. There is no Westminster Captivity of Evangelicalism. Rather, there is an attempt by the Reformed denominations to restore the churches and reform the churches to the apostolic doctrines of the New Testament era. The Protestant Reformation was a recovery of Holy Scripture as the final measure, rule of faith, and authority in all ecclesiastical and doctrinal matters. The Pentecostal/Charismatic movement, on the other hand, is determined to reintroduce the radical reformation which questioned all, even going so far as to deny the trinity.
Even more ironic is the fact that most lay persons in Pentecostal denominations see themselves as fundamentalists and even act and operate on that level as they understand things literally from Scripture. In the intellectual and scholarly circles of the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement, however, there is clearly a move toward postmodernism, reader response hermeneutics, neo-orthodoxy, and even liberal theology.
The real problem as I see it is that most Reformed scholars are so busy fighting their own battles against Federal Visionism, the New Perspectives on Paul, Theonomy, the Neo-Nestorianism of Gordon H. Clark and John Robbins, and the creeping in of liberal theology and quasi-Arminianism that they have overlooked a major threat to the Reformation in their own backyard. Even men like Wayne Grudem and John Piper are promoting the ongoing practice of the apostolic signs, wonders and gifts within an essentially Reformed paradigm which for all practical purposes operates as a synergistic theology.
This is particularly true of those who are Anglican and Reformed. Rather than seeing Anglican Charismatics as allies perhaps Evangelical and Reformed Anglicans should reconsider. It might be that Charismatics within the "conservative and orthodox" side of the Anglican Communion might in fact be contributing indirectly to the erosion of biblical theology and propositional truth conveyed through the inerrant and inspired revelation of God in Jesus Christ and Holy Scripture. (Hebrews 1:1-3; 2 Timothy 3:15-17; 2 Peter 1:19-21).
Peace,
Charlie J. Ray, M.Div.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son : and to the Holy Ghost;
Answer. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be : world without end. Amen.
Answer. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be : world without end. Amen.
Posts
