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Common Witness
Catholics and
Walter J.
Hollenweger
disputes
engagement,
a “common witness.” But
upon On the basis of
personal
theology
and
piety?
course of action is the
185
Between Pentecostals1
or on shared
perspectives
about
For
many years,
Christians in the Pentecostal and Catholic traditions have been involved in a kind of border
war, complete
with
territory
and border skirmishes. As we
approach
the Third
Millennium, the time is now
right
for a declaration of
truce,
for constructive
and-as the title of this
essay suggests-the discovery
of
what basis can a peace be established?
a shared sense of ecclesiastical
authority,
on a shared
and
corporate history,
It is the
position
of this
essay
that the one viable
last of these three
options.
The border
fights have been over the first
two,
and because of them we have come to think of the border between Catholics and Pentecostals as a kind of no man’s land. But on the basis of the third another course of action
opens up; by
the
grace
of God what has been a no man’s land
may
become
have much more in common than we
common
ground.
We
actually have allowed ourselves to think.
The Past
Catholics
were
polemic
persecution
of the persecution goes
back to
of common witness
by
characterized
by
much
ignorance,
Take as an
example
the
even after 1949. This
The
past
does not offer
many examples
and Pentecostals. On the
contrary, past relationships
between the two
religious groups
and sometimes
persecution.
Pentecostals in
Italy,
the ill-fated Buffarini-Guidi circular
(9 April 1935, by
Mussolini’s Minister of the
Interior).’ Giorgio Spini
has argued
that this document was issued because
Italy
needed the
support
in her
policy
of
aggression against Abyssinia,
and in fact received it from then on.3 The
Waldensian, Giorgio Peyrot,
has
of the
Pope
dialogue participants although
Hollenweger, School,
‘This
paper was submitted to the Vatican/Pentecostal Dialogue Session, July 1995 in
Brixen, Italy. It provoked a lively and controversial discussion. On the basis of this
dialogue,
the
paper
was revised for
publication. The author thanks
all the
he could not accept all of their criticism. However, ecumenical dialogue does not live from consensus but from mutual respect. I hope that this paper fosters not only respect but also understanding.
2 Detailed documentation and court records from the
period of from persecutions
in
Handbuch der Pfinstbewegung (available ATLA, Yale Divinity
New Haven, CT), no. 05.15.
Summary in
Walter J.
Hollenweger,
The Pentecostals
(Peabody,
MA: Hendrickson Publishers,
1988),
251-256. On the Buffarini-Guidi
circular,
Pentecostali la
cf. Giorgio Peyrot,
La circolare
Bufforini-Guidi
e i
(Attuare
costituzione 26). Rome: Associazione Italiana pex la liberta della Cultura, 1955.
“La
persecuzione
contro
gli Evangelici
in
Italia,”
11 Ponte 9
‘ Giorgio Spini,
1
186
described it as the “most serious act of
religious
intolerance” since modem
Italy
came into
being.’
Peyrot, Luigi Pestalozza, Spini
and others have
published
a depressing
collection of material from the records of Italian court.
S Most
striking
is the fact that the Italian Pentecostals were still subjected to
persecution
after the second world war. In
1944,
Carlo
Jemolo, Professor at the
University
of
Rome, pleaded
both for the continuance of the Roman Catholic Church as the established church and also for political
and
religious
freedom.’
Arguing
from the
point
of view of a liberal,
he exhorted the Catholic Church not to stick to the letter of the Lateran
Treaties. The Fascist state had
persecuted
Protestants for reasons of mere
opportunism, hoping
to
gain
the
support
of the
Catholic Church. The Catholic Church
should, says Jemolo, reject
these tendencies of its own accord.
Unfortunately,
neither the Italian
bishops nor the
priests
were
prepared
at the time to listen to this wise advice. For
example,
on
July 30, 1952,
Curci
Michele,
an elder in the Pentecostal
church,
was
trying
to
get
a workmate out of a well and was asphyxiated by
the
poisonous gases.
The burial was to take
place
on August
1. A
large
crowd wished to show their
respect
for their courageous
fellow-citizen and to attend the Protestant funeral
service, but the Roman Catholic
priest
took
objection
to this desire. For
days the civil
municipality
refused burial in the
cemetery,
which was not church
property. Finally,
an
energetic protest by
the Communists enabled the Curci
family
to obtain its
right.’ Spini’s
comment is: “All this
happened
in
1952,
the fourth
year
of the
republican constitution, and
eighty-two years
after the fall of the
temporal power
of the Popes.”8
It is
easy
to understand
Spini’s
bitter words: the Minister of the Interior thinks that he must
respect
the
republican
constitution when it is a
question
of
dealing
with those who were convicted
by
the Fascist puppet government
in
Sal6,
but treats it as a joke when he is
dealing
(January 1953): 1-14, quote, 5.
4Pcyrot,
La circolare BufJrarini-Guidi e i Pentecostali, 5.
Giorgio Peyrot, Commissione per gli Affari Intemazionali del delle
“L’Intolleranza
Consiglio Federale
Chisese
Evangeliche d’Italia, religiose
in
Italia,” Protestantesimo 8 (January-March, 1953): 1-39; ET:
1947/52 World Council
Religious Intolerance in Italy tremolare. La condizione delle minoranze
(Geneva:
of Churches,
1953). Luigi Pestalozza, Il diritto di Milan-Rome: Edizioni Avanti, 1956.
religiose
in Italia
(L’Attualita 14). 6Carlo Arturo Jemolo, Per la pace religiose d’Italia
(Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1944),
35.
‘ Peyrot,
“L’Intolleranza
religiose
in
IL-dia,” 25. Carlo Falconi,
La Chiesa e
cattoliche in Italia, 1945-1955.
Saggi per
una storia del cattolicesimo italiano nel dopoquerra. (Turin: Einaudi, 1956), 304. Cam. Dep. Res. l’organizzazioni
Somm. Interr. no. 9110 (on Preti); letter of the Alto Commissariato per l’Igiene e Sanità a
Pubblica, 12.12.1952, no. 970/2.160.
Spini, “La persecuzione contro gli Evangelici in Italia,” 8.
.
2
187
with citizens who want to hold their
religious
services in peace.9 On the basis of the Buffarini-Guidi circular the Pentecostals were
punished
for their resistance to Fascism
right up
to 1955.
Spini perceptively comments:
There is a risk that the defence of freedom provided by the constitution will become a monopoly of the Communists. The way this confuses the issues in the
political
life of Italy is obvious to
everyone….
What do the wretched clergy of Italy hope to achieve by stirring up the
Protestants? Do
government to persecute they believe that refusing residence permits and arrests, are reasonable ways of converting a Protestant to Catholicism? Do they
believe that the police are capable of stopping the drift away from the Catholic Church? When
chapel,
the Protestants divide into . groups
which
they close a
assemble
Carabinieri would have to be placed on guard in front of the house of every
secretly
in various houses…. One of the Protestant believer to check that no one was going in to take part in a
But even this would not be enough. Beside the there would have to be a
gospel meeting.
priest to the
check that the
policeman
himself was police
resisting
temptation to listen to the gospel in secret. During the Fascist there was a Pentecostal elder who took the period
opportunity
of
during every spell
imprisonment to convert his guards.’°
The Buffarini-Guidi circular was not the
only
basis for tensions between Pentecostals and Catholics in
Italy.
For
years
the Catholic Church used the old
catch-phrase
that Pentecostal
worship
was dangerous
to health and should be forbidden for “reasons of
morality and
public
order.”” Various
attempts by high dignitaries
of the Catholic Church to
justify
this claim’2 did not
improve matters,
and the wearisome reiteration of claims that Pentecostal
worship
is
dangerous to health sound absurd until one remembers that
they represent
a camouflaged
remnant of Fascist
ideology.
Furthermore,
such claims
appear
to be buttressed
by
Catholic doctrine and
polity.
In an article that has become
notorious,
Cavalli wrote that because of its divine
privileges,
and because it is the
only true
church,
the Catholic Church must claim the
right
to
religious freedom for itself alone. This freedom extends
only
to the
truth,
and not to error. 13 Indeed, the
Archbishop
of Milan
expressed regret
for the abolition of the
Inquisition,
and desired for
“overriding religious
and political
reasons” that in particular the freedom of
lapsed priests
should be restricted.” The Jesuit S. Lener has described in
many
articles the dangers of Protestantism,
its links with the
Communists,
the
flooding
of Italy
with
preachers
and
evangelists,
and the
passion
of the Pentecostals
9 Spini, “La persecuzione contro gli Evangelici in Italia,” 2.
10 Spini,
”
“La persecuzione contro gli Evangelici in Italia,” 12-14.
12 Government decrees in F.
of
Peyrot, Intolerance,
28. and La circolare.
Stefano, bishop Teggiano, “I protestanti nella diocesi di Teggiano,” Fides 151-157. The
(May-June 1958): Bishop of Padua in Gazzetino del Lunedi, Venice, ‘
2.6.1952;
13
L Awenire d’]talia,
Bologna, 17.6.1952.
Cavalli, Civilt6 Cattolica, 3.4.1948. ” I.
Schuster, Ossevatore Romana, 15.10.1952.
3
188
to obtain conversions. 15
According
to
Lener,
the latter
misrepresent
the Catholic
interpretation
of the Italian Constitution as a Fascist
one,
and do not hesitate to draw on Communist
help
to
guarantee
what
they understand as
religious freedom, although
the
missionary
societies in the homeland
(e.g.,
the Assemblies of God in the
USA)
are
firmly opposed
to Communism. The Catholic
Church,
Lener
writes,
cannot tolerate numerous
people
without
dignity
or
scruples, outsiders, sometimes motivated
solely by the hope of financial gain, and search for or
popularity, inspired by passion vindictiveness, camouflaged
in their
newly acquired clerical garb and a
American
who attack the
citizenship,
Catholic
Italian people, and force those who are in error not into a different
laity,
insult the Church recently acquired and the
religion
of the
but to the final abandonment of all
religion
religion and every supernatural belief. 16 Lener also claims that in their literature the Pentecostals
spread
lies about the
Pope
and sow seeds of doubt about the Catholic
religion:
They
lead
astray simple
souls who still believe in God and his
only-begotten son,
into a
vague, alien,
Communist-inclined
When the
religiosity.
Supreme Pontiff gives audience to a group
of athletes,
accuse him of
mixing religion
and culture. If he audiences to
they
scientists and
philosophers,
there is
gives
again
an
outcry
that he is
If he shows his
making
political propaganda.
workers and the
fatherly concern for the poor, the
wretched, they trot out morbid jokes about the riches of the
Vatican. When the
clergy of the Catholic church,
in their loyalty to the
sacrosanct law of God, which is
themselves… insist that
accepted without discussion by Protestants
marriage
should remain
holy and chaste, accuse them of they
using the confessional to satisfy an unhealthy and morbid
curiosity….”
“Do these sectarians
really
deserve
toleration?,”
Lener asks at the end of this
long
list of misdeeds.
What these accusations show is not the wickedness of the Pentecostals,
but Lener’s
inability
to meet those whose faith is different with
anything
other than insults and
aspersions
on their
morality.
As the studies of court records
show,
this
perspective
was
widely shared, which makes it
easy
to understand
why
Pentecostals in
Italy
at the
.
‘s S. Lener, “La
propaganda
dei
protestanti
in Italia,” Civilta Cattolica
104, 1953/IV, 254-269, quote
254.
‘6Lener,
“La propaganda dei protestanti in Italia,” 255.
“Lener, “La
dei in Italia,” 267. See also Lener,
dello Stato e
propaganda protestanti “Religione
principio
democratico nella Constituzione repubblicana,” La Civilta Cattolica
1951, IV, 505-516; Lener, “Equivoci
e
La Civilta Cattolica
pregiudizi
sull’
ugualianza
in materia di
religio,” 1952/I, 402-416, 611-622; III, 467-79; Lener, “Esercizio di culti acattolici e propaganda di religione diverse da quella dello Stato,”
La Civi/tà Cattolica 1952/IV, 143-155, 400-415; Lener,
“Apertura
non autorizzata di templi accatolici e riunioni di culti, ivi tenute, senza preavviso,” Il diritto ecclesiastico 1953/II, 421-442. Lener, “Nuove
figure
di destinazionae anomala nel processo coincidente di costizionalita,” La Civilta Cattolica
1956/III, 113-128.
4
189
present day,
even after the Vatican
Council,
find it difficult to believe in any
real
change
of heart in Catholicism.
I leave it to Carlo Falconi to
reply
to these accusations.” In a brilliant essay
entitled “The Anti-Protestant
Persecution,”
Falconi
rages against the Catholic
press,
which he
says
is devoted to
a fortissimo rendering of laments for the
persecutions
suffered
by
the Catholic Church. The other side of the record consists of hosannas in praise of its
constantly increasing power.
As I have shown
elsewhere,
the
persecution
of Protestants in Italy and elsewhere is treated with an efficient
conspiracy of silence in the so-called
independent press
in Italy, although
adequate and reliable documentation is available.” Falconi’s
response
is
direct, and not without a
polemical
tone of its own: It is impossible to
regard Protestantism,
and the Pentecostal movement in
particular,
as the first stage
of unbelief One has
only
to read the letters of Pentecostals in Nuovi
Argumenti
and in II Mondo.
These,
Falconi
writes,
_
form, without exaggeration, a chapter of popular literature which with its
direct spontaneity and burning faith is comparable to the literature of early
Christianity.
Falconi also refutes the
charge
that Protestantism is
anti-Italian,
and he
quotes
the
history
of the Waldensians in
support
of his
argument. Besides,
at the
present day,
when the role of nation-states must
decline, the artificial
fostering
of Italian nationalism is a crime
against humanity:
It is an unpardonable sin against Christianity to try to resist the ecumenical efforts of Christian churches throughout the world by trying to increase the isolation of national and racist enclaves from the outside world.’°
Why
indeed should there be such an
outcry
on behalf of
150,000
to 200,000
Protestants in a population of 50,000,000?
As to the
charges
of
communism,
Pentecostals in
general
are not Communists, although many
voted for the Communist
Party.
But this political preference
is also true of the
Catholics;
in Catholic
Italy
a great part
of the
population
votes for the Communist
party.
Because of the
disproportion
between Catholic and Protestant sectors of the population,
it would make more sense to
say
that it was the Catholics who voted the Communists into Parliament.
Moreover,
who are the Pentecostals to vote for? The “Christian Democrats” with their
long standing policy
of
persecution?
The
charge
that the Protestants are Communists is a cheap
argument,
and Mario
Miegge
describes it rightly as “the childish
fantasy
of someone who tries to tar all his
opponents with the same brush. ,21
.
18Falconi, La Chiesa, 219ff
19 Hollenweger,
Handbuch derPfingstbewegung, o5.15.006c.
“Falconi,
La Chiesa, 309.
21 Mario Miegge, “Le diffusion du protestantisme dans les zones sous-developpees de l’Italie
mdridionale,” Archives
de Sociologie des religions 4
(July-December 1959): 81-96, quote,
87.
.
5
190
Perhaps
sometimes it would
help
the
dialogue
between Catholics and Pentecostals if a
representative
of the Italian
hierarchy
could ask the Pentecostals for
forgiveness.
If Nelson Mandela can make
peace
with de Klerk, could not Italian Catholics and Pentecostals also?
But there are
signs
of
hope.
The
youngest
Italian Pentecostal
church, the Chiesa
Evangelica
Internazionale,
asks all its members to refrain from
polemics against
other
Christians,
in particular against the Roman Catholics. It is also a
sign
of
hope
that this church was introduced to the World Council of Churches
by
a
Benedictine, namely
one of the chairmen of the Vatican/Pentecostal
Dialogue,
Dr. Kilian McDonnel1.22 So
perhaps
the time is
ripe
to review the situation, but I fear these movements
may
not be
enough
to
change
the
deeply
rooted anti-ecumenical attitude of Italian Pentecostals as a whole. There are still here and there
polemics
in the Pentecostal literature
against
the Catholic Church.23
The Vatican/Pentecostal
dialogue
has not
yet produced
the
expected fruit in the Catholic Church either. 24 Here it is clear that what has happened
in
Italy
is
symptomatic
of a
problem
of international
scope. For
example,
some
people
in the Catholic Church still have not learned that
something
fundamental must
change
if they want to
stop
the drain of
8,000 persons
who break
away
from the traditional Catholic church in Latin America
daily.25
Peter
Hocken,
in his brilliant review of the seminal work of
Jerry Sandidge,2′
admonishes his fellow Catholics: “It would seem that
many
Catholics still
readily
attribute
unworthy
motives to Pentecostal missionaries
seeing
their advent
primarily
in terms of sectarian
aggression
and sinister subversion of the Catholic faith. 1121
22 On Kilian McDonnell, see Walter J. Hollenweger, The Pentecostals,
Volume II: Promise and Problem
[working title] (Peabody,
MA: Hendrickson
Publishers, forthcoming), Chapters
26.3: “Kilian
in
McDonnell”); and,
Cecil M.
Robeck, Jr., “Kilian McDonnell
(1921- ),” Dictionary of Pentecostal and
Charismatic Movements, eds. Stanley M.
Zondervan
Burgess
and
Gary B. McGee (Grand Rapids,
MI:
Publishing House, 1988), 566-567. 23 On the older
polemic
literature
by Pentecostals,
see The Pentecostals, 436-438. On the change of climate within Pentecostalism see Kilian Hollenweger, McDonnell, “Improbable Conversations: The International Classical Pentecostal/Roman Catholic Dialogue,” PNEG??IA: The Journal
of the Pentecostal Theology 17 Society for 24
(Fall 1995): 163-174,
Manuel
in particular, 166-167.
Gaxiola-Gaxiola, Mexican Protestantism: The Struggle for Identity and Relevance in a Pluralistic
Society (Ph.D. Dissertation; Birmingham: University of Birmingham, England,
25
1990), 270.
G?ola-Gaxiola,
Mexican Protestantism, 276.
L. Sandidge, Romans Catholic/Pentecostal
(1977-1982): A Study in
26 JerrJ,
Developing
Ecumenism. 2
vols.,
Studies in Dialogue the Intercultural of Christianity
27
44 (Frankfurt, Berne, Paris, New
History
York, etc.: Lang, 1987).
Hocken mentions in
particular
a Catholic statement from Me·cico bracketing together
the Assemblies of God and Jehovah’s Witnesses as aggressive sectarian proselytisers.
“It is a violation of ecumenical principles to place together classical Pentecostals and sub-Christian
groups
such as Jehovah’s Witnesses. Catholics should also
distinguish
between the
indigenous
Pentecostal movements in Latin
6
191
I do not know whether the
Holy
Father in Rome listens to Peter Hocken,
but he should. In the
opening
address to the Fourth General Conference of the Latin American
Episcopate,
John Paul II
gave
a somewhat
triumphalistic speech
on the Catholic mission in Latin America.28 The
speech
is otherwise most
enlightening
because it admits the
de facto pluralism
and the
questioning
of the
papal authority
in the Catholic church
(although
all of these
developments are,
of
course, rejected).
He also mentions the invasion
by
the sects in Latin
America, and
lumps together
Jehovah’s witnesses and others with Pentecostals. It is a regrettable oversight that he failed to differentiate between those with whom his own Secretariat has
long
been in an intensive
dialogue, and those who could not care less about the
ecumenicity
of the church. This
shortcoming
has been criticized
by
a number of Catholics and Pentecostals.29
Although
the ecumenical climate between Catholics and Pentecostals has
(especially
in
America) changed dramatically
for the better due to the Vatican/Pentecostal
dialogue,
considerable opportunities
for common witness remain
unexplored.
Present
Opportunities
What I have written thus far
suggests
that the
only way
to surmount the difficulties of the
past
is to base an ecumenical
dialogue
on those aspects
of Catholic and Pentecostal
experience
that we hold in common.
Indeed,
the tensions between us
may
have blinded us to important aspects
of faith we have
already long
shared. We will turn to these
momentarily,
but first a brief excursis on our shared traditions of caring
for the sick.
Healing
the Wounds
Catholics and Pentecostals have a common tradition of
dealing
with the
sick,
the
weary
and the
heavy-laden.
Neither teach that sickness and depression
are
primarily
a blessing from God in order to
bring
sufferers closer to God as some Protestant churches do. Both use the old rite of anointing
in their
ministry
with the sick. It is also no coincidence that
America and those
imported
from North America. The evidence points to the former growing at a faster rate.” Peter Hocken, “Dialogue Extraordinary,” One in Christ 24/2 (1988): 202-213, quote 212, note 29.
28 John Paul II in Santo Domingo, “Opening Address to Fourth General Conference of Latin American
Episcopate,” Origins,
CNS Documentary Service
22/19,
22 October 1992, 322-326.
2’Edward
Cleary,
“John Paul Cries ‘Wolf:
Misreading
the
Pentecostals,” Commonweal 119 (November 1992): 7ff; Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., “Taking Stock of Pentecostalism: The Personal Reflections of a
Retiring Editor,”
PNEUMA: The Journal
of the Society for
Pentecostal Studies 15 (Spring
1993): 35-60. Cleary’s article
appeared
also in
Spanish:
“El maltrato de la
Jerarquia
Cat6lica a los Pentecostales,”
Pastoral
Popular
No. 227
Commonweal
(March 1993): 15-17. Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., “What the Pope Said,” (December 1992), 30ff. On the whole issue see
Hollenweger,
The Pentecostals, Volume II,
Chapter
13: “Pentecostals and Catholics.”
7
192
many
leaders of retreats for
priests,
members of
religious
orders and pastoral
assistants have asked me to rediscover and
develop
the rite of anointing
the sick
together
with them.
Indeed,
a most
paradoxical phenomenon
has occurred when Catholics ask a Reformed minister to revitalize an old Catholic rite.
The
emphasis
in such seminars was not on the faith of the individual seeking help
nor on the faith of the ones who
perform
the
rite,
but on the
thesaurus fidei ecclesiae,
on the faith of the hic et nunc assembled “coma Christou ”
according
to Mark
2:5,
where the
evangelist says: “When Jesus saw their faith
[i.e.,
the faith of the four who
brought
the paralytic
to
Jesus]
he said to the lame man: Your sins are
forgiven.”
In other
words,
he
forgives
sins and heals on the basis of the faith of a third
party, i.e.,
the church.
There is no need for me to deal with the
ugly extravagances
of some Pentecostal
healing evangelists.
The Pentecostals themselves have expressed
this criticism in no uncertain
terms, especially
because these evangelists
misuse their
gifts
to
gain personal power
and income and because
they pretend
that a believer is per
defrnitionem healthy.30 What is most
astonishing
is the
decisive, exegetically
and
theologically
clear critique by
Pentecostal
theologians.
All the sadder that of all
people some Charismatics with a decent
theological
education still try to
give
a platform
to the
apostles
of
“Sings
and
Wonders,”
of “Positive Confession
Theology,”
to cite two
examples.3′ However,
this
critique
“For the Pentecostal
critique
on the
healing evangelists, see Leonhard Steiner, “Divine Healing in God’s Redemption,” in Fifth World Pentecostal Conference, ed. Donald Gee. Pentecostal World Conference
in
Messages, preached
at the Fifth Friennal World
Conference,
held the Coliseum
Arena,
Exhibition
Ground, Toronto, Canada,
from
September 14-21, 1958,
Committee for the Conference
published by
the
Advisory
(Toronto,
Ontario:
of the Debate on the
Testimony Press, 1958),
137. Thomas Pratt, “The Need to
Dialogue:
A Review
of
Controversy
Signs, Wonders, Miracles and Spiritual Warfare Raised in the Literature of the Third Wave Movement,” PNEUMA: The Journal
Studies 13
of the Society for
Pentecostal
the Third Wave: What Comes After Renewal? and Donald Bridge, Power
(Spring 1991): 7-32. Peter Hocken, “Review of Kevin Springer, ed., Riding
Evangelism
and the Word
of God, ” EPTA Bulletin 7/3 (1988):104-108.
W. MacDonald,
“The Cross Versus Personal Kingdom,” PNEUMA: The Journal
Pentecostal Studies 3 (Fall 1982): 26-37. Charles Farah, “A
of the Society for
Critical
The ‘Roots and Fruits’ of Faith-Formula
Theology,”
PNEUMA: The Journal
Analysis:
of the Society for
Pentecostal Studies 3
(Spring 1981): 3-21. Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., “Signs, Wonders, and Witness,” PNEUIL4: The Journal
Pentecostal Studies 3
of the Society for (Fall 1981): 1-5. The whole literature is analysed in detail in Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, Volume II,
Chapter
18: “Signs and Wonders,” together
with the ecumenical, psychological, theological and medical literature. See also Walter J.
Hollenweger, “Healing Through Prayer: Superstition
or Forgotten Christian Tradition?”
Theology 92 (May 1989): 166-174 (also in German, French, and Danish).
“For a
critique
of this
development,
see the black Pentecostal Leonard
Lovett, “Positive Confession
Theology,”
in
Dictionary of Pentecostal
and Charismatic Movements, eds. Stanley M. Burgess
and
Gary B.
McGee (Grand
Rapids,
MI:
8
193
sober
does not solve the
problem
of a
liturgically
and
theologically healing ministry
in the local
church,
Pentecostal and Catholic. Here as elsewhere it is true: The best
critique of
the false is the
praxis of
the true.
liturgies
Catholics, Pentecostals.
For
The
praxis
of the true can and should
appear ecumenically,
since we are not
confessionally
sick or
healthy. Therefore,
such
community
for sick and
healthy people
have been set
up
in Germany and Switzerland on an ecumenical
basis, especially
between Protestants and
but also
including Adventists,
consequences
for
only
diagnosis
profession.32
We
Europeans
illness
Churches has introduced
how
many
broke down under the needed. The
Anglican
Church too
Mennonites and sometimes
this
disregard
for
matter of course. The our medical
industry
has also
the Christians from the Third
World,
community liturgies
is at
any
rate often a
catastrophic
of
exporting
been noted
by
the World Health
Organization
in Geneva. If we
trample on the belief of our
patients,
the best we can do is treat but not heal them. Can we
imagine
what it means for an
African,
who understands his illness to be the result of a broken
relationship, when,
in his hour of crisis he is
separated
from friends and
family,
is touched
by strangers and is
obliged
to swallow
foreign
food and medicine? Such
disrespect
a sick
person
makes him or her feel like a car
put
in for
repair.
Not
in Africa but also in the West this
approach
has led to
wrong
and to illnesses which have been caused
by
the medical
also are not ill or
healthy
in isolation. It is the whole
community,
the “soma Christou ” which
participates
in the
and health of the individual. That is
why
the World Council of
“healing
services” for its staff. It was noticed
burden of their work.
Help
was
has re-introduced an anointing rite in hospitals, usually by incorporating
the medical staff in the rite.
If such
liturgies
for the sick and
heavy-laden
a number of issues have
(1)
The
anointing
with the Catholic
where
only
the
priest
tradition be called a sacramentalia,
water” which can also be
applied by lay persons. My experience
hinder God from
intervening.
It allows for
lay persons (in particular women),
and
in Catholic
parlance
are at best
theologically
trained lay persons)
to
apply
this rite.
Contrary
to the Protestant tradition it
be advisable not to
integrate
the
litrugy
for the sick into the
(2)
It
might
also be advisable the anointers
to indicate that
they
do not act as individual
persons
but
ecumenical basis
consideration:
because this creates conflicts sacraments,
Catholic
this
lay emphasis
does not Catholic
Pentecostals
(who
might Eucharist. appropriately
are offered on an
to be taken into should not be called a sacrament
understanding
of can anoint. It should in a
good
like
e.g.,
the “blessed
is that
Protestants
to dress
Zondervan Publishing House, 1988), 718-720.
32 The literature in detail in Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, Chapter 18.
9
194
are commissioned
by
the church for this
ministry.
The Catholic ministrants’
garments
fulfill this
purpose very
well. If this looks “too Catholic” for some
Pentecostals,
one
might
choose another visible
sign. (3)
Priests and
pastors
are no
longer
the
only
or even the main “anointers” but
they
teach their
congregations
how to minister in this case, something
which is at least
theoretically
a tradition common to Pentecostals and Catholics. This
congregational participation
would also counteract the
ugly personal
cult of the virtuoso healers in Pentecostalism.
(4)
It is advisable to
integrate
medical
personnel
into this
rite,
like
nurses,
chemists and
doctors,
and in certain cases representatives
of
Complementary
Medicine. As the World Health Organization
and also some mission societies
emphasize untiringly,
this last
point
is particularly important for the Third World.33
Elements of Common Witness
It has been observed for a
long
time that Pentecostalism is particularly
successful in Catholic cultures. There are reasons for this success. One of them is that Pentecostalism has
clearly recognizable and
historically
traceable Catholic
roots,
in
particular
its belief in two worlds
(a supernatural
and a natural-a doctrine which is
receding
in Catholic
theology
but which is still
strong
in
popular Catholicism),
its ordo
salutis, its hierarchical
church
structure,
and its
(strict) Arminianism,
or the doctrine of “free will.””
33 V. Djukanovic and E. O. Mach, eds., Alternative Approaches
to Nleeting Basic Health Needs in
Developing
Countries. A Joint UNICEF/WHO Study (Geneva: World Health
1975). Kenneth W. Newell, ed., Health By the People (Geneva:
World Health Organization, Organization, 1975). Beatrix Pfleiderer and
Wolfgang Bichmann,
Krankheit und Kultur. Eine Einführung in die Ethnomedizin. (Berlin: D. Reimer, 1995). Michael Wilson, “The Winter of Materialism,” Journal of
South
Theology for
No. 28
1979): 3-6. Wilson, The
Place
of Truth: A
Africa (September Hospital-a
Study of the Role of the Hospital Chaplain (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1971).
U.
Fritsche, “Heilung/Heilungen II,”
Theol Realenzykiopddie
14 (1985), 768-774. The Contact of the WCC, Geneva. Hans Schaefer, Die Medizin in unserer Zeit. periodical Theorie, Forschung, Lehre (Munich: Piper,
19631. Kofi Nlan Cures, God Heals: and lvfedical Practice Among the Akans Appiah-Kubi,
Religion
of Ghana (Totowa, NJ: Allanheld, Osmond der Publishing, 1981). Hans-Jurgen Becken,
Kirchen
Theologie
Das
in
Heilung
Heilen in den Afrikanischen Unabhdngigen Südafrika (Hermannsburg: Verlag Missionsbuchhandlung, 1972). Becken, “Begegnung
mit Medizinmännem in Afrika,”
Materialdienst
(Stuttgart)
48 (1985): 284-295. Becken, “Die Kirsch als heilende
Gemeinschaft,” Zeitschrift fiir
1′?Iission 12
(1986);
lvfaterialdienst 49 (1986):
321-324. Becken, “Heilen ist Versohnung zur Gemeinschaft.
Heilung
in Afrika,”
Jahrbuch Mission (1990): 77-86 (Hamburg: Missionshilfe
Verlag, 1990). Becken, “Heilungen
in anderen Kutturen-Pneumatische
Erfahrungen,” Zeitschrift far
Mission 17/1 (1991): 18-25. (More literature in Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, Volume 34
II, Chapter 18.)
Vinson Synan, “Theological Boundaries: The Arminian Tradition,” PNEUJvfA: The Journal
of the Society for
Pentecostal Studies 3 (Fall 1982), 38-53. On the controversy
between the Reformers and Erasmus on this, see Walter J. Hollenweger, “Zwingli
Writes the
Gospel
Into His World’s
Agenda,”
Mennonite
Ouarterly
10
195
The doctrine of an ordo salutis has been
passed
on to Pentecostalism via the Holiness Movement and John
Wesley.35
It can be
clearly documented which Catholic authors
Wesley
read and translated for his lay preachers.
While it is not sure how far
Wesley accepted
all the ideas of his Catholic
mentors,
he
certainly accepted
their
plea
for a second religious
crisis
experience subsequent
to and
different from conversion.
Thus,
it is not
astonishing
that the bone of contention in the Catholic/Pentecostal
dialogue
is not the
experience
of the
Spirit,
not the Pentecostal
proprium
but its
Baptist
additives
(e.g., baptism,
which is not even contained in the first Pentecostal declaration of
faith36) and
its ecclesiology (which
at the
present
time is under revision in PentecostaliSM17).
That there are hierarchical structures in Pentecostalism
might
be an unexpected
statement for the
non-specialist. However,
most black and most Third World Pentecostal churches have
bishops
with clear episcopal
functions. In
Europe
and America there are
clearly “episcopal” leaders,
even if
they
are not called
bishops.
In
fact,
a Pentecostal
bishop probably
has more
power
than a Catholic
bishop, just
as Pentecostal
pastors
have more
power
than Catholic
priests.
A Pentecostal
pastor
has the
keys
to eternal life and damnation in his hands. If he
forgives sins, they
are also
forgiven
in heaven-if he does not,
the believer is in trouble. He
might go
to another Pentecostal church to find a more lenient
“priest.”
These
things
are
hardly
ever discussed in Pentecostal literature but what is discussed is their increasing
clericalism and the fact that their executives have
power which would make the
Pope
envious. Whether this
growing authority of Pentecostal leaders is a reason for common witness is another question.
It could also be a reason for mutual
repentance.
I shall come back to this
point
under
my
section “The Difficulties: Conversion and Ecclesiology.”
On the matter
of free
will Pentecostal
theology
is the exact
opposite of reformation
theology.
This contrast can be shown
clearly
in the following story:
A young man was condemned to death for embezzlement. Those took
present
pity on the young man who had fallen into evil ways. The King gave $900.– from the
treasury to make good the debt, the Queen gave $90.–, the
young Crown Prince gave $5.–, and the people in the public gallery the hat round and collected another $4.90. But since the condemned passed
owed ‘$1000.- in all, the
judge
said: “It is no
use,
the man must be
Review 43 (January
1969): 70-94, in particular, 80-83. On Wesley’s position on free will, see Hollenweger, The Pentecostals,
Volume II, Chapter 12: “Wesley’s Catholic Roots,”
35
where the sources are
See Hollenweger, The
quoted.
Pentecostals, Volume II, Chapter 12.
“‘See the Declaration of Faith of
Seymour’s Apostolic
Faith Movement in Hollenweger,
The Pentecostals, 513.
“See
Hollenweger, The Pentecostals,
Volume II, Chapter 20: Ecclesiology: “Who Belongs
to the Church?”.
11
196
hanged.” In despair the man went through his pockets, and to the acclaim of those in the court
produced the last vital dime from his trousers.
The
story
is a Catholic
story.
But it is also a Pentecostal
story.
It illustrates the common
understanding
of salvation in the Pentecostal movement and in
popular
Catholicism.
Admittedly
the last dime is a very
small contribution
compared
with the
large
donations from the King
and the Crown
Prince,
but it is this last dime that
saves, something
which no Reformation
theologian
could admit. Without this last
dime,
without this minimum of decision and sanctification for which God
looks,
there is no
redemption.
Let me contrast this
story
with the
experience
of salvation
by Martin Luther,
who is for me not the final word in this matter but one who needs to be
quoted
here in order to show how different Pentecostals are from Christians in the Reformed tradition. Luther had learned from Gabriel Biel
(1410-1495):
If man does his uttermost
(facere quod
in se est),
God will
forgive
him. This
pastoral
counsel was meant for those Christians who were tormented in their conscience
by
their shortcomings.
But this minimal
request
was turned into a
whip
in the hands of a conscientious monk and thinker like Martin Luther. In
studying
Gabriel Biel’s
writings
he had to ask himself
continually: When am I
really doing my
uttermost? Who can
give
me the assurance that the fear of hell
(attritio),
which drives me into the
confessional,
is the uttermost
quod
in me est? Is not
repentance
of the heart
(contritio) which flees out of love to the arms of
God,
this uttermost which God
justly requires
of us and not the fear of damnation? But
precisely
this minimum,
this contritio of
heart,
was
impossible
for Luther to achieve. He became convinced on the basis of Biel’s
soteriology
that he could not flee from hell
through
his life as a
monk,38
even if he as a
young monk,
“was
sitting
with wide
open
mouth and
nose, smacking
his
lips out of
devotion,”39
on
hearing
that
every
renewal of the monk’s vow had the same virtue as the first decision for a life as a monk.
Reading the Bible did not ease his conscience. He
recognized
that “there was no comer in his soul that was not full of the most bitter bitterness “0 my sin, sin, sin,
sin!” he
complained
in a letter to
Staupitz.
He was made
desperate by
the
incomprehensible phrase
in Psalm 31: “In
thy justice
deliver me”
(in
iustitia tua libera
me)
which for a Latin understanding
of
justice (Luther
read
daily
in the Latin
Psalter)
” Otto Scheel, ed., Dokumente zu Luthers Entwicklung (Tübingen
1929), no. 397. (Sermon on John 3:16, 29 June 1539; Luther Weimar edition XLVII, 90: “Ich will der hellan ‘9 entlauffen mit meiner Muncherej und Orden”).
Scheel, no. 281 (“Kleine Antwort,” Fall 1533; Luther Weimar edition XXXVIII: 148ff.): “Wir jungen
Mfnche sassen und sperreten maul und nasen
auch
auff, schmatzten
fiir andacht gegen socher trostlicher rede von unser heiligen Muncherej. Und ist 40 also diese meinung den Munchen
Luther Weimar edition bey
gemein gewest.”
I, 558 (“Resolutiones disputationum de
virtute” 1518: “Nec est ullus
indulgentiarum
angulus in ea non repletus amaritudine amarissma”).
12
197
appeared
to him to be
gross
nonsense. Justice-this could mean for him only
the Latin
distributive, i.e.,
the
punishing justice
of
God,
which distributes to
everyone according
to his merits. For a realistic self-examining
man such as
Luther, justice
meant the deserved punishment
and not liberation.
Luther’s troubles were not eased
by reading
the New Testament. Even in Paul’s
epistle
to the Romans
(1:17)
he found this
punishing justice
of God, so that he was
greatly tempted
to curse God.
So I was raging with a wounded and perturbed conscience; in great thirst I
knocked again at Paul’s door in order to find out what he meant
this until after and of I really
by
passage, days nights thinking
observed more
exactly
the context (connexio verborum). “The
justice
of God is revealed in
the Gospel” and “The just shall live by faith.””‘
In the same manner he examined Psalm 31: 1 :
Praise God, when I understood the context (res) and saw that “justice of God” meant “justice that justifies us through the given justice in Christ Jesus,” then I understood the grammar and I began to enjoy the Psalter.11
That
is, Luther discovered that the genitive “justice
of God” meant that justice
which God
gives
us and not a justice which he demands of us. Immediately
he tested his
discovery
on similar
genitives
in the Bible and found that the Hebrew word
“justice” (zedaga)
did not mean the mechanical, Latin,
but God’s
personal sovereign justice,
his
free, unconditional
justice.
This
meaning
is the reason
why
the same word can be translated in the Bible sometimes as “mercy.”43
This Lutheran
understanding
of salvation is
exactly
what the Pentecostals
disagree
with.
They
either
interpret
Luther in a Pentecostal
way
and describe his “conversion” as
exactly
that last
dime,
.
41 Luther Weimar edition
LIV,
186 (Introduction to vol. I of the Opera
Latina, 1545):
“Furebam ita saeve et
conscientia, tamen eo loco Paulum, ardentissime sitiens perturbata
pulsabam importunus
scire, quid 5. Paulus vellet. Donec miserente Deo meditabundus dies et noctes connexionem verborum attenderm, Iustitia Dei revelatur in
nempe:
illo,
sicut
scripto
est: Iustus ex fide
vivit,
ibi iustitiam Dei
coepi intellegere eam, qua iustus dono Dei vivit.” For the Reformed tradition see Walter J. Hollenweger, Erfahrungen
der
Leibhaftigkeit.
Interkulturelle
Theologie
2 (KaiserlGiitersloher Verlagshaus, 1979, 1990?), 299-328 (on
the
very
different social consequences of salvation); also Walter J. Hollenweger, Geist und Materie. Interkulturelle Theologie 3 (Kaiser/Gütersloher
Verlagshaus, 1982, 19922), 157-159 (on
the salvation of
“pagans,”
in
particular Muslims), also in the article mentioned note 42
Hollenweger, “Zwingli Writes the Gospel Into His World’s Agenda,” 70-94.
Scheel, no. 449 (“Tischrede,” V, no. 5247, between September 2 and 17, 1520): “Gott lob, da ich die res verstunde und wiste, das iustitia Dei hiess iustitia iustificat
qua nos
per donatam iustitiam Christi Jhesu, da verstunde ich die grammatica, und schmeckt 43 mir erst der Psalter.”
Luther Weimar edition V, 155. On Luther see also Miroslav Volf, “Materiality of Salvation: An
Investigation
in the
Soteriologies of Liberation and Pentecostal Theologies,”
Journal
of
Ecumenical Studies 26
(Spring 1989): 447-467,
in particular 449, 454.
13
198
or
they
side with
example, Pentecostalism,
the decision for
Christ,
which
they
have
experienced,”
the anti-Lutheran Catholic
position
at the time of the Reformation. For
in a
polemic against
the German Lutheran
specialist
on
Kurt
Hutten,
Christian Rockle writes:
Catholicism. interesting
understanding
of salvation churches while the Reformation position.
Hutten’s basic error is that he speaks of grace without conditions
the last
(without
dime),
and the Bible knows of no such thing. The doctrine of
unconditional grace is a master stroke of Satan, with which he has
deceived millions of
already
people and led them to damnation.”
This
comparison
shows that Pentecostalism
elements of
popular
as Catholicism has moved
and moved
“Evangelicalism plus,”
has taken on board
many This
development
is all the more
away
from its Tridentine
closer to the Reformation churches have also softened their
fire,
dedication,
This
coming together
at the
popular
level makes it understandable that the
Presbyterian
ecumenist John A.
Mackay
foresaw “a more cordial
rapprochement
between the Catholics and Pentecostals than between adherents of mainline denominations. ,,46 And
indeed,
Catholics and Pentecostals have been in
dialogue
for over 20
years
whilst there are
only
12 Pentecostal churches in the World Council of Churches.”
In
summary,
one can
say
that Pentecostalism is not a kind of
i.e., Evangelicalism plus
missionary success, speaking
in
tongues
and
gifts
of
healing.
That will no
longer do, especially
because of the
heavy dispensationalism
one finds in Evangelicalism, which conflicts with the Pentecostal refusal to 44 Samuel Doctorian describes Luther thus: “The same moment I remembered about
by
very ‘Quoted by
1971-January 1972): 10-11;
Dialogue,”
the great reformer, when he was going up the stairs
the
kneeling; suddenly
light of God’s Word, he jumped
down and shouted: ‘The just shall live enlightened faith. “‘ Samuel Doctorian in The
by 45
Evangelist 4 (June 1964): 4.
Christian Röckle in Philadelphiabriefe 15 (March-April
1963): 3. But see the
different approach by Volf, “The Materiality of Salvation.” ”
Michael
Harper, “Dialogue
Between Pentecostals and Vatican Officials,” Renewal 37 1972): 7-9. See also Between Roman Catholics and Charismatics Starts (February-March in
“Dialogue
1972,”
Renewal 36
J. Rodman
(December
Williams, “Ecumenical
New Covenant 2
(April 1973): 5;
J. Rodman
Williams,
“Roman Breakthrough,” Catholic/Pentecostal
One in Christ 9/1 (1973): 73ff.
“African Church of the
Holy Spirit (Kenya) (20,000);
African Israel Church Niniveh
(Kenya) (350,000);
Church of the Lord (Nigeria) (1,103,340); Jesus-Christ sur
Eglise
de
la Terre
par
le Prophete Simon Kimbangu
(Zaire) (5,000,000);
du
Congo (Congo Brazzaville) (110,461); Iglesia
de Dios
de Missiones Pentecostales Libres en Chile
Pentecostal de
(no
Chile (90,000); Igreja Evangelica Pentecostal de
International
Evangelical
Church
(USA) and Chiesa Internazionale Mision Pentecostal
Evangelica Union of
(Italy) (168,000); Iglesia (Chile) (12,000);
Evangelical
Christian
Baptists
of USSR
(547,000). Details and
discussion of sources in Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, Volume 11, Chapter 27: “Dialogue with
Ecumenism.”
Eglise Evangdlique (Argentina) (40,000); Iglesia statistics); Iglesia
Angola (3,000);
Organized
14
199
relegate
the
gifts
of the
Spirit
to the formative
period
of
Christianity. 41 The doctrine of free will, the ordo salutis and other elements are traditions common to Pentecostalism and Catholicism. If one is not prepared
to consider Pentecostalism as a kind of popular
Catholicism,
a Catholic
piety
without the
theological
and
juridical
Uberbau of the Catholic
church,
one would at least have to see
Pentecostalism as a denomination sui
generis.
Making
the
Kingdom
Visible: Elements of Common Action
That the Catholic Church in Latin America is in trouble is too well known to need documentation. That the Latin American Pentecostals profit
from this weakness is also well known.
However,
one should not lay
the weakness of the Latin American Catholic Church at the door of Pentecostalism. Catholicism must reform itself out of its own tradition. Polemics
against
Pentecostals will
only
worsen the situation.
Such reforms are under
way
for instance in the Catholic base communities.
However,
these base communities are a
two-edged sword.
Certainly they
have taken on board some elements of Pentecostalism,
in
particular lay leadership
at the local level and the oral medium of communication.
They
were “intended as a means of stopping
Protestantism.” But Adoniram Gaxiola
aptly
observes that the “result was instead `a
parallel church, and,
in the last
instance,
a schismatic church’.”49 He is seconded
by Harvey
Cox who writes:
The intention of the ecclesial machinery in giving life to the Ecclesial Base
Communities was to reorganize the periphery and to direct it towards a
centralized power [but] this time the mechanism “went-hay-wire,” and the
periphery
distanced itself still more from the centralized power. The base
communities rebounded against… the vertical structure and dismantled
it.so
On the other hand the continuous
growth
of Pentecostalism in Latin America is not the solution to all the
problems
of that continent. So far Pentecostals lack the skill to deal with “structural
injustice,”
with political
and educational
issues, although they try
hard to enter this field. That is why a number of Pentecostals
plead
for more
cooperation between Pentecostal churches and the Catholic base communities. 51
48 Gerald T. Sheppard, “Pentecostals and the Hermeneutics of
the
Dispensationalism:
Anatomy of an Uneasy Relationship,” PNEUMA: The Journal Pentecostal Studies 6 of the Society for
(Fall 1984): 5-33.
“Adoniram
Gaxiola, “Poverty as a Meeting
and Place: Similarities and Contrasts in the
Experiences
of Latin American Pentecostalism and Ecclesial Parting Base Communities,” PNEUMA: The Journal of the Society for
Pentecostal Studies 13 (Fall 1991): 167-174, quote, 169.
This SI
soH?ey Cox,
La Religión en la Ciudad Secular,
111, quoted in Gaxiola, 169.
quote from Harvey Cox produced violent protests from the Catholic side.
Special issue of Pastoralia 7/15 (December
on “Pentecostalismo de liberacion.” Ramon Flores, “The Hermit: A 1985)
y teologia
Prophetic-Pastoral Model for Latin America
Today,” PNEUMA: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Theology 13 (Fall 1991): 141-150. Carmelo A. Alvarez, Santitad y
compromiso. El riesqo
de
15
200
their hermeneutical
approach, acting”
and “common emerging
Neo-Pentecostal
they
However,
who are
very
different
seek of social
protest through
an
orientation is
biblically
Although
there are some considerable differences between the two in
there is
enough space
for “common
thinking,” especially
with
regard
to the new
money aristocracy
in Central America. The neo-Pentecostals hold their
prayer meetings
in exclusive hotels and actively support police
terror and torture. That means in certain cases
are
torturing
their own brothers in the
faith,
the
poor indigenous (which Sepulveda
calls “criollo”
Pentecostals)
from the US-based Neo-Pentecostals. The Neo-Pentecostals freedom for
big
business and
suppression
authoritarian state. All of that
political
camouflaged
as the
fight
of
good against
evil. That “the evil” can also be their own brothers and sisters in the faith who
happen
to be on the other side of the social
divide,
is a particularly cruel
irony
of this
story.
the
independent
and
indigenous
churches
(Sepulveda’s Criollo
Pentecostals)
discover that
they
are not
helpless
victims of a cruel world-order.
They
know that God
gives
them
hope
and
power
to
the world.
They organize
themselves and even
accept political mandates. “God demands from us a prophetic stance.”52 Here is a large field of “common action.”
Dennis
Smith,
a
Presbyterian working
in
Guatemala,
above
picture
of the Charismatic
“were well-connected in local and international
“embraced New
Right politics
as a logical extension of their new found
change
gospel.”
He
pointedly
asks:
Bundy,
Sepulveda,
1993),
Kamsteeg).
money aristocracy:
confirms the. some of them politics.” They
vivir el evanglio (Mexico: Casa Unida de Publicaciones, 1985), reviewed by David
PNEUMA: The Journal
of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 8 (Fall 1986): 187. See also Pentecostalismo liberación, reviewed Anders Ruuth in
Alvarez, ed., y 1993, by
Evangelio y Sociedad,
no. 18
(July-September 1993):
26-27. Juan
“Pentecostalism and Liberation
Theology: Two Manifestations of the Work
of the Holy Spirit for the Renewal of the Church,” in All
Together in One Place:
Theological Papers from
the Brighton Conference on World
eds. Harold D. Hunter
Evangelization,
and Peter D. Hocken (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press,
51-64.
mas Volf,
“Materiality
of Salvation,” 447-467. See also the booklet
important
Algo que 6pio (eds.
Barbara
Boudewinse, Andrd Droogers, Frans
Una lectura del latinamericano caribeno Jose:
antropológica pentecostalismo y
(San Departemento Ecumendco de Investigaciones [DEI]), 1991. s2 This is based on extensive field research
by Heinrich Schafer, “… und erlose uns von dem Bosen. Zur politischen Funktion des Fundamentalismus in Mittelamerika in Uwe Birnstein
(ed.),
“Gottes
Fundamentalismus als
einziqe
Antwort…
”
Christlicher
Herausforderung
an Kirsche und
Peter
Gesellschaft (Wuppertal:
Hammer, 1990),
118-139. Also
Sch?fer,
“Dualistische
Religion aus chaftlichen Gegensatzen. Gesellschaftliche Krise und
gesell
Nachfrage im Protestantismus Mittelamerikas,” Wege zum Menschen 41 (February-March 1989): 52-70. ‘
The
quote is from a Spanish
document (Declaración de la consulta de lideres nacionales de la Iglesia de Dios: Desarrollo de un modelo pastoral pentecostal frente a la teologia de la liberacion, in Pastoralia, San Josd, Costa Rica, no. 15, 10/1989,
On the whole issue see Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, Volume II, Chapter 16: “Battle Against Unjust Structures.”
102?.
16
201
‘
What about the businessman who
participates
in a Full
Gospel Businessmen’s
prayer every Tuesday,
and attends
worship
at a Neo-Pentecostal church three or four times a week? Does his faith affect his business ethics? Will he permit his employees to organize a union? Will he continue to fire and rehire his production workers six months so that he can avoid Social
every
to be
paying Security
benefits? Will his home continue
plagued
with domestic violence? In a
like Guatemala’s, those who have wealth and
highly polarized society power and who claim to have had their lives transformed by the Spirit of God are faced with a special responsibility
to practice justice, humility and mercy.
And how about those who now hold high public office? Will they be less
and less abusive of human rights than their predecessors? So far
President Serrano and his closest advisers have shown that they are fond of
corrupt
the of office. Pomp and
protocol are practised religiously. In
classic
trappings
Neo-Pentecostal
style,
Serrano and his advisers are
conspicuous
consumers of luxury automobiles, exclusive and the very clothing
finest culinary fare. Serrano preaches fiscal responsibility, but has chosen
not to eliminate the huge presidential discretionary fund that has been a
major
source of
corruption
in the Human
rights
violations have
increased
sharply
since Serrano assumed office in past.
January
1991. Drug
traffickers and human rights violators in the army continue to operate with
impurity. 53
In relation to the dilemma between the
poor
Pentecostals and the Pentecostals with
money
and
power, Harvey Cox,
who considers himself “a
sympathetic
fellow traveler” of the Pentecostals and has “developed
a
genuine
fondness for the movement”
knowing
“how much the world needs its
message
and its
spirit,”
nevertheless sees cause for
genuine
concern. He writes:
In America, most white Pentecostals have become terribly comfortable with “this world.” They started out as a faith that brought hope to the rejects and the losers. Today some of their most visible have become ostentatiously
rich. They started out as a rebellion representatives
against creeds. Today many
of their preachers cling doggedly to such recently invented dogmas as the verbal inerrancy of the Bible. They started out teaching that the signs
and wonders took place in their congregations were not some kind of spectral
fireworks but
harbingers
of God’s new
day. Today
some Pentecostals have become so obsessed with the techniques of rapture that they
have
forgotten
the
original message. They
started out as radical antagonists
of the status-quo, refusing to fight the bloody wars of this fallen
have now turned into flag-waving super-patriots, easy marks for the demagogues of the new religious right. They started out as a radically age. Many
inclusive
spiritual fellowship
in which race and
gender virtually disappeared.
That is hardly the case, at least in most white Pentecostal churches today.
But I have not given up hope. In fact what impressed me most about the people
I met at SPS [the Society for Pentecostal Theology] was not just their
“Dennis
Smith, “Coming
of
Age:
A Reflection on
Pentecostals, Politics and
in Guatemala,” PNEUMA: The Journal
of
the
Society Pentecostal Theology
Popular Religion for
13 (Fall 1991): 131-139, quotes, 139.
17
202
openness
to
dialogue
but also their commitment to rescue their own movement from the distortions it has suffered, especially in recent years. What I found there was an
expanding company
of young Pentecostal leaders who are determined not to barter the
power of their remarkable movement for a
questionable
batch of
currently popular religious
and political slogans. 54
That Dennis Smith’s and
Harvey
Cox’s concern is shared
by
more than a few Pentecostal leaders can be seen from the fact that
they published their reflections in a Pentecostal
periodical.
The
ability
for critical self-examination has
always
been a mark of the
Spirit.”
All this
potential
for
political co-option by
the
Religious Right
makes Pentecostal
dialogue
with base communities and the
theology
of liberation
imperative.
That is the task which
Douglas
Petersen sets himself “To be
relevant, theology simply
must
respond
to the
questions that the
poor
are
asking.
The
marginalized
are not interested in the traditionally
articulated
scientific/theological ideas, rather, they
want to know how God could abandon them so
totally
in the
physical
realm. Unless the church is a participant in this
quest,
the Liberationists
argue, it has no reason for
being.”
Some Pentecostals even
go
so far as to see the need to take
up
some of the
insights
of Karl Marx.56
This
appreciation
for certain
aspects
of the liberationist
agenda
does not hinder Pentecostals from
criticizing
some elements in the
mainly Catholic
theology
of liberation. It is
confusing, says
Harold D.
Hunter, “because social activists often
speak
of
liberating
the
poor
but seem to have little
appreciation
for those
(like Pentecostals)
who minister to the
S4Harvey Cox, “Personal Reflections on Pentecostalism,” P.’VEU?1.TA: The Journal Pentecostal Studies 15
of the Socieiy for (Spring 1993): 29-34, quotes, 34. ss pentecostalism preceded Fundamentalism. Fundamentalists were and are the stricted adversaries of Pentecostalism. G. one of the contributors to The Fundamentals
( 12 vols., 1914)
even Campbell Morgan,
“the last vomit of Satan.” On the
spoke of the Pentecostal Movement as
interesting
and
uneasy marriage
between Fundamentalism and Pentecostalism, see Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, Volume II, Chapter 15: “Pentecostalism
and Evangelicalism.” There are even researchers who see in Pentecostalism a form of liberalism. The first Pentecostal “Declaration of Faith” has no “inerrancy of
(See the Declaration of Faith of Seymour’s Apostolic
Faith Movement in Scripture.”
Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, 513.)
On the
very strong pacifism
of
early
Pentecostalism see
Hollenweger,
The Pentecostals,
Volume II, Chapter 14.3: “Pacifism.”
Pentecostalism started under the
leadership
of a black ecumenist and saw the reconciliation of the races as one of the main works of the Spirit. Hollenweger, The Pentecostals,
Volume II.
Chapter
3: “The Black Oral Root,” Chapter 4: “A Kite Flies Against the Wind: Black Power and Black Pentecostalism in the US,” Chapter 5: “South Africa.”
‘Douglas Petersen,
“The
Kingdom
of God and the Hermeneutical Circle: Pentecostal Praxis in the Third World,” in Called and Empowered : Global Mission in Pentecostal Perspective, eds.
Murray
W. Dempster, Byron D. Klaus and Douglas Petersen
(Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1991), 47. See in particular
the works of Peter Kuzmic, and
Hollenweger,
The Pentecostals Volume II,
Chapter 16.3: “Pentecostalism and Marxism.”
18
working Cecilia Loreto because
why
does
more
necessary.60 Pentecostalism, especially Carmelo
On the other
hand,
203
perceived,”
the
poor
Pentecostal churches do not
opt
a poor
people’s
church and that is for them.”59
However,
this criticism
of works on Latin American
expanded.
Dialogue
session of
not
enough
America,
we must also talk to them.
class.”5′ In
echoing
what Catholics themselves
Mariz
says:
“The Catholic Church
opts
for
it is not a church of the
poor.
for the
poor
because
they
are
already
the
poor people
are
opting
not hinder a dialogue with Catholic
theology
but it makes it all the
In the
majority
the ones which deal with church
growth,
E. Alvarez
rightly
detects a kind of “Manichaen
reading” which does not see the
material, positive
elements of Pentecostalism.6′
the Catholics have learned from the Pentecostals that the absence of a priest does not mean the end of the church.62
“Common
acting”
and “common
thinking”
on this action is so far still in its
infancy.
There are
beginnings
here and there which need to be
All the more it is
regrettable
1994 could not take
place
in
Santiago,
Chile. It is
to talk about Roman Catholics and Pentecostals in Latin
that the Vatican/Pentecostal
harmonious
thought.
The
authors,
the
contexts, different.
Likewise,
whole. On almost
every
different but also
contradictory. fact that the Catholic church too
Unity
and
Diversity
It has been known for a
long
time that the
Scriptures
do not offer a
and coherent
system
of
theological
and social ethical
the
vocabulary,
the times are too
Pentecostalism is not a
theologically
coherent
issue one finds convictions that are not
only
What is usually not
appreciated
is the
is a very heterogeneous entity, both in terms of its
theology
and its moral convictions. Pentecostals have tried to
present
the
appearance
of a consistent
logical whole,
but with no success. The World Pentecostal Conference has therefore never issued
5/2 (1986):
typescript, Hollenweger,
Poverty:
Philadelphia Temple University
” Harold D. Hunter in a review of David E.
Harrell, Jr.,
Oral Roberts: An American Life (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1985), in EPTA Bulletin
59-61, quote 60.
For instance Abdalazis de Moura (former research assistant of Helder “A
Camara),
importancia
das
Igrejas
Pentecostais para a
de Rua Boa
Igreja Catolica,” Recife, dupl.
Moura, Jiriquiti 48, Vista, 1969,
summarized in 59
The Pentecostals, 105-107.
Cecilia Loreto
Mariz, Religion
and
Coping
with in Brazil
(Ph.D. Dissertation; Boston, MA: Boston University, 1989), 138.
Poverty
Published as Coping With
Pentecostals and Christian Base Communities in Brazil (Philadelphia, PA: 60
Press, 1994).
More material in detail in Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, Volume 11, 16.20: “Pentecostalism and
Chapter
Theology of Liberation,” and Chapter 13: “Pentecostals and
61
Catholics.”
Carmelo A.
Alvarez,
Santidad
y compromiso, reviewed by David Bundy
in PNEUMA: The Journal ó2
of the Society for Pentecostal Theology 8 (Fall 1986): 187.
Eclesiogenesis. Las Comunidades de Base Reinventen la Iglesia (Santander: Sal Terrae, 1980), 13.
19
204
a statement of
agreement
on
major theological
issues. The Catholic Church has issued such
statements,
but as
every
observer
knows,
these statements have been received in the worldwide Catholic church in a very
limited
way.
In
fact,
the more the center of
power
insists on its right
to issue such
decrees,
the more the Catholic
grassroots
conflict with the central church. This fact was
brought forcefully
home to me through my
visits to Catholic churches in the Third World and even more so
through my
Catholic research
students,
secular
priests, members of religious orders and
lay people.
It is therefore
quite
obvious that neither the
unity
of
Scripture,
nor the
unity
of Pentecostalism or Catholicism lies in an articulated declaration. These are at best
auxiliary
structures. The
unity
of
Scripture
lies in the fact that in general it points in one direction and has one center. The
unity
of Catholicism lies in its
tradition,
in its
liturgy,
in the
conciliarity
of its
bishops,
in a common
language (Latin),
and in a common
spirituality,
but to
pretend
that the Catholic church is theologically homogenous
is a
gross misunderstanding.
Therefore it is obvious that
unity
must be
expressed successfully through
means other than
conceptual
statements. That is
something
which the Pentecostals have not
yet learned, yet
their
experience
and
history
would lend itself very
well to such an exercise. In fact both Catholics and Pentecostals could work on a model of
unity
which sees
theological
and ethical concepts
as
only auxiliary. secondary
instruments. So for both the question
remains: How then is
unity expressed
and made visible? This is the
topic
of our next section.
The
Difficulties
Conversion and
Ecclesiology
In
general
Pentecostal churches ask for conversion as a pre-condition for church
membership.
In the
past they
had clear demarcation lines. But this
boundary
has been eroded
long ago.
I invite
any
reader to
go to a
long
established Pentecostal church and see for himself or herself what has
changed
in the last
twenty years
as to
dress, cosmetics, lifestyle
and even sexual
ethics, including
an
increasing
rate of divorce. The
dividing
lines between the converted and the unconverted are no longer
clear. This erosion of
past
behavioral standards
has,
of
course, social reasons.
This
change
in
personal
and social holiness is also discussed on a theological level,
for
instance, by
Miroslav Volf from former Yugoslavia.
He
says:
A church is a community of people who congregate in order to call on, to
to and to confess Christ the liberator.
They
do not need to be characterized
testify
by a certain grade of personal or social holiness in order to be called the church. The church…
lives
solely
on the
sanctifying presence
of Christ, who promised to be wherever people congregate in His name…. The Church is therefore not a club of the
perfected but a
_
20
205
community of people who confess to be sinners and pray: debita dimitte. A church is any group that gathers around the one Christ, around God in his salvific devotion to men Zuwendung zum Menschen), that celebrates him as its liberator and Lord, that is open to all people and treats all with the same
people
dignity.
Such a
group
is a church because Christ has
to be present amongst them.6′ _
promised
context from
from earlier
ecclesiologies drawn on the
both
first time that a Pentecostal leading
Pentecostal scholar
were and social holiness.6′ This
has been
published by
a
earlier
ecclesiologies.
What is
interesting
in this
ecclesiology,
which was
published
in one of the
leading
German
theological periodicals
and which was
expressly titled as “free-church
perspectives,”
is the influence of the orthodox
which Volf
comes,
and even more the blatant difference
in which clear lines of demarcation
criteria of
personal
ecclesiological ideology
has for a
long
time been
given up
in
praxis
in the West and in the Third World. But it is to
my knowledge
the
ecclesiology
who contradicts
Perhaps
the turmoil and
suffering
in Yugoslavia
sharpen
the
theological
an
unexpressed expectation
to
explain why he,
as a Croate still had friends in Serbia and did not talk with
the backwardness of Byzantine-Orthodox
important
is Volf s definition of sin: “The real sinner is not the outcast but the one who casts the other out…. Sin is not so much a defilement but a certain form
of purity :
the exclusion of the other from one’s heart
mind. At
any rate,
he “sensed
disgust
about
and one’s world.”
Pentecostals.
culture.”65 Also
.
Volf is not alone in this
approach.
The
Hispanic
Pentecostal scholar Eldin Villafane sets the demarcation lines
very differently
from earlier
Because the church is a liberated
community,
he
says,
“it is committed to reconciliation. Because it has an ethic of
liberation,
it plays
a
major
role in bringing about a
new,
reconciled national church and
society.”66
Both Volfs and Villafane’s views indicate that a number
fast in an ecumenical direction without giving up
their
identity. Perhaps
a
possible
form of the church in these
of Pentecostals
are
moving very
Catholics also to
recognize “free-church
perspectives.”
this
position
makes it easier for
Baptism
For
many
Pentecostal churches
nowadays
adult
baptism
has become a more
important
issue than
spiritual gifts
and life in the
Spirit,
and this
6′ Miroslav Volf, “Kirche als Gemeinschaft. Ekklesiologische Ueberlegungen aus freikirchlicher Perspektive,” Evangelische Theologie 49/1 (1989): 52-76, quotes 64, 65.
Cleansing,”‘
” Volf, 6S
“Kirche als Gemeinschaft,” 68, note 65.
Volf, “Exclusion and Embrace: Theological Reflections in the Wake of ‘Ethnic
Journal
of Ecumenical Studies 29 (Spring 1992): 230-246,
241. mine.
quotes 332ff,
“Eldin
Emphasis
Villafade,
The Liberating Spirit: Toward an
Hispanic American Social Ethics
(Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1993), 224.
21
206
in the
in
spite
of the fact that adult
baptism
was not even mentioned first “declaration of faith” of Pentecostalism.6′ Cecil M.
Robeck, Jr.,
and the late
Jerry
L.
Sandidge, ministers,
examined
reminded
doctrinal
interpretations
strong
both of them Assemblies of God in detail. Robeck and
Sandidge
Pentecostalism.
They
mention
and adult
baptism.
Some
this
question
us of Donald
Gelpi.
He “has noted that ‘the most serious
differences
dividing
Catholic charismatics and Protestant
Pentecostals lie in the area of sacramental
theology’.68 Undoubtedly,
this observation could be
applied equally
to Roman Catholics and
Pentecostals in general. What
may
not be so obvious is that one
aspect
of ‘sacramental’
theology, baptism,
has .led to more intense debates and
divided more Pentecostal churches than
any
other issue the movement
has faced.”69
They
then
go
on to discuss the
different
modes and
of
baptism
within
immersion and
sprinkling,
infant
baptism
‘
demand
re-baptism
if in their view the mode was not correct or if it
took
place before
conversion. Some
dip
the candidate
only once,
others
three times. Also the condemnation of infant
baptism
is not
equally
in all Pentecostal churches. Most Chilean Pentecostals
practice
infant
baptism.
As in the case of
“Spirit-baptism”
the two authors
display
a rich
pluralist approach
to
praxis,
mode and
interpretation
the
baptismal
formulas It is also not clear
Pentecostals whether water
baptism
is an ordinance or a
and it is furthermore not clear whether
baptism
is
necessary
for salvation or not. Readers who
deny
this
pluralism may dispute
this
on
baptism
whose
closely argued
and
richly
documented
baptism.
That relates also to amongst
sacrament,
diversity
of
positions Sandidge
and
Robeck, essay
I do not need to
repeat.
of
with their
fellow-Pentecostals,
They
Very important
is their
theological
conclusion based on these facts.
write:
What most Pentecostals fail to take as
seriously as the
witness to an individual’s identification with Christ in this act is the
testimony
it contains to the identification with Christian koinonia, to
corporate identification, the relationship
between the person being baptized and all
Hollenweger,
Doubleday, 1975), 180, quoted by Ecclesiology
McDonnell,
67 See the Declaration of Faith of
Seymour’s Apostolic
Faith Movement in
The Pentecostals, 513.
Donald L. Gelpi, “Ecumenical Problems and Possibilities,” in The and Power: The Charismatic
Renewal, ed. Kilian McDonnell
Holy Spirit
(Garden City, NY: Cecil M.
Robeck, Jr., and Jerry Sandidge, “The
of Koinonia and
Baptism:
A Pentecostal
Perspective,”
Journal Ecumenical Studies 27 505. See also Kilian of (Summer 1990):
504-535, quote,
“Five Defining Issues: The International Classical Pentecostal/Roman Catholic
Dialogue,”
PNEUMA: The Journal
of
the
Society for
Pentecostal Studies 17 (Fall 1995): 175-188, in particular, 177-181.
69 Robeck and Sandidge, “The Ecclesiology of Koinonia and Baptism,” 505.
The Pentecostals, 31-32, 390-395.
Hollenweger,,
22
207 z
others who have been baptized and who share in their identification with Christ.”
In other words,
baptism
is an ecumenical sacrament. It
expresses
the identification with the whole church of God. If baptism,
they conclude, “is to bear witness to that koinonia with God in Christ
through
the Spirit,
then it cannot be done in isolation. It is meant to be undertaken within the context of the
community
of faith. Private
baptism undermines
baptism’s community
nature.”7′
This
corporate
nature of
baptism
is furthermore seen in terms of anamnesis: “The Risen Lord is
present through
the
Holy Spirit
who comes to indwell the new believer.
Baptism
then becomes sacramental by bringing reality
to the
presence
of the one who died and was resurrected….”
Koinonia also means the “church as a whole” and it includes those previously baptized.
The
implications of this are both social and ethical. At each baptism the must be asked
again:
Do we accept them as our brothers and sisters? Are we willing to be responsible for them? Are we also willing to question
recognize that they now have a responsibility to/for us?”
This view
places
the issue of the
legitimacy
of believers’ and infant baptism
in a new
light.
The biblical data seems
generally
to favor believers
baptism, regardless
of age.
“However,”
Robeck and
Sandidge continue,
“the
question
must be raised
regarding
at what
point
in what way
such
baptism
becomes efficacious.”
They
answer
by using
the analogy
of healing:
Within much Pentecostal theology, the faith of the one seeking healing is often understood to be essential to a person’s healing, but the person who is sick may not be able to exercise the faith. It
the of faith “necessary”
may be exercised, however, by community
on behalf of the sick or
and the community of faith anticipates that its faith will be injured person, effectual… ; for those who view baptism non-sacramentally and who practise believers’ baptism,
there is no clear and efficacious role for the faith of the koinonia, of other believers, to be exercised on behalf of the baptismal candidate.”
Pioneer Pentecostal educator P. C. Nelson noted
years ago
that since the sinner must first
repent
and
believe,
“this excludes children
(infants) who are too
young
to
repent
and
believe,
and invalidates
‘baptism’
of those who were not
regenerated
when
they
submitted to the ordinance. ,,75
However,
that is not what I read in the
Gospel.
I mention
“Robeck and Sandidge, “The Ecclesiology of Koinonia and Baptism,” 525ff. 72Robeck and Sandidge, “The Ecclesiology of Koinonia and Baptism,” 527. “Robeck and Sandidge, “The Ecclesiology of Koinonia and Baptism,” 528. “Robeck and “The Ecclesiology of Koinonia and 528. 75p. C.
Sandidge, Baptism,”
Nelson, Bible Doctrines: A Handbook of Pentecostal Theology Based on Scriptures
and
Following
the Lines
of Fundamental
Truths as Adopted by the General Council of the Assemblies of God (Enid, OK: Southwestern
revised and
Press, 1934);
enlarged, Enid,
OK: Southwestern Press, 1936′;
Springfield,
MO:
23
208
only
two
passages.
Peter
says
to the
inquirers
in Acts 2:38:
“Repent, and be
baptized everyone
of
you
in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness
of sins
(eis aphesin
ton hamartion
hymon).”
No
question that
they
need
forgiveness
of sin
before
their
baptism
and that
baptism was
only
a
public sign
of what had
already happened. Baptism
is “for the
forgiveness
of sin” whether we like it or not. Even
stronger
is Mark 2. Here a
paralytic
is
brought
before Jesus. The
evangelist
Mark
says: “And when Jesus saw their
[i.e.,
the four who
brought him]
faith he said to the
paralytic: ‘My son, your
sins are
forgiven.”‘ Fortunately Mark did not have to send his
gospel
for
approval
to
any church, Pentecostal or not. That means that sins are
forgiven
in this instance on the basis of the faith of others, in other words of the koinonia,.
In a similar
way
the Pentecostal authors
Sandidge
and Robeck
argue: “One
theological
document
suggests
that the
baptism
of infants
may
be considered a
baptism
of
‘corporate faith,’
and believers’
baptism
of ‘personal
confession. “”6 No wonder that the Pentecostal authors then recommend the ecumenical document on
Baptism,
Eucharist and lyfinistry (Lima).
Robeck and
Sandidge
then discuss
very intelligently
the
pastoral problems
related to infant
baptism;
for
example,
when
somebody
who has been
baptized
as an infant demands to be
baptized
as a believer. They quote
the Catholic
priest
Francis MacNutt: “Rather than
deny their sacramental
baptism
as infants, he told them
they
could ‘enact’ the conversion that
many
of them had
truly experienced….”‘
Such confirmation
of baptism
can be done with water or with oil as
long
as it is clear that it is a confirmation of the
already
valid
baptism.
The Pentecostal authors then continue: “If Roman Catholics can accept
the
baptism
of
persons
immersed in the name of the
Trinity by
a Pentecostal
minister,
is it too much to
anticipate
that Pentecostals might
also
accept
the reaf?rmation of sacramental
baptism
received as an infant
through
a rite of renewal
by immersion,
whether
by
a Roman Catholic
priest
or a Pentecostal
pastor?”‘8
Such
practice
would solve a very deep problem
in Pentecostalism,
namely
the
re-baptism
of
people who have been
baptized
in another Pentecostal church. This
practice denies the character of
baptism
and should not be allowed. Instead the problem
should be
approached
on a
pastoral
level. So
here,
it seems to me,
Pentecostals could
give up
their
polemics against
infant
baptism
.
Gospel Publishing House, 1940;
revised:
Springfield,
MO:
Gospel Publishing House, and London:
Assemblies of God Publishing
House, 1962, 180; quoted by Robeck and Sandidge, “The Ecclesiology of Koinonia and Baptism,” 505. “‘John
Ford, ed.,
“Ecumenical
Findings,”
note 13,
manuscript 21, quoted by Robeck and Sandidge, “The Ecclesiology of Koinonia and
Baptism,” 529. “Francis
MacNutt, “A Proposed Solution to the Re-Baptism Dilemma,” Ministries 3
(Spring 1985): 58-61, quote, 61,
and Robeck, “The Ecclesiology
‘g
of Koinonia and Baptism,” 531. quoted by Sandidge
Sandidge and Robeck, “The Ecclesiology of Koinonia and Baptism,” 531.
24
209
without
giving up
their
identity. They might
no
longer say
“infant baptism”
is no baptism.
The Eucharist
During
the Vatican/Pentecostal
Dialogue
the Pentecostals
put
this “hard
question”
to the Catholics: “If the eucharist is the heart of worship,
in the
light
of Acts 15:5-11 and I Cor. 12:12-13 how can Roman Catholics in good conscience exclude
anyone
from the table of the Lord? Where in Scripture do
you
find justification to use the Lord’s Table
(the
heart of
worship)
as a
disciplinary tool, i.e.,
a closed table (cf.
I Cor.
11:28,
Mt.
26:25)?”‘9
The Pentecostals were disturbed that they
were not allowed to take
part
in the Catholic
Eucharist,
but Catholics “whose lives do not conform to the
Gospel
are admitted to the Eucharist
simply
on the basis of their
supposed
catholic faiths Furthermore
they
asked: is the “mediation of Christ” exclusive to Roman Catholic
ecclesiology?
Who and what are the
“separated brethren?””
Robert McAlister asked the
pertinent question: “Why
do
you
call us brethren and refuse to share the Table with
us, hypocrites!”82
“The Apostle
Paul makes it
very
clear that our burden is not whether our brother or sister or some other denomination is
worthy
or not
worthy of the Table of the Lord. He
points
out that our sole
responsibility
is examining
ourselves.”g3 In further discussion the Pentecostals confessed to a Zwinglian, rather than a Lutheran,
understanding
of the Eucharist. However,
it is doubtful to me whether
they-as
in fact most
people who use this term-were aware of the transubstantional
aspect
of Zwingli’s
Eucharist
(transubstantiation
of the
people
into the
body
of Christ)
which has left
deep
traces in
Anglican theology
and
liturgy. 84 However,
the Pentecostal
position
on this issue was not as
strong
as it looks
here,
for later in the
dialogue they
had a heated debate
amongst themselves on the Lord’s
Supper.
“The Roman Catholic
delegation
sat quietly
while the inner
dialogue
was in progress.”85 William Carmichael came to this conclusion: “It is true
(and
a sad
fact)
that there is often sharp disagreement
within the Pentecostal tradition. We are indeed a ‘mixed has’.”‘”
‘9 Sandidge, Roman Catholic/Pentecostal Dialogue (19 77-1982), 1:220. Roman Catholic/Pentecostal
Sandidge, Dialogue (1977-1982), I:227. Roman Catholic/Pentecostal
8? Sandidge, Dialogue (1977-1982), 1:220. “Robert
McAlister letter to William
Carmichael, Rio de Janeiro, 24 November 1980; Sandidge,
Roman Catholic/Pentecostal Dialogue (1977-1982), 1:226. 83 robert McAlister letter to William
Carmichael, Rio de Janeiro, 24 November 1980; Sandidge,
Roman Catholic/Pentecostal
” water
Dialogue (1977-1982), I:226. J.
Hollenweger, “Zwinglis Einfluss in England,”
in Reformiertes Erbe, eds. Heiko A. Oberman, Ernst
Saxer,
Alfred
Schindler,
and Heinzpeter Stucki. Festschrift fiir Gottfried W. Locher zu seinem 80
(Geburtstag, Zurich: TVZ, I, 1972), 171-186. 85
Sandidge, Roman Catholic/Pentecostal Dialogue (1977-1982), 1:232. 86William
L. Carmichael, Letter to John Meares, Sisters, OR, 22 October
1980,
25
210
In
my opinion
this
acknowledgment by
Carmichael is not the end of the
story. First,
the Catholics are also a mixed
bag.
There is even room for a
Zwinglian
Eucharist in the Catholic church
according
to the Catholic
specialist
Albert
Ziegler. According
to him the Reformation was due to the
inflexibiliy
of the Catholic
hierarchy
which treated symptoms
instead of going to the root cause of the
plight
in the church. He draws
explicit parallels
with
today’s
Catholicism and
points
out that the Reformation started not with a
controversy
on fundamental truths but in the realm of practical Christianity (celibacy of priests, the Bible in the
language
of the
people, changes
in
liturgy),
and he further sees Zwingli’s
Reformation as an “Ecclesial Basic
Community”
not unlike present-day
communities in Latin America. He describes
Zwingli’s Eucharist as ecumenical. There is room for
Zwingli’s
Eucharist in the Catholic Church.
Ziegler
deals with
Zwingli’s
ecumenical and conciliar understanding
of the universal
church,
which he calls “a
very topical insight.” Zwingli
was furthermore a fervent
mariologist
and did not abandon the Marian feasts in Zurich
(this happened later,
when the two churches moved
apart).
Therefore
Ziegler
invites his Catholic colleagues
to read
Zwingli ecumenically.
The same invitation must be addressed to the Reformed and Pentecostal
theologians.”
Also on the
practical
level there are
great
diversities in the Eucharist for instance between
Germany
and Mexico. In the
highlands
of Mexico I visited some Catholic nuns and held Bible studies with them and the people
of the
village. They
asked me to celebrate a mass for them. I answered that I was a Reformed
pastor
and did not have the
right
to celebrate the Eucharist in the Catholic Church. “That does not bother us,” they
answered. “The
priest
comes here
every
second
year.
Now you
are here. Will
you
do it for us?” I asked them to show me the liturgy book,
the
vestments,
the chalice and
everything
that was necessary.
The Catholic
liturgical
form was
very
beautiful and
posed
no theological problems
for me. So I was
disguised
as a Catholic
priest and celebrated with the nuns. Similar
experiences
in other countries (including
Switzerland and
Germany)
have confirmed
my
conviction that the Roman Catholic Eucharist is not as exclusive as the official statements make it. Here
again,
the ecclesial
pronouncements
do not mirror that which is believed
by
the
body
of all
believers,
not even
by the
majority
of Catholic believers.
Furthermore,
we do not find “theological
examinations” on the
meaning
of the Eucharist in Scripture a
pre-condition
for
partaking
in the Eucharist. At
any
rate the first disciples
were at least as mixed and divided on
theological
and
political issues as
today’s
Christians. But Christ celebrated with them. I know of course that at the
present
time this
open
table is
unacceptable
for
McAlister letter to William Carmichael, Rio de
Janeiro,
30 December 1980. Sandidge,
Roman Catholic/Pentecostal Dialogue (19 77-1982), 1:23 2.
“Albert
Ziegler, Zwingli, katholisch qesehen, 6kumenisch befragt (Zurich: NZN Buchverlag, 1984).
26
211
Catholic
theologians. They
think that
theological conformity
is a precondition
for
partaking
in the Eucharist. This
pre-condition, however,
is not even fulfilled within the Catholic Church.
So, why continue it to the
chagrin
of Catholics and other Christians?
In Switzerland there are
people
who leave the Reformed Church because
of the Pope. People
no
longer
make
sharp
distinctions between Catholics and Protestants. We are in this
body
of Christ
together.
The confessional
separation
around the Lord’s Table is an artificial divide which we
might
be forced to reconsider. All Christians believe that Christ is realiter
present
in the Eucharist. The mode of his
presence might
be
explained differently.
But is this difference of
theological nuance a reason for
separation?
One should also consider that the verb “esse ” does not exist in
many languages,
for instance not in the language
of
Jesus, namely
Aramaic.
Ontological categories
are not as universal as
people
who think in Latin terms
usually suppose. So,
if the Eucharist is universal, it should not be
put
into the
straight-jacket
of a Latin
ontology.
I have come to the conviction that the bone of contention is not really
the
interpretation
of the Eucharist but the
question:
Who can rite preside
over the Eucharist? The answer of the Catholics in
general
is: Only
a rite consecrated Catholic
priest.
But this
replaces authority (as understood
above) by juridical power-a very
difficult
position
to hold in the
light
of biblical tradition.
The Catholic
dialogue partners
did not like the
example
from Mexico. A Reformed minister
presiding
over a Catholic Eucharist is not “common witness” but
“abuse,” they
said. Even more
violently they criticized the last sentence in the
paragraph
above. “This
sentence,” they said,
“is not true. You fail to see the difference between res and signum.” Theological
“Res
(the reality
of
God)
is
present
in Pentecostal
worship,”
but the
signum (the apostolic succession)
is missing.
And that is the reason
why
there is at the
present
time no eucharistic communion.”
Well,
let us see what is
going
to
happen.
I suppose
in a
very
near future all this talk on res and
signum
will become obsolete and all of a sudden Protestants and Catholics will celebrate the Eucharist
together.
I shall watch with some amusement how Catholic
theologians
will then
explain
to their faithful
why
this exclusion has
always
been Catholic tradition.
But I
began
also to understand
why
the Catholics so
violently defended their
signum.
One of the Catholic
participants
said to a Pentecostal:
“So, you
are
prepared
to celebrate the Eucharist with un-baptized people
since
you
consider Catholic Infant
baptism
as a non-baptism?”
There was no answer to this
argument.
The
recognition of both res and
signum
in Pentecostalism and Catholicism works both ways.
Pentecostals cannot ask for Eucharist communion and
reject baptismal
communion.
27
212
The Petrine
Ministry
During
the Vatican/Pentecostal merged
on the
interpretation
of
Scripture.
Dialogue
a
significant divergence
faithfully by
In Roman Catholicism the interpretation of Scripture goes on daily in the lives of the faithful at many levels, such as in the family, in the pulpit, and in the classroom. The whole body of the faithful, who have an that comes from the Holy One cannot err in matters of belief
anointing
(cf. I John 2:20, 27). Roman Catholics hold that the teaching office of the Church is not above the Word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it
divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit (Dei Verum, lo).
If the Catholics had left it at that one would have to admit that
they
have a much more Pentecostal
for
by
Quakers (Society
of
Friends). They
theologians),
no
churches,
Quaker organizations
approach
to the
interpretation
of Pentecostals “look with
skepticism
faithful cannot err in matters of
the
only
church that has
Scripture
than the
Pentecostals,
on
any
claim that the whole
body
of the
belief.”88
First,
the term “the whole
body
of the faithful” needs clarification. If
that term
only
the Catholic faithful are
meant,
then this is in fact a Roman and not a Catholic definition. Let me
give
as an
example
the
are
very
different from Catholics and Pentecostals.
They
have no
priests (but they
have
university
no
dogma,
no
liturgy,
no sacraments. In their services one is silent. For them all of life is a sacrament. Some
are members of the World Council of Churches. They
have been
light-years
ahead of the other churches in their work for
peace. They
are
(with
the
Mennonites)
received a Nobel Peace Prize.
They
are
secretly
behind most
peace moves in the world. Because
they
refused to do
military
service
many of them have been in prison.
Long ago they developed
alternative
ways of
treating
the
mentally handicapped. They
established coeducational
in the forefront for the
emancipation
of women and black
slaves,
when the other churches considered all of this social activity
to be immoral. Most
importantly, they
have not
just published
in their factories
they
established a viable alternative to
capitalism, by integrating
workers and
employees
in the
schools and were
critiques
of
capitalism
but
decision-making process
on demonstrating (not just declaring)
Jesus-they give away
millions.
profits
and
development,
thus
that
capitalism
is not the
only
programs),
alternative to communism. Some of them have become
very
rich.
They are not ashamed of
making money. But-according
In
Birmingham
financed
public parks, many programs
at the
University
schools and institutes
for
to the
example
of
for instance
they
(not Quaker Muslims and other
88 Final
Report, point 25, PNEUlvfA: The Journal of the Society for
Pentecostal Studies 12 (Fall 1990): 122.
28
213
of reconciliation and
peace
and
Non-Christians.
pursue
this
ministry
Is it not
possible
interpretation
want
singing.
ordained
ministry
and of
thoughtful have to admit that these
Quakers
They
are
pioneers
with skill and
perseverance.
to include these
Quaker insights
in a
process
of
of
Scripture
of “the whole
body
of the faithful?” I do not to be misunderstood. I could not be a
Quaker.
I like
liturgy
and
Sacraments are
important
for me and I also see the value of an
certainly
Christian
During “hard
questions”
interpretations
doctrinal
guidelines.
But I also have
something
to offer which the
are
only learning
in the articulation of
put
the
following
Pentecostals,
other churches
(Catholic,
Protestant and
Pentecostal)
very slowly. Quakers
have a
place
commitment and common
witnessing.89
the second
quinquennium
the Catholics
to the Pentecostals: “When Pentecostal ministers exercise their
authority
and
speak
the
truth,
submission is
expected. Who decides and how is it decided what truth is in the case? If the answer is the ‘Biblical
Message,’
of the biblical text?,,9Q Anybody
knowledgeable Pentecostalism will have to
agree
that this
question
is unanswerable
which of course does not mean that the Roman Catholic position
is the solution to the dilemma.
In the final
report
this
complex
issue was summarized as follows:
satisfactorily expressed ecclesiology.
always
who decides
among
the various
about
for
Pentecostals believe that church order demanded
by
koinonia is not
in some
important aspects
of Roman Catholic
Even within the context of which seem to bear this out include those where it is stated that “the collegiality, examples order is the
passages episcopal
subject of the supreme and full power of the universal Church,” and even more
importantly, when it is stated that “the Roman Pontiff has full, supreme,
and universal
power
over the
Church,”
which “he can
exercise…
freely” (Lumen Genetium, 22).
On the
whole, Pentecostals
models
propose
that
presbyterial
and/or
congregational
ecclesial
express
better the
mutuality
and
reciprocity
demanded koinonia.91
by
authority
of
protest.
A Roman
‘
.
That,
in
my opinion,
is a
very
tame Pentecostal
Pontiff who has
“full, supreme,
and universal
power
over the Church” is
probably
the
greatest
hindrance to
growth
and
spirituality
in the Catholic Church and to ecumenical
fellowship
with other Christians. After
all,
the Catholic Church lived and
prospered
for
many
centuries without the doctrine of
“papal infallibility.”
At a time when the
institutional churches is
waning, “papal infallibility”
looks like a defense mechanism. The men and women who serve as
examples
89Literature and of
Quakers
in der Leibhaftigkeit, Roman Catholic/Pentecostal
123-133.
description Hollenweger, Erfahrungen
Dialogue (1977-1982), 1:259. On the Pentecostal discussion on hermeneutics see The Pentecostals, Volume 11, 18: “Hermeneutics: Who
Chapter
9′ Point 87 of the Final Interprets Scripture Correctly?” Report, PNEUMA: The Journal
of
the
Pentecostal Theology 12
Society for
(Fall 1990): 135.
90 Sandidge,
29
214
and Christian role models do not make the claim of
infallibility.
One might
think of St. Francis of
Assisi,
Niklaus von
Flue, Dag Hammersjold,
the former German
president
von
Weizsacker,
or also of Mother Theresa. All of them had
very
little
power,
but
great authority. Von Flue was even illiterate. And
Pope
John XXIII was not the
pope of all Christians because he was “infallible” but because he was credible,
and this in spite of his rather conservative
theology.
This
legitimizing power
of moral
integrity
is realized
by many Catholics.
“Papal infallibility”
is not
generally
received
by
the “whole body
of the
believers,”
not even
by
all of the Catholic believers. The doctrine of “infallibility” did not unite the Catholic
Church,
but divided it
(1870).
The Swiss Jesuit Albert
Ziegler says,
in a most
enlightening book on
Zwingli,
that the
ministry
of the
Pope
in its
present
historical form is not the
only
Catholic form of a Petrine
ministry.
There are other more ecumenical and more conciliar forms of
expressing
the
unity
of the church in the Catholic tradition.92
Catholics,
who
oppose
the
“full, supreme,
and universal
power
of the Pontiff over the
Church,”
both in theory and in
practice,
do not cease to be Catholics
(not only
Hans
Kfng).
Some Catholic researchers have told me that
only
Protestants still believe in the
infallibility
of the
Pope. When the Haitian
bishops
and Catholics
protested against
the diplomatic policy
of the
Vatican,
which was the
only
state in the world to
recognize
the
dictatorship
of Cedras in
spite
of the fact that he killed and
persecuted many
Catholic
priests
and
deposed
the
democratically elected
president,
the Catholic
priest Aristide,
and when the Haitian people say “We are the church,”
there is a serious blow to the
authority of the
Pope.
Of course I know that these
developments
in Haiti have theologically nothing
to do with the claim of
infallibility.
But such distinctions do not interest the
persecuted
and tortured Haitians.
“They are the church.” A Vicarius Filii Dei is
only
the
spokesman
of the church in so far as he follows the
example
of Christ. In
spite
of donatist suspicions,
this is also a Catholic
position
on the Petrine
ministry.
It seems to me that in the interest of a really Catholic Petrine
ministry the books on this issue should be
reopened.
I believe that there is room for a “Petrine
ministry.”
There is room for a
figure
and for
signs
of unity.
But
why
must
they
be connected with the
juridical power
of the Pontiff,
for which there is very little or no basis either in Scripture or in the
long
Catholic tradition? The
Pontifex
mcacimus is a
bridge
builder. He cannot be a
“bridge-builder,” general manager
of the church and supreme
arbiter.
Why
not divide these functions and make the “Petrine ministry”
a
figure
of
unity
and
leadership
without
any
of its authoritarian and juridical trappings?
Perhaps
Pentecostals did not dare to tackle this
point
because
they knew
only
too well that
they
themselves had become
very
clerical and
.
92 Ziegler, Zwingli, katholisch qesehen.
I
30
215
have
powers (although
that some Pentecostal not
authority)
which would figure
of
authority organizational
emerge-they
their
authority.
pastors
and executives
make the
Pope
envious? An
integrative
can of course not be
“organized.”
But the framework can be such that-when
such are not
figures
distorted
by
functions and
powers
which hinder
This
organizational change
would leave room for
yet many understand
integration.
Dutch monarchies crisis in their
country,
thinking.
such
figures
of
cannot fire
professors within his limited
jurisdiction).
mutual
repentance
and new common
groundbreaking
Catholic
dialogue partners
said that I did not understand the
subtlety of papal
in. f’allibility.
I was told that a statement can be infallible but
not
opportune.
It is of course
quite possible
that
I-together
with
Catholic
theologians
and
lay people
whom I know-do not
this issue. The Catholic
dialogue partners
also criticized
my personalizing
of the Petrine
ministry.
That criticism made me think and I had to reflect further on a form of
institutionalizing
I believe I found some such models in the Scandinavian and
(who played
a
very important
role in a moment of
without much
juridical power).
I also can think of
King
Juan of
Spain
who fulfilled an
integrative
mission in a crisis situation of his country. One would also like to mention the
Archbishop of
Canterbury.
He has
authority
but
hardly any global jurisdiction.
He
of
theology,
Nevertheless he is a
figure
of
unity
for the whole
Anglican community.
Paul in his
explanation
of
“logike
latreia”
the Romans:
vote;
authority
bishops
or even
priests (except
(Rom. 12:2)
admonishes
Do not conform to the schemata of this
age (Me suschematizesthe to aioni
touto,
Rom.
12:2).
Not to follow the organograms (the
schemata of this
age) applies
in particular to the
way we set
up
our ecumenical and ecclesial structures. This
non-conformity to the
spirit
of this
age
also means that truth is not found
by majority
this too is conforming to this world. We have
to
find
ways
which better
express
the
unerring
truth of the whole
body
of believers. The
of the Church does not lie in its
power
but in that it lives and proclaims
the
saving
truth
by
its
very being.
The definition of this truth
must
perhaps
wait for the
Kingdom
of God. What a hybris to believe that mortal
beings-and
of believers or even the
Pope-can express
God’s truth. This truth
might
be a task which
is-in
good
Catholic tradition-a
be it the whole
body
process
which is
always provisional
this
and
imperfect. Witnessing to, proclaiming, living
and
celebrating truth
might
be that foretaste of the
Kingdom
which is
given
to the Church. In this a “Petrine
ministry”
has a
function,
not as last arbiter but as
sign
of that
unity
which is still
underway.
A
Pope
who consults experts
on all kinds of issues and then decides out of his
ignorance (or
is not a
sign
of that
unity.
A
Pope
who expresses
what the “whole
body
of believers” stands for
(but
the whole body
of
believers,
not
just
those who
happen
to
agree
with
him)
has
perhaps
his
conviction),
31
216
real
authority. Authority
is that charisma which can articulate a consensus where no consensus seems to be visible.
However,
it would mean that he
really
trusts in the “indestructible truth” which is given to the Church.
The
Way Forward
.
If we want to
go
forward we have to take
cognizance
of new developments
both in the Pentecostal and Catholic
camps. Perhaps
it is also a function of the
dialogue
to
give
a platform to
minority positions in both churches because
they
are more
genuine
and more ecumenical. Perhaps
it is no
longer necessary
to
keep
the
dialogue partner
fixed in positions
which
might
still be “official” but which are no
longer
viable in either
community. Perhaps
the
dialogue helps
us to become better Pentecostals and more catholic Catholics.
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