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71
From Academic Research to
Spiritual Transformation: Reflections on a
Study
Pentecostalism in Brazil
of
Richard
Shaull
Two
years ago,
Waldo
Cesar,
a Brazilian
sociologist
of religion, and friend and
colleague
of many years, received a grant from the Research Enablement
Program
of the Overseas Ministries
Study Center,
to carry out a research
project
on the
topic
of Pentecostal
Responses
in Brazil to the Suffering of the
Poor,
and invited me to share in this
project.
Our original
intention was
simply
to discover to what extent Pentecostal movements were
responding,
in
any way comparable
to the Christian base communities, to the
desperate struggle
for survival of
increasing numbers of poor and excluded
people.
We started out from our own secure
position intending
to
study objectively
a
growing religious movement,
and evaluate it from our perspective.
But
very
soon we realized
that,
as we went about our efforts to find answers to our
questions
about
Pentecostalism, Pentecostals were
compelling
us to face new
questions
about ourselves and our faith.
As we
continued,
we
gradually
came to the conclusion that what
we were
seeing
were
signs
of the
emergence
of a new
expression
of Christian faith and life
significantly
different from that defined for us by
the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth
century.
We realized that,
if developed in faithfulness to the biblical
witness, this vision and experience
of Christian
faith,
as we were
coming
to perceive
it, could offer a compelling
response
to the
present
crisis of
civilization, espe- cially
to the vast numbers of
poor
and excluded
people
victimized
by it. As our
study proceeded, my major
concern became that of
trying
to discern,
in
my
interaction with
Pentecostals,
the central elements in what I would call a new
paradigm
for our
experience
and under- standing
of the
Gospel.
As I
struggled
with this need for discernment in almost
daily
contact with
them,
I realized that I was
being
trans- formed, theologically
and
spiritually.
Given this
investigative journey
from academic research to
spiritu- al transformation, I must
speak quite personally,
as a witness, to what I perceive as elements of this new
experience
and vision of Christian faith as well as the critical
questions they
lead me to raise, for
people in
my
own
religious
world and for Pentecostals,
trusting
that in this way
I
might
contribute
something
to a dialogue that could
prove
fruit- ful for the Christian witness in the
world,
whatever be our various
1
72
backgrounds
and
heritages.
And I can
accomplish
this task
only
as I speak
out of the context of my own
spiritual journey
over these
many decades.
‘
Stages
in an
Unexpected Journey
My
faith
journey began
in the earliest
years
of my life on an isolat- ed farm in southeastern
Pennsylvania during
the Great
Depression.
At that
time, my
world was limited to
my family
and
my church,
in both of which a strong Calvinist faith was the central
life-determining
real- ity. My parents rarely spoke
about it and the
preaching
and
teaching
in our church had little
appeal
for me. But we had a Bible and I immersed
myself
in the
reading
of
it, especially
the
Gospels,
from a
very early age.
As a result,
something happened
to me that has
shaped
the course of
my
life to this
day:
I
grew up
with a
profound
faith in and
experi- ence of God, and an extraordinary interest in and attachment to the
per- son of Jesus Christ. At the same time, this
experience,
mediated
by
the Scriptures, opened my eyes
to human
suffering
and awakened in me a concern about and commitment to the
struggle
for
justice
which has continued to
grow
over the
years.
And as far back as I can remember I assumed that I was called to the
Gospel ministry.
Arriving
in Princeton in
1938,
I began to
study
with three
profes- sors of
theology,
Emil
Brunner, John
Mackay
and Josef Hromadka. These scholars
provided
me with an
exciting theology
which offered me the
understanding my
faith had been
seeking,
and
deepened
and enriched that faith.
They
offered me an alternative to both the funda- mentalism which I had
rejected
and the
theological
liberalism which did not
satisfy
me. And for each of them,
theology
led to
passionate commitment to the
struggle
for social
justice
and the transformation of the world. I thus found in
theology
a perspective on and basis for life in the world that I had found nowhere else. When I finished
seminary, I asked the Board of
Foreign
Missions of the
Presbyterian
Church to send me as an
evangelistic missionary
to Latin America.
Arriving
in Colombia in 1942, I was confronted from the first
day there with the
reality
of
people spiritually
lost and
economically
des- perate.
I gave all
my energy
to the revitalization of
stagnant churches, and recruited
young people
who were
ready
to work with me,
starting preaching points
and new
congregations among
the
poor.
All our evan- gelistic
efforts combined the
preaching
of the
Gospel
as the
power
of God to transform life with dedicated efforts on the
part
of these
young people
to provide resources for the
improvement
of health, for educa- tion and for small initiatives in economic
development.
2
73
These efforts
proved quite successful,
and
yet
I was haunted
by
the fact that most
Presbyterian
Churches were not
growing
in a
healthy way
because
they
were bound
by imported
ecclesiastical structures and patterns
of congregational life which did not arise out of or fit their sit- uation. Over the
years,
I also became aware of the fact that our church- es created a
mentality
in which
many
of those who were converted became
primarily
concerned about
getting
an
education,
pursuing
a career,
and
becoming socially
and
economically upwardly
mobile. Along
this
road,
their
passion
for
evangelism
as well as their concern for the
suffering
of the
poor
seemed to fade into the
background.
In 1952, I was sent to Brazil where I
began working
with Presbyterian youth
and the Student Christian Movement while
teaching at the
Presbyterian Seminary
in
Campinas.
Here I found, in a situation of
growing
social unrest, a new
generation
of Protestants with
strong faith,
who were
seeking
an
appealing theological
foundation and ori- entation for their commitment to the
struggle
for social transformation. I was excited
by
the
possibilities
for Christian faith and witness in this situation and
rejoiced
as I witnessed their
growth
in their understand- ing
of the
Gospel
as well as in their involvement in social and
political struggles
for
justice.
As I look back now on that
period,
I realize that many young
lives were
permanently
enriched and transformed. But I cannot
escape
the fact that
here,
as in Colombia, within the ethos cre- ated
by
mainline
Protestantism,
involvement in pursuing a profession- al career and
upward mobility
for
many
others took
precedence
over the
passion
for
evangelism
and for radical social witness.
When I could no
longer
work in
Brazil, I
went to Princeton Seminary,
where I
taught
for
eighteen years.
There too I knew the excitement of
contributing
to the
spiritual
and ethical formation of several
generations
of students who were
searching
for a vital faith and a solid
theological grounding
and were
growing
in their determination to put that faith into
practice
in the world. It seemed inevitable that
they would move into
positions
in the church from which
they
could work passionately
at communicating this faith and
stimulating
the
growth
of a Christian social conscience. But over the
years,
I became more and more
perturbed
as I saw what
happened
to those who took
up
the min- istry
as a profession. To this factor of discontent was added
my grow- ing
awareness that the
theology
we were
teaching
was based on a par- ticular Western and masculine
type
of rationality. While I thought I was living
and
communicating
a faith
experience,
I suspected that what I and others were
really doing
was
teaching people
to have the
right ideas about God, to learn how to
speak
about God rather than to and with God.
Having
come to these
conclusions,
I decided to leave Princeton ten
years
before I was
expected
to retire.
3
74
I turned
my
attention once
again
to Latin America and was soon caught up
in the
development
of the
theology
of liberation. There I found
myself living
in
community
with women and men who were living
and
working
in
solidarity
with the
poor.
As
they experienced solidarity
with the
poor,
and read the Bible with
them, they
rediscov- ered its witness to God’s concern for and salvific action
among
the
poor and were led to a re-interpretation of the
Gospel message
that revi- talized their faith and
provided dynamic
motivation for the
struggle for social transformation. Out of this
experience
was bom a new model of church, the Christian base communities, in which the
poor experi- enced the closeness of God, a new
reality
of
community
and the call to
struggle
for
life,
even at the risk of their own lives. As I witnessed the transformative
power
of this movement, I
spoke
of it as a “new Reformation.” But
today
I have to admit that its
dynamic growth
and transformative
power
are much less in evidence.
I think that
you
can understand
why, given
this
personal history,
I have little
hope
that the older and more established churches will respond
to the
challenge they
face
today
to live out and communicate a faith
grounded
in the
Spirit
which would have the
power
to recon- struct broken lives and a broken world. And this task is
precisely
the one that I believe God has called us to undertake. At a time when the global
market
economy
is transforming the lives of millions into a des- perate struggle
for
daily
survival,
when all our
major
social institutions are in crisis, when the most
elementary
structures that sustain life in community
are
disintegrating, when,
in other
words,
we are
facing what I can best describe as a crisis of civilization.
With this
background
in
mind, you may also understand
the
spirit in which I entered into this
study
of Pentecostalism in Brazil. While I approached
it with
my
own critical stance as a Reformed
theologian and reacted
quite negatively
to much that I saw
especially
in the fast- growing Igreja
Universal do Reino de Deus
(IURD),
I was also search- ing
for
any
manifestations of the
power
of the
Spirit
which
might
offer life to those condemned to a
“living
death” and contribute
signifi- cantly
to the reconstruction of life in community. But I had not antici- pated
that I would not
only
face a clear
challenge
to
my
own
spiritual life and
my theology
but also
begin
to
perceive
the
emergence
of ele- ments of a new form of Christian faith and life
particularly
relevant to the
present
crisis of civilization as well as to
my
own
spiritual quest.
Taking Seriously
the Hermeneutical
Advantage of the Poor
For most of
my
lifetime, I have read but
paid
little attention to the words of the
Apostle
Paul to the members of the Church in
Corinth, reminding
them of the sort of
people
God had called:
4
75
To shame the wise, God has chosen what the world counts folly, and to shame what is strong, God has chosen what the world counts weakness. He has chosen things without rank or standing in the world, mere nothings, to overthrow the existing order. (1:26-28, Revised English Bible)
But some
years ago,
members of the base communities in Nicaragua,
El Salvador and
Chile, forced me to
recognize
what this Pauline
teaching
is all about. I remember still the first such
meeting my wife and I attended in one of the
poorest
communities on the outskirts of Santiago, Chile. As I listened to those who had a difficult time read- ing
the
Gospel
text reflect on its
meaning
for them in terms that at first seemed
quite simplistic,
I
gradually
came to
perceive
that
they
had been able to
grasp
a richness and
depth
of that
message
that
I,
with all my
academic work, had never been aware of. So when, at the end of the discussion
they
turned to me and said: “And
now, professor,
what do
you
have to say?,” I could
only
remain silent.
Anything
I might add would
only get
in the
way
of the
perception
and
appropriation
of the Word that I had witnessed. As a result of this and other similar
experi- ences,
I
try
to return each
year
to Latin America for several months. And while in the USA, I have been
taking part
in a praise and
praise service in a poor African-American
congregation.
This
ongoing expe- rience is essential if I
hope
to understand what God is
doing
in the world, deepen my
own
experience
of
faith,
and learn what it means to follow Christ.
The reason for this connection between
experiencing solidarity with the
poor
and
discerning
God’s action in the world is not hard to find. If the God revealed in the Hebrew
Scriptures
is the God who acts dynamically
to liberate a slave
people
and the God of justice as
por- trayed by
the
prophets,
who
judges
each nation in the
light
of what it does to the widow, the
orphan
and the
stranger,
and if the
message
of Jesus of Nazareth is
good
news to the
poor,
then the
poor
do indeed occupy
a
privileged position
as
interpreters
of God’s self-revelation. The church can be the
people
of God
only
if the
struggle
of the
poor for life is at the center of its faith and life.
Speaking
in more
theological terms,
the Pentecostal
theologian Jean-Jacques
Suurmond declares that “in the useless weak who cannot find
any
foothold in the dominant social order, God’s
grace emerges most
strongly
as the
power
which creates
something
out of nothing, life out of death.”I Suurmond makes this
theological
affirmation concrete when he notes that
“[t]he poor,
the
handicapped,
the
unemployed
and others who have been cast aside
by society
have a power in their weak- ness to evoke
gifts. Through
their need
they
stimulate the
functioning
lJean-Jacques
Suurmond, Word and Spirit
at
Play:
Toward a Charismatic Theology (Grand Rapids,
MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995), 87.
5
76
of
giving
and thus the encounter with God in Christ, so that the com- munity
is enriched.”2
I
rejoice
in the witness of the Christian base communities. I hope and
pray
that sooner or later small
groups
of women and men in our mainline churches will
struggle
with the
implications
of this biblical witness. But I cannot
escape
the fact that
today
Pentecostals are the ones who are
reaching increasing
numbers of the
poor
with a message and an experience that connects
directly
with their
religious
world and their
struggle.
The
great majority
of their churches are churches
of the poor.
Moreover,
as
they
are
constantly forming
new
groups,
which break
away
from the older established ones, these tend to move down- ward,
toward those who are
poorer
and more
marginal.
In fact, in his recent
study
of Pentecostalism in
Brazil,3
Andre Corten, a
Belgian political
scientist,
claims that Pentecostals have gone beyond
the base communities in a number of
ways. They
have touched the lives of a much
larger
number of
poor people, especially those at the bottom. Their discourse, rather than
being primarily
ratio- nal,
is an emotional discourse of consolation.
They
do not celebrate the equality
of the
poor
which,
in the base
communities, leads to new inequalities,
but allow the
poorest
to speak. Their discourse is not about the
“option
for the
poor”
but a discourse of the
poor
that refuses to accept poverty.
And instead of
focusing
on
political liberation, Pentecostalism focuses on
catastrophe,
violence and
terror,
the tribula- tions which
precede
the millennium.4
This Pentecostal
approach
to
empowering
the
poor
leaves
us,
I believe,
with an enormous task on our
hands,
or I would rather
say,
a compelling calling.
While I
recognize
the
privileged position
that Pentecostalism
occupies
when
dealing
with this
matter,
I am
surprised to find that, in Brazil at least, there is practically no
theological
reflec- tion on
it,
or on what it means in
shaping
both the
thought
and the life of communities of faith. And
my experience
in those Pentecostal cir- cles in Brazil has left me convinced that at least three related issues merit much more attention than
they
seem to have received thus far:
1) the need for
theological
and biblical reflection on what we have called “the hermeneutical
advantage
of the
poor,” coupled
with efforts to put this
consciously
into
practice; 2)
the need to
struggle
with the
way
in which this Pentecostal vision and
reality
is distorted
by imported
fun- damentalistic and
“prosperity” theologies
which are
incapable
of nam- ing
what God is doing in their
midst; and, 3)
the need to
struggle
with the contradiction between this
socially empowering
dimension of
2Surmond, Word and Spirit at Play, 190.
3Andre Corten, Le pentecotisme au Bresil (Paris, France: Karthala, 1995). 4Corten,
Le pentecotisme au Bresil, 243.
6
77
Pentecostal faith and the ever
present temptation,
in our
middle-class, materialistic
society,
to “conform to this
world,”
to
gain acceptance
in it,
and to use
positions
of power in the church for
personal prestige
and financial
gain.
At the same
time,
I realize that those of us in mainline churches face a more
overwhelming challenge.
And I suspect
that,
if any
signif- icant
change
is to occur
among us,
it will come as the result
primarily of the
impact
of the Pentecostal witness in our midst. Such a develop- ment
suggests
to me that as Pentecostals become more
engaged
in bib- lical
study
of issues such as those I have
just mentioned, they
will be prepared
to make a contribution to the future of the church of Jesus Christ that
goes
far
beyond
their own communities.
Life
and Power in the Realm
of
the
Spirit
I have
always thought
of
myself
as a person with a vital Christian faith and have on several occasions been accused
by
one or another of my
academic
colleagues
of
allowing my
faith to
get
in the
way
of
my scholarship.
I have
also, from
time to
time, struggled along
with
my students with the absence of an
experience
of God. In more recent years,
I have been concerned about the fact that, in the circles in which I usually move, conversations about what God is doing in our lives, of what Jesus Christ means for us, are so
infrequent.
This
experience
has led me to wonder to what extent for us in mainline churches, faith is a matter of belief in certain affirmations about God and Christ, rather than a dynamic experience of God in the center of our
daily
existence.
In the last few
years, my questioning
in this realm has
gone
much further. I more and more
suspect
that, whatever
may
be our Christian “beliefs,”
our world view is
essentially
determined
by
the Enlightenment
and the scientific
mentality
and sense of modernity that go
with it. In this context,
Reality,
as we know
it, is
limited to the vis- ible and material realm, to what
goes
on in us and in our
daily
lives as we concern ourselves about
family, work,
and
society.
Our world of reality
is thus a world closed in upon itself, and in which God and the realm of the
Spirit
have little
place
or are
essentially
absent.
But, among
the
poor
in
Brazil,
I soon came to realize that those who have not been
shaped by
this world view
perceive reality
in a quite
different
way. They
assume that their lives and world are set in the context of what we
might
call the “Realm of the
Spirit.” Reality
is not limited to what is visible,
tangible
and
material,
as defined
by
our scientific and secular
mentality.
All this
empirical
world is but
part
of and embraced
by
a
greater
Divine
Reality
which is present in and
per- meates
everything.
It constitutes the center around which their lives
7
78
revolve,
in contact with which
they experience
most
profoundly
the mysteries
of life and the world.
As I have become aware of this fact, I have
begun
to understand why
so
many
who
perceive reality
this
way
are
flocking
to Pentecostal Churches as their lives and their world
disintegrate
around them. Pentecostal movements,
especially
those in Brazil that are not
import- ed,
make an immediate connection with them.
They
take for
granted and affirms a perception of
Reality,
in which human
beings
live in an integral
relation with others, with nature and with the Divine. But Pentecostals
proclaim
and demonstrate that this Divine
Reality
is gra- cious and
compassionate, present
with
power
in the midst of all
they are
suffering.
Many
of those we interviewed
spoke
about their
overwhelming burdens: their
struggles
for
daily
survival, broken families,
material deprivation,
addiction to drugs and alcohol, and the culture of violence surrounding
them.
But,
in the midst of all this
struggle, they
had come to know the
presence
and
power
of the
Holy Spirit
in all aspects of their lives.
They
see the world and human life as infested with demons. At the same time,
they firmly
believe that their lives and their world are in the hands of God who acts to overcome these demonic forces. In the midst of all the forces of death and destruction around them, their lives are centered on an
experience
of God who is
very
close to them,
gra- cious and
compassionate.
To the
degree
that
they
live this
reality, women and men overwhelmed
by
utter
deprivation experience ecstasy and
joy.
For
persons caught
in
impossible
situations,
the
impossible becomes
possible
time and
again.
Miracles are
happening. Family
rela- tionship
are transformed, alcoholics and those on
drugs
break their addiction. Broken bodies and disturbed minds are healed. Those who have no worth and no
place
in society discover their worth before God and feel
empowered.
And some thus transformed find new
opportuni- ties for. richer human
relationships,
the
re-structuring
of life in commu- nity
and the
improvement
of their economic situation. Those who
expe- rience these miracles know that, even in the midst of the demonic forces around them, their world is
open
rather than
closed,
and their lives are oriented toward the future, the
coming Reign
of God. Thus they
are enabled to trust their lives into God’s hands and count on God’s
promises,
all of which
energizes
them for the arduous
struggle of
daily
life and for
participation
in efforts on behalf of God’s
coming reign.
Living
in
daily
contact with
people
who take for
granted
this
per- ception
of
reality
and witness to the
power
of this
experience
in their lives,
I have been
compelled
to undertake a new
reading
of the Bible
8
79
with this
paradigm
shift in mind. As I have done
so,
I have come to realize the
following
four
significant insights.
1. There is a dramatic contrast between the biblical worldview and
.
that of those of us, even in the church, whose
perspective
on life and the world has been
shaped by
the culture of
modernity.
In both the Hebrew and the Christian
Scriptures
we come face to face with
people for whom
Reality
is not limited to what we
ordinarily perceive
but includes a nonmaterial
reality,
the Realm of
Spirit,
which is manifest in their midst as a source of
energy
and
power.
Moses and the prophets,
Jesus and Paul took for
granted
that their lives and all aspects
of their world were set in the context of a greater Reality, that of the
Spirit.
More
significantly, they
were
Spirit-filled persons,
who experienced
this
presence
and
power flowing
into their lives and set- ting
the terms for all that
they thought
and
did,
and
empowering
them to be instruments of God’s
redemptive purpose
for the world.
2. Immersed in this
re-reading
of the biblical
story,
I have been con- fronted
by following
truth,
about which I heard
very
little in the Pentecostal churches I attended in Brazil: When we enter
fully
into the realm of the
Spirit,
our lives and our world are set in the context of a divine
reality
which is
compassionate,
centered on a God who suffers with those to whom a full life is denied and acts to
change
their situa- tion. To know this God, to live in the
Spirit,
means to be called and empowered
to do justice, to be
totally
committed to the transformation of life and the world in the direction of the
Reign
of God. When this God
speaks
to Moses, God declares that he has heard the
cry
of a slave people
in Egypt and has come to liberate them. The call of each of the prophets
was a call to lay before the
people
of Israel God’s demand for justice,
which
meant,
above all
else,
responding
to the needs of the widow,
the
orphan
and the
stranger. And,
as Marcus
Borg points
out in his
book,
Jesus: A New Elision, what
distinguished
Jesus from most of his contemporaries as well as from us “was his vivid sense that real- ity
was
ultimately gracious
and
compassionate.”5
3. Confronted
by
this
witness,
I can
only
ask: How is it that so many
can
speak
so enthusiastically about life in the
Spirit
and the
pres- ence of Christ in their lives without
allowing
the
Spirit
to lead them to passionate
commitment in the
struggle
for life for all to whom it is denied and into the
struggle
for the transformation of unjust structures in the direction of God’s
Reign?
Is it too much to hope
that,
in this time of such horrendous and
widespread
human
suffering,
we
might
witness and
participate
in an
“outpouring
of the
Spirit”
which would manifest itself in a dramatic
expression
of this dimension of the biblical wit- ness ?
5Marcus Borg, Jesus: A New Vision (San Francisco, CA: Harper Collins, 1991), 104.
9
80
4.
Turning
once
again
to the
Apostle Paul,
I have been forced to take a new look at the tremendous
theological
battles he carried on within the churches he founded. Paul, as well as those whom he led to Christian faith, had a profound, and often
overwhelming experience
of the
Spirit.
He was also
compelled
to
struggle mightily
to orient believers to discern and be faithful to the
leading
of the
Spirit.
This experience
had created a radically new
situation,
which
challenged
for- mer
ways
of thinking and of living and raised all sorts of issues
regard- ing
the nature of this new
relationship
with
God,
with self and with neighbor.
To answer these
questions,
neither the new Christians nor Paul could
go
back to the
theology
that had
shaped
their lives and thought
before their conversion. Life in the realm of the
Spirit
called for
theological
re-creation,
not
repetition,
for
daring
to risk
being
led to find new solutions to the new issues of faith and life
being
confronted daily.
The seriousness with which Paul undertook this
theological
task of discerning
the
leading
of the
Spirit
stands as a
challenge
to all of us today.
At the same time, we cannot
simply
assume that what we have taken for
granted
as Paul’s
theology,
as it has been mediated to us through
centuries of acculturation in our white, Western, male
–
world, dominated
by
the of
–
rationality modernity
or rational reaction against
it will
equip
us for this task.
Moreover,
the issues we face are not the same ones he faced. And the issues
being
raised
by
new religious
currents in a
post-modern
world and
by
the wide
variety
of expressions
of spirituality
manifesting
themselves both inside and out- side of the church, call for
daring
efforts at theological re-creation in an ever
deepening study
of the
Scriptures.
We
may
not have the
depth
of experience
or the richness of thought of the Apostle, but we do have the leading
of the same
Spirit which, according
to the Book of Acts, is time and
again pushing
God’s
people
to think new
thoughts
and do new things.
Retelling
the
Story of
Salvation
As a final
point
for discussion, I want to
present
a conclusion to which I have come as a result of
my
immersion in Pentecostal move- ments in Brazil, which
you may
find
disturbing,
or even heretical. I am convinced that in some of these movements a new
perspective
is emerging
on what is most central in our Christian faith, our under- standing
of the nature of God’s
redemptive activity
in our midst. This new
perspective,
whether we end
up accepting
it or
not,
raises crucial theological questions
which
may
take on
increasing importance
for all those in the Christian
community
in the
years
ahead.
10
81
For all the
years
of
my
life as a Christian, I have taken for
granted one
interpretation
of the nature of God’s
redemptive activity
as
being that
presented
in the Bible and worked out
faithfully
in our
theologi- cal tradition. The essence of the
story
of salvation at the heart of it is well known. God created human
beings
in a state of
goodness
from which
they
fell.
Responsible
for this
departure
from God’s
plan, they stood
guilty
before God and under God’s
judgment, yet incapable
of liberating
themselves from this condition. But God has acted to save
us,
in and
through
Jesus
Christ, especially through
his
death,
in order to overcome sin and offer
forgiveness
and eternal life.
I have not
only
been rooted in this
heritage
but am also a child of the Protestant Reformation which
re-interpreted
and
gave
new life to this
paradigm through
its
re-discovery
of the Pauline
emphasis
on God’s
gracious
initiative in the
justification
of sinners, available to all through
faith. From this recovered Pauline
emphasis
came a re-inter- pretation
of all
aspects
of Christian
faith, as well as a powerful experi- ence of liberation which had a tremendous
appeal
to an
emerging Social class in Western
Europe
and North America. It has been the foundation of evangelical
preaching
as well as missionary outreach and has
been,
over the
centuries,
a powerful force for conversion of sinners, personal
transformation and lives dedicated to the service of God and
neighbor.
It is thus
hardly surprising
that
only very slowly
have we
begun
to raise some
questions
about the
possible
limitations of this most fun- damental
paradigm.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of the first to raise serious
questions
about the relevance of an understanding of the
gospel which
compelled
Christians to first convince
people
that
they
were sin- ners in order to bring them to faith in Christ. He also asked whether this particular story
of
redemption
was faithful to the biblical
message. “Redemptions
in the Old
Testament,” he concluded, “are historical,
i.e. on this side of death.
Redemption
now means
redemption
from
cares, distress,
fears and
belongings,
from sin and
death,
in a better world beyond
the
grave,
but is this
really
the essential character of the
procla- mation of Christ in the
Gospel
or by Paul? I should
say
it is not…. The Christian
hope
of
redemption …
sends a man back to his life on earth in a wholly new
way.”6
More
recently
liberation
theologians
in Latin America have
ques- tioned
any interpretation
of
redemption
offered to people within histo- ry,
which is not
integrally
connected to the concrete realities of the his- torical
process. They
have
challenged
the idea of “two
histories,” which claims that in the Bible there is only “one
history,”
the
history
of
6Dietrich, Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1972), 336.
11
82
salvation. In contrast, liberationists declare that God’s salvific action is
set in the center of human life and
struggle
in the world and has to do with the transformation of that
history.
And a growing number of fem- inist
theologians
have declared that the traditional
paradigm focussing on
sin,
the
expiatory
work of Christ,
forgiveness
and the
acceptance
of God’s
grace, may
well connect with the
experience
of men
belonging to the dominant classes, but it does not
speak redemptively
to the con- dition of
many
women.
I have been
struggling
with these
theological
issues for some time and am aware that a number of biblical scholars and
theologians today are
raising
similar
questions.
But what struck me in my encounter with Pentecostals in Brazil was that a
quite
different
perspective,
or
para- digm,
of
redemption,
not
systematically
worked out or
generally preached,
was
finding expression
in the
spiritual experience
and in the testimonies of a surprising number of them.
We first became aware of this
emerging perspective
on
redemption in our extensive interviews with members of the IURD. As one after another of them described their
experience
of
salvation,
the
following picture began
to
emerge.
For
them,
the human
problem
is that of women and men who are
poor, impotent,
and condemned to
insignifi- cance.
They
are
engaged
in a desperate
struggle
for survival in a world falling apart
around them.
They
and their world are
“possessed,”
dom- inated
by supernatural
demonic forces who are
agents
of destruction and chaos. In their
daily
lives
they
are overwhelmed not
primarily by the sense of sin and
guilt
but
by
the
painful
realities of their lives as poor persons.
For them in this situation, God’s
redemptive
action is manifest in the
presence
and
power
of the resurrected Christ and of the
Holy Spirit as the source of life and
hope,
the
power
to make it
through
each new day,
the
guarantee
of
victory
over demonic forces.
Through
the
life,
death and resurrection of
Jesus,
and the
gift
of the
Holy Spirit,
God’s saving
work is manifest as an immediate
response
to
suffering, pain and
brokenness,
which makes
possible
a journey toward the fullness of life as
health,
material well
being
and
happiness.
The sick are
healed, family
members
experience
reconciliation and new
life-giving
rela- tionships.
The
poorest
discover new
possibilities
for
improving
their economic
situation,
and those who have felt
impotent
in the face of evil are now
empowered
to confront and overcome the
demons, manifested in hunger and
sickness, prostitution
and
drugs,
social
disintegration
and violence. Here,
just
as at the time of the Protestant Reformation in Europe,
the
supreme reality
is an
overwhelming experience
of the
pres- ence and
power
of God – but
intimately
connected with their imme- diate brokenness,
suffering
and
insignificance.
And this
reality
is
12
communicated, ritual of praise
While this the
logical power beginning
to leaders.
Bishop IURD,
has
put give
he
says
that means empty respected,
But
by
far going
on here Suurmond,
Word for Pentecostals, sacrifice of Jesus, on the life, Pentecost Christmas
83
perhaps
too
sharply
–
when in neo-Pentecostal
churches,
but from
not
by
a rational word or doctrinal
exposition,
but
by
a
and
worship
which
generates
emotion.
view of God’s
redemptive activity
is not
expressed
with
and
consistency
of a
systematic theologian,
it is
take
shape
in some statements
emerging
from Pentecostal
Edir
Macedo, the founder
and
supreme
leader of the
it this
way:
“We
say
that Jesus died on the cross to for-
our sins and
give
us eternal life
–
but is this all the Good News we should announce? The Good News that Jesus ordered us to preach includes all kinds of blessings for
people: spiritual, physical.
and finan- cial.
Certainly
it
guarantees
the
healing
of our
sickness, complete
lib- eration from the dominion of
Satan,
and the
help
we need for the solu- tion of our
problems
Andre Corten has stated the difference in these two
paradigms
of
redemption clearly
–
the conversion
experience,
a movement, not
primarily
from sin to
forgiveness,
to
full,
from
destroyed
to
prosperous,
from humiliated to
from
depressed
to
happy,
from
anguish
to
peace,
and from loneliness to life in the
community
of the church.
the most
compelling theological
statement of what is
that I have found is in the book
by Jean-Jacques
and
Spirit
at
Play.
He calls attention to the fact
that,
the
story
of salvation centers not
only
on the cross, the
and the
gift
of forgiveness and justification, but also
death and resurrection of Jesus
culminating
in Pentecost.
is “the consummation and the crown of the events of
and Easter. The end is more than the
beginning.
The
birth, death and resurrection of Jesus have made
possible
the
‘outpouring’
of Christ’s Word and
Spirit
on all that
lives,
so that the
purifying
fire of
love can now be kindled all over the earth.”g
The
possibility
of a shift of this
magnitude
in our
paradigm
of
calls for a major
theological
effort on the
part
of those who
take it seriously, whatever their ecclesiastical tradition. All that I can do in this brief article is to affirm what I have seen and what it suggests
to me. This
understanding
work of God
moving dynamically
from the
life, death and resurrection
and
beyond
manifest in Jesus continues into our
present
time. In
fact,
scholar, Raymond
Gospel
of John, the
Holy Spirit
is
nothing
less than the
presence
of
God’s
redemption dare to
of Jesus to Pentecost action of God the New Testament
and
experience
of the
redemptive
means that the same
redemptive
Brown,
claims
that,
in the
7Edir Macedo, Liberacao da
teologia (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Editora Grafica Universal, 1992), 138.
Liberacao da teologia, 139
8Macedo,
13
84
Jesus when Jesus is absent.9 The
presence
and
power
of God, incarnate in one time and
place
in Jesus of Nazareth, is now
exploding
into all of the world and
moving
toward the end of time. In the words of Odette Mainville,
with the resurrection and the manifestation of the
Spirit
in Pentecost,
“henceforth the actions of the
Spirit
will be the continuation of the
earthly
mission of Jesus;
they perpetuate
his
actions,
his
options, his
ideas,
his
perception
of God and of the human
being.”10
For
me,
the
consequences
of this
perception
and
experience
lead to at least three rather
staggering
affirmations.
1. In the situation created
by
the
present
economic
system
and the impending
crisis of civilization, the vast and ever
increasing
number of poor and broken
people
can and should discover that what
they
read in the
Gospels
is happening now in their midst.
2. I am convinced that this Pentecost
paradigm
of God’s
redemp- tive
activity
is the source and drive of
evangelism.
To see and feel the presence
and
power
of Jesus, as witnessed in the
Gospels, bringing health and
life, overcoming
the demonic forces of death in our
world, and
manifesting signs
of God’s
coming reign,
can
only
lead us to make the continuation of this
redemptive activity
the
primary
concern of our lives.
3. If the actions of the
Spirit,
as Mainville claims,
perpetuate
the actions and
options
of Jesus, then we can have an authentic
experience of the
presence
of the Risen Christ in our lives
only
as we walk as Jesus
walked, among
the
poor
and
outcasts,
not
only sharing
their bur- dens but so
confronting
the
powers
that are
destroying
their lives that we too run the risks of crucifixion.
If
my assumption
is correct about the
emergence
here of a possible new
paradigm
of Christian faith and
life,
then our
major
task is to struggle
to discern where the
Spirit
is leading us. And this
struggle
for discernment means
that,
whether we are Pentecostals or more
directly rooted in the tradition of the Reformation, we can
only
undertake the task of theological re-creation, with all its risks and
promise,
as we rec- ognize
how much we need each other.
9John, Anchor Bible Series (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982), 1141.
100dette Mainville,
L’Esprit
dans l’oeuvre de Luc
(Montreal, Quebec: Fides, 1991), 333.
14
