Pentecostalism And The Academy

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Pentecostal Theology, Volume 27, No. 1, Spring 2005

Pentecostalism and the Academy

Douglas Jacobsen and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen

The main thesis of our book Scholarship and Christian Faith: Enlarging the Conversation (Oxford University Press, 2004) is that the work of research, writing, creative activity, and teaching undertaken by Christians in the academy connects to faith in many different ways. There is no one model that works for everyone. Instead, each of us will develop his or her own style of Christian scholarship based on the life questions our experiences have encouraged us to ask, the specific faith traditions that have informed our Christian confession, the ways we have been mentored into our different academic disciplines, and the varied places where we teach or present our work as scholars, artists, and experts in our fields.

A subsidiary theme is that Christian scholarship should be characterized by hope rather than by pessimism. This is God’s world, and we as scholars have the awesome and wonderful task of trying to understand God’s good creation. Our first job is not the drudgery of defending Christian faith from the attacks of the secular academy. Defense and debate may be needed on occasion, but our first task is constructive: How do we as Christians participate as hopeful peers alongside others in the scholarly effort to make sense of, manage, and enjoy the world in which we live? Christian faith calls us to be hopeful, and so does the present state of higher education, which is more open to questions of meaning, purpose, faith, and spirituality than has been the case for many years.

The goal of Scholarship and Christian Faithis to encourage a wider conversation among Christians and other scholars about the many different ways Christians can learn from and contribute to the academic pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty. The goal is not to boil down the many dif- ferent forms of Christian faith to one common essence of Christianity, but to encourage Christian scholars to speak out of their own particular- ity and out of the traditions that have formed them as persons of faith.

The currently dominant model—at least within the more or less evan- gelical arena of higher education—does not do this. This model is called “the integration of faith and learning,” and its primary mode of operation is first to outline “the” Christian worldview and then contrast that singular Christian worldview with the theories and claims of the various acade- mic disciplines. The goal is the philosophical analysis of faith and learning for the purpose of separating truth from error and simultaneously discovering truth wherever it might be found.

© 2005 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden pp. 106–109

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The integration model has many strengths, of that there is no doubt; but it also has its limitations. Also, many of its proponents have a penchant for claiming that it is the only valid model of Christian scholarship. But this model is not for everyone. The integration model was birthed within and is deeply formed by a distinctly Reformed (i.e., Calvinistic) under- standing of Christian faith. Christians from non-Calvinist traditions may find it stifling rather than helpful.

The integration model focuses almost entirely on “the life of the mind” with its philosophic and high-culture bent. We have no desire to denigrate the life of the mind, but in our perspective the term is too truncated to describe our calling as Christian scholars. Of course, we need to use our minds to think, but as human beings, as scholars, and as Christians we also bring a whole host of other concerns, values, moral convictions, expe- riences, passions, and creative insights to our work. There is no easy way of working all that into one formula that defines the norm for Christian scholarship. Instead we need to explore and reflect upon the many dif- fering connections of faith, learning, and life that are present within our own lives and within the Christian traditions we affirm.

The purpose of such exploration should not be to separate Christian scholarship along denominational lines. No one will benefit from neatly segmented zones of scholarship in which Lutherans can follow their par- ticular predilections in their own little sphere, and Methodists in theirs, and Catholics in theirs, and Pentecostals in yet one more segregated arena. Rather, the goal is to encourage scholars in all the various Christian tra- ditions to explore the distinctive resources available in their own traditions and then to share those perspectives conversationally with one another. And the word conversation is very important. The purpose is not to argue about which view is better. This is not a competition. The purpose is to share our scholarly insights, practices, and passions in conversation so we can borrow from one another, complementing our weaknesses with the strengths of other perspectives and layering new depths of meaning and understanding on top of our developing views.

Writing for Pneuma, we want especially to encourage Pentecostals to reflect on the specific resources that Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians can bring to this broad and exciting conversation about Christian scholarship. What does it mean to be intelligent people of the Spirit? What might it mean for Pentecostals to have a spiritual influence within the broader academy? How might truth derived from the academic disciplines reshape Pentecostal faith and practice? What forums might be created so that Pentecostals can freely and effectively share their insights with and learn

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from other Christian scholars? These and other questions need to be asked by Pentecostals as they reflect on their scholarly projects and inclinations.

Scholarship and Christian Faith includes a very brief description of how Pentecostal distinctives might specially contribute to scholarly activity. These distinctives include a focus on the Holy Spirit, and especially the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which is understood as the experience through which the Spirit of God enters the believer and changes that person for- ever. One implication of this emphasis on experience is that Pentecostals believe truth contains an affective dimension: people can learn some things experientially that can be learned in no other way. Thus Steve Land, along with many other Pentecostal thinkers, argues that Pentecostal reflection on both faith and scholarship ought to pay attention to the affections along- side beliefs and actions.1

We also make the case that Pentecostalism is or should be especially sensitive to the cultural dimensions of scholarship. We cite Samuel Solivan, who has argued that the biblical narrative of Pentecost recorded in the second chapter of Acts is an example of “cultural glossolalia.” Solivan argues that Pentecostal faith and scholarship should affirm “all people and cultures [as] each having their place and contributions.” In his view, “cultural or linguistic arrogance, or the imposition of one language over another” has no place in Christian faith and scholarship.2 The European Pentecostal scholar Jean-Jacques Suurmond underscores that same basic point when he says, “the essential contribution of Pentecostal spirituality lies in its playful character… [where] everyone has a contribution to make—regardless of race, gender or status.”3

Finally, we refer to the work of the late James Loder, a charismati- cally-influenced theologian from Princeton Seminary. In The Transforming Moment, Loder describes an “intuitive” way of knowing, one that often functions out of sight and well “beneath our educated and scholarly ways of knowing.” He says this intuitive way of knowing has the potential “to generate from hidden sources new, sometimes powerful, insights that [can] transform [a person’s] horizons of intelligibility.” When that happens, the very personhood of the knower can be thoroughly remolded. Loder so believed in the power of this intuitive way of knowing, and in its unac-

1

See Steven J. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 41.

2

Samuel Solivan, The Spirit, Pathos and Liberation: Toward an Hispanic Pentecostal Theology (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 118.

3

Jean-Jacques Suurmond, Word and Spirit at Play: Towards a Charismatic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 220.

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knowledged prevalence everywhere in the academy, that he formulated his own “theory of error” that said that “any assertion of truth that does not recognize and accept its primary dependency on some leap of imag- ination, some insight, intuition, or vision, is guilty of intellectual dissim- ulation. Reason thinks it secures an objective, airtight case when in fact its processes are open-textured, its sources rooted in ‘personal knowl- edge,’ and its conclusions are laced with human interests.”4

Others will have different ideas about how Pentecostals might poten- tially contribute to the overall discussion of Christian scholarship, and we welcome learning from the essays that follow. We hope that this issue of Pneuma launches a rich conversation within Pentecostalism, and between Pentecostals and others, about the intellectual gifts this strong and grow- ing tradition can bring to the work of Christian scholarship.

4

James L. Loder, The Transforming Moment, 2nd ed. (Colorado Springs: Helmers and Howard, 1989), 2–3, 26. While Loder was not a member of any Pentecostal church, the charismatic tenor of The Transforming Moment is evident. Loder confirmed that under- standing of his work in a personal conversation several years before his death.

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