Pentecostal Ecclesiology: Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9 Via Free Access

Pentecostal Ecclesiology
Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9

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Journal of Pentecostal Theology
Supplement Series
38
General Editor
John Christopher Thomas
ISSN 0966 7393
Deo Publishing
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PENTECOSTAL
ECCLESIOLOGY
An Essay on the Development oJ Doctrine
Simon Chan
deo
PUBLISHING
BLANDFORD FORUM
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Journal ofPentecostal Theology Supplement Series, 38
ISSN 0966 7393
Copyright © 2011 Deo Publishing

P.O. Box 6284, Blandford Forum, Dorset DTll lAQ, UK
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior
written permission from the publisher.
Printed by Henry Ling Ltd, at the Dorset Press, Dorchester, DTl IHD, UK
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-905679-15-7
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For
the Orthodox and Pentecostal panelists
in
the Pentecostal-Orthodox Dialogues
May their efforts,

guided by the Holy Spirit,
be crowned with success.
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Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9
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Contents
Preface ...................................................................................................... ix
Introduction .............................................................................................. 1
Chapter 1
Spirit, Creation, and Church:
The Context for Pentecostal Ecclesiology ........................................... 12
Creation-centered Pneumatologies ..................................................... 14
An Ecclesia-centered Pneumatology ................................................... 22
Conclusion ........................................................................................ 31
Chapter 2
The Spirit and the Church:
Two Perspectives .................................................................................... 32
Barth' s Ecclesiology ............................................................................ 32
Evangelical Ecclesiology ..................................................................... 38
Catholic and Orthodox Ecclesiologies ................................................ 41
Ecclesial Practices as the W ork of the Spirit ...................................... .45
Conclusion ........................................................................................ 49
Chapter 3
Spirit, Church and the Trinitarian Narrative ....................................... 50
The Church in Trinitarian Perspective: An Overview ........................ 50
The First Sending ....................................................................... 53
The Second Sending .................................................................. 55
TheJohannine Pentecost ............................................................ 58
Pentecost and the Spirit's Proper Work .............................................. 59
The Church as the Spirit's Personal Indwelling ........................... 60
The Church as Ontologically United to Christ ............................ 63
The Church as the Temple of the Spirit ...................................... 65
The Paradoxes of the Spirit ................................................................ 66
Truth as Historical and Charismatic ............................................ 67
The Already and Not yet.. ......................................................... 70
The Spirit and the Liturgy .................................................................. 71
Conclusion ........................................................................................ 73
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Vlll Pentecostal Ecclesiology
Chapter 4
The Communion of the Holy Spirit .................................................... 74
The Temple ofthe Spirit ................................................................... 74
Corporate and Personal Indwelling of the Spirit ................................. 77
Communion as the Spirit's Proprium ................................................. 80
The Spirit as the Third Person ................................................... 83
The Holiness of the Spirit.. ........................................................ 86
The Newness of the Spirit ......................................................... 88
The Hiddenness of the Spirit ...................................................... 90
Condusion ........................................................................................ 92
Chapter 5
Reshaping Pentecostal Spirituality ....................................................... 93
Pentecostal Particularity ..................................................................... 96
The Personhood of the Spirit.. ........................................................... 97
Individualizing the Trinity ................................................................ 102
The Monarchy of the Father ............................................................. 106
Pentecostal 'Episcopal' Impulse ......................................................... 112
Pentecostal Sacramental Universe ...................................................... 115
Pentecostal Liturgy? .......................................................................... 118
Condusion ....................................................................................... 122
Bibliography .......................................................................................... 126
Index of Modern Authors ..................................................................... 138

Index of Biblical References ................................................................ 142
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Preface
The number of books on ecclesiology by evangelical scholars within

the last fifteen years is clearly an acknowledgement that this is their last
unexplored dogmatic frontier - and, in fact, evangelicalism's (not to
mention Protestantism's) Achilles' heel. It would not be an exaggera-
tion to say that many of the problems evangelicals are facing today
could be traced to their deficient understanding of the church. In my
book Liturgical Theology I sought to address this evangelical ecclesio-
logical deficit and suggested how they might deal with it by re-
visioning their worship on a dogmatic foundation and learning from
the ancient liturgy. This book deals with a similar problem in Pente-
costalism. Like their evangelical counterparts, Pentecostals are also be-
coming aware that some of the major problems confronting the
movement today are at bottom ecclesiological in nature. But what I
have recommended for evangelicals there are somewhat different from
the proposals set forth here. This is because evangelicals and Pentecos-
tals are situated differendy even though the results of their neglect of
the church are often the same. The difference has to do with their
respective spiritualities: Whereas there is litde within their own tradi-
tion that evangelicals could draw from to deal with their deficit, there
is a rich implicit theology (theologia prima) within Pentecostal faith and
experience which could contribute to the development of a coherent
Pentecostal ecclesiology.
Efforts to develop a Pentecostal ecclesiology are only beginning and
even then, they are not likely to go very far because, among other
things, many Pentecostal scholars are still operating under the safety of
the evangelical umbrella or seeking accommodations with mainline
Protestantism. These two traditions are often perceived as their cultural
and theological betters. These tactical moves, however, will not work.
The first will only make Pentecostalism theologically anemic; the sec-
ond, theologically disastrous. Perhaps it is time for Pentecostals to
"drink water from their own cistems" and come to terms with the fact
that the evangelical and Protestant umbrellas are too small! Pentecostal-
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x Pentecostal Ecclesiology
ism has a lot more to offer eompared to evangeliealism and mainline

Protestantism at least as far as its primary theology is eoneerned. But
this theology needs to be teased out and made explieit through en-
gagement and dialogue with older Christian traditions, espeeially Or-
thodoxy.
Although this book is meant primarily for a Penteeostal readership, I
hope that evangelieals looking for ways to shore up their own eeclesi-
ology would find some things that they eould use.
About the time when the manuseript was eompleted, Penteeostals
and Orthodox Christians had begun offieial eontaets in Constantinople
for the first time. Hopefully, my small endeavor eould provide some
talking points in subsequent exehanges. To the current and future Pen-
teeostal and Orthodox partieipants in the Dialogue, I dedieate this
book.
Simon Chan
17 Oetober 2010
Sunday of the Seventh Eeumenieal Couneil
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Introduction
The Pentecostal movement as a revival movement has always been

concerned with maintaining its spiritual vitality, or in Pentecostal par-
lance 'keeping the fire alive and burning'. If the fire has somewhat died
down, the time-honored way is to rekindle it and recapture the origi-
nal spiritual impulses through revival meetings. The felt need for re-
vival has given rise to the many restorationist movements that emerge
from within their ranks from time to time whose strategy for renewal is
neatly encapsulated in an oft-repeated slogan 'Back to Pentecost'.1 The
restorationist approach presupposes that the 'rediscovered' truth of the
book of Acts at Azusa Street in 1906 is timeless and unchanging. What
is needed is faithfully to apply the same truth to new situations. But it
is now becoming clear for some that this is the presupposition of a
passing modernity. Under the impact of various forms of postmodern
hermeneutics, newer Pentecostal scholars are of the view that doctrines
can no longer be conceived as timeless, propositional truths derived
from an 'objective' interpretation of the Scripture, predicated on the
principle of sola scriptura. Rather, doctrines develop from an interactive
process between the text and th~ comrnunity that shapes is and is in
turned shaped by it. Doctrines develop as the textual community faces
new challenges in new social contexts. 2 The challenge that Pentecostals
in the twenty-first century face is twofold: How do they keep Pente-
costal spiritual fervor alive without being bound to the past and ending
up in a spiritual ghetto? Concurrently, how can they be open to the
future without surrendering to the culture of this world? Pentecostals
I The Assemblies of God National Evangelist Office sponsored a major conference
in 2006 featuring some of the key leaders of the AG. The event was called 'Empower
2006: Back to Pentecost'.
2 E.g. James K.A. Srnith, 'The Closing of the Book: Pentecostals, Evangelicals, and
the Sacred Writings', Journal of Pentecostal Theology 11 (1997), pp. 49-71; Kenneth J.
Archer, A Pentecostal Hermeneutic for the Twenty First Century: Spirit, Scripture and Com-
munity (London: T. & T. Clark, 2004); Shane Clifton, 'An Analysis of the Developing
Ecclesiology of the Assemblies of God in Australia', Australia Catholic University PhD
Thesis (2005).
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2 Pentecostal Ecclesiology
are facing the same twin challenges faced by older traditions: ressource-
ment (a return to the sources) and aggiornamento (bringing up to date),
the two key processes behind Vatican 11. The problem may be under-
stood as the problem of the development of doctrine. New under-
standings need to develop as doctrines no longer function adequately in
Pentecostal communities existing in vastly changed circumstances. The
real issue, therefore, is not whether there is doctrinal development in
the church; more crucially: What constitutes a genuine development of
doctrine?
One major Pentecostal doctrine that has been subject to much re-
thinking in recent years is the baptism in the Spirit. This is understand-
able given the fact that it has always featured prominently in forming
the Pentecostal self-identity and also one of the most controversial as
Pentecostal have traditionally understood it. Traditionally Pentecostals
understood Spirit baptism as one component of the five-fold gospel:
Jesus as savior, sanctifier, baptizer, healer and corning king. 3 Within this
schema Spirit baptism is often narrowly conceived as a second work of
grace to empower Christians for life and service. Arecent constructive
effort from Frank Macchia has shown that Spirit baptism has much
wider theological rarnifications than how it was originally understood. 4
There is no question that Macchia's study represents a genuine devel-
opment of the Pentecostal doctrine of Spirit baptism as far as its mean-
ing is concerned. But for the early Pentecostals Spirit baptism is
qualified by two other distinctive teachings: the doctrine of Spirit bap-
tism as 'distinct from and subsequent to the new birth' (commonly
known as the doctrine of subsequence) and that it is evidenced by the
'initial physical' sign of speaking in tongues (the doctrine of initial evi-
dence).5 For many modem Pentecostal scholars, however, these two
doctrines are highly problematic. The doctrine of subsequence as tradi-
tionally understood and framed separates the Spirit's work from and
subordinates it to that of Christ's. It divorces the Spirit's work from
soteriology.6 The initial evidence doctrine is equally, if not more,
problematic. As it stands it is quite indefensible and many have rec-
ommended its radical reinterpretation if not abandonment. One such
3 The centrality of the four- or five-fold gospel for early Pentecostals has been noted
by Donald W. Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Grand Rapids: Francis Asbury

Press, 1987), pp. 19-21. Dayton notes, however, that the four-fold gospel (minus Jesus
as sanctifier) is the more widely held (pp. 21-22).
4 Frank D. Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit: AGlobai Pentecostal Theology (Grand Rap-
ids: Zondervan, 2006).

5 I have used the key phrases found in the Assemblies of God 'Statement of Funda-
mental Truths'.
6 As pointed out by Steven M. Studebaker, 'Pentecostal Soteriology and Pneuma-
tology', Journal of Pentecostal Theology 11.2 (2003), pp. 248-70.
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Introduction 3
person is Shane Clifton of the Assemblies of God in Australia who has

suggested that it should be reworded as follows: 'This experience of the
Spirit is accompanied by the universally available gifts of the Spirit
(including tongues)'.7 Clifton analyzes how Spirit baptism functions in
Pentecostal communities using Lindbeck's cultural-linguistic theory,
Vanhoozer's canonical approach, and the four functions of doctrine
proposed by Bernard Lonergan. 8 The changes he suggests would seem
to make the doctrine more functionally adequate in the evolving Pen-
tecostal communities. One does wonder, however, if Clifton has done
real justice to the traditional Pentecostal doctrine of initial evidence.
Any faithful development of the doctrine must not only present new
ways of understanding old ones, it must also be able to demonstrate
that the new understanding enlarges on and is consistent with what was
previously believed. For Pentecostals, the doctrine of initial evidence is
saying something significantly more than that tongues is one of the
accompanying gifts of the Spirit. If that was all the early Pentecostals
believed, there would be nothing to distinguish them from the holiness
tradition. There would be no reason for them to split with the holiness
churches and for holiness people to distance themselves from the Pen-
tecostals. 9 Initial evidence and not Spirit baptism as such was in fact the
Pentecostals' distinguishing mark. Given the importance of the doc-
trine for the early Pentecostals, one would be expected at least to raise
pertinent questions concerning the underlying experience to which the
initial evidence doctrine points: What were the early Pentecostals try-
ing to tell us when they identified glossolalia as 'the initial, physical
evidence' of the baptism in the Holy Spirit? What was the underlying
reality that they were trying, inchoately perhaps, to communicate?
How was the initial evidence doctrine functioning for these early Pen-
tecostals? Why did many classical Pentecostal denominations enshrine
the initial evidence doctrine in their 'constitutions'? To attribute it to
bad hermeneutics simply sidesteps the issue: Why is glossolalia so per-
sistent in the Pentecostal experience of Spirit baptism in spite of the diffi-
culty of defending it using the traditional proof-texts? Pentecostals have
something like an initial evidence experience which is too precious to
be given up even if they are unable to put up a convincing argument
in its defense. Even if their mind could not come to terms with it, their
7 Shane Clifton, 'The Spirit and Doctrinal Development: A Functional Analysis of
the Traditional Pentecostal Doctrine of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit', Pneuma 29
(2007), p. 21. Clifton's recommendation is in line with the position of the Assemblies
of God in Australia.
8 Clifton, 'The Spirit and Doctrinal Development', pp. 9-11.
9 For example, the holiness Church of the Nazarene was originally named the Pen-
tecostal Church of the Nazarene. But 'Pentecostal' was dropped to distinguished itself
from the newer Pentecostal churches.
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heart teIls them that it has 'the ring of truth', to use a famous phrase of
J.B. Phillips. This dilemma can be seen in Jack Hayford. Rationally,
Hayford would agree that there are many other gifts accompanying
Spirit baptism; he could not decisively prove from Scripture that ton-
gues are the evidence of the 'Holy-Spirit-fullness'; he could not deny
that there are truly Spirit-filled believers who do not speak in tongues.
Yet, experientially, he could not' deny the availability or value of ton-
gues ifwelcomed by those seeking His fullness'.
[A]s I honestly weighed all this, I was still 6nding consistent results as I
encouraged people to expect to speak with tongues when they asked
the Lord Jesus Christ to 611 them with the Holy Spirit and power. Of
course, I had originally been motivated to do this for doctrinal reasons,
believing tongues were mandated. But though my convictions as to a
'mandate' were waning, there still seemed an apparent willingness of
the Lord to respond in grace, however imperfect my view may have
been. Regularly, people met Jesus in a mighty way - in overflowing
fu11ness. And even though tongues were never forced on anyone, the
unthreatening atmosphere of expectation resulted in virtually a11 re-
ceiving a spirituallanguage at the same time they were 611ed. 'O
For Hayford, as for many Pentecostals today, the spirituality that
somehow connects tongues with Spirit baptism is simply undeniable
even ifhe is unable to explain the connection theologically.
The initial evidence doctrine should not, for lack of an adequate
theological explanation, be dismissed. What is needed is a better theol-
ogy that makes better sense of the distinctively Pentecostal experience.
Clifton's rewording, therefore, does not appear to represent a genuine
development of the Pentecostal doctrine of Spirit baptism but the
'evangelicalization' of it. The change may be more functionally accept-
able in relation to the evangelical interpretive community that does not
share the full force of the Pentecostal experience, but it is done at the
expense of something distinctive of the Pentecostal doctrine and ex-
perience. Modem Pentecostals, for all their newly acquired sophistica-
tion, seem to be operating under the evangelical shadow still. Thus,
while Pentecostals, along with evangelicals, are coming more and more
to see doctrines not so much as fixed propositions but as living truths
organically linked to the life of the church and therefore in need of
development as the church continues its joumey toward the Eschaton,
yet some of these 'developments' may not turn out to be genuine de-
velopments but aberrations.
Genuine development can only take place within the Christian tra-
dition, that is, as part of the on-going narrative of the triune God.
10 Jack Hayfard, The Beauty of Spiritual Language: My Journey Toward the Heart of God
(Dallas, TX: Ward, 1992), pp. 95-99 passim.
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Introduction 5
Doctrinal development is about the future of the church which is part

of the future of the Spirit and hence, part of the future of the triune
God. (This point will be taken up in Chapter 3.) Just as we might spe-
culate about how an unfinished story might end on the basis of its basic
storyline up to the point the story breaks off,l1 the story of the triune
God sets the trajectory for talking about the future of the church.
Without grounding the future of the church in the past, attempts to
understand the church's future may end up as idle speculation (as seen
in dispensational eschatology) or in bondage to the reigning ideologies.
The latter is probably the current danger faced by evangelicals and
Pentecostals. A case in point can be seen in Pentecostal theologian
Amos Y ong's attempt to develop a theology of religions. In the ex-
changes between Wolfgang Vondey and Amos Y ong occasioned by
the publication of the latter's book Beyond the Impasse: Toward a Pneu-
matological Theology of Religions,12 Vondey observes that Yong's pneu-
matological theology of religions fails to be grounded in the
particularity of the Pentecostal story and ultimately in the particularity
of the Trinitarian story.13 Y ong could afford to speak of privileging the
'eschatological orientation' of pneumatology as opposed to Vondey's
'archeological' orientation because in his view what deterrnines the
future of the church is not the particularity of the Christian story but
principles that the story exemplifies. 14 Thus Yong's mIes of discern-
ment are phenomenological or spiritual experiences rather than the
concrete particularity of the Spirit's work in the church. 15 Vondey is
right that a global Pentecostal theology which constitutes a genuine
development must take seriously the Pentecostal story, which Yong has
failed to dO. 16
The failure to take the Pentecostal story (and ultimately the Trinitar-
ian story) seriously is why there is widespread abandonment of tradi-
tional Pentecostal beliefs such as the initial evidence doctrine by many
11 I'm thinking of the analogy used by N.T. Wright: The church's story is the un-
finished fifth act of a five-act biblical drama which is still being played out. 'How Can
the Bible Be Authoritative?' http://www.ntwrightpage.com/WrighCBible_ Authori-
tative.htm, accessed 24 May 2010.
12 Amos Y ong, Beyond the Impasse: Toward a Pneumatological Theology if Religions
(Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003).

13 Wolfgang Vondey, 'Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology: Impli-
cations ofthe Theology of Amos Yong', Pneuma 28.2 (Fall 2006), pp. 305, 297.
14 Yong, 'Performing Global Pentecostal Theology: A Response to Wolfgang Von-
dey', Pneuma 28.2 (Fall 2006), pp. 319-20.

15 I have addressed the problem ofYong's phenomenological pneumatology in 'En-
countering the Triune God: Spirituality Since the Azusa Street Revival', in The Azusa
Street Revival and Its Legacy, ed. Harold D. Hunter & Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. (Cleveland,
TN: Pathway Press, 2006), pp. 218-21.
16 Vondey, 'Pentecostalism and the Possiblity ofGlobal Theology', p. 305.
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modem Pentecostal scholars. Its rejection is symptomatic of a disturb-

ing trend: the widening gap between them and the grassroots leaders
and practitioners. Pentecostal scholars seem to be more familiar with
the world of scholarship than with their own ecclesial tradition. This
situation, to be sure, is not entirely of their own making, since many of
them are looked at with deep suspicion by their own church officials
and often find themselves unable to participate meaningfully in their
own denomination and local church. Others have simply left the Pen-
tecostal establishment. But whatever the reason of this distancing, the
result is that they are often unable to enter deeply into the life of the
local Pentecostal church and theologize from the 'inside' and from
'below'. Good second-order theological reflection must come from the
primary theology (theologia prima) implicit in the living faith of the
church. Without a sensitive appreciation of the living tradition of the
Pentecostal church, that is, without personally indwelling the Pente-
costal story, it is difficult to see how genuine development of doctrine
could take place. The tendency of the scholar is to impose an interpre-
tation derived from the interpretive community the scholar habitually
indwells. For many it is the evangelical community and mainline Prot-
estantism. Evangelicalism continues to cast its long shadow on Pente-
costals. This is not to deny the importance of the evangelical tradition
for Pentecostals. It is after all the tradition in which Pentecostals have
their roots and with which they share many major concerns, such as
the authority of Scripture, the normativity of the gospel, and the im-
perative of proclaiming it throughout the world. But on matters that
are quintessentially Pentecostal, Pentecostals will have to look else-
where.
If there is to be genuine doctrinal development in those areas that
most concern Pentecostals, they need to widen their frame of refer-
ence. The communities that they should interact more seriously with
and from whom they are more likely to discover the theological and
conceptual tools to make better sense of their experience are the older
traditions who share similar experiences. Catholic charismatics, to cite
one such community, have been more open to such ideas as subse-
quence and evidential tongues because their mystical, sacramental, and
liturgical traditions provide a better theological framework for dealing
with these issues. For instance, the 'evidential' nature of glossolalia
becomes intelligible when it is understood in terms of sacramental the-
ology.17 Here is a point of convergence that could help Pentecostals
move beyond a purely individualistic conception of experience to one
that is more ecclesial; concurrently, Pentecostals could bring into the
17 See my Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition OPTSup 21; Shef-
field: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), pp. 49-57.
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Introduction 7
liturgical tradition a new infusion of spiritual vitality. A genuine devel-

opment of doctrine is more likely to come from encounters where the
operating assumption is that there is something right about the initial
evidence doctrine rather than that it is basically wrong.
If there is to be genuine Pentecostal development of doctrine there
must be a vibrant traditioning structure. Up to now Pentecostals have
been focusing on how to keep their communities vibrant through re-
vival meetings, new techniques of church growth and new strategies.
What they generally lack is a coherent theology of the church which
allows for the truths that they hold dear to be systematically extended
from one generation to the next. 18 Earlier I referred to the interpretive
community and its relation to its authoritative texts. To be precise, the
interpretive community is more than the theological fraternity but the
ecclesia1 community with its orders, authority structures, and its living
faith expressed through its worship and mission. Only such an inter-
pretive community constitutes the primary context for real doctrinal
development to take place. As John Meyendorff puts it, 'Sound eccle-
siology alone can reconcile experience and responsibility, continuity
and change, authority and freedom. And this reconciliation is a con-
tinuous process, effected by the Spirit' .19 This brings us to the aim of
this book: if Pentecostals are to experience genuine traditioning and
doctrinal development, they need to develop asound ecclesiology.
Developing a Pentecostal ecclesiology does not mean that it has to
be built from scratch. We are only deluding ourselves if we think that
our own serious engagement with 'God's word' and 'God's world'
alone is sufficient for doing constructive theology.20 This habit of
thinking that doctrine can be divorced from its ecclesial context has
been a characteristic feature of scholastic Protestantism and then of
evangelicalism from which Pentecostals have traditionally tended to
take their cues. In re cent years, however, evangelicals are developing
their own ecclesiology, but for reasons that will be given later (see
18 Paraphrasing Alasdair MacIntyre's understanding of tradition in After Virtue: A
Study in Moral Iheory (2nd ed.; Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,
1984), p. 222.
!9 John Meyendorff, Living Tradition (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir Seminary Press,
1978), p. 46.
20 A reeent example eould be seen in Lyle Dabney's review of Kilian MeDonnell's
Ihe Other Hand of God: Ihe Holy Spirit as Universal Touch and Goal (Collegeville: Litur-
gieal Press, 2003). Dabney regards the attempt to retrieve patristie pneumatologieal
tradition and re-express it in eontemporary mode as 'theologieally barren' (p. 392). For
Dabney, theology is not about retrieval but about being 'both faithful to God's Word
and authentie to God's world' (p. 393). One wonders, however, how Dabney deeides
what constitutes faithfulness to God's word and authentieity to God's world. Dabney's
herrneneuties is not fundamentally different from Y ong's. Iheology Today 61.3 (Oet
2003), pp. 390-93.
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Chapter 2) Pentecostals would do weIl to look further afield. Much of

what Pentecostals need to recover in ecclesiology can be found within
the larger Christian tradition, especially Orthodoxy. Telford Work, for
example, has noted that Pentecostals and Orthodox share a dynamic
understanding of the tradition, except that Pentecostals stress newness
while the Orthodox stress continuity.21 This may explain why a lot of
things 'charismatic' that excite Western Christians do not seem to
move the Orthodox. Their response is likely to be, 'Wehave had it all
along!' This will be apparent in the discussions that follow, especially
on things that matter most to Pentecostals. The question that might be
asked is, what then is new about the Pentecostal experience? What is
new is in the way the truth is personally appropriated, in the way the
truth is experienced in a fresh way by the renewing work of the Spirit,
especially the personal presence of Jesus through the Spirit. In these
matters, Pentecostals have drawn attention once again to the impor-
tance of experience. Again, Orthodox Christians would not be sur-
prised by it, for central to their faith is experience, but not
individualistic and private experiences, but ecclesial experience. For
them, personal experiences of the Spirit must be understood within the
life of the church expressed most concretely and decisively in the lit-
urgy. Part of the Pentecostal development of doctrine would require a
revisioning of personal experience in light of ecclesial experience, which
is the living tradition, 'the life of the Church in the Holy Spirit'. 22 Pen-
tecostals could learn from Orthodoxy the need for a theology of the
church to sustain their practice.
In another crucial area Pentecostalism and Orthodoxy share a deep
affinity: the inseparable link between the Spirit and the Church. This is
the central theme of the book. My aim is to explore a single theme
that is particularly suited for understanding the nature of the church as
Pentecostal: what is the relation of the Spirit to the church? To be
sure, the work of the Spirit in the church must ultimately reference the
work of the Father and the Son since the church is the result of the
Trinitarian economy and not exclusively the economy of the Spirit.
We cannot avoid discussing the Patrological and Christological dimen-
sions of the church, but for our purpose these will form the backdrop
for the pneumatological. The pneumatological provides the key to
unlocking a fuller understanding of the church since it is through the
coming of the Spirit that the full Trinitarian nature of God is revealed
21 Telford Work, 'Gusty Winds, or aJet Stream? Charismatics and Orthodox on the
Spirit of Tradition', AAR Evangelical Theology and Orthodox Theology Joint Ses-
sion, Boston, MA, 1999.
22 Vladirnir Lossky, The Mystical Theology <if the Bastern Church (London: James
Clarke, 1957), p. 188.
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Introduction 9
(see Chapter 3). Putting it another way, the coming of the Spirit to the
church could be said to be the elimax of the Trinitarian story, and
from the end we could see more elearly the whole story of the triune
God.
The Pentecost event, then, is paradigmatic for understanding the
true nature of the church. Thus, theologically the church is essentially
and irreducibly Pentecostal since the nature of the church is most deci-
sively shaped by the coming of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. The
more immediately pertinent question is whether Pentecostalism as a
historical phenomenon is compatible with this theological understand-
ing. I would argue that it iso The Pentecostal spiritual instincts are in
the main resonant with and supported by a theology of the church
understood as the product of the Pentecost event.
To elarify the relationship between the Spirit and the church I shall
begin by examining two contrasting pneumatologies: one creation-
centered and the other ecelesia-centered (Chapter 1). I will argue that
the way to understand the Spirit's role in creation is to see it in terms
of his primary role in the church. The Spirit is primarily the Spirit of
the church and through and in the church creation finds its ultimate
meaning and fulfillment. This view is strongly affirmed in Orthodoxy,
and could be called the Orthodox view of the church. Although Pen-
tecostals and evangelicals have much in common with this ecelesia-
centered pneumatology, there are critical points at which they diverge.
This is the subject of Chapter 2. Their difference helps to sharpen fur-
ther our focus on what constitutes a Pentecostal ecelesiology. The
main difference concerns the issue of identity and non-identity. Recent
attempts by evangelicals to develop a theology of the church have
quite consistently insisted on the principle of 'asymmetry' between the
gospel and the church. In contrast, the Pentecostals' robust practical
pneumatology has more in common with the elose link between the
Spirit and the church that Catholic and Orthodox ecelesiologies main-
tain. Basically, the first two chapters make the case for what a Pente-
costal ecelesiology is not in order to provide a contrasting backdrop for
the affirmative approach in the next two chapters. Chapter 3 explores
the central thesis that the Pentecost event is the coming of the Holy
Spirit in his own person to indwell the church, making the church an
essential part of the story of the Spirit and hence part of the story of the
triune God. This personal indwelling is actualized supremely in the
church as the communion of the Spirit. Weshall explore some of its
main features which both challenge and resonate with Pentecostal ex-
perience (Chapter 4). The final chapter will examine the reshaping of
Pentecostal spirituality. It will first seek to flesh out the theology im-
plicit in its spirituality and, second, seek the assistance of the larger
spiritual tradition, especially Orthodoxy with which it shares deep
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spiritual affinities, in order to give it an ecclesial shape. By engaging the

larger tradition, Pentecostalism will discover the hidden resources from
within to build a stable, yet vibrant, ecclesiology.
All theological developments grow out of the needs and concems of
particular ecclesial communities. The interest in ecclesiology among
evangelicals and Pentecostals in recent years is no exception. Tradition-
ally evangelicals and Pentecostals have been plagued by excessive em-
phasis on an individualistic conception of the Christian life which they
are only beginning to correct by a more communal understanding.
Further, their previous ecclesiologies (if there was one) are conceived
in largely sociological and pragmatic terms which they now acknowl-
edge to be manifesdy inadequate. This has caused some evangelicals to
re-examine the theological meaning of church. Arecent example is
seen in Gary Badcock,23 who insists on the need to construct an eccle-
siology on asolid theological foundation, without which real praxis
would not be possible. What is interesting is that Badcock singles out
the Catholic Nicholas Healy's 'practical-prophetic' ecclesiology for
criticism. 24 The reference to Healy is ironical. Healy has questioned the
appropriateness of traditional Catholic 'blueprint' ecclesiologies seen,
for example, in Avery Dulles' classic Models cif the Church. 25 And here is
an evangelical advocating precisely a 'blueprint' ecclesiology in re-
sponse to the all too 'practical' ecclesiologies of evangelicals. It is ap-
parent that each is focusing on neglected aspects of their own
traditions. Healy's ecclesiology develops in reaction to excessively insti-
tutional and highly abstract conceptions in his own tradition, whereas
Badcock's proposal addresses a dire need for a 'blueprint' ecclesiology
in the highly pragmatic world of evangelicalism. Other examples of the
same phenomenon will be noted in the course of our discussion. What
these new developments suggest is the need for the different traditions
to engage in constructive dialogue if there is to emerge a more catholic
ecclesiology. My hope is that this book will help in a small way to
advance that conversation, even though it is addressed primarily to a
Pentecostal audience.
Two points of clarification are in order. First, the qualifier 'Pente-
costal' in the tide should be understood in both its theological and
historical senses. It is hoped that the proposal I have outlined will help
those from Pentecostal traditions develop a distinctive ecclesiological
identity (the theological sense) capable of sustaining their spirituality,
and at the same time open up for the larger Christian tradition a way to
Gary Badcock, The House Where God Lives (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009).
23
Badcock, The House Where God Lives, p. 6.

24
25 Avery Dulles, Models I!f the Church (NY: Image Books, 2002), first published in
1974.
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Introduction 11
appreciate better the Pentecostal dimension of the church as a practical

reality (the historical sense). Recognizing the distinctive Pentecostal
spiritual impulses within the life of the church could provide the me ans
for the church to become a truly Pentecostal church in both its theo-
logical and historical senses. Second, what I have presented is not a
Pentecostal ecclesiology as such but some suggestions on the path that
needs to be taken for one to emerge. It seeks to make a case for a Pen-
tecostal ecclesiology by offering a theological account of key features of
Pentecostal self-understanding and spirituality in light of older Chris-
tian traditions. A full treatment of Pentecostal ecclesiology would re-
quire examining various aspects of ecclesiology (word, sacrament, the
liturgy, church orders, authority, etc.) from the perspective of Pente-
costal faith and experience. In this book these are mostly hinted at
rather than developed. Much has been written in recent times on Pen-
tecostalism as a historical movement and from the perspective of the
social sciences, but much still needs to be done to flesh out the primary
theologies implicit in these studies. This book aims to contribute
something toward a better appreciation of its implicit theologies. I am
confident that if these implicit theologies are surfaced, many Pentecos-
tals would be able to respond to them, to use a phrase of C.S. Lewis,
with 'amazed recognition,.26
26 C.S. Lewis, Prayer: Leiters to Malcolm (Glasgow: Fount Paperbacks, 1977), p. 124.
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1
Spirit, Creation, and Church:

The Context for Pentecostal Ecclesiology
In recent years there has been a discernible shift from theology proper
(the doctrine of God) to pneumatology as the way to constructing a
doctrine of creation. This is perhaps best exemplified in the seventh
assembly of the WCC in Canberra in 1990. The theme of the assembly
was 'Come, Holy Spirit - Renew the Whole Creation'.1 If the Spirit is
at work in creation, it will have many wide-ranging implications for a
'public theology': theologies of culture, religion, ecology, etc. 2 The
issue is not that the Spirit is at work in the world, in human culture, in
non-Christian religions, and in the non-human creation, but how the
more inclusive work of the Spirit is to be conceived vis-a-vis his work
in the church. The issue could be reformulated as the problem of the
relationship between the church and the kingdom, the kingdom being
the category for understanding the Spirit's action in both church and
world. There are many ways of conceptualizing the relationship be-
tween the Spirit's work in the world and in the church. 3 For our pro-
posed project, I would like to consider two broad approaches. In the
first approach the issue could be framed in terms of the threefold
schema commonly used in the theologies of religion, namely, plural-
ism, exclusivism, and inclusivism. 4 It sees the church as essentially an
instrument (understood in various ways) in advancing the work of the
1 See Michael Kinnamon, ed., Signs of the Spirit: Official Report Seventh Assembly
(Geneva: WCC, 1991).

2 E.g. Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz, God's Spirit: Transforming a World in Crisis (New
York: Continuum, 1995); Mark 1. Wallace, Fragments of the Spirit: Nature, Violence and
the Renewal of Creation (New York: Continuum, 1996); Jürgen Moltmann, God in
Creatio: An Eeologieal Doctrine of Creation (London: SCM, 1985); The Spirit of Life: A
Universal 4ffirmation (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1992); The Souree of Life: The Holy
Spirit and the Theology of Ufe (London: SCM, 1997).
3 For a succinct account of various configurations of the church and kingdom, see
Howard A. Snyder, Models of the Kingdom (Nashville: Abingdon, 1991).

4 For a classic discussion of this threefold schema, see Gavin D'Costa, Theology and
Religious Pluralism: The Challenge of Other Religions (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986). D'Costa
has since moved away from this paradigm. See below n. 6.
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1. Spirit, Creation, and Church 13
Spirit in creation. 5 But I would like to move beyond this frame of ref-
erence6 and propose a second approach derived from the Orthodox
vision of the church.
This second approach represents a different way of configuring the
discussion. Instead of asking, how or to what extent is the Spirit at
work in the world, it asks, is the work of the Spirit in the church to be
understood in terms of his work in creation, or vice versa? To put it
differently, is God's ultima te purpose to be realized in creation or in the
church? There are two possible ways of answering the question, each
representing a different way of reading the biblical narrative. In the
creation-centered reading, God's ultimate intention is expressed in the
creation of the world and his special covenantal people (Israel and sub-
sequently the church) are the means of securing creation's goal. That is
to say, we understand what the Spirit is doing in the church from what
he is doing in the world. In the ecclesia-centered reading, creation is
the means to fulfilling God's ultimate goal which is the church. 7 We
understand what the Spirit is doing in the world only by understanding
what he is doing in the church. 8
For our present purpose, the discussion of the first approach will be
brief Their difference will be highlighted programmatically, but in so
doing I realize that I may not be doing full justice to the various nu-
ances within the vast spectrum of creation-centered pneumatologies.
My aim, rather, is a modest one: to flesh out the chief features of the
second approach by way of contrast to the first in order better to clarity
the theological context for a Pentecostal ecclesiology.
5 Y ong rightly notes that this three-fold schema tends to limit the discussion to so te-
riology, but his pneumatological proposal is framed within a creation-centered narra-

tive still, and therefore does not depart radically from it but rather presupposes it. See
Beyond the Impasse, pp. 22-29, 42-49.
6 Sirnilar moves beyond the threefold typology are seen in the theologies of religion
of Mark Heim, Gavin D'Costa and George Sumner. For them, the real issue is be-
tween the Enlightenment concept of 'universal' truth represented in various pluralistic
theories of religion and a postmodern theory of particularity. See Heim, Salvations:
Truth and Differenee in Religion (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995); The Depths of the Riehes:
A Trinitarian Theology of Religious Ends (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001); D'Costa, The
Meeting of Religions and the Trinity (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000); Sumner, The First and
the Last: The Claim of Jesus Christ and the Claims of Other Religious Traditions (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004).
7 Barth's exclusive focus on the Spiritus redemptor has certain affinities with the ec-
clesia-centered approach, but, as critics have pointed out, it is emphasized at the ex-
pense of any meaningful predication of the Spiritus ereator concept. See Philip J. Rosato,
The Spirit as Lord: The Pneumatology of Karl Barth (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1981),
esp. pp. 134-55. The issue will be taken up in Chapter 3.
8 See my Liturgieal Theology: The Chureh as Worshipping Community (Downers Grove,
IL: IVP, 2006), pp. 21-27. An ecclesia-centered account can be found in a 'nonsu-
persessionist' reading of the biblical narrative, although it entails its own difficulties. Cf
Liturgieal Theology, p. 169, n. 5.
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14 Pentecostal Ealesiology
Creation-centered Pneumatologies
Pluralist versions of pneumatology cover a range of views. One form
conceives of the Spirit in almost pantheistic terms. The Spirit is the
life-force animating all of life, human and non-human equally. Driven
by a deep ecological concern, it rejects all forms of anthropocentric
understandings of the Spirit in favor of 'biocentrism,.9 Other pluralistic
versions, especially those developing from the Indian context, focus
more on the presence of the Spirit in other religions and social move-
ments. \0 The Spirit is at work salvifically in the world quite apart from
what he is doing in the church. The church's task is to work with all
people for the promotion of kingdom values such as peace, justice and
liberation. The role of the church according to Panikkar is not so
much to bring Christ into the world (since Christ as the universal
'Christian symbol' is already there) but to bring Christ out of the
world. l1 The church cannot claim any privileged access to the truth. If
the church is an instrument it is not an indispensable one, since the
kingdom of God could just as well be realized through other religions
or socio-political movements.
At the opposite end of the spectrum are pneumatologies predicated
on an exclusivistic theory of religion. It has a number of distinctive
features. First, while it shares with the inclusivist approach (to be dis-
cussed below) that the work of the Spirit cannot be confined to the
church, it makes a sharp distinction between the work of the Spirit in
the church and in the world. In traditional Reformed theology, the
distinction is expressed in terms of the difference between special or
saving grace and common grace. The Spirit's work in creation is the
work of non-saving common grace. This does not mean that it is un-
important. The good in creation and all human endeavors are good in
themselves and need no further justification since they are no less the
work of divine grace. Christians as fellow-citizens of the world should
seek to promote these goods in every realm of life. The most articulate
9 E.g. Wallace, Fragments of the Spirit, esp. pp. 162-68. Wallace calls his approach
'ecological pneumatology' (p. 9).

IO See Kirsteen Kim's discussion of the pneumatologies of Stanley Samartha, Van-
dana and Samuel Rayan in The Holy Spirit in the World: AGlobai Conversation
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2007), pp. 67-102.
11 Raimundo Panikkar, 'Christians and So-Called "Non-Christians"', in What Asian
Christians are Thinking, ed. Douglas Elwood (Manila: New Day Publishers, 1976), pp.
339-76, esp. 361-63. Similar ideas are reechoed in a more recent work: Raimon Pa-
nikkar, Christophany: The Fullness of Man (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004), esp. pp. 143-
84.
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account of this Calvinistic vision is Abraham Kuyper. 12 A second fea-

ture is that it highlights the personhood of the Spirit rather than the
Spirit as divine action. What distinguishes the Spirit's presence in be-
lievers from 'the general ministry of the Spirit' is that in the former the
Spirit' s presence is personal. 13 Consequently, greater emphasis is placed
on the Spirit of redemption (Spiritus recreator: the Spirit who actualizes
personal relations) than on Spiritus creator. 14 Third, the relation between
the Spirit's presence in the church and in the world is usually formu-
lated in terms of some form of praeparatio evangelica. '[C]ommon grace
serves as a condition for special grace by making it possible for the elect
to be born' .15 While the exc1usivist paradigm gives greater priority to
the Spirit's work in the church, it still sees the church from the per-
spective of creation. The church is essentially the redemptive instru-
ment to restore what was lost due to the Fall. 16 The church is defined
primarily by its mission of advancing the kingdom of God which in-
c1udes the 'creation mandate' .17
Pneumatologies predicated on an inc1usivist paradigm do not distin-
guish sharply between special (saving) and common grace. If there is a
distinction between the Spirit's work in the world and in the church it
is a matter of degree rather than kind. What is more c1early distin-
guished are the respective pUrposes of God for the church and for crea-
tion. Creation is the larger category within which the church, usually
understood as the redemptive community, is subsumed, and of which
12 Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987); Vincent
E. Bacote, The Spirit in Public Theology: Appropriating the LRgacy cf Abraham Kuyper
(Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005).
13 E.g. Sinclair Ferguson, The Holy Spirit (Leicester: IVP, 1996), pp. 21-25. Refer-
ring to David's prayer in Ps 51.11 ('Do not cast me from your presence or take your
Holy Spirit from me'), Ferguson says, 'For David the presence of the Spirit and the
possession of salvation and its joy are correlative' (pp. 24-25, 247-48).
14 Ferguson, The Holy Spirit, p. 241.
15 Bacote, The Spirit in Public Theology, p. 98. Note that for Bacote common grace is
preparation for the gospel only in the sense that it makes possible the realization of
saving grace, not that common grace finds fulfillment in saving grace, which is the way
praeparatio evangelica is commonly understood.
16 The fact that much of the discussion of the role of the Spirit in creation by both
evangelicals and Pentecostals occurs in relation to mission theology rather than ecclesi-
ology shows that the church is defined largely in terms of its task of serving the king-
dom of God. See, e.g. Mission as Transformation: A Theology of the Whole Gospel, ed.
Vinay Samuel & Chris Sugden (CarlisIe: Regnum, 1999) and Called and Empowered:
Global Mission in Pentecostal Perspective, ed. Murray A. Dempster, Byron D. Klaus &
Douglas Petersen (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991), esp. pp. 7-43.
17 See, e.g. George E. Ladd, A Theology cf the New Testament (rev. ed.; Grand Rap-
ids: Eerdrnans, 1993), pp. 109-17. According to Ladd, the church is related to the
kingdom as its witness, instrument and custodian but cannot be identified with the
kingdom. Cf. Vinay Samuel and Chris Sugden, 'God's Intention for the World', Mis-
sion as Traniformation, pp. 166-207, esp. 175-76, 198-201.
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the church is a servant. Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz may be cited as a

case in point. Müller-Fahrenholz's approach uses the concept of the
Spirit in creation as the basic framework for understanding God's rela-
tion to the world. God's speaking in Gen 1.3 implies the action of the
Spirit since speech involves the breath (ru ach) of GOd. 18 Within this
creation-centered narrative, the person and work ofJesus Christ is seen
as strictly for the purpose of overcoming the sin of human beings so
that they could serve God's larger purpose in creation. Even the re-
demption of human beings is for the purpose of serving creation. The
incamation of Christ and the existence of the church are instrumental
in creation's restoration.
God becomes a human being, not because God is indifferent to the
other forms of creation, but because it is we human who sinned and
thus became the great destructive element of creation. Human beings
need liberation in order to live lives of service to creation. Human be-
ings need redemption so that once again they can serve creation in
freedom. 19
The instrumentality of the church is seen also in Pannenberg who

regards the church as 'the provisional sign of God's dominion' and
insists that the church being the 'sign' must be distinguished from the
'thing signified' (the kingdom).
The church must distinguish itself from the future fellowship of men
and women in the kingdom of God in order that it may be seen to be
a sign of the kingdom by which its saving future is already present for
people in their own day. If the church fails to make this distinction
clearly, then it arrogates to itself the finality and glory of the kingdom,
but by the poverty and all too human character of its own life it also
makes the Christian hope incredible. 20
Pannenberg stresses the brokenness and provisional nature of the

church in contradistinction to the fullness of the kingdom of God. In
and of itself the church cannot be the sacrament of the kingdom. 21
The church is not in and of itself the saving mystery of the rule of God
either in its social constitution or in its historical form. It is so only in
Christ, therefore only in the event of participation in Jesus Christ as
this takes place in its liturgicallife. 22
18Müller-Fahrenholz, God's Spirit, p. 13.

19Müller-Fahrenholz, God's Spirit, p. 40.
2n Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand
Rapids, Edinburgh: Eerdmans and T. & T. Clark 1998), II1, p. 32. Hereafter, ST.
21 Pannenberg, ST, III, pp. 38-42. Pannenberg's emphasis on the distinction be-
tween the church and Christ is quite typically Protestant - a point we shall return to
later.
22 Pannenberg, ST, III, p. 42.
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Pannenberg constantly refers to the church's historical failures to

highlight its brokenness. Even J esus hirnself distinguishes hirnself from
the kingdom of the Father by seeing hirns elf as the sign of the king-
dom, although Jesus is also the embodiment of the 'mystery of salva-
tion' as weil as 'sign'. He 'is the revelation of the divine mystery of
salvation because from his death and resurrection proceeds the recon-
ciliation of humanity with a view to God's kingdom. The church,
however, is a sign of humanity's future in God's kingdom by its par-
ticipation in the divine plan of salvation that is revealed in J esus Christ,
and participates in this plan as it exists as the body of Christ' .23 Pannen-
berg is concerned that if the church is seen as an end in itself it loses its
missionary character, but its missionary character is preserved when it is
seen as the sign and sacrament of the future kingdom of GOd. 24
Pannenberg's asymmetrical view of the church and kingdom could
be said to represent the Protestant position. Protestants may have good
historical reasons to be fearful of the church becoming too closely
identified with the kingdom. For them, the only safe way is for the
church to understand itself in its humble position as a provisional sign
and servant of the kingdom. Thus Clark Pinnock would stress repeat-
edly that 'The church exists for the world, not for itself .25 Similarly,
Pentecostal theologian Frank Macchia, mindful of how different eccle-
siologies in the past had created intractable differences over sacraments
and Christian initiation, proposes to move the discussion of Spirit-
baptism beyond the church to the dynamic kingdom. 26
In the inclusivist paradigm the basis for affirming the presence of the
Holy Spirit is usually some common features that are discerned in both
the church and the world. This can be seen, for example, in Amos
Yong's pneumatological approach to a theology of religions. Y ong
believes that such an approach holds the best promise since it recog-
nizes that the Pentecostal-charismatic experience has spiritual affinities
with primal spiritualities which are characterized by features also found
in Pentecostalism, namely, ecstatic speech, mystical piety and millennial
fervor. In agreement with Harvey COX,27 Y ong sees the phenomenol-
ogical similarities between Pentecostal and primal spiritualities as a sign
23 Pannenberg, ST, III, pp. 43-44. Pannenberg righdy stresses that the church is the
sign of the kingdom only as it participates in Christ. But surely, participation in Christ
inheres in the very definition of the church. A church that is not in Christ is no longer
the church.
24 Pannenberg, ST, III, p. 45.
25 Clark Pinnock, Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit (Downers Grove, IL:
IVP, 1996), pp. 52, 53, 54.

26 Frank D. Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit, pp. 62-63.
27 Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostalism and the Reshaping of Relig-
ion in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Da Capco Press, 2001).
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of the Spirit at work in both. 28 While Yong seeks to go beyond mere

pheonomenological descriptions, it is clear that his criteria for discern-
ment are based on broad principles denominated in Christian terms
like kingdom of God rather than the particularity of the Christian gos-
pe. 129
A similar approach could be seen in Michael Welker's pneumatol-
ogy.30 Welker rightly rejects as inadequate pneumatologies based on the
Enlightenment paradigm which looks for truth in universal principles
(' old European metaphysics', 'dialogical personalism' , and 'social mor-
alism').31 Against these, Welker offers a 'realistic theology' which essen-
tially modifies the universal principles of modernity in the light of the
on-going work of the Spirit in the Christian traditions and in human
cultures, 32 which he identifies as justice, mercy, and the knowledge of
God in their interconnections. 33 While Welker's approach may have
given more specific content to the criteria for discerning the Spirit's
work in the world, the basis of discernment is still broad principles
rather than the particularity of Christian tradition. 34 It is on that basis
that Welker could make such sweeping statements as 'The Spirit is seen
in worldwide religious movements. The Spirit universally establishes
justice, mercy, and knowledge of God .. .'.35 It also led hirn confidently
to affirm that various liberation and feminist movements are the diverse
works of the Spirit. 36 But how is Welker so sure especially when, on
his own admission, it is not easy to disco ver the true workings of the
Spirit?37
For Pannenberg, the point of unity between church and world is his
concept of the Spirit as 'force field'. The concept of Spirit as 'force
field' may be useful in elucidating the doctrine of God's presence in
28 Y ong, Disceming the Spirit[s), p. 20.

29 E.g. Amos Yong, The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibil-
ity cf Global Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), pp. 250-56. See my comment in
'Encountering the Triune God: Spirituality Since the Azusa Street Revival', The Azusa
Street and Its Legacy, ed. Harold D. Hunter & Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. (Cleveland, TN:
Pathway Press, 2006), pp. 217-21.
:lO Michael Welker, God the Spirit (trans.John F. Hoffineyer; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994).
31 Welker, God the Spirit, pp. 41-44.
33 Welker, God the Spirit, ch. 3
34 Welker's method, for all its nuances and caveats, is essentially not very different
from the Tillichian method of correlation.

35 Welker, God the Spirit, p. 40.
37 Welker, God the Spirit, pp. 20-21. To be sure, Welker recognizes the work of the
Spirit in relation to Christ and the church (Chapter 4 cf pp. 308-309), but the Chris-
tological and ecclesial criteria in their connectedness do not seem to playas critical a
role in the discemment of the Spirit's work in the world.
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creation. 38 But it is useful precisely because it presents a 'principle' ra-

ther than an explicitly personal understanding of the Spirit. Critics have
questioned if such an impersonal concept is ultimately adequate. 39 Per-
haps, for Pannenberg, he needs a concept broad enough to embrace
both church and world, both the human and non-human in creation,
since his whole theological program seeks to establish meaningful
points of contact with the other (secular) communities. But an imper-
sonal understanding of the Spirit has unforeseen consequences. Thus it
is not coincidental that Pannenberg tends to treat matters like divine
healing rather dismissively.40 Yet it is in these matters where the Pente-
costal belief in a supremely personal God who comes to people with
surprises achieves its sharpest focus.
Pannenberg, however, also stresses the unity of the church and the
kingdom at the eschaton. According to Kärkkäinen, the continuity of
the Spirit's work in creation, redemption, the church, and the eschaton
is 'the leading thematic feature ofPannenberg's pneumatology'.41 What
God is doing in creation is 'not unrelated to what he is doing in the
church and individual lives on the way to the ultimate consumma-
tion,.42 This unity is nuanced in several ways.
Pannenberg speaks of the 'special mode of the presence' of the Spirit
in the gospel proclaimed by the church which anticipates what the
Spirit will finally accomplish in creation.
The work of the Spirit of God in his church and in believers serves the
consummating of his work in the world of creation. For the special
mode of the presence of the divine Spirit in the gospel and by its procla-
mation, which shines out from the liturgical life of the church and fills
believers, so that Paul can say of them that the Spirit 'dwells' in them,
is a pledge of the promise that the life which derives everywhere from
the creative work of the Spirit will finally triumph over death, which is
the price paid for the autonomy of creatures in their exorbitant cling-
ing to their existence, in spite of its finitude, and over against its divine
. . 43
ongm.
In summary, all creation-centered pneumatologies operate on the
fundamental presupposition that creation is the larger, more basic cate-
gory within which the church must discover its raison d'hre. This is
38 Pannenberg, ST, 11, 20-35.

39 V.-M. Kärkkäinen, 'The Working of the Spirit of God in Creation and in the
People of God: The Pneumatology of Wolfhart Pannenberg', Pneuma 26.1 (Spring
2004), p. 32. Kärkkäinen cites Stanley J. Grenz & Roger E. Olson, Twentieth-Century
Theology: God and the World in a Transitional Age (Downers Grove: IVP, 1992), p. 199.
40 Kärkkäinen, 'The Working ofthe Spirit', p. 33.
41 Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, 'The Working of the Spirit', p. 28.
42 Kärkkäinen, 'The Working ofthe Spirit', p. 31.
43 Pannenberg, ST, III, p. 2. Emphasis added.
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weIl exemplified in Alan Torrance's reservations with Zizioulas' ontol-

ogy of communion. Torrance fears that Zizioulas risks promoting a
'positivism of communion' much like Barth had been accused of pro-
moting a 'positivism of revelation' .44 According to Torrance, it risks
reducing Christ's work to the 'sphere of personal transformation and
subjective sanctification that is the church' .45 Yet, if what the Spirit is
doing in the church is a true foretaste of the new creation, advocates of
creation-centered pneumatologies cannot avoid speaking of the king-
dom in terms which are quite unmistakably ecclesial. Thus according
to Pinnock, creation is aimed 'at increasing levels of participation in
the fellowship of love ... The Spirit aims to bring about the sabbath
rest of new creation and the joys of the kingdom of God'. 46 If the goal
of creation is 'the new humanity' brought about by 'Christ's mighty
acts' through the church (the 'new family on earth') one cannot escape
the fact that the work of the Spirit in creation and in the church is
directed towards the same ultimate end, namely, communion with
God. If this is so, then we cannot say 'The church exists for the world,
not for itself; it would be more accurate to say that the church exists
for the world in order. to make the world the church, the universal
communion of saints. Macchia, along a similar line, speaks of the king-
dom of God as '[d] ecisively inaugurated in the life, death, and resurrec-
tion of Jesus' and 'directed toward the divine indwelling in all of
creation so that a1l things might be conformed to Christ's image':7 Isn't
this what the church is in its final perfection?
Thus, on the one hand, unequivocal emphasis is placed on the ser-
vanthood of the church vis-a-vis the kingdom, yet, on the other hand,
the goal of the kingdom is often framed in ecclesial terms. This equi-
vocation seems to stern from the fear that the church might assurne too
much power for itself if it is too closely identified with the kingdom,
or it might conceive its task too narrowly and turn itself into a 're-
demptive cult'. 48 This lack of clarity suggests that the relationship be-
tween church and kingdom cannot be restricted to just being a sign of
the kingdom or an instrument to fulfill the 'creation mandate': the
44 Allan J. Torrance, Persons in Communion: Trinitarian Description and Human Partici-
pation (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1996), pp. 4, 300.

45 Torrance, Persons in Communion, p. 302. But as we shall see below, Zizioulas' on-
tology of communion is much more comprehensive that Torrance would allow. Gun-
ton takes a position similar to Torrance's. Unlike Zizioulas who links pneumatology
closely to the church, Gunton links it with the action of the Father in the world. The
church is largely in the background. 'The Spirit in the Trinity', in The Forgotten Trinity,
ed. Alasdair Heron (London: British Council of Churches, 1991), 123-135, esp. p.
130.
46 Pinnock, Flame cfLove, p. 61.
47 Macchia, Baptized, p. 97.
48 Macchia, Baptized, p. 87.
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church cannot be so easily subsumed under the supposedly larger cate-

gory of creation.
While the inclusivist paradigm has certain advantages over the plu-
ralist and exclusivist models, it is not without its problems. First, phe-
nomenological similarities and shared principles alone are not adequate
to establish identity. In light of the postmodern critique, we must ask
of Welker, which justice, what kind of mercy, whose knowledge of
Godt9 If, as we have noted above, the ultimate goal of the church and
the kingdom is the same, namely communion with God, then the
particularity of personal identities of God and creatures is a sine qua non.
Communion in its fullest sense must be personal; it must involve per-
sons with a name and a face: 'The throne of God and of the Lamb will
be in the city and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and
his name will be on their foreheads' (Rev. 22.3b-4). Without its con-
cretization in particularity, all other concepts of the kingdom of God in
terms of common principles, however dynamically they are expressed,
will remain at best penultimate.
The problem becomes apparent in various attempts at discerning the
Spirit or spirits. 50 Kim enumerates four criteria, namely, the ecclesial,
ethical, charismatic, and liberational. 51 The criteria, however, are so
qualified that they seem to have died the death of a thousand qualifica-
tions. Take, for instance, the Christological criterion. This sounds
promising, but Kim admits that 'Christians differ greatly in their vision
ofJesus ChriSt'.52 Ifwe are not even certain about who Jesus is, if'Chr-
ist' is no more than a 'christic principle', 53 even if it is a principle of
profound religious significance, then the christological criterion is not
very helpful for discerning the operations of the Spirit in the world.
Discernment of spirits is problematic, to say the least, as long as we
try to establish it on the basis of some common moral values or reli-
gious experience. This is because all moral values and religious experi-
ence are not contextless but are inextricably linked to particular
frameworks of belief (Alasdair McIntyre). But perhaps we do have
shared values because in a pluralistic world, people inhabit more than
one community. Christians and non-Christians may be part of the
same ethnic group or nation and therefore share some common iden-
49 Alasdair MacIntyre, JiVhose Justice? JiVhich Rationality? (Notre Dame, IN: Univer-
sity ofNotre Dame Press, 1988).

50 Kirsteen Kim, Ihe Holy Spirit in the World: AGlobai Conversation (Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis, 2007), pp. 164-70.

51 Kim, Ihe Holy Spirit in the World, p. 168.
52 Kim, Ihe Holy Spirit in the World, p. 167.
53 Raimundo Panikkar, 'The Jordan, the Tiber and the Ganges: Three Kairological
Moments of Christic Self-Awareness' in Ihe Myth of Christian Uniqueness, ed. John

Hick & Paul Knitter (London: SCM, 1988), p. 112.
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tity. But in an increasingly secularized world, discovering shared values

between religious and secular people is becoming difficult. This raises
the question of whether there could even be a public theology.54 Even
if there are shared values they are at best penultimate and do not shape
one's ultimate identity. They are true only as they are relative to one's
transcendent framework ofbelie( In other words, if these shared values
are penultimate in nature, they make the best sense as praeparatio evan-
gelica, if the gospel is understood as concemed ultimately with com-
munion with the triune God. They are signs of the Spirit only if they
are critically interpreted (= discemed) in relation to the particularity of
the Christian framework of belief centering in the particularity of Jesus
Christ and not to some 'christic' principle. Kim is therefore right to
suggest that only when the four criteria are taken together are we on
firmer ground in disceming the Spirit's presence. 55 I would go a step
further to say that it is only in the light of the ecclesial criterion can we
make sense of the other three.
An Ecclesia-centered Pneumatology
This view, which for want of a better term we shall call the Orthodox
view, shares with exclusivism the emphasis on the personhood of the
Holy Spirit and the close connection between the Spirit and the
church, but rejects the latter's dualistic tendency of separating the
works of the Spirit in the church and in the world. It shares with in-
clusivism the unity of the Spirit's work in the church and in creation.
But it moves beyond both by its universal vision of the church. It has a
vision of the church large enough to include the world within it; and
the key to understanding the church is the personal communion of the
triune God in which the church participates through the liturgy.
The kingdom of God is the final achievement of the Spirit in crea-
tion, but it cannot be understood apart from the church. The church is
not only the sign and instrument of the kingdom but its sacramental
embodiment now and its full embodiment at the consummation. 56 The
54 Vigen Guroian, Ethics 4fter Christendom: Toward An Ecclesial Christian Ethic (Grand
Radids: Eerdmans, 1994), pp. 92-96. Guroian is speaking from the North American
context, but the MacIntyrean principle on which his assessment is based is valid.
Where common ground has shrunk, the resulting public theology can only be of a
rather diluted kind. It may weil be just another name for civil religion. But even civil-
ity itself is in question in the absence of an overarching belief; it is no more than toler-
ance of each other's personal preferences and lifestyles (p. 96).
55 Kim, The Holy Spirit in the World, p. 169.
56 It is interesting that a trend within certain Reformed churches known as 'Federal
Vision' has arrived at a similar understanding of the church. See Peter J. Leithart, The
Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church (Phillipsburg, NJ: P. &
R. Publishing, 1993).
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church as the communion of saints means that the personal is the ulti-
mate category for understanding God's relation to the world. There is
a elose relationship between the Spirit and the church, and conse-
quently, between the church and the kingdom. The relationship could
be called ontological rather than instrumental. 57 This is the main point
of difference between Orthodoxy and the view we saw in Pannenberg.
Pannenberg, to~, stresses the unity of Spirit, church and kingdom, but
sees the relation of the Spirit, church and kingdom in terms of 'sign'
which is sharply distinguished from the thing signified. The emphasis
falls heavily on the church as the instrument of the Spirit to realize the
kingdom.
The first thing to be said in favor of the Orthodox view is its solid
basis in a biblical pneumatology. The biblical conception of the Spirit
is not a free-roarning Spirit but as many biblical scholars have pointed
out, the Spirit is linked to God's covenant with Israel. Max Turner
notes that in the Old Testament, it is not elear that the 'spirit in crea-
tion' theme has in view the Holy Spirit or simply God-in-action. 58
What is elear is that 'God's Spirit was typically related to God's covenan-
tal activities in and on behalf of Israel, so the locus of the Spirit's work
was restricted almost exelusively to the holy nation' .59 This tendency of
linking the Spirit to the covenant people extends into the New Testa-
ment. Thomas Smail notes that '[w]hen the New Testament refers to
creation it does so not in relation to the Spirit but in relation to the
Son, the Word by whom all things were made,.60 Sirnilarly, the New
Testament scholar C.F.D. Moule observes that 'the canonical Scripture
of the Old Testament contain extremely little about a "cosrnic" spirit.
Instead, spirit is used chiefly to denote God's powerful action on and
within persons, and especially members of his own people'. Moule
further notes that in the New Testament the work of the Spirit is even
more restricted: 'the Spirit is scarcely mentioned except as among
Christians and as the agent of the "new creation" - the bringing per-
sons to new life in Christ,.61 Interestingly, Gordon Fee in his massive
study of Pauline pneumatology makes no mention of the relationship
57 It is ontologieal preeisely beeause it eoneerns the ontology of eommunion rather
than substanee. See John Zizioulas, Communion and Othemess: Further Studies in Person-
hood and the Church (ed. Paul MePartlan; London: T. & T. Clark, 2006) p. 20. See
Chapter 2, pp. 42-44 below.
58 Max Turner, The Holy Spirit and Spiritual Gifts (Peabody, MA: Hendriekson,
1996), eh. 2.
59 Turner, The Holy Spirit, 3. Emphasis author's.
60 Thomas Smail, The Giving Gift: The Holy Spirit in Person (London: Hodder &
Stoughton, 1988), p. 168.

61 C.F.D. Moule, The Holy Spirit (London: Mowbrays, 1978), p. 19.
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of the Spirit to the cosmos. 62 Even Pinnock recognizes the paucity of

reference to the Spirit in creation, but that does not deter hirn from
deve10ping a theology of creator Spiritus. 63
This dose connection between the Spirit and the covenant peo-
ple/church passes into the Christian tradition. 64 We see this, for exam-
pIe, in the ancient creeds. Although there is some early evidence of
belief in the church and the resurrection of the body as separate artides
of the creed, the general tendency was to integrate ecdesiology and
eschatology into the third artide. 65 In some early baptismal creeds, the
question posed to catechumens was: 'Do you believe in the Holy Spirit
in the holy church?'66 The earliest Christian understanding of the Holy
Spirit is that he is the Spirit-in-the-church. A comparison between the
doxology at the end of the Eucharistie prayer in the Roman Mass and
the Eucharistia of Hippolytus shows how dose1y the Holy Spirit is iden-
tified with the church in ancient liturgies.
Roman Canon Hippolytus, Eucharistia

Per ipsum et cum ipso et in ipso Per quem
est tibi tibi
omnis honor et Gloria gloria et honoT
Deo Patri omnipotenti Patri et Pi/io et Sancto Spiritus
in unitate Spiritus Sancti in sancta Ecclesia tua
per omnia saecula saeculorum et nunc et saecula saeculorum
Where the Roman Canon has 'in the unity of the Holy Spirit' Hip-
polytus has 'in your holy Church'. This has prompted Josef Jungmann
to comment that 'the 'unity of the Holy Ghost' in the modern Mass is
only another way of saying the 'holy Church' .... She is the unity of
the Holy GhOSt'.67 This dose relationship between the Spirit and the
church is not an invention of the church for its own ulterior purposes,
but reflects faithfully the biblical story of the trinitarian economy.
62 Gordon Fee, Cod's Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters cif Paul (Pea-
body, MA: Hendrickson, 1994). Noted by Ferguson, The Holy Spirit, p. 245.
63 Pinnock, The Flame cif Love, pp. 52-54.
64 For a succinct account of the relationship between the Spirit and the church, see
Geoffrey Wainwright, 'The Holy Spirit in the Life of the Church', Creek Orthodox
Theological Review, 27.4 (Winter 1982), pp. 441-53.
65 Wainwright, 'The Holy Spirit', p. 441 cf. p. 451.
66 Hippolytus, The Apostolic Tradition, 21.17. See Gregory Dix, The Treatise on the
Apostolic Tradition cif St Hippolytus cif Rome (London: Alban Press, 1968, 1992), p. 37.
For variants, see Alistair Stewart-Sykes, On the Apostolic Tradition (Crestwood, NY: St
Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2001), pp. 115-16; Paul F. Bradshaw, et al., The Apostolic
Tradition: A Commentary (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 2002), pp. 116-17 cf.
p.127.
67 Josef A. Jungmann, The Mass cif the Roman Rite: Its Origin and Development, vol. II
(trans. Francis A. Brunner; NY: Benziger Bros., 1955), p. 265. Emphasis author's.
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Briefly, it is precisely in the corning of the Holy Spirit to indwell the

church that the Spirit is revealed as the third person; the Spirit-in-the-
church completes the Trinitarian narrative. This theme will be further
developed in Chapter 3. 68
The evidence from both Scripture and the Christian tradition is
quite overwhelrning: The Spirit's work in creation cannot be inter-
preted as something independent of the church. Creation does not
have its own autonomous purpose to which the church is called to
serve; rather what God intends for creation can only be understood in
terms of what He intends for the church and what the Spirit is doing in
the church. Without coming to terms with the close connection be-
tween the Spirit and the church we fundamentally rnisinterpret the
Spirit's work in creation. In sum, instead of subsurning the church
under creation, Orthodoxy subsurnes creation under the church. As
Nikos A. Nissiotis aptly puts it,
The Chureh is the realization in time of the divine eeonomy deeided
before the foundation of the world through the eleetion in Christ of all
those who would believe in Hirn. It is a trans-historieal event in Crea-
tion whieh unites its origin, its aetual state and its fulfillment. In the
Chureh historieal moments reveal Eternity and make historieal man
share in the eternal goal, whieh is already existent in this life in the
present engagement of his spirit. The whole of the universe, its essenee
and the purpose it inearnates, is in the being of the Chureh, whieh is
the kerneI, the mierokosmos of the Creation. 69
Thus Nissiotis could describe ecclesiology as 'church and creation'

not only beeause this safeguards the eontinuity of the Aet of God, ere-
ating, saving and regenerating His own ereation in His word, but be-
eause it is through the Chureh as a re-established eommunion with
God that the aet and purpose of the Creation as ktisis is revealed and
eommunieated to man. 'Chureh and Creation' means drawing into the
Chureh all the elements of the Creation in order to fulfil their form by
restoring their signifieanee as instruments for rendering to God in their
authentie relationship with Hirn the things He has ereated for us. 70
Similarly, Zizioulas insists that, precisely because of the very nature

of pneumatology, the kingdom of God is fulfilled primarily in and
through the church. The kingdom does not have an independent exis-
tence in the world apart from the ecclesia.
68 See my Liturgical Theology, pp. 33-36.

69 N.A. Nissiotis, 'Interpreting Orthodoxy: The Communication of Some Eastern
Orthodox Categories to Students of Western Church Traditions', Ecumenical Review
14.1 (Oct 1961),p.12.
70 Nissiotis, 'Interpreting Orthodoxy', p. 13.
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[T]he Church can never identity the eschaton with history by trying to
build the kingdom as part of the historical process. At this point the
Church must be ready to confess her 'tactical inferiority' compared
with the Marxist view of history, precisely because of her pneuma-
tological dimension. In bringing the eschaton into history, the Spirit
makes the Church through her sacramental structures both a presence
of the eschaton in history and apointer beyond history, since pneuma-
tology constandy points to the unobjectifiable, uncontrollable, extraor-
dinary 'beyond'. 71
The Iarger ramifications of Zizioulas' point that the Spirit is also al-
ways coming from 'beyond history' will be taken up later, but his
point that the Spirit's work of realizing the eschaton is through the
church is widely shared in Orthodoxy. This can be seen in the Ortho-
dox response to the theme of the seventh assembIy of the W orld
Council of Churches in Canberra: 'Corne, Holy Spirit - Renew the
Whole Creation,.72 The Orthodox response repeatedly stresses the
close link between the Spirit and the church: 'The Holy Spirit is in-
conceivable without the communion of the peopie of God he assem-
bles and creates'. Consequently, creation cannot be understood apart
from the church, as if creation had some independent purpose of its
own.
Without limiting the Spirit to the institutional church, we have always
to remember that the destiny of the whole creation somehow passes
through the church, where the world finds its true meaning and salva-
tion.
All this makes the community of the church the place where creation
is liberated from self-sufficiency and is offered to its Creator as being
'His own,.73
The Orthodox reflection also makes clear how the creation is taken
into the church. Transformation of creation cannot be understood
apart from the transformation of the church that takes place most cen-
trally in the liturgical celebration, especially baptism and eucharist. 74 In
both these sacraments, the basic elements of creation - water, bread
and wine - are transfigured to become the means of the sanctification
of the church, and through the church, the whole creation.
Having been purified through our repentance and baptism, creation
passes through the hands of the ecclesial community to become holy
71 Zizioulas, 'The Pneumatological Dimension ofthe Church', Communio (1974), p.

156.
72 'Orthodox Reflections on the Assembly Theme', in To the Wind cf God's Spirit:
Rljlections on the Canberra Theme, compiled by Emilio Castro (Geneva: WCC, 1990).
73 'Orthodox Reflections', §4e.
74 A point acknowledged by Pannenberg in ST, III, p. 4 n.
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eucharist. It is offered to God by the High Priest, our Lord Jesus Christ,
through a properly ordained rninistry which is his 'typos' and 'eikon',
under the elements ofbread and wine. 75
The church could be said to be the means of the renewal of the
whole creation, but it is a means not in the instrumentalist sense of
being an agent doing something for the world, carrying out an extrin-
sie mission; rather, it is the means of renewal in its very life, by its be-
ing the Body of Christ indwelled by the Spirit. 76 In short, the church is
intrinsie to the whole process of renewing creation; it is her very life
with God, especially in the eucharist, that makes renewal possible. 77 It
is for this very reason that Orthodoxy is wary of equating social
movements of peace, justice, ecology etc. with the Spirit of God, espe-
cially when concepts like justice and peace are reduced to general prin-
ciples and not grounded in ecclesiology, as evident in the Orthodox
response in the Canberra Assembly.78
A number of fundamental concepts underlie the Orthodox under-
standing of the church. One is the concept of personhood as the ulti-
mate ontological category for uniting church and creation. Another is
the doctrine ofthe church as a divine-human reality. We shall take up
these two points in turn.
The person as the key to understanding creation is not a distinctively
Orthodox concept. It is frequently expressed in the concept of the
imago Dei and of stewardship of creation. An example can be seen in
Colin Gunton. According to Gunton, '[T]he fact that it is Israel and
Jesus who are at the centre of God's action in and towards the world
means that it is the person that is central, the non-personal periph-
eral' .79 If the person is the key to understanding the whole of creation,
then the revelation of God in the person ofJ esus Christ is not only for
the sake offallen humanity; rather, the incamation is primarily for the
purpose of perfecting creation, that is, bringing it to a higher order that
it never had been, even without the Fall. 80 By person, Gunton has in
view the imago Dei understood not so much as certain unique qualities
of the individuallike rationality but as relationality. Personal relational-
75 'Orthodox Reflections', §4e; see also §13, §47c

76 'Orthodox Reflections', §13.
77 Kirsteen Kim is therefore right when she says that in the Orthodox view of mis-
sion 'the church is not merely the instrument of mission, but mission belongs to the
very nature ofthe church' (Ihe Holy Spirit in the World, p. 52).
78 Cf. Kim, Ihe Holy Spirit in the World, pp. 55-57.
79 Colin Gunton, God and Creation (Carlisie: Paternoster, 1992), p. 34. Note that for
Gunton, unlike Orthodoxy, it is the person rather than the church that is the key to
understanding creation. The importance of this difference will be taken up in a later
chapter.
80 Cf. Gunton, God and Creation, p. 80.
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ity holds the key to the meaning of all creation. 'It is where we come
most directly into relationship with other people that what we are as
persons, and therefore our relations with everyone and everything else,
take their essential shape' .81 When the imago Dei is defined in terms of
the uniqueness of the individual rather than in relatedness, then man
will isolate hirns elf from the world and dominion takes on its hideous
forms which we know all too well in our world: in enslavement of
other humans less rationally endowed; in the destruction of the foetus
conceived as merely a potential person; in the abuse of non-rational
creatures and non-human creation leading to the current ecological
disasters.
What is unique in Orthodoxy is that it does not just see persons as
relational beings, but more specifically as ecclesia I beings. For commun-
ion itself is an 'ecclesial fact'. 82 It is as ecclesial beings that persons be-
come the key to creation's 'hypostatization'. For Zizioulas, to be a
person is to be an 'other' existing in comrnunion, the ultimate basis of
which is the communion of the triune Persons. The particularity of all
existence (their hypostases), including non-human creation, is realized
in relation to persons. Zizioulas asks: 'Why make the survival of the
particular depend on personhood?' and gives the following answer:
... the will and intention of God in creating the world was to 'reca-
pitulate' it in his beloved Son or Logos, that is, in aperson, and this ap-
plies to the redemption of the world as a whole. The logoi of creation
on which the 'logos of nature' depends can only truly exist in the hy-
postasis of the Logos .... There is no escape from personhood in Chris-
tian cosmology."'
Zizioulas sees a 'chain of hypostatic existence', with the triune God

as the source of personhood and particularity; then human persons
made in the image of God; and the rest of creation hypostatized by
'incorporation in the human being' .84 Man is a 'priest of creation, that is,
the one in and through whom creation would be riferred back (anaphora)
to the Creator' .85 Thus Rom. 8.21 speaks of the world waiting expec-
tantly for the liberation of the children of God. Creation finds its true
liberation in the redemption of the sons of God at the resurrection of
body. The whole created order is consummated 'in Christ' - the Per-
Gunton, God and Creation, p. 104.

BI
82Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood,

NY: St. Vladimir Seminary Press, 1993), p. 15.
83 J. Zizioulas, Communion and Othemess: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church
(ed. Paul McPartlan; London: T. & T. Clark, 2006), p. 66.

84 Zizioulas, Communion and Othemess, p. 67.
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son who makes communion and particularity/ othemess an eventual

reality without one being reduced to the other. 86
The indwelling Spirit 'hypostatizes' believers, and through the
church creation too is 'hypostatized'; that is to say, creation too will
realize its own 'personhood', its own way of communion with God.
Lossky makes a similar point when he says that the 'absolute corre-
spondence of person with a personal God allows hirn to "personalize"
the world. Man no longer saves hirns elf through the universe, but the
universe is saved through man. For man is the hypostasis of the whole
cosmos which participates in his nature,.87 Even non-human creation
will be made capable of independence in their relation to God ('other-
ness') and at the same time integrated into the unity of God's kingdom
('communion').88 Zizioulas' vision of the Spirit's hypostatizing the
world keeps the church focused on what it is meant to be: not a re-
stricted entity standing over against the world (though before the con-
summation this may in fact be the case), but a reality which in some
way embraces the whole creation, where creatures exist in their own
integrity or 'othemess', yet are united to God in communion in their
respective capacities as creatures, whether human or non-human. 89 The
ecological implication of this ecclesial vision is no less compelling (if
not more) compared with accounts that seek to give creation its own
independent status. As Zizioulas has stated elsewhere:
The Church as koinonia relates also to the animal and material world as
a whole. Perhaps the most urgent mission of the Church today is to
become conscious of and to prodaim in the strongest terms the fact
that there is an intrinsic communion between the human being and its
natural environment, a communion that must be brought into the
Church's very being in order to receive its fullness. 9o
It is not without reason that Zizioulas is called the 'ecological bishop,.91
But it is an eco-theology that is quite different from what we see in plural-
ist and inclusivist accounts of the Spirit in creation. The whole creation
must pass through the church - eucharistically 92 - if it is to be truly freed
from bondage to decay and enter communion with God.
86 Zizioulas, Communion and Othemess, 62-63.

87 Vladimir Lossky, Orthodox Theology: An Introduction (trans. lan & Ihita Kesarcodi-
Watson; Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir Seminary Press, 1989), p. 71.
89 Cf Zizioulas, Communion and Othemess, pp. 19-20.
90 John Zizioulas, 'The Church as Communion', St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly
38.1 (1994), p. 13.

9' Jaroslav Z. Skira, 'The Ecological Bishop: John Zizioulas' Theology of Creation',
Toronto Joumal ofTheology 19.2 (2003), pp. 199-213.
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The heavenly origin of the church

The church as the key to unlocking the mystery of creation makes sense
only in the light of the distinctive Orthodox understanding of the
church. Unlike in Roman Catholicism that stresses the church's institu-
tional character and Protestantism that reduces the church to a sociologi-
cal phenomenon and then becomes highly SUSPICIOUS of its
institutionalism, Orthodoxy envisions the church as the Body of Christ
and the temple of the Spirit,93 and as such, it is both institutional and
spiritual, both earthly and heavenly: a 'Divine-humanity' energized by
the Holy Spirit. 94 Alexander Schmemann has described it most suc-
cincdy:
'Heaven on earth': this formula familiar to every Orthodox expresses
rather weil the fundamental Orthodox experience of the church. The
church is first of all and before everything else a God-created and God-
given reality, the presence of Christ's new life, the manifestation of the
new eon of the Holy Spirit. An Orthodox in his contemplation of the
church sees it as the divine gift before he thinks of the church as hu-
man response to this gift. 95
The divine origin of the church is seen in many aspects of Orthodox

theology, for example, in its concept of worship as the enactment of
the worship of heaven and in the use of icons in the church as gate-
ways into the heavenly realm. For icons depict not Jesus and saints in
their humanity but in their glorified humanity: 'transfigured flesh, illu-
minated by grace, the flesh of the world to come'. Further, the icon
'does not represent the divinity. Rather, it indicates man's participation in
the divine life,.96
There is, in other words, 'an organic link' between the saint and the
icon. 97 Thus in the Orthodox church where worship occurs in the
presence of the icons of Jesus and the saints, the church on earth is
truly joined with the worship of the saints in heaven.
The divine origin of the church is most clearly revealed at the con-
summation. In the eschatologie al vision of Revelation 21-22, John is
93 Catholicism tends to be dominated by the image of the church as the Body of
Christ in both its divine and human aspects, hence giving its ecclesiology a strongly
institutional bent. Orthodoxy, on the other hand, juxtaposes Body of Christ and tem-
ple of the Spirit, giving to its ecclesiology a strongly charismatic dimension.
94 Sergius Bulgakov, The Bride rif the Lamb (trans. Boris Jakim; Grand Rapids: Eerd-
mans, 2002), pp. 262, 256.

95 Alexander Schmemann, 'The Missionary Imperative in the Orthodox Tradition',
in Bastern Orthodox Theology: A Contemporary Reader, ed. Daniel B. Clendenin (Grand

Rapids: Baker, 1995), p. 197.
96 Leonid Ouspensky, Theology of the Icon, vol. 1 (trans. Anthony Gythiel; Crest-
wood, NY: St. Vladimir Seminary Press, 1992), p. 162. Italics mine.
97 Ouspensky, Theology rifthe Icon, I, p. 166.
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shown the Bride of the Lamb as 'the Holy City, the new Jerusalem,
coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifuIly
dressed for her husband' (Rev. 21.2). At the same time, as the Russian
Orthodox theologian, Sergius Bulgakov notes, she is not purely of
divine origin but also of earth, inscribed with the names of the twelve
tribes of Israel and of the twelve apostles (21.12, 14) and measured
with 'man's measurement' (v. 17). This 'indicates that this heavenly-
earthly glorified Jerusalem contains the sum-total of universal history as
weIl as the matter of the creaturely world' .98 The church may not be
coterminous with the new creation, but through the indwelling of the
God-man himself, she is creation's animating center, bringing together
heaven and earth, human and non-human in the 'chain of hypostatic
existence'. She 'is Spirit and Bride, manifesting in Her very being the
image of the hypostatic Spirit of God'. 99
Conclusion
There are two features of the Orthodox vision of the church which
resonate with the Pentecostal spiritual instinct. First, the 'supematural-
ness' of the church in Orthodoxy seems to find its counterpart in Pen-
tecostal supernaturalism. Second, the Orthodox emphasis on person-
hood as the key to understanding the world has deep spiritual affinity
with the Pentecostal emphasis on personal 'presence'. The main differ-
ence is that Pentecostals (at least until recently) tend to restrict super-
naturalism and personal presence to the individual. As a result, these
emphases sometimes find expression in highly idiosyncratic and bizarre
ways: individuals claiming special 'anointing' and 'apostolic' ministry
with no accountability to the larger church. If there is to be sound and
sustainable practice of these Pentecostal distinctives, they need to be set
within a proper ecclesial framework. Orthodox ecclesiology could
provide such a framework for a Pentecostal ecclesiology to emerge.
98 Sergius Bulgakov, The Bride qf the Lamb, trans. Boris ]akim (Grand Rapids: Eerd-
mans, 2002), p. 521.

99 Bulgakov, The Bride qf the Lamb, p. 526. Bulgakov here is referring to the Mother
of God, who represents the church in person.
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2
The Spirit and the Church: Two Perspectives
In the preceding chapter we have noted that a key idea in the Ortho-
dox ecclesia-centered pneumatology is the emphasis it places on the
person of the Holy Spirit and the concept of personhood in general.
We also noted the same concern in the predominantly evangelical
pneumatology predicated on an exclusivist theory of religion. But
there are fundamental differences between the two over the way the
person of the Spirit is related to the church. The nature of the relation-
ship between the Spirit and the church must now be examined. Given
the fact that Pentecostals have traditionally been aligned with evangeli-
eals, it would be important to see how evangelicals have addressed the
ecclesiological question in recent years and how they compare with
CathoIic and Orthodox conceptions.
Ecclesiology is more than organization and authority structures.
These sociological aspects, important and necessary though they may
be, must themselves be grounded in something more fundamental:
what is the spiritual relationship between the church as a people called
out by the triune God and the God who calls her? The church as a
theological question is about this fundamental relationship. It is on this
issue that basic differences are seen between Catholicism and Ortho-
doxy on the one side and Protestantism and evangelicalism on the other.
Barth's ecclesiology
In the postmodern climate Barth has once again taken his place as a
theologian of considerable influence in almost all aspects of dogmatics,
and ecclesiology is no exception. The significance of Barth lies pre-
cisely in the fact that for hirn, the basic question in ecclesiology is es-
sentially a theological one. As such, it offers a strong corrective to the
reductionist ecclesiologies in mainline Protestantism and evangelical-
ism. Basic to Barth's ecclesiology - in fact, to his whole theology - is
the utterly central fact of the election of Jesus Christ from eternity. For
Barth, the reality of the risen Christ is 'the most concrete reality'
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2. Ihe Spirit and the Church: Two Perspectives 33
against which all other realities are abstractions by comparison. 1 Our

ordinary reality is 'abstract' in the sense that it is penultimate, whose
ultimate meaning is understood only in reference to the concrete es-
chatological reality of the risen Christ. Barth makes no attempt to de-
fend or justifY this truth; it is the 'given' by which everything else
stands or falls; and to make sense of everything else in the light of that
eschatological reality in Christ is what his dogmatics is all about. 2 That
is to say, only a Christological perspective makes sense of all the rest of
reality, thus giving rise to what could be called the Barthian principle:
'the general exists for the sake of the particular'. 3
It is not the general which comes first, but the particular. The general
does not exist without this particular and cannot therefore be prior to
the particular. It cannot, then, be recognized and understood as the
general prior to it, as if it were itself a particular. Thus we cannot move
from the general to the particular, but only in the opposite direction -
from this particular to the general. 4
The particular history of Jesus Christ is definitive for God's dealing

with the world. 5 Barth is strongly opposed to the Protestant liberal
theology that sees Christ as only an instantiation of some general prin-
ciple in human culture. Unlike Schleiermacher or Tillich, Barth would
not accept the idea that Christianity is only a specification of a more
general religious consciousness. This is to reduce theology to anthro-
pology. That is to say, we can only understand the world in relation to
Christ and not vice versa. It is this all-determining truth of the particu-
larity ofJesus Christ that gives his ecclesiology its unambiguously theo-
logical character: For the church is elected in Christ and shares in all
the particularity of Christ. Barth could not have put it more starkly:
'God does not will to be God, and is not God, apart from those who
are His, apart from His people'.6 This gives the church its essentially
theological character; the church cannot be reduced to a sociological
phenomenon.
The Church is the concrete reality from which we may derive gen-
eral principles for living, for it is upon the work of God in Christ and
the church that these principles depend. Barth's ecclesiology, in line
with his Christology, could be called an ecclesiology 'from above'.
Such a view of the church is needed if Pentecostals (and we may add
1 Ingolf U. Dalferth, 'Kar! Barth's Eschatological realism', Karl Barth: Centenary Es-
says, ed. Stephen Skyes (Cambridge: CUP, 1989), pp. 14-45.

2 Dalferth, 'Karl Barth's Eschatological realism', p. 30.
3 Barth, Church Dogmatics 11.2 (ed. G.W. Bromiley & T.F. Torrance; Edinburgh: T.
& T. Clark, 1986), pp. 8, 53 etc. Hereafter CD.

4 Barth, CD 11.1, p. 602.
5 Barth, CD 11.2, pp. 8-9, 53-54.
6 Barth, CD 11.2, p. 77.
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evangelicals) are to correct their largely sociological and pragmatic

view of the church. 7
The importance ofBarth's ecclesiology has been well summed up by
arecent commentator, Kimlyn Bender:
... if the existence of the church is grounded in election and thus in an
eternal decision ... , then the church is not only discussed under the
rubric of the doctrine of God, as election itself falls within this doc-
trine, but the church itself is viewed as part of God's eternal covenantal
intention. The church ... can never then be understood simply as a
corporate collection of individuals who have chosen to assemble them-
selves based upon a shared religious experience. Consequently, the
church must first be understood theologically before it is understood
sociologically, for the ground of its existence is an eternal divine deci-
sion rather than human choice effected in history. The church is not
simply a contingent reality that exists within God's redemption of a
post-fallen world, but is in fact a divinely-established reality that dis-
plays God's eternal purpose for humanity, though in a provisional
form."
Barth's particularism has provided formidable support for those
evangelicals see king to develop a 'missional ecclesiology' centering on
the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ as the essential and nor-
mative work of the church. This can be seen, for example, in the life
work of mission theologian Lesslie Newbigin, whose 'logic of election'
forms the basis for his theology of mission and culture. 9 Missional ec-
clesiology in turn serves as a powerful corrective to the woefully in-
adequate ecclesiology of modem evangelicalism which treats the
church as a practical arrangement for what it perceives to be the more
primary work of saving individual souls. 1O The constitution of the
church by divine action is something that would also resonate deeply
with the Pentecostal ethos with its emphasis on the supematuralness of
the Christian life.
The Christological focus ofBarth's ecclesiology has not gone unno-
ticed by Orthodox theologians who recognize its deep affinity with
7 Nicholas Healy, 'Karl Barth's Ecclesiology Reconsidered', SJOT 57.3 (2004), pp.
287-299, esp. p. 296.

8 Kimlyn J. Bender, Karl Barth's Christological Ecclesiology (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate,
2005), p. 10l.
9 See Leslie Newbigen, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids, Geneva:
Eerdrnans, WCC, 1989), pp. 80-127, esp. pp. 80-88. See George R. Hunsberger,
Bearing the Witness cf the Spirit: Lesslie Newbigin's Theology cf Cultural Plurality (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 45-112.
10 The problem has been highlighted by several evangelicals in recent years, among
them David Wells, No Place for Truth: Or Whatever Happened to Evangelical· Theology
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993) and Stanley Grenz, Renewing the Center: Evangelical
Theology in a Post- Theological ETa (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006).
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2. The Spirit and the Church: Two Perspectives 35
their OWll. Orthodox theology too seeks to give an account of the

revelation of the Trinity as it is expressed in the Church. According to
Nikos Nissiotis, Orthodox theology gives priority to what God is do-
ing in the Church since the 'fundamental event' of God's revelation is
mediated 'through the instrumentality of the ecclesiastical commu-
nity'.11 This is what we have already noted in the Orthodox under-
standing of the work of the Spirit in creation in Chapter 1: whatever
God is doing to and for the world by his Spirit has to pass through the
church.
Barth's Pneumatological Dificit

Yet for all the promises it holds, Barth's ecclesiology falls short because
of what many have perceived as its pneumatological deficit: a lack of
emphasis on the concrete works of the Spirit at the human level. 12 The
Spirit's work is merely to 'realize subjectively' what has been accom-
plished by God in etemity in Christ. 13 This is due to the fact that Barth,
in good Reformed fashion, so stresses the sovereignty of grace, more
specifically, the totally determinative nature of election in Christ, that
it leaves no room for a sacramental theology and the Spirit's oWll con-
stitutive work in the church. Barth makes this point in no uncertain
terms:
We must be clear that the community is not made the body of Christ
or its members member of this body by this event [of the Spirit], by
the Spirit of Pentecost, by the fullness of His gifts, by the faith awak-
11 Nikos Nissiotis, 'The Theology of the Church and its Accomplishment', Ecumeni-
cal Review 29.1 Gan. 1977), p. 66.

12 Robert W. Jenson, 'You Wonder Where the Spirit Went', Pro Ealesia 2.3 (1993),
pp. 296-304; Nicholas M. Healy, 'The Logic of Kar! Barth's Ecclesiology: Analysis,
Assessment and Proposed Modifications, Modem Theology 10 (1994), pp. 253-70; Stan-
ley Hauerwas, With the Grain rf the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology
(Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2001); Reinhard Hütter, Sl1iJering Divine Things: Theology as
Church Practice (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 95-115; Joseph L. Mangina,
'Bearing the Mark of Jesus: The Church in the Economy of Salvation in Barth and
Hauerwas', SJOT 52 (1999), pp. 269-305; Mangina, 'The Stranger as Sacrament: Kar!
Barth and the Ethics of Ecclesial Practice', International Journal rf Systematic Theology 1
(1999), pp. 322-39; James J. Buckley, 'Christian Community, Baptism, and Lord's
Supper', in Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, ed. John B. Webster (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 195-211; John Y ocum, Ecclesial Mediation in
Karl Barth (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), p. 136. Cf. Bender, Karl Barth's Christological
Ecclesiology, p. 280. More recendy, Gary D. Badcock, The House Mere God Lives:, p.
147.
13 Barth, CD IV.1, p. 667. What is said about Christ and the church paralleis what
Barth says about the relation of Good Friday and Easter. The resurrection bears 'wit-
ness' to the work of reconciliation which was effectively completed on the Cross,
which raises the question whether the resurrection adds anything new. See Joseph
Mangina, 'Bearing the Mark ofJesus', pp. 275-77.
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ened by Hirn by the visible, audible and tangible results of the reaching
and receiving of the Gospel, let alone by baptism and the Lord's Sup-
per (as so-called 'sacraments'). Ir is the body, and its members are
members of this body, in Jesus Christ, in His election from all eternity
(Rom 8:29; Eph 1:4). And it became His body, they became its mem-
bers, in the fulfilment of their eternal election in His death on the cross
of Golgotha proclaimed in His resurrection from the dead. 14
Barth's strict Christological focus, important in itself, fails to grant to
the Spirit his own distinctive operation or proprium: pneumatology is
subsumed under Christology and treated as strictly apart of Christol-
ogy. Without a doctrine of the Spirit's own distinctive work in the
church, there is no concrete ecclesiology expressed in formative ecclesial
practices, as many critics of Barth have pointed out. For example, Eu-
gene Rogers, Jr. has argued that if the Spirit is not given his own 'au-
tonomy' but seen simply as 'the power of Christ' then there is no
freedom for human beings either. 15 Mangina too has noted that Barth's
ecclesiology leaves 'precious little for the Holy Spirit to accomplish' at
the concrete church level. 16 Where the work of the Spirit is recog-
nized, it is strictly distinguished from the action of the church and
could not be identified with the action of the church. 17 Thus for Barth,
human action is only a 'sign', not in the sacramental sense of contain-
ing the thing signified but a sign pointing to Christ who is the effective
agent. 18 Further, without acknowledging the Spirit's proprium, especially
as the power of God's future,19 history has no real future either; there
would be no genuine development of the living Tradition. The
church's existence in history would consist only of aseries of anamnetic
events. As Pentecostal theologian Wolfgang Vondey has observed, for
Barth 'the Spirit directs humankind back in time to Christ but does not
point forward to the completion of God's work of salvation in the
future,.20 Again, Mangina has pointed out that Barth identifies the
church with Christ only at the level of election in etemity, 'sheerly as a
predicate of divine action', not at the level of its concrete existence. 21
Consequently, Barth's understanding of Christ and the church tends to
14Barth, CD IV.1, p. 667.

15Eugene Rogers, Jr. After the Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatology from Resources out-
side the Modem West (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), p. 32.
16 Mangina, 'Bearing the Marks ofJesus', p. 300.
17 Y ocum, Ecclesial Mediation, p. 139.
18 Healy, 'The Logic ofKarl Barth's Ecclesiology', p. 261.
19 Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology, vol. I (New York: OUP, 1997), pp. 157-
58. Hereafter ST.

20 Wolfgang Vondey, 'The Holy Spirit and time in contemporary Catholic and
Protestant theology', Scottish Journal of Theology 58.4 (2005), p. 398.

21 Mangina, 'Bearing the Marks of Jesus', pp. 278, 280. Cf Philip J. Rosato, The
Spirit as Lord, pp. 134-41.
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vacillate between 'complete identity and complete non-identity,.22 The

'complete identity' is what gives to Barth's ecclesiology its unambigu-
ously theological character. 23 For if election is 'the central doctrine of
Barth's theology', then the church as elected in Christ is also central to
his theology and made totally dependent on Christology.24 Speaking of
the church as the 'image' of the body of Christ Barth could claim that
'there is in this image not merely an image but something real, indeed,
primarily and ultimately the only real thing in the world'. 25
The problem is in Barth's 'complete non-identity' between Christ
and the church. Barth sees no place for a mediatorial role for the
church. Barth fears an encroaching triumphalism if the church is given
some form of cooperative role in the furtherance of the work of GOd. 26
The church's role is thus reduced to that of bearing witness to what
Christ has decisively accomplished. 27 Human action is strict1y 'analo-
gous' to divine action. Divine action cannot be 'supplemented or aug-
mented' by human action. 28 According to Bender, underlying Barth's
doctrine of 'non-identity' is his strict adherence to the Chalcedonian
pattern of the 'asymmetrical relation of an anhypostatic-enhypostatic
Christology' where the human nature itself is not a person (anhypos-
tatic) but achieves personhood in its union with the divine Logos (en-
hypostatic).29 The church corresponds to the human nature of Jesus in
its union with Christ. 30
22 Mangina, 'Bearing the Marks ofJesus', p. 302.

23 See Barth, CD IV.1, pp. 662-68 where Barth affirms the 'complete identity' be-
tween the church and the body of Christ.
24 Bender, Barth's Christological Ecclesiology, pp. 106, 108.
25 Barth, CD IV.3.2, p. 858.
26 One will not fail to notice that throughout the Church Dogmatics, the two 'ene-
mies' that Barth constantly pits his theology against are liberal Protestantism on the one
side and Catholicism on the other. The former reduces the church to an aspect of
culture while the latter tends to identifY the church too closely with Christ. E.g. Barth,
CD IV.l, p. 667. See John Yocum, Ecclesial Mediation in Karl Barth (Aldershot: Ash-
gate, 2004), pp. xx-xxi.
27 Barth, CD IV.l, pp. 327-28.
28 Y ocum, Ecclesial Mediation, pp. 140, 142.
29 Bender, Barth's Christological Ecclesiology, p. 167. The appeal to Chalcedon is a
double-edged sword. Y ocum has noted that it is here that Barth has been accused,
rightly or wrongly, ofNestorian tendencies (Ecclesial Mediation, pp. 168-69).
30 Barth's refusal to see identity between Creator and creature seems to have strong
affinities with Calvin. Miroslav V olf describes Calvin' s understanding of the relation
between the Spirit and the church as 'elusive' ['The Spirit and the Church' in Advents
of the Spirit: An Introduction to the Current Study of Pneumatology, ed. Bradford E. Hinze
& D. Lyle Dabney (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2001), p. 382.] J.
Todd Billings has used the same expression to describe Calvin's doctrine of participa-
tion in Christ (p. 333). Calvin's doctrine distinguishes itself from the Orthodox doc-
trine to the extent that it refuses to acknowledge the identification between Creator
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Perhaps the problem with Barth's ecclesiology is not so much that it

vacillates between identity and non-identity, but that it is an ecclesiol-
ogy that is too theological to the extent that the 'real' church is no
longer connected to its institutional life. The church is bifurcated into
the 'real' church (die wirkliche Kirche) and the 'apparent' church (die
Scheinkirche),31 so that what the church is institutionally - what it does
and how· it is organized - is not constitutive of the spiritual life of its
members. The result, as Nicholas Healy has noted, is that 'without the
effective socialization of church members through sets of distinctively
Christian institutions and practices it is difficult for them to resist the
assimilative forces of modern culture' .32
Evangelical Ecclesiology
Whether evangelicals are directly or indirectly indebted to Barth or
not, his ecclesiology has provided an important context for the devel-
opment of evangelical thinking on ecclesiology in recent years. 33 There
is a growing awareness that an evangelical theology of the church
needs to go beyond a pragmatic and sociological conception. Evangeli-
cals are beginning to think more theologically about the church. As a
result of such fresh thinking a number of important features are emerg-
ing. For one thing, increasing recognition is given to the objective and
corporate dimension of the Christian faith rather than to an exclusively
'experiential-expressive' conception of faith. 34 This is one of the main
features of the church George Vandervelde has singled out:
The communal character of the Christian faith is intrinsie to that faith.
The corporate reality of Christian faith is not a by-product of a faith
and ereature (p. 334) ('United to God through Christ: Assessing Calvin on the Ques-
tion ofDeiflcation', Harvard Theological Review 98.3 [2005], pp. 315-34).
31 Nieholas M. Healy, 'The Logie ofKarl Barth's Eeclesiology', p. 258.
32 Healy, 'The Logic ofKarl Barth's Ecclesiology', p. 265.
33 See Stanley J. Grenz, Renewing the Center, Donald Bloesch, The Church: Sacra-
ments, Worship, Ministry, Mission (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2002), pp. 47-48; George
Vandervelde, 'The Challenge of Evangelieal Eeclesiology' Evangelical Review cf Theology
27.1 (2003), pp. 4-26; Evangelical Ealesiology: Reality or fllusion? ed.John G. Staekhouse
(Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003); John Webster, 'The Chureh and the Perfeetion of God',
in The Community cf the Word, ed. Mark Husbands & Daniel J. Treier (Downers
Grove, IL: IVP, 2005), pp. 75-95; John Webster, 'The Visible Attests the Invisible',
idem; Mark Sauey, 'Evangelieal, Catholie and Orthodox Together: Is the Chureh the
Extension of the Inearnation?' Journal cf the Evangelical Theological Society 43.2 Oune
2000), pp. 193-212.
34 The tenn 'experiential-expressive' is used by George Lindbeek to refer to an un-
derstanding of Christian doetrine whieh loeates it in the subjeetive eonseiousness. See

The Nature rfDodrine (Philadelphia: Westminster), p. 16. Ironieally, evangelieals have a
view of faith that is frequently redueed to the level of the subjeetive. See Zizioulas's
assessment below.
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that resides first of all in the hearts of individual believers .... Corporate
communion - the body of Christ communion - is the very matrix of
faith. 35
In Paul's image of the church as the temple of the Spirit, Van-
dervelde argues, the 'you' is always in the plural while temple is in the
singular, thus stressing the corporate, communal life of the church. 36
Perhaps more significantly is the recognition of the need to understand
the church theologically, that is, in terms of its relation to the triune
God. Vandervelde, noting the 'bold parallel' between Jn 1.14 and 1 Jn
4.12, concludes that the church plays a 'God-revealing and God-
embodying role'.37 As such the church is not only the means but an
'end, a provisional end, but an end nonetheless' .38 Such a view radically
reconceptualizes the nature of mission. He chided evangelicals for play-
ing off mission against ecclesiology arguing that 'an ecclesiology of
God's dwelling with and in the Christ-community is intrinsically mis-
sional' .39
Vandervelde's challenge to evangelicals to re-vision the church
represents an important advance. But exactly how is the church to be
conceived as the 'dwelling-of-God'? Vandervelde's answer shows
where evangelicalism differs most sharply from Catholicism and Or-
thodoxy. Vandervelde sees any attempt at constructing an ecclesiology
based on the inner nature of the triune God as 'speculative'.40 He fur-
ther rejects attempts to differentiate between the divine and human
elements of the church so as to give to the former a certain 'ontologi-
cal' status. He argues instead for the divine origin of the church and its
uniqueness by virtue of its relationship with God: 'only a relational un-
derstanding ... creates room for a distinctive evangelical contribution
to ecclesiology'. 41 In other words, the church' s theological identity can
be predicated only on the basis of distinction; the church could be any
thing other than possessing ontological divine elements. This seems to
be the bottom line of evangelical ecclesiology beyond which no evan-
gelical is prepared to go. They are united in stressing only the non-
identity between Christ and the church. The reason for this is that
evangelicals share with other Protestants a deep suspicion of any
church that claims to mediate God's grace. Donald Bloesch, for exam-
pIe, thinks that the totus Christus concept detracts from the Protestant
35 George Vandervelde, 'The Challenge ofEvangelical Ecclesiology', Evangelical Re-
viewoJTheology27.1 (2003),p.19.
36 Vandervelde, 'The Challenge', p. 16.
39 Vandervelde, 'The Challenge', pp. 12-13.
40 Vandervelde, 'The Challenge', pp. 21-26.
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principle of solus Christus. 42 Similarly, Colin Gunton regards the

Church as only an 'echo' of the Trinity.43
The basic difference is weIl put by another evangelical Mark Saucy:
While Protestants take the expression 'body of Christ' in 1 Cor. 12.27
as 'a metaphor' like other biblical metaphors describing the nature and
function of the church, Catholics and Orthodox see it as more than a
metaphor but a 'statement of reality'.44 The way to understand the
relationship between Christ and his church according to Saucy is not
the Chalcedonian model where the unity of the divine and human
nature in one person finds its correspondence in the church that is so
united with Christ as to form a single subject: the totus ChristuS. 45 Ra-
ther, the relationship must be understood functionally, based on the
tripIe office of Christ as prophet, priest, and king. 46
The issue has found sustained treatment in John Webster whose
fundamental assertion on ecclesiology is 'the asymmetry of gospel and
church,.47 According to Webster, the point at issue is whether God's
perfection is inclusive or exclusive. An inclusive perfection in relation
to creatures 'would be to say that the fullness of God includes as an
integral element of itself some reality other than God'. If the relation is
exclusive, God's relation with his creatures is real but creatures 'do not
participate in God but are elected for fellowship and therefore sum-
moned into God's presence'. Ecclesiologically, the issue could be posed
thus: '[I]s the church, as the assembly of creatures in relation to God,
intrinsie to God's perfection, or extemally related to God's perfect
being and work? Does God's being include the being of the church?,48
Webster, however, does not advocate a pure 'extrinsicism' either, but
suggests 'a dogmatics of the mutuality between God and creatures', a
'relation-in-distinction' i.e. a 'covenant fellowship,49 based on the 'on-
tological rule ... that whatever conjunction there may be between God
and his saints, it is comprehended within an even greater dissirnilar-
ity' .50 'God may choose to act through creatures; in doing so, he ele-
42Donald Bloesch, The Church:, pp. 47-48.

43Colin Gunton, 'The Church on Earth: The Roots of Community', in On Being
the Church: Essays on the Christian Community, ed. Colin E. Gunton & Danie! W. Har-
dy (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1989), p. 75.
44 Mark Sauey, 'Evangelical, Catholic and Orthodox Together', p. 193.
45 Notice that Barth uses Chaleedonian model to affirm non-identity by highlight-
ing the asymmetry between the divine and human natures in the unity of the one
person.
46 Mark Saucy, 'Evangelieal, Catholic and Orthodox Together', p. 195.
47 John Webster, 'The Chureh and the Perfeetion of God', Community of the Word,
p. 77.
48 Webster, 'The Chureh', p. 80.
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vates the creature but does not bestow an enduring capacity on the crea-
ture so much as consecrate if for a specific appointment'. 51 Webster
thinks that to affirm anything more would compromise God' s perfec-
• 52
tlon.
Webster applies the same 'rule' of dissimilarity to the relationship
between the Spirit and the church. The Spirit is given to the church
but 'not in a way which is convertible into something immanent to the
church or something which the church fills or realizes in its action' .53
Consequently, Webster rejects attempts to identify the practices of the
church as the work of the Spirit because that would not sufficiently
distinguish between the opus Dei and opus hominum. 54
The evangelical concerns are understandable, but are they well
founded? Take, for example, the concern that any 'addition' would
compromise God's perfection. But do not the doctrines of the Incarna-
tion and the bodily ascension of Christ imply just that - the addition of
human nature into the Godhead? They would seem to validate Robert
Jenson's claim that 'precisely because God is the infinite Creator there
can be no limit to the modes and degrees of creatures' promised par-
ticipation in his life'.55 To insist, as Webster does, that these events are
unique to Christ and non-repeatable 56 does not quite deflect Jenson's
point since they do show, even granting that these events are not rep-
licable at the creaturely level, that God's perfection could and does
include something other than himself.
Catholic and Orthodox Ecclesiologies

Protestants have difficulty speaking of the relationship between God
and the church in terms of ontological identity because the relationship
is perceived as strictly 'external' to God ('exclusive perfection'), where-
as Catholicism and Orthodoxy have developed their own languages to
speak of a relationship that is 'internal' to God without blurring the
distinction between God and humanity. Catholicism has at its disposal
the conceptual tools of scholastic theology, such as the distinction be-
tween created and uncreated grace (see below) , formal and efficient
causes. A formal cause refers to a relationship between two things in
which the effect is essentially the same as the cause (a cat is the formal
cause of a kitten). Efficient cause refers to relationship between two
things in which the effect is essentially different from the cause (a car-
51 Webster, 'The Church', pp. 89, 91 (emphasis mine).

52 Webster, 'The Church', p. 92.
53 Webster, 'The Visible Attests the Invisible', p. 103.
54 Webster, 'The Visible Attests the Invisible', pp. 105-106.
55 Cited by Webster, 'The Church', p. 92 - a point he rejects.
56 Webster, 'The Visible Attests the Invisible', pp. 93-94.
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penter is the efficient cause of a table). Some have made use of Rah-
ner's concept of 'quasi-formal causality' which allows for both identity
and distinction between God and humanity to be affirmed. 57 Quasi-
formal causality refers to the fact that the work of the Spirit in the
church is not entirely an opus ex extra nor entirely ad intra but 'mixed' .58
'In Christ' we become 'sons in the Son', but
unlike Christ, we remain permanendy and exclusively dependent on
the Holy Spirit for this ontological status. Unlike Christ, we never be-
come sons and daughters in our own right. Our relation with the Holy
Spirit is therefore twofold: first, he re-creates us as sons and daughters
in the Son, and second, he takes possession of us in this newly con-
ferred status, and we of hirn, this mutual possession persisting as long as
we do not fall from grace by sin. This first dimension of this relation is
appropriated to the Holy Spirit and the second is proper'. 59
Such a concept allows for development of a deeper identity between
God and the church without sacrificing distinction. Similarly, Ortho-
doxy using the Palarnite distinction of 'essence' and 'energies' could
speak of participation in God as 'deification' rather than merely sanctifi-
cation or the development of moral qualities. Deification is a sharing in
the divine nature, a participation in the divine 'energies', without mak-
ing the church essentially divine. The real issue, therefore, is not whether
Catholicism and Orthodoxy have failed to make adequate distinctions,
but where the distinction is located: is it located strictly in God's opus ad
extra or is it also included in God's opus ad intra? Perhaps evangelicals
have created for themselves a false dilemma of choosing between an
'external' relation between God and his people and a substantial identity:
Either we make the relationship between God and humanity completely
asymmetrieal, or we end up confusing God and humanity.
Catholic and Orthodox theologies show that there are other possi-
bilities, among which Zizioulas' concept of the communion of persons
as an ontological category stands out as one of the better alternatives.
To be persons is to exist as a 'mode ofbeing' with other persons. Rela-
tionship with God has to do with the 'way of being' between God and
creatures, and this relationship is an ontological and not merely some-
thing ethical or psychologieal:
God, therefore, relates to the world with a change not of what each of
these identities are, hut of how they are. Given the fact that no heing
57 Ralph DeI Colle, Christ and the Spirit: Spirit-Christology in Trinitarian Perspective
(Oxford, 1994), p. 74; David Coffey, 'Did you Receive the Holy Spirit When You Be-
lieved?' Some Basic Questions JOT Pneumatology (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University
Press, 2005), p. 28.
58 Coffey, Did you Receive, pp. 32-33.
59 Coffey, Did you Receive, p. 34.
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exists as a 'naked' nature, but always in a particular 'mode' or tropos,

the relation of God to the world is not 'ethical' or 'psychological' or
anything other than ontologieal, that is, a relation allowing for commun-
ion with each other's very being, albeit without a change ofwhat each
ofthem is:o
It is the union of persons understood ontologically that allows for
real communion as weIl as othemess or distinction to be maintained. 61
In the modem world communion and othemess exist in deep tension.
Othemess creates division while unity results in absorption. Only in
the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo as a free act of God is the
integrity of the 'other' maintained. 62 At the same time, the doctrine of
the Creator as person understood as a 'mode of being' makes com-
munion possible. The communion is marked by a 'eucharistie ethos'
by which Zizioulas means the fundamental attitude of gratitude for the
'gift ofbeing', the acknowledgment of God's very Person (the Other)
'and our own existence as a gift of the Other'. 63 God and humanity are
linked to each other by 'personal causality' in which 'whatever exists or
happens is given to us by aperson'. The Eucharist presupposes an onto-
logical communion and othemess: In the Eucharist creatures are 'hypos-
tatized' and given a new identity (that is, as deified persons yet
remaining creatures).64 This is because in the Eucharist God gives him-
self; we receive the body of Christ and become the Body of Christ. The
faith generated by the eucharistie ethos is unique. It differs from the
Enlightenment and Cartesian concept of faith as rational conviction
and from the Protestant view which replaces rational conviction with a
psychological or ethical concept: faith as trust (Luther) or as response
and obedience to the W ord of God (Barth). 65 Beyond these reduction-
istic concepts of faith, the eucharistie faith is a personal exchange, a
'way of being' between persons in which created persons participate in
the very life of the Trinity. The problem with evangelicalism does not
lie in what it affirms regarding Christ and the church but in what it
denies. By conceiving the relation only at the level of election and
covenant, and of 'fellowship' conceived asymmetrically, it fails to go
beyond a rational, psychological or ethical conception of faith to faith
as a 'mode of being' between creaturely persons and the divine Per-
sons.
We need to go beyond the evangelical assumption of the 'asymme-
try of gospel and church' to a way of understanding relationship in-

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volving the creatures' participation in the life of the triune GOd. 66 The
latter has been a central feature of Orthodoxy which has been most
vigorously pursued by Zizioulas. But this doctrine is by no means re-
stricted to the East. According to some Luther scholars of the Finnish
School, Luther's doctrine of justification by faith is not only forensic
but includes the element of participation in the person of Christ.
When a human being is united with God, he or she becomes a partici-
pant not only in the human but also in the divine nature of Christ. At
the same time a kind of 'communication of attributes' occurs: the at-
tributes of the essence of God - such as righteousness, life, power, etc.
- are communicated to the Christian. In all this, Christ in his person is
both God's 'favor' and God's 'gift' at the same time. 6'
Other studies have also found concepts of participation and deifica-
tion among the Anabaptists and in the early Methodist movement. 68
What is perhaps more surprising is that similar ideas can be found
among Pentecostals. Pentecostal scholar Edmund J. Rybarczyk in a
comparative study of the Orthodox and Pentecostal doctrines of salva-
tion notes that Pentecostals do not use ontologicallanguage to describe
communion, but they speak of 'an experiential participation in the
triune God to a degree unlike any other sub-groups within Christen-
dom' or 'a coinhering communion which extends far beyond the mo-
ment of conversion' .69 In other words, even though communion is not
described in ontological terms, their idea of communion carries onto-
logical implications.
66 This kind of participation must be distinguished from panentheisitc forms found
in Moltmann's doctrine of God as 'immanent transcendence' (The Spirit qf Life, pp. 31-
38); in Open Theism represented by Clark Pinnock and others [The Openness qf God:
A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding qf God (Downers Grove, IL: IVP,
1994)]; and more recently, Paul Fiddes, Participating in God: A Pastoral Doctrine qf the
Trinity (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2000). In one sense, Fiddes is
even more radical than Moltmann. Ey conceiving of the trinitarian persons as 'subsis-
tent relations ... without remainder' (p. 39) i.e. without personal subjects, he seems to
have reduced the Trinity to a philosophical principle goveming human relations. How
is relationship with God different from a very refined way of talking about human
relations, no matter how transcendental the relationship is made to be since there is
really no divine 'subject' to relate to?
67 Tuomo Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith: Luther's View qfJustification (Minnea-
polis: Fortress, 2005), p. 8.

68 Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, One with God: Salvation as Deification and Justification (Col-
legeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2004), pp. 67-81.

69 Edmund J. Rybarczyk, Beyond Salvation: Bastern Orthodoxy and Classical Pente-
costalism on Becoming Like Christ (Carlisie: Paternoster, 2004), pp. 8, 13.
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Ecclesial Practices as the W ork of the Spirit

Questions have been raised about this Finnish interpretation of Luther,
but the idea makes good sense in the light of a strong sacramental the-
ology found in Luther. For the doctrine of participation entails a close
identification between the works of the church and the work of the
Spirit. For Luther the church could be said to be the mediator of grace
through her core ecclesial practices. According to David S. Yeago,
Luther had more in common with the church of his time he criticized
than with his modem interpreters who consider Protestantism to be all
about individualistic piety.70 But in contrast to the excessive juridicism
and abstraction of the Catholic church of his day, Luther stressed the
church as a concrete, worshipping community, an actual gathering of
God's people called out by the gospel to be a holy people. 71 The
church is identified by certain essential practices which Luther calls
'holy things' of which there are seven: the preached word, baptism,
Lord's Supper, the keys (church discipline), church offices, worship,
and cross-bearing. 72 Luther understands them to be 'the great holy pos-
session (Heilthum) whereby the Holy Spirit effects in us a daily sanctifi-
cation and vivification in Christ, according to the first table ofMoses'.73
According to Yeago, in the medieval church a Heilthum is a miracle-
working relie. By calling these practices 'holy things' Luther sees them
as the means 'through which the Holy Spirit fashions a holy people in
the world,.74 In other words, they have a sacramental function. Luther,
as a matter of fact, goes on to say, 'I would even call these seven parts
the seven sacraments ... .'75
It is in light of the intimate relationship between the Spirit and the
church's core practices that we can understand Luther's concept of the
priesthood of all believers and the place of the ordained ministry. Ac-
cording to Yeago, the universal priesthood is not about each individual
believer being a priest. It means that the church as a whole, the whole
corporate body is a priesthood unto God. The priesthood is like the
'communal property' of a community; it does not belong to any one
individual. The ordained ministry therefore, is not just a convenient
70 David S. Yeago, '''A Christian, Holy People": Martin Luther on Salvation and
the Chureh', Modem Theology 13.1 (Jan 1997), pp. 101-20.

71 Yeago, "'A Christian, Holy People"', pp. 106-108.
72 Martin Luther, 'On the Couneils and the Chureh', Luther's Works, 41, ed. Erie
W. Gritseh (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966), pp. 148-66. Hereafter LW.

73 These marks relate prineipally to God (the first table of the Law) and are therefore
the more primary. Luther also reeognizes 'holy possessions' aeeording to the seeond
table of the Law but they are seeondary and not determinative of the ehurch as ehureh.
Martin Luther, LW, p. 166.
74 Luther, 'On the Couneils and the Chureh', p. 110.
75 LW, 41, pp. 165-66.
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way to ensure order in the church; rather Luther sees the ordained
ministry as one of the seven essential practices, something necessary for
the church's identity as church. It is necessary 'that one person, or
however many are pleasing to the community, be chosen and received,
who are to exercise these offices publicly in the stead and name of
all .... ,76 The ordained minister is not adelegate representing the collec-
tive interests of the people; he is not so much delegated by the people
to speak on their behalf as 'that organ through which and in which the
Church is speaking and acting',77 that is, acting in persona ecclesiae. He
acts in behalf of the church as a corporate body, not as a collectivity of
individuals. 7S This is quite different from the typical evangelical under-
standing of the church as the sum-total of individual Christians rather
than as a single, corporate entity that is more than the sum-total of indi-
vidualS. 79
In what sense are the core practices the work of the Spirit? This
question has been given sustained treatment by Reinhard Hütter. so
Hütter is concemed primarily with the loss of the 'public' character of
the church in mainline Protestantism under the impact of modemity.
The way to recover the church as 'public' in its own right and not just
an aspect of a supposedly larger secular public is not by objectifying the
faith seen in 'fundamentalist biblicism' and 'traditionalist ecclesiasti-
cism'Sl but by affirming its public dogma and core practices as the
works of the Holy Spirit. 82 Barth's pneumatology, according to Hütter
goes some way towards overcoming the weaknesses of both liberal
subjectivism and excessive objectivism, but it ultimately fails for reasons
we have already noted, namely, the failure to articulate the relation
between the work of the Holy Spirit and church practice in a concrete
way.83 First, for the church to be God's public, it has to be defined by
certain binding dogmas and core practices that distinguish it as church.
Dogma 'bindingly teaches about these key practices, while the key
practices enact dogma'.84 At Pentecost the Spirit creates the church as
LW, 41, p. 112.

76
LW, 41, p. 113. Yeago eiting the Catholie Gisbert Greshake, who, he thinks,
77
eaptures Luther's idea eorreedy.

78 Oddly, Free Chureh theologian, Miroslav Volf, reeognizes this prineiple in the
ordained rninistry: 'The specifie neeessity attaehing to the gifts of offiee is their refer-
enee to the entirety of the loeal eongregation'. See Miroslav Volf & Mauriee Lee, 'The
Spirit and the Chureh' in Advents of the Spirit, p. 395. Author's emphasis.
79 See below, pp. 78-79.
'0 Reinhard Hütter, 'The Chureh as Publie: Dogma, Praetiee, and the Holy Spirit',
Pro Ecclesia 3.3 (Summer 1994), pp. 334-61.
81 Hütter, 'Chureh as Publie', p. 334.
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God's public and continues to work in and through the core ecclesial
practices as 'mediating forms', without being limited by them. 85 The
constitutive work of the Spirit corresponds to the constitutive core
practices of the church.
These [eore] praetiees are understood pneumatologieally as aets to be
interpreted enhypostatieally as 'works' of the Spirit. Rather than being
self-grounded, they partieipate in the being of the Spirit as the latter's
work in the Spirit's mission ofthe triune God's eeonomy ofsalvation. 86
To say that the core practices are constitutive of the church as
church implies that they are not arbitrarily invented by the church.
David Stubbs has noted that although there are differences over what
practices are constitutive (as there are differences over what constitutes
the central church dogmas which these practices enact), they are also
remarkably unified around the traditional shape of the liturgy. Further,
'what unites them is the thing they are living symbols of, namely, the
form of the second person of the Trinity as it becomes embodied in
human flesh through the power ofthe Holy Spirit'.87 In short, the core
practices are the practice of W ord and Spirit in the liturgy which en-
acts the Trinitarian economy of salvation. Thus 'talk about core prac-
tices is not merely a way of talking about sacraments under another
name. It is a way of specifYing what sacraments are'. 88 Sacraments are
the Spirit's usual way of working in and through the core practices.
This strong sacramentology is generally rejected by evangelicals whose
'asymmetry of the gospel and church' is extended to the relationship
between the Holy Spirit and the core practices. 89
The evangelical reticence sterns from the fear that to identifY the
work of the Spirit with ecclesial practices might lead to the abuse of
power in the church and the domestication of the Spirit. While the
fear is not unfounded, a corrective such as Barth's may weIl represent
an over-correction. David Stubbs offers a more satisfactory solution.
Drawing on the traditional distinction between created and uncreated
grace, Stubbs argues that the Spirit himself (uncreated grace) is at work
in the core practices and not just some created graces of the Spirit. And
precisely because it is the presence of the person of the Spirit, the core
practices cannot be manipuIated by the church but must always be
carried out in dependence of the Holy Spirit. 90 Ironically, the evangeli-
85 Hütter, 'Church as Public', pp. 358-59.

86 Hütter, Suffering Divine Things, p. 27.
87 David L. Stubbs, 'Practices, Core Practices, and the Work of the Holy Spirit',
JoumalforChristian Theological Research 9 (2004), p. 23.

88 Stubbs, 'Practices', p. 22.
89 As noted above in Webster, 'The Visible Attests the Invisible', pp. 105-106.
90 Stubbs, 'Practices', p. 25.
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cal insistence on the 'asymmetry' of ecclesial practices and the Spirit

results in a view of the former as essentially spiritual 'gifts' (created
graces) which could be and often are manipulated by the church (as
evident in some evangelical-charismatics). Another immediate conse-
quence is that evangelicals have tended to look upon mysticism and
sacramentology with deep suspicion. 91
The way to overcome the problem anticipated by Barth and evan-
gelicals is to posit a robust doctrine of the Spirit in relation to the
church's action. It is not so much the church's action as such, but the
action of the Spirit himself in the action of the church. The Orthodox
way of conceptualizing this dynamic is to say that the church exists in
epicletic relationship to the Spirit. Nikos Nissiotis defines the church as
'the permanent epiclesis of the Holy Spirit from the Father and in virtue
of the salvation of ChriSt'.92 'The ecclesial institution, as a charismatic
communion created by the Spirit, exists only epicletically' .93 The very
nature of the church is that she exists in total dependence of the Holy
Spirit. Her actions are truly hers only as she acts by constantly invoking
the Spirit to act. She must constantly empty herself so as to be filled
with the Spirit. She is truly herself when she acts out of a deep humil-
ity. This is why, according to Nissiotis, in the Orthodox liturgy the
congregation kneels when the Spirit is invoked. 94 Similar correctives
have also come from the Catholic side. John H. McKenna has argued
that a proper understanding of the epiclesis should overcome any exag-
gerated role given to the ordained minister since the prayer for the
Holy Spirit to come is actually the prayer of the whole assembly and
expresses the faith-response of the whole church. 'One major contri-
bution of the epiclesis proper to a healthy understanding of the Eucha-
rist lies precisely in its ability to express the helplessness and
dependence and, at the same time, the prayerful confidence of the
assembly,.95 Similarly, drawing on the Orthodox pneumatological in-
sights, Yves Congar has developed a pneumatology that recognizes the
91 E.g. David Parker, 'Evangelical Spirituality Reviewed', Evangelical Quarterly 63.2
(1991), pp. 123-48. Parker thinks that a sacramental understanding of the Christian
faith is incompatible with the evangelical understanding of'fellowship' (p. 143).
92 Nikos A. Nissiotis, 'Called to Unity: The Significance of the Invocation of the
Spirit for Church Unity', in Lausanne 77: Fifty Years of Faith and Order (Geneva: WCC,
1977), p. 55.
93 Isaac Kizhakkeparampil, The Invocation of the Holy Spirit as Constitutive of the Sacra-
ments according to Cardinal Yves Congar (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1995), p. 33.
94 Nissiotis, 'Called to Unity', p. 55.
95 E.g., John H. McKenna, 'Eucharistie Epiclesis: Myopia or Microcosm?' Theologi-
cal Studies, 36.2 (Tune 1975), pp. 272-75 passim, p. 274.
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freedom of the Spirit on the one hand and a place for ecclesial media-
tion on the other. 96
Conclusion
While evangelicals and Pentecostals would be rather sympathetic to-
ward Barth's christological particularity, Pentecostals have too strong a
sense of the freedom and personal presence of the Spirit (i.e. the Spi-
rit's proprium) to allow for the pneumatological dimension to be re-
duced to just an aspect of Christology. Their sensitivity to the personal
nearness of the Spirit is too important for them to allow themselves to
assimilate unquestioningly the evangelical idea of the 'asymmetry of
church and gospel'.
Given the deep ambiguity that is becoming increasingly apparent
between Pentecostals and evangelicals on the matter of the relationship
of the Spirit and the church, a question that inevitably arises is, where
do or should Pentecostals locate themselves? The relationship between
Pentecostals and evangelicals is a complex one. As no ted earlier, Pente-
costals have traditionally aligned themselves with evangelicals and share
much of the latter's spiritual heritage. But in more re cent years ques-
tions have been raised concerning how the relationship ought to be.
Hollenweger, for one, thinks that the alliance was amistake since
'there is hardly anything in common between Evangelicals and charis-
matics' .97 Hollenweger's assessment may be somewhat exaggerated, but
it reflects a sentiment that is found increasingly among Pentecostal
scholars who are seeking consciously to distinguish (if not distance) the
Pentecostal movement from evangelicalism, especially over the doc-
trine of sola scriptura and the grammatical-historical method of interpre-
tation. 98 Hollenweger is perhaps nearer the mark when he observes that
Pentecostalism has a lot in common with Catholicism: 'Pentecostalism
is a way of being Catholic without accepting the juridical structures of
the Catholic Church,.99 Perhaps there is something about Pentecostal
spirituality that allows it to align itself more closely with Catholicism
than traditional evangelicalism. What it is will be the subject of another
chapter.
96 See e.g. Kizhakkeparampil, The Invocation oJ the Holy Spirit; Elizabeth Teresa
Groppe, Yves Congar's Theology oJ the Holy Spirit (NY: Oxford University Press, 2004).
97 Walter J. Hollenweger, 'Crucial Issues for Pentecostals' in Pentecostals after a Cen-
tury: Global Perspectives on a Movement in Transition, ed. Allan H. Anderson & Walter J.
Hollenweger GPTSup 15; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), p. 186.
98 See above n. 2.
99 Walter J. Hollenweger, 'Crucial Issues for Pentecostals', p. 166.
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3
Spirit, Church, and the T rinitarian Narrative
In the previous chapter we have looked at the difference between the

Protestant-evangelical and the Catholic-Orthodox understandings of
the relation between the Spirit and the church, and suggested that Pen-
tecostals, with their robust experience of the Spirit, may have more in
common with the latter. The biblical and theological basis for this af-
firmation must now be addressed. The approach taken will be to ex-
plore the story of the Trinitarian economy of salvation from a largely
pneumatological perspective. In the Trinitarian economy, the distinct
identity of the church is created by the personal indwelling of the Spi-
rit. Through this Spirit-event the church is taken into the Trinitarian
economy. The doctrine of the Spirit as the third person could not be
properly conceived without his relation to the church. This intimate
relationship between the Spirit and the church could be described as
mutually conditioning. If the church is defined primarily by its relation
to the Spirit the Spirit too is defined primarily by his relation to the
church. This mutuality, however, does not imply a relations hip of
equality. The Spirit is still the 'Lord and giver of life' of the church.
The Spirit is both in and over the church; He has come and is always
coming from 'beyond history' . There is a deep paradox in the Spirit's
relation to the church, a paradox that is manifested in a number of
polarities in the life of the church. The church must maintain these
polarities in a healthy tension if it is to fulfill its true vocation as the
church of Jesus Christ. The term Pentecostal, both in its theological
and historical senses, most appropriately applies to these peculiar dy-
namics of the Spirit.
The Church in Trinitarian Perspective: An Overview

The dose connection between the Spirit and the church that we have
observed in the Creed and ancient liturgies (Chapter 1) is grounded in
the fact that in Scripture the full revelation of the triune God is inti-
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3. Spirit, Church, and the Trinitarian Narrative 51
mately connected with the coming of the Spirit to be the Spirit cf the
church.
According to Nissiotis Orthodox theology is essentially 'a commen-
tary on the Trinitarian God'. 1 What he says of the nature of Orthodox
theology could be said of any good theology. This is especially true of
ecclesiology. The doctrine of the church cannot be properly under-
stood except in relation to the story of the triune God. It grows di-
rectly out of the Trinitarian narrative centering in the sending of the
Son and the sending of the Spirit. Although the triune relationship
could also be described from other perspectives,2 the story of 'the two
sendings' is probably the most definitive for understanding the nature
of the church. This is clearly reflected, for instance, in the Dogmatic
Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium) ofVatican 11, where the
two sendings are referred to quite early in the document. 3 In short, the
revelation of the triune God in the NT fol1ows a basic story line which
could be told in terms the sending of the Son and culminating in the
sending ofthe Holy Spirit to the church (cE Rom. 8.14-17, 21, 29;
Gal. 4.4-6).
The story of the two sendings, however, presupposes the One who
sends. This means that the church's story must begin with an account
of its relation to the Father, otherwise our ecclesiology remains incom-
plete. We will deal only briefly with this part of the Trinitarian narra-
tive since its broader implication will be taken up in Chapter 5. The
church's relation to the Father parallels the etemal relation of the Fa-
ther to the Son and Spirit. The Father, who is unbegotten and 'with-
out origin' , etemally generates the Son and breathes out the Spirit (and
some would add, through the Son). The church's relation to the Fa-
ther, therefore, has to do with the question of origin. As Robert Jen-
son has pointed out, just as the future of the church is linked to the
Spirit who is the 'Archimedean point' of the Trinitarian goal and ful-
fillment, the origin of the church is linked to the Father who is the
'Archimedean point' of the Trinitarian origin. 4 A complete ecclesiol-
ogy, therefore, must envisage both the .church's origin and future, both
its relation to the Father and its relation to the Spirit. Much of the
modem ecclesiological emphasis is confined largely to the eschatologi-
cal orientation of the church ala Moltmann, focusing on its relation to
the Spirit, whereas the church's 'archeological' orientation focusing on
1 Nissiotis, 'Interpreting Orthodoxy', p. 7.

2 For other models, see Kilian McDonneII, The üther Hand <if God: The Holy Spirit
as the Universal Touch and Goal (CoIIegeviIIe, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003), pp. 7-8.
3 Lumen Gentium §3, 4. See Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit (New Y ork: Se-
abury, 1983),2, pp. 5-12.

4 See RobertJenson, ST, I, p. 157.
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its relation to the Father is largely ignored. 5 The church's pneuma-

tological orientation is also an orientation toward its future and mis-
sion, whereas its patrological orientation is toward its origin and
worship. Lacking the latter orientation, Pentecostal-evangelical ecclesi-
ologies have tended to focus exclusively on a missiological definition of
the church (as exemplified in missional ecclesiology)6 at the expense of
its liturgical-doxologicallife. 7
The church's origin is grounded in the eternal purpose of the Father
who 'chose us in hirn [Christ] before the foundation of the world'
(Eph. 1.4). The correlative ofthis truth is Christ the unblemished lamb
chosen before the creation of the world (1 Pet. 1.20; cf. Rev. 13.8).
That the church exists in God's eternal purpose before the creation of
the world is the basis of two points made elsewhere about the nature of
the church: First, that the church is of divine origin and shares some-
thing of the divine nature, a 'Divine-humanity', that is, not a purely
human entity or solely apart of the created order. 8 The church is more
than a creature that exists in time; it is the result of an eternal decision
in the Father and therefore part of the triune opus ad intra which is yet
distinct from the triune perichoresis. But how is it possible to conceive
of an entity as existing as part of the life of the Trinity and yet remain-
ing distinct from it? One way is in terms of Balthasar's doctrine of the
'excess' and the 'eternal fruitfulness' of the Trinitarian life. 9 Although
God is a self-sufficient Trinity, he is not a self-enclosed Trinity. There
is in the very life of God always a spillover, an 'excess' which is su-
premely concretized in the church. In this relationship the church is
both identified with and yet distinct from the Trinity.1O A second im-
plication is that it is from what God is doing in the church that we
understand the raison d'etre ofthe world. 11
5 As seen, for example, in liberation theologies and more reeently in Frank Mae-
ehia's otherwise remarkable work on a Penteeostal theology, Baptized in the Spirit.

Maeehia's almost exclusive esehatologieal orientation, while important for a pneuma-
tologieal theology. The term 'areheologieal' is used by Vondey. See Introduetion, p. 5.
6 E.g. DarreIl L. Guder, Missional Church: AVision For the Sending of the Church in
North America (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998); George H. Hunsberger, The Church
Between Gospel and Culture: The Emerging Mission in North America (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1996); Craig van Gelder, The Essence of the Church: A Community Created by
the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000).
7 It is no coineidenee that all aneient and modem liturgies are ultimately oriented to
the Father as seen in the ehureh's eucharistie prayers and doxologies: 'Through him
[Christ], with him and in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honor and glory is
your, Almighty Father, forever and ever'.
8 Bulgakov, The Bride, pp. 256, 262. See above, pp. 30-31.
9 See Chapter 4.
10 As no ted in Chapter 2, the ehureh's identifieation with the Trinity is something
that many evangelieals have repudiated.

11 See diseussion on eeclesia-eentered pneumatology in Chapter 1.
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If the church's relation to the Father is to be understood in terms of

its source and origin and to the Spirit in terms of its future and goal,
what might be the church's orientation in relation to Jesus Christ?
Christ is the core of the gospel story and therefore the center of the
church's self-identity. Evangelicals are therefore quite right in under-
standing of the gospel in this way when they articulate it in terms of
Christ's incamation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Pentecos-
tals offer a slightly different version of the same gospel by conceptualiz-
ing the 'full gospel' as centering in Jesus as savior, sanctifier, baptizer,
healer, and coming king. This is the five-fold gospel of Wesleyan-
Holiness Pentecostals. Reformed Pentecostals, on the other hand, con-
flates the work of salvation and sanctification, resulting in the four-fold
gospel. That the four- or five-fold gospel is quite central to Pentecos-
talism has been convincingly argued by Donald Dayton. 12 If this is the
case, according to New Testament scholar John Christopher Thomas,
the five-fold gospel could serve as the paradigm for articulating a dis-
tinctively Pentecostal theology. 13
Jesus is also the center in that he is the fulcrum upon which the
whole Trinitarian story turns. The revelation of Jesus Christ makes
possible a distinctively Christian conception of God in which the Son
is distinguished from the One he addresses as Father, and the Spirit of
God is no longer simply Yahweh-in-action but a third hypostasis, the
Holy Spirit. Only with the coming of the second person is it possible
to speak of God the Father as the first person and the Holy Spirit as the
third person of the Trinity. This will become clear in what follows as
we explicate the unfolding of the Trinitarian story in terms of the two
sendings.
The First Sending

The coming of Christ is the coming of truth incamate. The truth has
taken a concrete shape:
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we
have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have
touched - this we proclaim conceming the Word oflife. The life ap-
peared; we have seen it and testifY to it, and we proclaim to you the
etemal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to uso We
proclaim to you what we have seen and heard ... (1 Jn 1.1-3).
The apostolic proclamation focuses on the truth which can be heard,
seen and touched. The Word oflife is aperson. Truth for Christianity
Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism.

12
John Christopher Thomas, 'Pentecostal Theology in the Twenty-First Century',

13
Pneuma 20.1 (Spring 1998), pp. 3-19; repr. idem, The Spirit ofthe New Testament (Lei-
den/Blandford Forum: Deo Publishing, 2005), pp. 3-22.
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is not an abstract principle but a concrete particularity. (The signifi-

cance of this for Pentecostal faith and experience will be explored in
thapter 5.) Barth's doctrine of Christological particularity is solidly
grounded in the NT witness. Jesus Christ the Truth who is the etemal
life from the Father has entered our history. The etemal has come to
partake of the vicissitudes of history and yet remains etemally true. In
the gospel ofJohn this coming of the etemal W ord into history is de-
scribed as the revelation of the divine glory: 'The W ord became flesh
and made his dwelling among uso Wehave seen his glory, the glory of
the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth'
an 1.14). The incamated glory, however, takes a form which cannot
be readily seen except through the eyes of faith. This comes through
consistently in the so-called 'double meaning' which is a distinctive
trademark of John's gospel. 14 Jesus is to be enthroned on the Cross
(3.14; 8.28; 12.32); his glory is supremely revealed in his humiliation
(12.23,24; 17.1).
In the unfolding of the Trinitarian mission Jesus Christ is the ful-
crum. It is through his coming that we are given a fuller revelation of
the Father. Jesus alone has fully seen the Father an
6.46), and therefore
could fully reveal the Father. Thus when Philip asked, 'Lord, show us
the Father ... ' Jesus' response was 'Anyone who has seen me has seen
the Father' an14.8, 9). It was Jesus' own self-consciousness of who he
was and what he was called to do in relation to Yahweh which consti-
tutes the beginnings of a uniquely Christi an conception of God. The
NT identifies J esus as the one who accomplishes what Yahweh hirns elf
promised he would do in the last days. This concerted testimony of
Scripture is well summarized by N.T. Wright:
Jesus of Nazareth was conscious of a vocation: a vocation, given hirn
by the one he knew as 'father', to enact in hirns elf what, in Israel's
scriptures, God had prornised to accornplish an by hirnself. He would
be the pillar of cloud and fire for the people of the new Exodus. He
would ernbody in hirns elf the returning and redeerning action of the
covenant God. 1S
The early disciples' understanding of this fact, confirmed by the res-
urrection of Jesus, led to the radical reordering of their understanding
of God. But the recognition of Jesus as standing in the place of Yah-
weh in itself does not establish the Trinitarian doctrine as such. In fact,
14 According to Oscar Cullmann, double meanings are frequendy used in John's
gospel to show that behind an ordinary, physical reality is a deeper, spiritual meaning.
John's way of juxtaposing the physical and the spiritual reflects the early church's ex-
perience ofJesus who in some mysterious fashion is still present spiritually in the Chris-
tian community at worship. Early Christian Worship (London: SCM, 1953), p. 58.
IS N.T. Wright, The Challenge ofJesus (London: SPCK, 2000), pp. 91-92.
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for a time, the early church tended to speak more in binitarian rather
than in Trinitarian terms. 16 What led the church eventually to the for-
mulation of the Trinitarian dogma?17
The Second Sending

The answer is to be found in the story of the 'second sending' . In the
Scripture, the corning of the Spirit is the inauguration of the 'last days',
the final age ofhistory, and anticipates the age to come. To be baptized
in the Spirit is to be initiated into this new reality.18 Newness is the
hallmark of the age of the Spirit: it will be established by a new cove-
nant: the law will be written on the heart (Jer. 31.33-34); the people of
the covenant will be given a new heart (Ezek. 36.26-27). Thus Jesus'
giving his disciples a 'new commandment' signifies the establishment of
a new community founded on love (Jn 13.34). Loving one another
will be their chief identity marker: 'By this all men will know that you
are my disciples, if you love one another' (v. 35). Communion - the
communion of the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 13.14) - is the mark of the
ecclesial community. Objectively, it is expressed in the sacrament of
the Eucharist or Holy Communion; subjectively, by a way of relating
to one another as persons indwelled by the Third Person. 19
In the second sending Jesus makes known the identity of the Holy
Spirit. What is unique about the second sending is the special relation-
ship that the Holy Spirit bears to Jesus. Jesus is the sender of the Spirit;
more specifically, he is the Spirit-baptizer. This is the unambiguous
testimony of Scripture. Of all the New Testament references to the
identity of Jesus, that as Spirit-baptizer is perhaps the most widely at-
tested (Mt. 3.11-12; Mk 1.8; Lk. 3.6;Jn 1.26-27, 33; Acts 1.5; 11.16).
It was this fact, more than any other that led the church to a full-orbed
Trinitarian doctrine. Its development could be briefly traced as follows.
In the OT the outpouring of God's Spirit as the sign of the messianic
age is seen as the direct work of Yahweh (Acts 2.17 = Joel 2.28; cE
Ezek. 36.26, 27; 37.14; 39.29). Further, it is generally agreed that the
Spirit ofYahweh does not refer to aseparate identity but to Yahweh in
action. We have as yet no clear 'hypostasis' of the Spirit. 20 In the NT
16 But this was, as Kilian McDonnell has pointed out, more of ahabit of rnind rather
than a theology. The Trinity was presupposed but not given explicit form until about a
quarter century before the Council of Constantinople (The ather Hand tj God, p. 16).
17 McDonnell, The ather Hand tj God, p. 92; cf. N.T. Wright, The New Testament
and the People tj God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), pp. 362, 448.
18 This understanding may be considered an established fact in biblical theology.
See, e.g. James D.G. Dunn, Baptism in the Holy Spirit (London: SCM, 1970).
19 See next chapter.
20 See e.g. Walther Eichrodt, Theology tj the Old Testament, vol. II (trans. J.A. Baker;
London: SCM, 1967), pp. 46-68.
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Jesus hirnself makes the claim to send the Spirit from the Father (Lk.
24.49; Jn 15.26). This claim puts hirn in the position ofYahweh, but
unlike the other claims to divinity, this one requires revising the OT
identification of the Spirit with Yahweh hirnself, otherwise J esus
would be 'Lord' over the Father. This juxtaposing of God to Jesus as
Spirit-baptizer makes it necessary for the Spirit to be differentiated
from the Father. 21 In other words, it is primarily in relation to Jesus as
Spirit-baptizer that the Spirit is distinguished as the third identity and
the full Trinitarian doctrine is revealed, from which all the other theo-
logical loci are derived. 22 Spirit-baptism has much wider theological
ramifications than just the 'enduement of power for life and service' as
Pentecostals have traditionally understood it. 23 This point has been
recently exploited by Pentecostal theologian Frank Macchia. For Pen-
tecostals, argues Macchia, Spirit-baptism is the personal appropriation
of a much bigger reality than their conceptualization of it. Theologi-
cally and experientially, Spirit-baptism links together the eschatological
kingdom of God and the whole salvific process. 24
Thus it is in connection with the second sending that we begin to
get a clearer picture of the Holy Spirit as third person. A similar pattern
emerges when we consider Jesus' so-called Farewell Discourse in John
14-16. Here, 'we can say that the highest point of the revelation of the
Trinity is reached' .25 Nowhere else in the NT is the person of the Spi-
rit more clearly distinguished than in these chapters, where the Spirit is
spoken of in connection with Jesus' going away and his sending the
Spirit to take his place. 26 The Spirit is identified as 'another' (allos) Para-
clete, that is, another of the same kind as Jesus. He 'mediates the pres-
ence of the Father and of the glorified Son to the disciples (14.16-
26)' .27 Raymond Brown in his commentary notes that everything that
is said about the Paraclete has been said about Jesus. 28 The Paraclete is
no less a person as Jesus is if he is to be an adequate replacement of
Jesus after his ascension. According to Brown the Spirit is 'the personal
Turner, The Holy Spirit and Spiritual Gifts, pp. 169-78.

21
Cf. Nissiotis' point that Orthodox theology is 'a commentary on the Trinitarian
22
God', n. 1.
23 The phrase is taken from the Assemblies of God 'Statement of Fundamental
Truths', no. 7 on Baptism in the Spirit.

24 Frank Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit: AGlobaI Pentecostal Theology (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 2006), see esp. chs. 3 and 4.

25 Dominum et Vivificantem, 10.
26 Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John, vol. II, The Anchor Bible
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970), p. 1139.

27 Turner, The Holy Spirit, pp. 80-81.
28 Brown,John, p. 1140.
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presence of Jesus in and with the Christian while Jesus is with the Fa-
ther'. He 'is toJesus asJesus is to the Father'.29
In short, if Jesus as Spirit-baptizer is what finally clinches the argu-
ment for the dogma of the Trinity, then Spirit-baptism could serve as
the template for understanding the whole revelation of the triune God
and his works. This is because a story cannot be fully understood until
it reaches its end; and Spirit-baptism could be said to constitute the
denouement of the Trinitarian narrative. 30 The claim of the early Pente-
costals that the gospel they proclaimed was 'the full gospel', therefore,
contains more truth than perhaps they themselves realized. Pentecostals
experience more than they could explain; the systematic reflection on
this 'more than' is what gives rise to a more holistic Pentecostal theol-
31
ogy.
The Holy Spirit is more than a substitute for the absent Jesus. What
the Spirit does goes beyond what Jesus did. The coming of the Spirit as
third person adds something new to the mission of the triune God. His
work in relation to Christ is not only to remind the disciples of what
they had heard from Christ. The Spirit also shows them things 'yet to
come' On 16.13). These are notjust events that were about to happen
to J esus, especially his coming death, resurrection and glorification. As
Max Turner has pointed out, 'Jesus does, after all, say the Spirit will
announce what he shall hear (not what he has heard), and it would be
difficult to restrict 'all the truth' and 'the things to come' to the signifi-
cance of Jesus' glorification alone, and absolutely nothing else'. But for
Turner, what this means is that the Spirit's coming is also to 'deepen
[the disciples '] understanding of the truth', 'unveil the significance of
the Christ-event' and 'the consequences of the Christ-event for the
church in the different times and places later' .32 Oddly, Turner would
not include 'the church's future' as part of that revelation. 33 The role of
the church is basically that of agent through which the Spirit works as
advocate to bear witness to the truth of Jesus by convicting the world
of sin, righteousness and judgment. In fact, the church is the sole agent,
thus establishing the claims for an ecclesia-centered pneumatology:
'John knows of no witness by the Spirit that is not witness through the
29 Brown,John, pp. 1139, 1140.

30 Cf Robert Jenson, ST, I, p. 157: 'The divine beginning at which the relations of
origin focus is acknowledged as the Father's Archimedean standpoint. Equally, the
divine goal at which relations offu!fillment focus should be acknowledged as the Spirit's
Archimedean standpoint ... ' (author's emphasis).
31 This is what we attempt to do in Chapter 5.
32 Turner, The Holy Spirit, pp. 83-84.
33 Turner, Holy Spirit, p. 84. The exclusion of the church's future from the revela-
tion of the Spirit presupposes that the church is to be strictly distinguished from Christ.
This is typically the Protestant view as noted in the previous chapter.
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church,.34 I would argue that the church is more than the instrument of
the Spirit's witness to Christ; it is so constituted by the personal in-
dwelling of the Spirit that it becomes part of the gospel narrative to
which the Spirit bears witness (see below).
The Johannine Pentecost

This new, constitutive event occurs at Pentecost. But prior to the Pen-
tecost event there was another communication of the Spirit. The Jo-
hannine Pentecost, as the event of Jn 20.22 is sometimes called, is a
post-resurrection event in which Jesus commissioned his disciples (v.
21), breathed into them and said, 'Receive the Holy Spirit'. Some see
this as another typical Johannine 'time warp', that it is merely John's
way of referring to the Pentecost event. 35 The event, however, is better
understood as involving a specific experience of the Spirit different
from His coming as Paraclete on the day of Pentecost. 36 Max Turner,
in typical evangelical fashion, sees it as a distinct gift of new life from
the Spirit. 37 But this does not imply that prior to the event the apostles
were not 'born again' . The gift of the Spirit of life is a process that
began even before Christ's resurrection, but here, a fuller gift of spiri-
tual life is given which is to be distinguished from the Pentecost event
when the Spirit comes in person. 38 This view is broadly supported by
Orthodox theologian Joost van Rossum. 39 Drawing on the works of
various church fathers and the Orthodox tradition, van Rossum too
concludes that the giving of the Spirit is a process and that Jn 20.22 is
best understood as a distinct gift or function of the Spirit40 rather than
the coming of the person of the Spirit. 41
But what exactly is given to the church in Jn 20.22? The verse im-
mediately following may provide the answer: 'If you forgive anyone
his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not
34Turner, Holy Spirit, p. 88.

35E.g. Raymond Brown,John, p. 1038.
36 For a discussion of various views on Jn 20.22 see M.M.B. Turner, 'The Concept
ofReceiving the Spirit in John's Gospel', Vox Evangelica, 10 (1977), pp. 24-42.
37 The parallel between Jn 20.22 and Gen. 2.7 is frequently noted. The gift oflife in
the Genesis account of crearion is juxtaposed to the gift of spiritual life in the new
crearion.
38 Turner, 'The Concept ofReceiving the Spirit', pp. 34-35.
39 Joost van Rossum, 'The 'Johannine Pentecost': John 20:22 in Modem Exegesis
and in Orthodox Theology', St. Vladimir Theological Quarterly 35.2-3 (1991), pp. 149-
67.
40 Another implied funcrion of the Spirit prior to the Pentecost event is Lk. 24.45
where Jesus enables the disciples to understand the scripture.

41 Van Rossum notes that both Eusebius and Gregory Palamas support their distinc-
tion by appeal to the use of the anarthrous noun: 'Receive a Holy Spirit' (labete pneuma
hagion) (p. 166). Congar holds a similar view (I Believe, I, p. 53).
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forgiven'. It is generally agreed that the statement has to do with the

exercise of authority.42 The language is similar to the authority given to
the church to exercise discipline: the authority of binding and loosing
(Mt. 6.19; 18.18).43 What they disagree over is how that authority is to
be understood and exercised. The Bible is quite dear that only God
could forgive sins, but the church commissioned by Christ, is given the
authority to prodaim the Good News that God has forgiven the sins of
the world. 44 The gift of the Spirit is an institutive act of Christ by
which the church is established as an authority structure. This is not a
gift to a special dass of people, but to the whole church. 45 The Johan-
nine Pentecost establishes the church as such, giving it a 'legal' status,
whereas the Pentecost event in Acts is where the church is constituted
by the Spirit in his own person. The first is an institutive event while
the second is a constitutive event. 46
Pentecost and the Spirit's Proper Work

The place of the church in the on-going Trinitarian narrative becomes
dearer when we consider the significance of the Pentecost event. Just
as a story makes full sense only when it reaches its end, the story of the
triune God is fully seen only with the coming of the Spirit at Pente-
cost. As Lossky puts it, 'Pentecost is ... the final goal of the divine
economy upon earth', such that, in asense, the work of Christ could
be seen as 'preparation for that of the Holy Spirit' .47 It is only after
Pentecost that we could speak of the full revelation of the triune God.
Pentecost is the climax of the story of salvation-history: the 'last days'
have arrived (Acts 2.17). This, to be sure, is not the final End but a
provisional End, because the Spirit is the firstfruits; the final harvest
must await the Parousia. 48 Pentecost, nonetheless, completes the story
of the triune God. Pentecost, therefore, must be seen as a further pro-
gression of the Spirit's work in the church which is to be distinguished
42 Calvin, e.g., has this to say: 'But Christ especially wanted to assert the dignity of
the apostolic order (apotolici ordinis). It was reasonable that they who were chosen to be
the earliest and chief preachers of the Gospel should possess unique authority'. The
Gospel According to St. John 11-21 (Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press, 1961), p. 205.
43 The only two instances in Matthew where the word church occurs are related to
the matter ofbinding and loosing.

44 Thus Calvin insists that the power of forgiving and retaining sins must not be se-
parated trom 'the teaching office'. St.John 11-21, p. 206.

45 See Lossky, Mystical Theology, p. 167.
46 Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 140. See also Lossky, Mystical Theology, pp. 166-
68.
47 Lossky, Mystical Theology of the Eastem Church, p. 159.
48 The Spirit himself as person could be said to be the causation of the divine narra-
tive; He is 'the Power of God's own and our future' (Robert Jenson, ST, I, p. 160.)
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from the institutive event ofJn 20.22. If the bestowal of the Spirit in Jn
20.22 establishes the 'legal' status of the church as Christ's, Pentecost
makes the church the dynamic extension of Christ the Truth. In the
first event the church stands in a somewhat extrinsie relation to Christ,
whereas in the second the church is taken into the internal life of the
Trinity.49 The newness of the Pentecost event is weIl summed up by
Nissiotis:
The pneumatological transubstantiates the christological and, as we re-
ceive the power of Pentecost, everything is transfonned in all of us,
making the christological remembrance of the simple historical event in
Jesus areal representation in the ecclesia among uso The Word of God
which was once incamate thus becomes spoken; it becomes the flame of
fire for new life together with God and men. The trembling, the waiting
in fear of the Aposdes, the deadly silence now become ecstatic glossolalia,
speaking with tongues. This root gives branches and fruit. The chosen
people of God, passing through the Body of Christ, now becomes the
koinonia of the Holy Spirit. The flesh of the Son of Man reveals now its
expiatory grace and becomes the omni-present Spirit. 50
The story of the Spirit is about his coming to the church making the
church an inextricable part of the Spirit-event. The story of the church
is part of the story of the Spirit and therefore part of the Trinitarian
narrative. The church is thus more than an agent to carry out the mis-
sion of the Trinity; she is part of the Trinitarian mission itself Mission
is more than what the church does but what the church is. 5 ! How does
the Spirit constitute the church as part of the triune narrative? In what
follows I shall oudine three main features of what might be called a
pneumatological ecclesiology.
The Church as the Spirit's Personal Indwelling

The story of the triune God includes the coming of the Spirit into the
church and reveals the Spirit's own particularity (proprium). This is
what makes Pentecost a new event as it involves a new relation to the
49 The personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the church must be distinguished
from the hypostatic union that exists in the Trinity. Using the Palamite distinction, the
former belongs to the divine 'energies' and the latter to the divine 'essence'. For a
discussion of the distinction between energies and essence in Gregory Palamas see John
Meyendorff, St. Gregory Palamas and Orthodoxy Spirituality (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladi-
mir Seminary Press, 1974), esp. pp. 108-29.
50 Nissiotis, 'Spirit, Church, and Ministry', Theology Today 19 (1963), p. 488.
51 This idea is also endorsed by a Free Church advocate, Miroslav Volf See Miro-
slav Volf and Maurice Lee, 'The Spirit and the Church', in Advents of the Spirit, ed.
Bradford E. Hinze & D. Lyle Dabney (Milwakee, WI: Marquette University Press,
2001), pp. 398-99. Volf like many other evangelicals identifies the mission of the
church with the mission of the Trinity but does not identify the life of the church with
the life of the Trinity.
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Spirit: He is 'with you and will be in you' On 14.17). The Spirit is with
the disciples in the sense that J esus who is the bearer of the Spirit is still
with them. But a time will come when the Spirit will be in them. Pen-
tecost is the story of the Spirit constituting the church by his personal
indwelling. 52 Earlier we have seen from the biblical accounts how the
second sending Oesus as Spirit-baptizer and the Farewell Discourse)
identify the Holy Spirit as the Third Person. It is this sending of the
Spirit to the church that darifies the personal identity of the Spirit. His
corning to indwell the church could be called the 'enhypostatization'
of the Spirit analogous to Jesus' own enhypostasis as a human person at
the Incarnation. 53 But unlike the Incarnation, the Spirit's 'in-personing'
in the church is not a hypostatic union between the Spirit and the
church but a personal indwelling such that in and through the church
the Spirit's personhood is revealed. 54 The intimate relationship between
the Spirit as person and the church could be further explained in terms
of the order of the Trinitarian revelation. Lossky, citing John of Da-
mascus, notes that 'the Son is the image of the Father, and the Spirit
the image of the Son'.
It follows that the third Hypostasis of the Trinity is the only one not
having His image in another Person. The Holy Spirit, as Person, re-
mains unmanifested, hidden, eoneealing Hirnself in His very appearing.
This is why St. Symeon the New Theologian was to praise Hirn, in his
hymns to the divine love, under the apophatie lineaments of a Person
at onee unknowable and mysterious. 55
But according to Ralph del Colle, in corning to the church, 'The

image of the Holy Spirit, not borne by another divine person, becomes
actual in created persons ... through his deifying work. In this sense
the rninistry of the Holy Spirit is associated with ecdesiology; some
52 David Coffey, 'Did you Receive the Holy Spirit VVhen You Believed?' Some Basic
Questionsfor Pneumatology (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2005), p. 34.

53 Ralph deI Colle sees a 'double enhypostasis ofJesus in the Logos and the Spirit'.
The first occurs at the incamation when the Son 'in his human nature undergoes an
in-personing in the Spirit'. In the second, at his baptism, the Spirit comes to indwell
the Son, making him the Christ. This second 'enhypostasis' is what is usually meant by
'Spirit Christology'. The Spirit's 'enhypostasis' in the church is similar to the latter.
Ralph del Colle, 'The Holy Spirit: Presenee, Power, Person', Theological Studies 62
(2001), p. 336.
54 Meyendorff sums up the distinction well: 'The Spirit ... does not en-hypostatize
human nature as a whole; He eommunicates His uncreated graee to each human per-
son, to each member ofthe Body ofChrist. New humanity is realized in the hypo stasis
of the Son incarnate, but it receives only the gifts of the Spirit.. .. Gregory of Cyprus
and Gregory Palamas will insist, in different contexts, that at Pentecost the Apostles
received the eternal gifts or 'energies' of the Spirit, but that there was no new hypo-
static union between the Spirit and humanity' (Byzantine Theology, p. 173).
55 Lossky, Mystical Theology, p. 160.
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even make the argument that ecclesiology is best understood when it is

a branch of pneumatology' .56 That is to say, the Spirit' s personhood is
expressed primarily in and through the church as persons-in-
communion; in fact, only through the personal indwelling of the Spirit
is it possible to speak of the church as a communion. As del Colle fur-
ther notes,
Qnly as Person can he recreate persons in community ecstatically ori-
ented to the other. With Christ the Spirit provides the space for their
concrete identities to emerge into the maturity of the full stature of
Christ (Ephesians 4:13) and into the consummation of God's temple so
that all of creation may be filled with the fullness of God (Ephesians
2:20-22; 3:16-19).57
An important feature ofthe Spirit's 'enhypostatization' in the church

is that in the process the Spirit experiences a kenosis. 5B He becomes the
'localized' Shekinah in the church just as Yahweh's Shekinah was local-
ized in the tabemacle, and just as Jesus underwent a kenosis to become
the localization of God's presence on earth Gn 1.14; 2.21).59 Again, in
the words of del Colle,
The triune economy reaches its goal in the economy of the Holy Spi-
rit, who like the Son undergoes his own kenosis in a temporal mission.
Just as the Son emptied hirnself by becorning flesh through the union
of his hypostasis to a human nature, so, too, the Holy Spirit empties
himself by indwelling human hypostases through the impartation of
uncreated grace. The former unifies common human nature in the one
hypostasis of the Son; the latter diversifies God's gifts among many
human persons or hypostases. 60
Two implications follow from the fact that the church is the per-
sonal indwelling of the Spirit. First, it provides the theological basis for
an earlier assertion that the work of the people of God (especially in
the liturgy) is the work of the Spirit. What we do is the Spirit's distinc-
tive work in us which is to be distinguished from what Christ has ac-
complished Jor uso Only in this way can the pneumatological deficit
(discussed in the previous chapter) be adequately met. Our response to
Del Colle, Christ and the Spirit, p. 25. Cf Lossky, Mystical Theology, p. 173.
56
Ralph del Colle, 'The Holy Spirit: Presence, Power, Person', p. 334.
57
58 Lossky, Mystical Theology, pp. 168, 244; Boris Bobrinskoy, 'The Church and the
Holy Spirit in 20th Century Russia', The Ecumenical Review (July 2000), p. 334 citing
Lossky and Bulgakov. Moltmann, however, sees the Spirit's kenosis and Shekinah only
in connection with bis descent upon Jesus and in his identification with Jesus' suffer-
ing. The Way ofJesus Christ: Christology in Messianic Dimensions (London: SCM, 1990),
p. 174; The Spirit of Life, p. 62.
59 Brown,John, p. 33.
60 Del Colle, Christ and the Spirit, p. 25. The idea that Christ unifies while the Spirit
diversifies is also found in Lossky, Mystical Theology, pp. 166-68.
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God is an effectual response because it is the response of the indwelling

Spirit sent from the Father (cf. Rom. 8.15; Gal. 4.6); yet it is in every
true sense our response. Tom Smail has summed up the issue most
succinctly:
Christ has in his speaking, his living and his suffering brought human-
ity's 'Yes' to God on behalf of us all. Only because he has said it for
me, can I say it for myself; but I still do need to say that 'Yes' for my-
selE, so that I may benefit from what Christ has done for me. It is the
Spirit who comes from Christ to me who lets me say my 'Yes' to his
'Yes'. My 'Yes' is notjust an echo ofhis - one ofTorrance's favourite
phrases. My 'Yes' is rather the result and consequence of his. In my
'Yes' the Spirit makes Christ's work fruitful in me in a way that it has
not been before and thus brings hirn a glory that he did not have be-
fore:!
The freedom of the Spirit in us is the freedom of the children of
God. This conjunction of freedoms is designated by the term synergy
in Eastem Orthodoxy. As Lossky puts it, synergy 'admits of two wills
and two operations taking place simultaneously'. It 'expresses the mys-
tery of the coincidence of grace and human freedom in good works,
without recourse to positive and rational terms'. This refusal to explain
rationally the relation of grace and human freedom reflects the 'apo-
phatic attitude' characteristic of Orthodoxy.62 Failure to appreciate the
Spirit's proprium in the church is one reason why the old problematic
between divine sovereignty and human freedom is misconceived as a
'zero-sum game'. In Reformed theology the decisiveness of Christ's
work is so stressed that one wonders if anything meaningful could be
said of human response: my response to God is not really mine, but
only an 'echo' of Christ's voice. 63 On the other hand, in Arminian
theology human freedom be comes a threat to the sovereignty of divine
grace. Second, the special relationship that Spirit bears to the church -
the kenosis of the Spirit and their mutual conditioning - implies that
the purpose of God for the whole creation finds its actualization only
by the Spirit-in-the-church, hence, only through the church. This idea
is captured in the ancient phrase extra ecclesiam nulla salus (no salvation
outside the church) but goes beyond the matter of salvation. It implies
a relation between the church and creation in which the church is the
goal of creation rather than the instrument to fulfill God's purpose in
creation. This is the theological basis for an ecclesia-centered pneuma-
tology discussed in Chapter 1.
61 Smail, The Giving Gift, p. 110 (emphasis mine).

62 Lossky, Mystical Theology, pp. 196-97,239.
63 This is Smail's critique ofT.F. Torrance. See The Giving Gift, p. 109.
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The Church as Ontologically United to Christ

A second feature of pneumatological ecclesiology is that in coming to
indwell the church, the Holy Spirit unites the church ontologically to
Christ as its head. This establishes the intimate connection between
Christology, pneumatology, and ecclesiology. Just as Christ is pneuma-
tologically conditioned, the church too is pneumatologically condi-
tioned. The work of the Spirit vis-a-vis Christ and the church is always
to actualize, the make concrete, to create, and re-create. In the former
(the first sending), the Spirit actualizes the coming of the Son in the
work of his conception in the virgin's womb enhypostatizing the
W ord in human flesh. Further the Spirit anointed the Son at his bap-
tism making hirn the Christ, the anointed one (Mk 1.9). Through the
Spirit Jesus battled and overcame the devil (Mk 1.12) and began his
ministry of proclaiming the kingdom of God (Mk 1.14). In the second
sending, everything that the Spirit does in relation to the church paral-
lels what he does in relation to the Son (except the Incamation). It is
done in the church by his personal indwelling. At Pentecost, the Holy
Spirit unites the people of God to Christ the Head, making the church
Christ's body.64 This ontological unity of Christ and the church is what
is meant by the phrase the total Christ (totus Christus). If Jesus is the
temple, the meeting place ofGod and humanity On 1.14; 2.19-21), the
church as the body of Christ is the temple of the Spirit (1 Cor. 3.17;
6.19; 2 Cor. 6.16; Eph. 2.22). Ifthe Spirit is the bond oflove between
the Father and the Son, the Spirit is now the bond of love between
Christ and his body, and between the members of his body.65 The
church is the unity and communion of the Holy Spirit. 66 Through the
indwelling Spirit the church becomes the 'corporate personality' of
Christ. There are, then, two ways of understanding 'Christ': in his
etemal relation with the Father and in his relation to the church at the
Incamation.
Christ's T is of course the eternal T that sterns from his eternal filial
relationship with the Father. But as the incarnate Christ he has intro-
duced into this eternal relationship another element: us, the many, the
Church. If the Church disappears from his identity he is no longer
Christ, although he will still be the eternal Son. And yet, the 'mystery
hidden before all ages' in the will of the Father is nothing else but the
incorporation of this other element, of us, or the many, into the eter-
64 For a fuller discussion of this see Robert Jenson, ST, II: The Works of God, pp.
167-88; Simon Chan, Liturgical Theology, pp. 31-39.

65 As Pannenberg puts it, the Holy Spirit is the 'condition and medium' of the fel-
lowship between the Father and the Son and '[o]nly on this basis may the imparting of
the Spirit to believers be seen as their incorporation into the fellowship of the Son with
the Father' (ST, I, p. 316).
66 Nissiotis, 'Spirit, Church, and Ministry', p. 487.
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nal filial relationship between the Father and the Son. This mystery
amounts therefore, to nothing but the Church. 67
From this perspective, as Zizioulas puts it, 'Christ' is not just a his-
torical individual who stands extemally to us, but 'a relational entity' so
linked to the church that '[b]etween the Christ-truth and ourselves
there is no gap to fill by the means of grace'.
When we make the assertion that [Christ] is the truth, we are meaning
His whole personal existence ... ; that is, we mean His relationship
with His body, the Church, ourselves. In other words, when we now
say 'Christ' we mean a person and not an individual; we mean a rela-
tional reality existing 'for me' or 'for us'. Here the Holy Spirit is not
one who aids us in bridging the distance between Christ and ourselves,
but he is the person of the Trinity who actually realizes in history that
which we call Christ, this absolutely relational entity, our Savior. In
this case, our Christology is essentially conditioned by Pneumatology.68
The Farewell Discourse provides another way to understanding the
distinctive role of the Spirit vis-a-vis the Christ of the church. Many
scholars believe that the role of the Holy Spirit portrayed in John 14-
16 is to answer the vexing question: what will happen to the church
when the last living witnesses of Jesus have died? Will the church lose
its last links to Jesus? The presence of the Paraclete as taking the place
of Jesus ensures continuity of the church with the apostolic tradition.
Subsequent generations of believers are no farther removed from Jesus
because of the presence of the Spirit who is the Spirit of Truth just as
Jesus is the Truth. 69 Through the Spirit, the church becomes the 'cor-
parate' Christ or totus Christus. The Spirit does this in his own unique
way as the Spirit of the church. The church is not only linked to the
truth historically in a linear fashion (from Christ to the apostles to bish-
ops and people), but also charismatically by the Spirit who comes from
beyond history, freeing the church from historical limitations. This is
why Jesus could promise his disciples that they would do 'greater
things' because ofhis ascension to the Father Gn 14.12). The ascension
is the prerequisite for his sending the Spirit to the church Gn 16.7).
Through the Spirit and his gifts, the church is no longer restricted in
her relation to Christ to just the historical-linear dimension. In this
work the Holy Spirit constitutes the church as the living Tradition.
Using the language of Irenaeus, the church that holds the precious
deposit of faith, the truth of the gospel ofJ esus Christ, is so united with
it that it is constantly being rejuvenated by the Spirit.
67 John Zizioulas, 'The Mystety of the Church in Orthodox Tradition', One in Christ
24 (1988), pp. 299-300.
68 Zizioulas, Being as Communion, pp. 110-11 (emphasis author's).
69 Brown,John, pp. 1141-42.
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The Church as the Temple of the Spirit

Irenaeus's picture of the church as a precious vessel in which the Spirit
dweIls brings out a third feature of ecclesiology. Irenaeus' discussion is
in connection with his rebuttal of the Gnostic claim to have access to
esoteric knowledge coming directly from the apostles apart from the
church. Irenaeus argues that apart from the church which has proof of
direct historical links with the apostles, there is no true knowledge of
salvation - a knowledge embodied in the church's rule of faith. The
Spirit not only links the church to the precious deposit of truth so that
she is constantly renewed by it, he is God's gift 'distributed throughout
the church' as the 'communion with Christ' and 'the ladder of ascent
to God.... For where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God; and
where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church, and every kind of
grace,.70 The Spirit now lives in the church making the church the
temple of the Spirit, the locus of the Spirit's presence where sacrifices
of praise are offered up to God through Jesus Christ in the Spirit (1
Pet. 2.4, 9) and the means of communion between God and human-
ity.71 The nature of the communion of the Spirit will be taken up in
the next chapter.
The Paradoxes of the Spirit

In his kenotic des cent, the Spirit both shapes the church and is also
ecclesially shaped. The relationship could even be described as a mu-
tual conditioning such that the Spirit gives to the church her definitive
character, while the church becomes the locus for the definition of the
Spirit as the Third Person. The church may be defined as the commu-
nity in which the Spirit dweIls in his own person, while the Spirit may
be defined as the Third Person whose distinct identity as Third Person
is revealed through his indwelling the church. Thus pneumatology
cannot be properly understood apart from ecclesiology and vice versa.
As Reinhard Hütter puts it, 'Pneumatology without ecclesiology is
empty; ecclesiology without pneumatology is blind'. 72 But to say that
the Spirit and church are mutually conditioning does not mean that the
Spirit is now placed under the beck and call of the church. Protestants
are understandably cautious when the church is identified too closely
with the powerful Spirit of God. Even Catholics have come to recog-
nize the danger. No less a person than Joseph Ratzinger has acknowl-
edged 'a narrowing of perspective' when the church is too closely
Irenaeus, Against Heresies, III.24.1

70
For further discussion on the temple of the Spirit see my Liturgical Theology, pp.
71
31-39.
72 Reinhard Hütter, 'The Church as Public', p. 358.
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identified with the Spirit. Such a danger 'arise[s] when the designation
of the Church as love no longer allows its connection with the Spirit
to be the actual standard of the Church (as a practical requirement) but
appears instead as the self-evident content of the institution' .73 The
church is constantly reminded in her recitation of the Nicene Creed
that the Spirit is 'the Lord and Giver of life'. Again, in the Creed, as
Congar reminds us, "'I believe in the holy Church" is conditioned by
the absolute "I believe in the Holy Spirit'" .74 The church owes her
very being to the indwelling Spirit. She has no authority to control the
Spirit. As one Orthodox theologian reminds us,
His presence, as the giver of life, is not to be interpreted in tenns of an
immanent principle by which the Church succeeds to the authority of
her Lord. In His sanctifYing presence it is the Lord God Himself who
exercises His own authority over His chosen and elect people. 75
The Spirit's relation to the Church is characterized by a deep para-

dox. The Spirit is always over and acting upon the church, yet he is
also within, acting alongside of the church both in his work of sancti-
fying grace and in his own person (uncreated grace).76 This paradox
creates a number of polarities in the church which it is important to
keep together if the church is to be truly Pentecostal, that is, the
church of the Pentecost event.
Truth as Historical and Charismatic

The nature of truth in the church takes on a new character through the
action of the Spirit who brings together truth as both historical and
charismatic. As Zizioulas puts it, the Spirit 'transfigures' historical truth
turning it into a 'charismatic-Pentecostal' event. 77 The church, there-
fore, must be conceived primarily as an 'event' of the Spirit and secon-
darily as an institution even though the institution of the church comes
first On 20.22). This event character of the church is much more
73 Ratzinger discusses this in connection with Augustine's doctrine of the Spirit as
love and unity who is God's gift to the church making 'the church is love' a dogmaric
statement. 'The Holy Spirit as Communio: Concerning the Relarionship of Pneumatol-
ogy and Spirituality in Augusrine', Communio 25.2 (Summer 1998), pp. 334-35, 339.
74 Congar, I Believe, III, p. 271.
75 Angelos J. Philippou, 'The Mystery of Pentecost' in The Orthodox Ethos, ed. AJ.
Philippou (Oxford: Holywell, 1964), p. 91.

76 Del Colle, ciring Matthias J. Scheeben, The mysteries cf Christianity (trans. Cyril
Vollert, SJ.; St. Louis, MO and London, B. Herder Book Co., 1946) and Emile
Mersch, The Theology cf the Mystical Body (trans. Cyril Vollert; St. Louis, MO: Herder,
1951), sees the presence of the Spirit in the church not only as gift of God (donum DeI)
but also as hypostatic idenrity (don um hypostaticum) , i.e. the Spirit is both present as
created grace (sanctifYing grace) and in his own person as uncreated grace (Christ and
the Spirit, p. 44).
77 Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 130.
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strongly emphasized in Orthodoxy than in any other tradition except

perhaps among Pentecostals who instinctively grasp this truth when
they proclaim: 'Pentecost is an experience, not adenomination'. The
more theologically astute Orthodox might say something like, 'The
church is primarily an event, and only secondarily an institution'. Zi-
zioulas, e.g. describes the church as 'a set of relationships making up a
mode of being exactly as is the case in the Trinitarian God' who is 'a
way ofbeing' between the three persons rather than a 'substance'. The
basis for conceiving the church in this way is that the Holy Spirit, the
third person of the Trinity, plays a 'constitutive role in the structure of
the church'. The Spirit 'con-stitutes the Church while Christ in-stitutes
it'. The church is 'constantly con-stituted, i.e. emerging out of the co-
incidence and con-vergence of relationships freely established by the Spi-
rit'. This event-character of the church is seen in the fact that the Spirit
is constantly being invoked in the liturgical celebration so that the
ministries cannot be conceived of in merely static, institutional terms.
The ontology of the church is 'pneumatologically conditioned' .78 Simi-
lady, Alexander Schmemann speaks of the church as constituted in the
very act of gathering. When Christians come together on Sunday, they
are actually 'on their way to constitute the Church ... to be transformed
into the Church of God,.79 Under the continuing action of the Spirit,
truth is no longer a static deposit as the church experiences a continu-
ing transfiguration to become the pillar and bulwark of truth (1 Tim.
3.15).
The first step in this process of transfiguration begins at baptism
when the individual is incorporated by the Spirit into the body of Chr-
ist (1 Cor. 12.13).80 At baptism the individual no longer exists as an
individual; that is to say, one is no longer a self-referencing entity; the
self is not the basis of his or her identity (the Cartesian '1'). Rather , he
or she has become aperson, defined by communion with other per-
sons. Baptism means death to individual 'selves' and resurrection as
persons-in-communion. This is the essence of the new creation
(2 Cor. 5.17). At baptism the old creation of individual selves is sub-
merged and from it arises the new creation 'in Christ' where relation-
ship is defined by truthful speaking to one another as members of one
body (Eph. 4.25). The paradox ofthe new creation is that in becoming
ecclesial beings, each person's uniqueness or 'individuality' is not lost
but is truly enhanced because the Spirit who unites each person in
" John Zizioulas, 'The Doctrine of God the Trinity Today: Suggestions for an
Ecumenical Study' in The Forgotten Trinity, pp. 27-28 passim.
79 Schmemann, Far the Life of the World: Sacrament and Orthodoxy (Crestwood, NY:
St. Vladimir Seminary Press, 1973), p. 27.

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Christ also distributes gifts to each member of the body. This theme
will be taken up in Chapter 4. Subsequently, at the Eucharist the Body
of Christ undergoes an on-going transformation as it feeds on real
spiritual food and drink and grows into Christ. The Spirit is invoked in
every Eucharistic celebration (epiclesis) because only by his actions is
ordinary bread and wine made into spiritual food and drink and ordi-
nary history transfigured into charismatic-pentecostal events. 81
Here is an important lesson for Pentecostals and non-Pentecostals
alike. If the traditional churches are often in danger of domesticating
the Spirit, the Pentecostal emphasis on the freedom of the Spirit
threatens to sever the church from its historical roots. Historically, the
Pentecostal experience of the Spirit has shown a tendency to transcend
not only historical location but also historical distance. In hermen eu-
tics, for example, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen has observed their attempt to
transcend the distance between themselves and the text. 82 The text
becomes the living word (the 'rhema' word); rhema apart from its
connection to history (in Pentecostal parlance, the 'logos') becomes the
only thing that really matters. The fact that there is a two-thousand-
year gap between us and the NT is a11 but ignored. Pentecostals could
become tao Pentecostal, that is to say, too divorced from historical
existence. A case in point is Peter Wagner's concept of apostleship
which is purely charismatic without any connection to history (see
p. 112). At the other end of the pole are the liberal Protestants who
have domesticated the Spirit, equating the Spirit with immanental
forces within creation expressing themselves in human creativity and
the 'enlightened' values of modern culture. 83 The way to overcome
these perennial problems is to recognize that the Pentecost event is not
just about an event coming from beyond history, but also an event
transfiguring history and directing history to its eschatological fulfill-
ment. This means that history is important; it is the 'material' on which
the Spirit works. The Spirit's work does not bypass history, or there
would be nothing to transfigure. Living and non-living things, human
and non-human activities - a11 these are taken up by the Spirit and
brought into relationship with the triune God. A genuinely 'Pentecos-
81 Ziziulas, Being as Communion, pp. 114-16.

82 See Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Toward a Pneumatological Theology: Pentecostal and Ecu-
menical Perspectives on Ecclesiology, Soteriology and Theology of Mission (ed. Amos Y ong;
New Y ork: University Press of America, 2002), p. 5.
83 For an account of the development of immanental theology in the West, see Wil-
liam Placher, The Domestication of Transcendence: How Modem Thinking about God Went
Wrong (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1996). For a classic evaluation
of modem Protestantism, see Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century:
fts Background and History (new ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002). An abbreviated
account can be found in his essay 'Evangelical Theology in the Nineteenth Century' in
The Humanity of God (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1976).
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tal' understanding of truth sees truth as charismatic, coming from be-

yond history, and impinging upon our historical existence in the man-
ner of a 'miracle'; at the same time, his coming is to indwell the
historical church with its structures and institutions and work through
created things, especially the eucharistic bread and wine. The church of
the Spirit is where truth as historical and charismatic coheres. The Spi-
rit acts on the church as weIl as acts in the church's action. This coher-
ence is for the most part recognized in orthodox traditions where the
freedom of the Spirit is also linked to certain historical realities, either
in relation to the apostolic tradition (as in Catholicism) or the written
texts of Scripture interpreted grammatically and historically (as in evan-
gelicalism). But while the charismatic and historical dimensions of truth
are acknowledged in principle in these traditions, they are seldom a
vibrant reality in experience. The challenge to both Pentecostals and
non-Pentecostals alike is to ensure that the coherence of truth as both
charismatic and historical are actualized.
The Already and Not Yet

The Spirit both works in history and comes from beyond history. The
Spirit who indwells the church characterizes the church's existence as
both historical and charismatic. If we are to use the language of biblical
theology, we would say that the indwelling Spirit is also the Spirit of
the eschaton, the one who anticipates the future. The Spirit himself is
the firstfruits of the new creation. And since the church has the
'firstfruits of the Spirit',84 it too is inspired by the indwelling Spirit to
look for full redemption (Rom. 8.22, 23, 26). The church lives in
anticipation of the End. Its life is marked by its orientation to the Telos.
The new creation has already begun as evidenced by the actual heal-
ing of bodies and minds with the inauguration of the kingdom of God
in the person ofJesus Christ (Mk 1.14-15; cf. vv. 21-34). The Pente-
costal expectation of the miraculous works of God, therefore, is not so
much a craving for portends and signs in the face of existential bore-
dom (although this may have been the case sometimes), but arises from
a deeply spiritual instinct of anticipating the new creation. Just as the
present creation groans in expectation for the new creation, Christians
manifest the same longing by praying with 'unutterable groanings'
(Rom. 8.26). For many Pentecostals these eschatological groans can be
nothing other than their own glossolalic utterances.
There is always something new as the church lives in constant ex-
pectation for fresh outpourings of the Spirit. As the Orthodox Ignatius
84 'Firstfruits of the Spirit' is probably a genitive of apposition: the Spirit is the
firstfruits, the foretaste of the new creation. E.g. James D.G. Dunn, Romans 1-8, vol. I,
Word Biblical Commentary 38 (Dallas, TX: Word, 1988), p. 473.
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Hazim puts it, '[The Holy Spirit] is himself Newness, at work in the
world. Without hirn, God is distant, Christ is in the past and the gospel
is a dead letter, the Church is no more than an organization, authority
is domination, our mission is propaganda, worship is mere calling to
mind, and Christian action is a slave morality' .85 But the newness the
Spirit brings is different from the fads and novelties that characterize
the spirit of this age. The newness that is anticipated by the Spirit is
always linked to 'the old, old story' of Jesus Christ who reveals the
Father and baptizes with the Spirit. If Jesus is the Alpha and the Ome-
ga, the Holy Spirit's future orientation cannot be other than the future
of Christ, the omega of Christ. The Spirit reveals to the church what is
the 'not yet' of Christ: 'He will bring glory to me by taking from what
is mine and making it known to you' an 16.14). This is not merely a
repetition of the past but involves a genuine development, but at the
same time not a newness divorced from the Father and the Son. The
shape of the church's future is Christological, but it is shaped and con-
ditioned by the pneumatological. The Spirit keeps the church apos-
tolic, not just in the sense of conforming the church to the first
apostolic witnesses of the gospel, but also directing the church to its
appointed end. If Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, the church, the
mystical Body of Christ, fills the space between these two termini. 86
The Spirit and the Liturgy

These paradoxes achieve coherence by the eontinuing action of the Spi-
rit in the church, specifically His work of constituting the church as a
temple in which worship is continually rendered to the Trinity 'in
Spirit and in truth'. The liturgy, that is, worship structured around
certain theological givens,87 plays a critical role in constituting the
church. This is seen most clearly in the Eucharistic celebration, the
climax of the liturgy, where the 'real presence' of Christ is experienced
afresh by the power of the Holy Spirit. Here the Spirit is especially
invoked (epiclesis) in regard to ordinary bread and wine: 'Grant that by
your Spirit these gifts of bread and wine may be to us the body and
blood of Christ .... ,88 The church feeds on Christ and is made more and
more one with Christ. The Eucharist, however, is not a purely epicletie
act, that is to say, not purely a charismatic event. It is also an anamnetie
act, an act of remembrance in which the historie work of the Trinitarian
85 Cited by Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, H, p. 34.

86 Cf. Congar, I Believe, H, pp. 35, 39-40.
87 The normativity of the liturgy will be discussed in Chapter 5.
88 Eucharistie prayer from the Alternative Service Book (1980).
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economy of salvation is recalled and made present. 89 Thus in the Eu-

charist, history is transfigured.
In the liturgy too, the coherence of the historical and charismatic
extends to the proclamation of the W ord. We te nd to think of preach-
ing as primarily historical since the central message of the kerygma is the
life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But the kerygma is not
merely the recollection of past events from which we draw moral and
spiritual lessons for present living. Such preaching is in danger of suc-
cumbing to moralism characteristic of the 'social gospel' of the nine-
teenth century and the imitatio Chrsti tradition of the Devotio Modema
and Pietism. It is possible that through sheer imitation one could be-
come self-made moral beings. 90 But without the vertical intervention
of the Spirit, our morality could become the morality of the Pharisee.
Spirit-inspired preaching links the apostolic witness ofJesus to the pre-
sent. The preacher in bearing testimony to the truth that is in Jesus
Christ is not merely affirrning the truth of what happened then, but
also testifying to the truth that is real in the here and now - truth that
is confirmed by the Spirit in signs and wonders, conversion and spiri-
tual transformation. In W ord and sacrament both the horizontal-
historical and the vertical-charismatic dimensions of truth are brought
together. W ord and sacrament are the 'marks of the church' which
constitute the ordo of the liturgy. In the liturgy, as Gordon Lathrop has
demonstrated, various paradoxes of the gospel are 'juxtaposed' and held
together. 91 The liturgy, then, is the primary locus for the ecclesial ex-
perience of the Spirit; it is where the church in the 'mystery of gather-
ing' (fLu(j't"~pwv 't""1j<; (juvoc~e:w<;) becomes the Spirit-event,92 where the
living tradition or 'the inner memory of the church' (in contrast to
historical recollection) is continually kept alive. 93 In light of this, Pente-
costals whose concern is to keep the Pentecostal experience vibrant
need seriously to consider the role of a normative liturgy in shaping
their practice of worship. The key to actualizing the charismatic and
historical dimensions of the Spirit's presence, to maintaining the bal-
89 As seen in all Eucharistie prayers. Even the highly simplified celebration of the
Lord's Supper in the Free Church tradition would still minimally include the Jesus'
words of institution at the last supper with his disciples.
90 MacIntyrean ethics building on the Aristotelian theory of virtue formation has
highlighted the critical importance of practice in virtue formation.

91 Gordon W. Lathrop, Holy Things: A Liturgical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress,
1993).
92 Georges Florovsky, Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View, Collected
Works, vol. I (Belmont, MA: Nordland Publishing, 1972), p. 41.

93 According to Georges Florovsky, the inner or mystical memory of the church is
what distinguishes the East from the 'historical recollection' of the West. See Ways if
Russian Theology, Part 2, Collected Works, vol. VI (trans. Robert L. Nichols; Vaduz,
Liechtenstein: Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1987), p. 304.
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ance between charisma and institution, to ensuring a place for both

personal and corporate experience, is to be found in doing the liturgy
weH.
Conclusion
To caH the church Pentecostal is to affirm the special relation that the
church bears to the Spirit in the Pentecost event which is part of the
story of the triune God. This relationship involves a personal indweH-
ing in which the Spirit's own particularity is revealed. Through his
indweHing the church is ontologically united to Christ and participates
in the Trinitarian life and becomes the communion of the Holy Spirit.
Communion is the sine qua non of the church. The church is the com-
muni on of saints. The nature of this communion is the subject of the
next chapter.
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4
The Communion of the Holy Spirit
In the last chapter, we noted that the uniqueness of the Pentecost

event lies in the fact that the Spirit comes in his own person to indwell
the church, such that the Spirit is now revealed as the third person of
the Trinity, and the church is revealed in its essen ce as the Spirit-
baptized body of Christ. To call the church Pentecostal is to recognize
the definitiveness of the Pentecost event, i.e. of the baptism in the
Spirit, in shaping the church's identity. Theologically, then, Pentecos-
tals are quite right to see Spirit-baptism as 'the crown jewel of Pente-
costal distinctives'. 1
The Temple of the Spirit

The image that is particularly appropriate for understanding this rela-
tionship of the Spirit to the church is the temple. The temple is at the
heart of OT religion. The concept underlying the temple imagery is
much more comprehensive and goes beyond the use of the term itself.
For behind that image lies an idea that is quite central to God's revela-
tion: God's desire to be present among the people he created and, in-
deed, among his entire creation.2 The temple, therefore, could be
taken as a metaphor for God's presence, variously understood, among
his people. The association of God's revelation with a 'place' of God's
dwelling can be traced back to the early patriarchs. The most notable is
perhaps the story of Jacob's dream and the setting up of a stone pillar
which he named Bethel: the house of God (Gen. 28.10-22). The en-
counter struck Jacob with fear: 'How awesome is this place! This is
none other than the house ofGod' (Gen. 28.17). In this story we see a
theme that is to be played out throughout the OT, a theme that cul-
minates in Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the temple: 'But will
Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit, p. 20.

t
2Yves Congar, The Mystery of the Temple, or The Manner of God's Presence to His
Creatures from Genesis to the Apocalypse (trans. Reginald F. Trevett; Westminster, MD:
Newrnan Press, 1962).
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4. The Communion cif the Holy Spirit 75
God really dweIl on the earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven,
cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built! Yet give
attention to your servant's prayer and his plea for mercy, 0 Lord my
God' (1 Kgs 8.27-28). Solomon's prayer acknowledges a deep paradox:
The Most High God, the one who even the heavens cannot contain,
has condescended to be 'with us' in a visible structure. This idea, how-
ever, is not new, but stretch es back to an earlier period of Israel's no-
madic existence in the wildemess where God manifested his presence
in the tabemacle, the dwelling place of God, and in the 'tent of meet-
ing' between God and his people. 3 It could even be said that it was the
place where Yahweh's Shekinah is 'localized' in the visible cloud and
in his speaking 'from between the two cherubim' (Exod. 40.34; Num.
7.89).
In the NT the temple is first applied to Jesus. Jesus is the temple of
the Spirit in that by the incamation he becomes the meeting point
between God and humanity.4 This is most clearly portrayed in John's
gospel, where the temple imagery is 'the major symbol' ofJesus and the
community that belongs to him. 5 The Logos became flesh and 'taber-
nacled' among us, and thus enabled us to truly see the glory of God On
1.14). In hirn the Shekinah of God shines forth. There is no other reve-
lation more definitive than this, since Jesus is 'the one and only who is
at the Father's side' who 'has made hirn known' On 1.18). In the words
of Balthasar, he is 'that than which nothing greater can be thought of
as far as God's revelationis concemed. 6 More specifically, the temple is
his body, so that his death and resurrection is seen as the destruction
and restoration of the true temple: 'Destroy this temple, and I will raise
it again in three days .... But the temple he had spoken of was his body'
On 2.19, 21). This is perhaps John's unique way of saying what the
synoptic gospels are also saying, that precisely at the point of his death,
the veil of the temple was tom from top to bottom (Mt. 27.50, 51; Mk
15.37, 38; Lk. 23.45, 46). Jesus by his death - the destruction of his
body - at once profaned the earthly temple and shows that in the true
temple there is no more veil separating humanity from the presence of
3 Questions have been raised about whether there were two tents, one housing the
Ark and the other, a place where Moses received prophetie revelation from God (Ex-
od. 33.7-11; Num. 11-12); or whether the former was only an idealization of the P
tradition. See 'Tabernacle' in International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, vol. IV, revised,
ed. Goeffrey W. Bromiley et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988). However the ques-
tions are answered, the point of our concern is that the 'tent' is where God and hu-
manity come together.
4 David Peterson, Engaging God: A Biblical Theology qf Worship (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1992), p. 81.

S See Mary L. Coloe, God Dweils with Us: Temple Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel
(Collegeville, MN: Michael Glazier, 2001), p. 3 (emphasis author's).

6 Balthasar, ereator Spirit, p. 153.
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God. Quite clearly, by identitying Jesus as the true temple, John in-
tends for us to see Jesus as the replaeement of the old temple On 2.21).7
Its signifieanee eould not have been lost to the Jews who eharged Jesus
with seeking to replaee the temple made with hands with one made
without hands (Mk 14.58). John goes on to eomment that the diseiples
understood the true signifieanee of Jesus' words after he was raised
from the dead (v. 22); that is to say, by his bodily resurreetion and
aseension they understood that the true temple is restored with com-
plete freedom of aeeess to God. 8 'For through hirn we both Uews and
Gentiles] have aeeess to the Father by one Spirit' (Eph. 2.18).
What is said of Jesus as the temple eould also be said of the ehureh. 9
The ehureh too is eonstituted the temple of the Spirit by virtue of its
unity with Christ through the indwelling Spirit thus making it the totus
Christus (Eph. 2.21-22).10 Although this eoneept has sometimes led to
an exeessive institutionalism in the ehureh, it need not be so if the
Spirit's indwelling is understood in both its aetive and passive dimen-
sions. The Spirit is both the given and the giver; he is the one sent
from the Father, and also the one who aetively distributes his dynamie
gifts in the body of Christ. He is in the ehureh not as a religious relie
on permanent display but as an aetive person, at onee affirming On
14.26) and eonvieting On 16.9), illuminating (Eph. 1.17, 18) and
blinding (Aets 13.9-11); he is not merely tied to the ehureh's order and
saeraments but, as we are often reminded by the Orthodox, also always
eoming from 'beyond history' . As noted in Chapter 3, the Spirit sus-
tains a paradoxieal relationship to the ehureh, and that must be kept in
foeus if we are to avoid domestieating the Spirit's indwelling and using
the Spirit to justity the institutional status quo. This paradoxieal rela-
tionship is what marks the ehureh as the eommunion of the Holy Spi-
rit. Unless the paradox is maintained, there is no true eommunion of
the Spirit.
7Peterson, Engaging God, pp. 93-95.

8Congar, Mystery, pp. 142-43.
9 The difference, as we have noted in Chapter 3 (p. 61), is that in Christ the Spirit
effects the hypostatic union of the two natures whereas in the church the Spirit is not
hypostatically uni ted with the church but indwells the church personally. From this, an
essential distinction must be made between the church as the mystical body of Christ
and Christ's own glorified body. See Congar, I Believe, II, pp. 19-20.
10 Congar, I Believe, H, p. 67. Besides the temple imagery, there are other places in
the NT where what is said ofChrist is immediately applied to the church (CoL 2.9-10;
1 Pet. 2.4-5).
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4. The Communion of the Holy Spirit 77
Corporate and Personal Indwelling of the Spirit!!

Pentecost is simultaneously an event of corporate as well as personal in-
filling of the Spirit. The Spirit that fills the whole church (Acts 2.4)
could also be said to fill each member by virtue of each person's incor-
poration into the body through baptism (Acts 4.8; 9.17; 13.9).
There is a deep interplay between the corporate and personal aspects
with respect to the Spirit's indwelling. The corporate, however, is the
primary reality. This is seen in the fact that whenever Paul applies the
temple imagery to believers the singular is used, whereas when address-
ing Christians individually he refers to them as 'members' or 'parts' of
Christ's body (1 Cor. 6.15 cf. 12.27). The many believers make up one
temple: 'you (ufLe:1~) are God's temple (voco~)' (1 Cor. 3.16, 17); 'we
are temple of the living God' (2 Cor. 6.16). The one possible excep-
tion is 1 Cor 6.19: Do you not know that your body ('Co crwfLoc UfLWV)!2
is the temple of the Holy Spirit?' The immediate context is the prob-
lem of sexual immorality involving specific members of the church
(esp. v. 15). Paul further specifically emphasizes that illicit sexual inter-
course is the sin against one's own body (v. 18). It is, therefore, not
likely that soma in v. 19 would refer to the body of Christ, the church,
as suggested by Badcock. 13 More likely, according to Fee, 'Paul has
taken the imagery that properly belongs to the church as a whole ...
and applied it to the individual believer'.!4
Jf this is the case, then we must ask in what sense the Spirit could be
said to indwell each person so that each could be considered as the
temple of the Holy Spirit. Lossky, for one, has highlighted the personal
indwelling of the Spirit in each person in the Pentecost event:
[The Spirit] appeared as a Person of the Trinity, independent of the
Son as to His hypostatic origin, though sent into the world 'in the
name of the Son'. Then He appeared under the form of divided ton-
gues of fire which res ted upon each one of those who were present.
This is no longer a communication of the Spirit to the Church consid-
ered corporately .... The Holy Spirit communicates Himself to persons,
11 When referring to distinct members of the church, I use the term 'personal' rather
than 'individual', since, following Zizoulas, each person is an ecclesial self, not an
isolated individual.
12 According to Gordon Fee, 1"0 crw!J.OI: u!J.wv is a distributive singular, meaning that
'something belonging to each person in a group of people is placed in the singular'.
Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), p.
263.
13 Badcock, The House Where God Lives, p. 125.
14 Fee, First Corinthians, p. 264.
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marking eaeh member of the Chureh with a seal of personal and

unique relationship to the Trinity, becorning present in eaeh person. 15
In recent times, there is a growing ecclesiological consciousness
among Protestants (and evangelicals in particular) and as a result greater
prominence is given to the corporate aspect of the Christian life. This
is understandable given their tendency in the past to stress the Spirit's
work in 'my heart' rather than his indwelling the whole body of Chr-
ist. 16 Gary Badcock in arecent work on ecclesiology goes so far as to
consider individualism 'Protestantism' s great sin', and goes on to de-
clare:
There ean be no true movement toward unity within Protestantism, or
any authentie realization of unity between Protestantism and the rest of
the Christ ehureh, until there has been a struggle to grasp and to be
grasped by the full seope of the pneumatologieal prineiple of eommun-
• 17
IOn.
There is, however, such a thing as an over-correction, and modem

evangelicals may become guilty of it in their attempt to steer clear of
individualism. This is seen, for example, in Badcock's interpretation of
the temple metaphor in exclusively corporate terms. 18 By contrast,
Catholicism faces a very different problem. Aware of its own stifling
institutionalism it has given more space to the personal and existential
dimension of the faith, but always in the context of ecclesia! life. 19 It
addresses the interplay between the corporate and the personal by dis-
tinguishing between two aspects of the church. The church may be
understood in the active sense as a corporate entity with its defining
apostolic institutions, functions, teachings, and sacraments which gath-
ers and calls people together (ecclesia congregans). In this sense, the
church is the alma mater, the mother of all believers (Gal. 4.26) and is
more than the sum of its parts. The church may also be understood in
the passive sense as the gathered body of believers, the result of the
15 Lossky, Mystical Theology, p. 168. Lossky sees the communication of the Spirit to
the church corporately in theJohannine Pentecost inJn 20.19-23 (pp. 166-68). Lossky
is perhaps correct if the first communication is to the ecclesia congregans while the second
(pentecost in Acts) is to the ecclesia congregata.
16 This is a point that Vandervelde is careful to highlight in his proposal for an evan-
gelical ecclesiology (Chapter 2). For abrief aceount of this evangelieal problematic, see
Telford Work, 'Reordering Salvation: Church as the Proper Context for an Evangeli-
cal Ordo Salutis' in Ecumenical theology in worship, doctrine and l!fe: essays presented to Gecif-
frey Wainwright on his sixtieth birthday, ed. David S. Cunningham, Ralph dei Colle,
Lucas Lamadrid (New Y ork: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 182-86.
17 Badcock, The House Where God Uves, p. 192.
t8 Badcock, The House Where God Uves, p. 125.
19 Congar, e.g., has a chapter on 'The Christian and the Church as Spiritual Tem-
pies' (Mystery ifthe Temple, pp. 151-72). Note the use ofthe plural 'temples'.
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mother church' s calling and gathering (ecclesia congregata). 20 If the church

is understood in the latter sense, then what applies to the whole applies
to each Christian since, according to Congar, citing the church fathers,
'each soul is the Church' .21 In terms of this distinction, the problem
that evangelicals face in their ecclesiology is two-fold. First, they tend
to understand the church in terms of the ecclesia congregata only, as evi-
denced by the general failure to acknowledge the corporate-objective
dimension of the faith ('Look not on our sins, but on the faith of your
church,).22 Faith is almost exclusively individual and subjective: it is my
faith, rather than the church's faith. This failure explains why evangeli-
cals are mostly credo- rather than paedo-baptists and also generally
anti-sacramental. For to recognize the objectivity of the faith implies
that there are objective things (the sacraments and core practices)
which are the concrete works of the Spirit (Chapter 2, pp. 45ft:). Sec-
ondly, there is a general failure to rise above a merely sociological in-
terpretation of the church. Although, as noted in Chapter 2, there is
now a growing awareness among evangelicals conceming the corporate
life of thechurch, this corporateness is exclusively the corporateness of
the ecclesia congregata rather than the ecclesia congregans. For to acknowl-
edge the latter is also to acknowledge to some extent the objectivity of
the faith and the sacraments and the ontological relationship between
Christ and his church to which Christ gives the gifts of faith and sac-
raments. 23 But the evangelicals' fear of 'sacramentalism' has prevented
them from taking seriously the objective aspect of the sacrament. 24 The
way forward for evangelicals (and here we must include Pentecostals) is
to recognize that the church in its gathering around word and sacra-
ment is no longer just a collectivity of individuals, but is constituted a
corporate entity of the Spirit. It is the body of Christ and temple of the
Spirit. Without some such concept of the ecclesia congregans it is doubt-
ful if evangelicals and Pentecostals could transcend the perennial prob-
lem of individualism. It would be difficult to see how their
ecclesiology could rise above the concept of the church as a social col-
20 For a discussion of these two aspects of the church see Henri de Lubac, The
Splendor cfthe Chureh (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999), pp. 102-25.
21 Congar, I Believe, H, p. 54; The Mystery cfthe Temple, pp. 153-54.
22 This is the prayer of the priest in connection with the sign of peace (ritus pacis) in
the Roman Missal.

23 I use the phrase 'to some extent' in view of the fact that there are differences in
different Christian traditions regarding the extent to which the sacraments convey
grace objectively.
24 As noted by the Catholic Avery Dulles in the evangelical-Catholic dialogues. See
Avery Dulles, 'Church, Ministry, and Sacraments', Catholie and Evangelieals: Do They
Share a Common Future? (ed. Thomas P. Rausch; Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2000), p.
111.
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lectivity for meeting individual needs - something which contempo-

rary evangelicals are keen to overcome. 25
It is the Spirit cif the church who ensures the healthy interplay be-
tween the personal and corporate dimensions. This is seen in his role as
the 'giving gift'. As the gift of the Father he unites the church in one
body through baptism (1 Cor. 12.13), and as the giver of gifts he diver-
sifies his operations in each member of that body giving 'to each one'
(btocO"'t"cp) a distinct charism for the common good (1 Cor. 12.7-11).
The very idea of communion which the Spirit effects in the body of
Christ necessarily involves the dialectic between the personal and the
corporate. Communion requires each person to be a distinct 'other' to
another person. If I am not who I am by virtue of my being called by a
unique name at my baptism and my being given a unique gift by the
Spirit, then I am only a member of a herd; I cannot be a distinct mem-
ber of the body of Christ. Only as distinct and different members of
one body is there true communion of persons in the church. Perhaps it
is not coincidental that the only two places in the Roman missal where
the 'I' occurs are at the beginning where each member of the church
confesses his or her sins to God and to one another: 'I confess to al-
mighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters ... '; and toward the
end in response to the invitation to the Communion: 'Lord, I am not
worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed'. In
communion each person is truly himself or herself before the divine
and human 'other'. If I am to be truly mys elf I must be in communion
with others, and I cannot be in communion without first confessing
my sins to my brothers and si sters and confessing my own unworthi-
ness to receive the invitation to the Supper apart from Christ's own
word of healing and restoration. At worship I stand as a responsible
member of the body of Christ, a person made capable of responding to
God and other persons. This is quite different from the narcissistic
preoccupation seen in the 'contemporary worship' of evangelical-
charismatic churches today. There is hardly any objective and corpo-
rate proclamation of who God is and hence no objective personal and
corporate response to God' s revelation. W orship is largely the expression
of the individual and collective feelings about how good God is to me.
Communion as the Spirit's proprium

The Spirit's distinctive work is that of uniting and bonding persons
together. Thus oneness is the first of four notae of the church according
to the Creed: 'We believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic
church ... .' Within the Trinity the Spirit is the mutual gift and bond of
25 E.g. Badcock, The Hause, p. 197.
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love between the Father and the Son. He is what Father and Son have
in common as Ratzinger noted, following Augustine, 'The particular-
ity of the Holy Spirit is evidently that he is what the Father and Son
have in common. His particularity is being unity' .26 Between the Trin-
ity and the church the Spirit is the 'formal donation' to the church, i.e.
he himself is the gift of the Father (Acts 2.38; 8.20; 10.45; Heb. 6.4).27
He unites each person to the body of Christ through baptism (1 Cor.
12.13) and unites the whole body to the Head. Within the church, the
Spirit is the bond offellowship between believers (2 Cor. 13.14). He is
what believers hold in common just as he is what the Father and Son
have in common. Thus the Spirit shows himself as person by being gift
and communion. As Nissiotis put is,
. .. the communion of the Holy Spirit is not merely the actions, the
charismata, the enthusiastic elements of the community life of the
Christians but the personal 'hypostasis' of the Holy Spirit. Church
communion is not a category of the action of the Holy Spirit but the
visible reference to his presence among men. The Holy Spirit is koino-
nia because in him and through hirn, the Father and the Son are One
and present in the church. The communion of the Holy Spirit is his
personal revelation as the Creator of the church in time in the grace
given by the redeeming act ofJesus and the love ofthe Father. 28
If the Holy Spirit manifests his personhood as gift to and commun-
ion in the church then the church manifests her true essence as the
body of Christ indwelled by the Spirit by being a charismatic com-
munion. As Congar aptly observes,
According to Irenaeus, Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria and other
Church Fathers, the incarnate W ord reveals the invisible Father and
the Spirit reveals the Word, Christ. Going further, we can say that the
saints reveal the Spirit, that is to say, they reveal God as gift, love,
communication and communion. 29
What this means is that to be truly Pentecostal (in the theological
sense), a concept of Spirit baptism narrowly focused on 'enduement of
power' and 'bestowal of gifts' seen in c1assical Pentecostalism is inade-
quate. 30 Only in the context of loving communion could the gifts be
truly edifying to the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 13). The church is
the new people of God marked by a new relationship with God
through the indwelling Spirit. This is the significance of the 'new
26 Ratzinger discussing Augustine's view of the Holy Spirit. 'The Holy Spirit as
Communio', p. 327.
27 Congar, I Believe, III, p. 144.
28 Nissiotis, 'Spirit, Church, and Ministry', p. 485.
29 Congar, I Believe, II, p. 58.
30 CE the AG Statement ofFundamental Truths, no. 7.
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command' of]esus an 13.34).]ust as the law ofMoses was the founda-

tion of the old covenant with Israel, the 'new command' to love one
another is the foundation of the new covenant people of God. Love is
the hallmark of the new community indwelled by the Spirit who is the
bond of love between the Father and the Son. Communion is the
more comprehensive reality without which power and gifts cannot
function in the way they ought. The church is instituted by Christ and
constituted by the Spirit as the communion of the Spirit. Communion
is personal relationship, i.e. a relationship in which persons manifest
their personal and unique concreteness to each other. If the church is
to be a communion of persons, the Holy Spirit who makes that com-
munion possible must be concretely personal. This is why it is only to
the church as communion of persons that the Spirit is revealed as per-
son. Conversely, to the extent that the church fails to be a communion
of persons, to that extent it obfuscate the Spirit's personal indwelling.
Although we speak of the Holy Spirit as gift and communion, the
two terms are quite inseparable. Gifts are a sign of a relationship be-
tween two or more persons; they presuppose and establish a relation-
ship between the giver and the recipient. 31 Thus the gift of the Spirit
from the Father establishes the communion of the Holy Spirit in the
church since by the Spirit the church is enabled to address God as Fa-
ther (Gal. 4.6). But there is also a difference. As communion the Spirit
unifies; as gift he diversifies. As communion the Spirit unites the
church to Christ and the Father, and unites believers with one another;
but as gift, the Spirit comes to the church as the giver of diverse gifts:
He is the 'Giving Gift' .32 The Spirit in person is the Love-Gift between
the Father and the Son and the Gift of the Father through the Son to
the church. The Spirit in turn distributes different gifts (charismata) to
members of the body of Christ. The communion of the Spirit is a
communion in diversity.33
The NT qualifies this diversity as both mutual and differentiated, re-
ciprocal as weIl as ordered. For example, in Eph. 5.18 the command to
be 'filled with the Spirit' (7t/':1JpouCJ.lh: ev 7tve:ufLocn) is immediately
modified by aseries of participial clauses which include mutual submis-
sion (Ü7to't"ocCJCJ6fLe:vO~ &AA~AO~C;, v. 21) as weIl as an ordered or differen-
tiated relationship between wives and husbands, parents and children,
masters and slaves (5.22-6.9). These ordered relationships are no less
31 Heribert Millen, A Charismatic Theology: Initiation in the Spirit (New York: Paulist,
1978), p. 119.
32 This is the tide ofTom Smail's book which is appropriately sub-titled 'The Holy
Spirit in Person'.
33 The communion of the Spirit is a differentiated communion, not only because
each has a different charism, but also it entails a certain ordering of relationship among
members ofthe communion. This theme will be taken upin the next chapter.
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4. Ihe Communion 01 the Holy Spirit 83
the outcome of being filled with the Spirit. The communion of the
Spirit does not exclude orders in the church. Modern Protestants (in-
cluding some evangelicals and Pentecostals) have difficulty understand-
ing this aspect of communion. Following Moltmann, they have tended
to respond in knee-jerk reaction to any form of order (except perhaps
in the workplace) as oppression and dornination. In the following
chapter we will see why it is necessary to nuance ecclesial communion
in this way.
The primacy of the Spirit as gift and communion is reflected in the
encyclical Dominum et Vivificantem by its description of the Spirit as
'Person-Love' and 'Person-Gift' both within the Trinity and within
the church.
It can be said that in the Holy Spirit the intimate life of the Triune
God becomes totally gift, an exchange of mutual love between the di-
vine Persons and that through the Holy Spirit God exists in the mode
of gift. It is the Holy Spirit who is the personal expression of this self-
giving, of this being-Iove. He is Person-Love. He is Person-Gift. Here
we have an inexhaustible treasure of the reality and an inexpressible
deepening of the concept of person in God, which only divine Reve-
lation makes known to uso
At the same time, the Holy Spirit, being consubstantial with the Father
and the Son in divinity, is love and uncreated gift from which derives
as from its source (fons vivus) all giving of gifts vis-a-vis creatures (cre-
ated gift): the gift of existence to all things through creation; the gift of
grace to human beings through the whole economy of salvation. As
the Apostle Paul writes: 'God's love has been poured into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us'. 34
If the gift of the Spirit, i.e. his corning to the church in his own per-
son, establishes the church as the communion of the Spirit, the nature
of ecclesial communion could only be properly understood in terms of
who the Spirit iso That is to say, the basic identity of the Spirit could be
described in terms of distinct characteristics that he sustains to the
church since the revelation of the Spirit's personal identity and the
identity of the church are correlative. His presence in terms of these ca-
pacities in the church delineates the spirituality of ecclesial communion.
The Spirit as the Third Person

One of the basic identities of the Spirit is that he is the third person of
the Trinity. The Spirit is the 'we' ofthe Father and the Son who 'deci-
sively transcends the opposition of the '1'- 'Thou' of the Father and the
Son. The relationship of the Spirit to the Father and Son is analogous
34 Dominum et Vivificantem 10.
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to the child who is the fruit of the union (the 'we') between a man and
a woman.
[A]s the 'We' of the Father and the Son, the Spirit is essentially ano-
nymous (something that is already indieated in his name: for God in his
totality is 'Spirit', so that the Third Person does not possess a proper
name of his own) , but preeisely in this he is the love of Father and
Son, as it were, through the merger of their freedorns in love: and as
this 'W e', he is onee again the absolute truth of God, the disclosure
(aletheia) of the eternallife of the divine love Gust as the ehild discloses
the sexual aet of the parents; the work, the eooperation of the friends),
whieh permits us to look into God and to see hirn as he is .... 35
The significance of the third person is weIl described by Vladimir
Lossky. A relation of two implies 'reciprocal limitation', whereas a
relationship of three 'establishes absolute diversity' and 'open-ended
infinity' .36 What this means is that true fellowship cannot be purely
mutual. If two persons exchange gifts nothing happens beyond the two
persons concerned. It is very much a self-enclosed mutuality: I bless
you and you bless me. But if the exchange is open to someone other
than the one from whom I receive some benefit, then a new dimen-
sion of relationship opens up. Jesus himself taught us this lesson when
he says, 'If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?
Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your
brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans
do that?' (Mt. 5.46-47). But ifwe love our enemy (v. 44), we open up
the fellowship to the 'third party' - someone other than my benefactor.
In human fellowship, the third party is often treated as an intrusion
even in what is supposed to be the most intimate form of relationship:
the family. The husband-wife relationship could become so exclusive
that the child is no longer a welcome addition to the family. The trag-
edy in our modern world is that marriage is primarily understood as a
me ans of mutual enrichment, but in reality it is a form of self-
fulfillment by means of another, and self-fulfillment is often made the
ultimate justification for alternative forms of marriage: gay marriage,
temporary marriage, or any live-in arrangements as long as they are
'loving'. This modern (or should it be called postmodern?) understand-
ing of relationship resists the third party. It is no coincidence that with
the widespread acceptance of such concepts in human relationships
especially in the developed countries, there is also an alarrning fall in
birthrates. 37
Balthasar, Creator Spirit, p. 127.

35
Lossky, Orthodox Theology, pp. 44, 45.

36
37 See e.g. Philip Longman, The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World
Prosperity and What to Do About It (New York: Basic Books, 2004).
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4. The Communion if the Holy Spirit 85
The Spirit as Third Person indwelling the church creates a fellow-

ship that is unlike any other fellowship in the world. It is a fellowship
that has the potential to expand infinitely. He takes us outside of our-
selves and outside of our self-enclosed mutuality, into an infinitely
expanding communion which ultimately embraces the entire creation.
In the Spirit-fellowship the primary reality is not individual self-
fulfillment or even mutual enrichment based on a dyadic relationship,
but a fellowship that opens to as many other people as possible - 'abso-
lute diversity' and 'open-ended infinity'. It involves a movement out of
oneself to the many. This movement could be described as an ecstatic
movement.
The Spirit moves freely and ecstatically as the 'common fmit' of the
Father and the Son, being sent out as the gift of God to the church as
the recipient. In indwelling the church the Spirit, too, transforms the
church into an ecstatic movement, a community that goes out of itself
into the world. Ecstasy is much more than having some euphoric ex-
perience, a feeling of being beside oneself with joy. Spiritual ecstasy,
like glory, is paradoxical. There is both joy and pain in the ecstatic
movement of coming out of oneself to be united with another. In
union with the 'other' one loses oneself - just like in marriage, when
the two become one, each one loses one's former self, and out of the
ecstasy of union, the third party (the child) emerges. In the commun-
ion that the Spirit accomplishes at our baptism, each person is no
longer an individual but an 'ecclesial self (Zizioulas). The ecstatic
communion of saints in the Holy Spirit is not just coziness; it also in-
volves losing ourselves in order to find new life as members of the
Body of Christ. Koinonia is not about polite talk and exchange of plea-
santries, nor is it for my own personal spiritual benefit, although these
might well be the outcome of tme koinonia. It is always for the edifica-
tion of the church as each commits to the 'other' even to the point of
death to self The ecclesial communion, if it is tmly governed by the
self-effacing Holy Spirit, will have the same self-effacement or self-
forgetfulness (Phil. 2.1, 3). But in losing one's life, one finds it.
This ecstatic movement of the Spirit also defines the nature of the
missio Dei. The mission of the Spirit, of course, cannot be understood
apart from the mission of the Son. Just as Christ's mission is pneumati-
cally conditioned (see Chapter 3, p. 64), the Spirit's mission is chris-
tologically conditioned both in its basis and outcome. It is
christologically conditioned in its basis because the mission of the Spirit
presupposes the mission of the Son. Jesus' 'departure' through the
cross, resurrection and ascension back to the Father is the precondition of
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the Spirit's coming as the 'other Paraclete' an

16.7).38 It is also chris-
tologically conditioned in its outcome because his mission as the Spirit
of truth is to reveal Christ the Truth, to glorify hirn and testify about
hirn an
16.14). He is the spotlight that shines on Christ while he him-
self remains hidden and unseen. Christ who is glorified by the Spirit in
turn glorifies the Father an
5.41; 7.18) while the Father glorifies the
Son (Eph. 1.10-12; Phil. 2.9-11). The whole Trinitarian relationship is
marked by the pneumatic ethos of turning away from oneself to the
'other'. The communion ofthe Spirit always turns outward. As Baltha-
sar puts it, 'The selfless transparency of the Spirit of love holds sway
over the whole Trinity and only in this way discloses the ultimate
meaning of the creation' .39 Such is the mission of the Spirit and such is
the mission of the church if the church indeed images the Spirit. As
long as there is 'the world' the church as the communion of the Spirit
is never satisfied with being a fellowship unto itself. It always looks
beyond itself to transform the world into the church, to call those who
are not God's people to become the people of God (see Chapter 1).
Thus the church prays, at the end of the eucharistic celebration:
Almighty God, we thank you for feeding us with the body and blood
ofyour SonJesus Christ. Through hirn we offer you our souls and bo-
dies to be a living sacritlce. Send us out in the power of your Spirit to
live and work to your praise and glory. Amen.
The Holiness of the Spirit

If holiness is the mark of the one called the Holy Spirit, it follows that
holiness must also characterize the church that he indwells. Thus the
church is called a 'holy temple' (1 Cor. 3.16; Eph. 2.21), a 'holy
priesthood' (1 Pet. 2.5) and a 'holy nation' (1 Pet. 2.9).40 Holiness has
both a positive and negative aspect. Positively, the Spirit's work of
uniting believers to Christ could be seen as one of continually trans-
forming them in Christ. They become new creatures by being incor-
porated into the Christ who is holy (2 Cor. 5.17), by the one Spirit
who is holy. Those dead in transgressions and sins, following the ways
of this world, are made alive by being raised with Christ (Eph. 2.1-6;
cf. Rom. 6.4). Sinners are transformed into saints, the world into the
church in baptism by the Spirit; created things are constantly trans-
formed by the Spirit who is invoked in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is
the most defining act of the church which is also the act of the Spirit in
38 This point is repeatedly stressed in Dominum et Vivificantem, 11, 13, 14, 22, 27, 30,
61,64.
39 Balthasar, Creator Spirit, p. 111.
Congar, I Believe, II, pp. 52-55.

4{)
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the church. It is where the church experiences a 'perpetual Pente-

cost' ,41 a continuing coming of the Spirit to make ordinary gifts of
bread and wine into spiritual food. We are what we eat; in the Eucha-
rist we become 'spiritual', that is, creatures of the Spirit. 42
Holiness is not just a personal quality but also an ecclesial quality. As
an ecclesial quality holiness is not so much a superadded quality of the
church as that which gives further clarity to the nature of the church as
the communion of the Holy Spirit. The holiness of the church is the
holiness of communion. It is a way of life with one another in Christ.
This is seen most clearly in the letter to the Ephesians where unity is
seen 'as a necessary correlative to purity' .43 Keeping the unity of the
Holy Spirit in the bond of peace (Eph. 4.3) includes the cultivation of
certain relational virtues: 'Be completely humble and gentle; be pa-
tient, bearing with one another in love' (4.1-2). Similarly, the church
is built on the foundation of apostles and prophets (Eph. 2.20) who,
with evangelists, pastors and teachers, are Christ's gift for the continu-
ing building up of the church 'until we all reach unity in the faith and
in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to
the whole measure ofthe fullness ofChrist' (4.12-13). The sign ofthis
mature faith and knowledge is that Christians are no longer destabilized
by false teachings, but become competent in 'speaking the truth in
love' as they grow to become a unified body (vv. 14-16). The same
juxtaposing of unity and holiness can be seen in Phil. 2: 1-4, where
union with Christ and fellowship with the Spirit (v. 1) are the basis of
Paul's appeal for a certain way oflife with one another: doing nothing
out of selfish ambition and considering others better than oneself, put-
ting the interest of others before self (vv. 3-4). All these appeals for a
certain way of being with one another are founded on the unity of the
church - one body sharing one hope, one faith, one baptism - in the
unity ofGod - one Spirit, one Lord, one God (Eph. 4.4-5).
Holiness also has a negative dimension: separation from all that is
unholy. The holiness of the community of the Spirit makes the church
stand out in sharp contrast to the world and its ways which elicits the
world's opposition. This theme of the world's opposition to Jesus and
his community is one that runs through the gospel of John. Even in
the Prologue we already have an intimation of it (1.5, 10). Perhaps
what is more significant is how this theme is linked to the work of the
Spirit as Paraclete in John 14-16. Beasley-Murray has argued that the
41Nikos Nissiotis, 'The Theology of the Church and its Accomplishment', p. 72.
42For a discussion of this important theme of transformation of creation, see Robert
Davis Hughes, III, Beloved Dust: Tides cif the Spirit in the Christian Life (New York:
Continuum, 2008).
43 Congar, The Mystery, p. 169.
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common feature that runs through the five Paraclete sayings (14.15-17,
25-26; 15.26-27; 16.7-11, 12-15) is his work as advocate or legal advi-
sor who comes to defend the truth against the world 'in the greatest
trial of history' .44 As the Spirit of truth, he reveals the truth set forth in
the life and teaching of Jesus to the disciples whose task is to testify to
the same truth (14.26; 16.12-15), since they are witnesses of the truth
'from the beginning' (15.26, 27). And like Jesus, the testimony of the
Paraclete who lives 'with' and shall be 'in' the disciples will be rejected
by the world (14.17). The world may repudiate the claims of J esus;
nonetheless when the Paraclete comes to indwell the church, he will
convince the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment (16.8-11) con-
cerning the truth ofJesus. The Paraclete sets the church apart from the
world, but its being set apart is also the very condition for the conver-
sion of the world, for making the world cease to be the world.
The N ewness of the Spirit

The unity and purity of the church is a fact but also an imperative. The
temple is both a reality and in the process of being built. It is still not
quite complete. The foundation has been laid by the apostles and
prophets. In Eph 2.20 and 3.5 both apostles and prophets are involved
in the foundation of the church. This suggests that the foundational
work of the church belongs not only to the apostles - those who are
the primary witnesses ofthe truth 'from the beginning' On 15.26-27) -
but also those who possessed 'charismatic authority,.45 As Schnacken-
burg puts it, 'the prophetic-pneumatic is also part of the foundation of
the Church'. 46 Both the work of bearing witness and of inspired eluci-
dation of the truth is needed for the laying of asolid foundation. The
church is both an institution and a charismatic community: ins ti tu ted
by Christ and constituted by the Spirit. But the building is on-going,
rising 'to become a holy temple' (2.21). Congar suggests that while the
process ofbuilding in v. 20 is pictured in more 'spatial' terms of stones
'placed above the foundation stone', v. 21 presents a more organic pic-
ture of growth from 'inside the one single basic stone' - like a tree
expanding from its roots (Co!. 2.7), or like a human body which grows
44 G.R. Beasley-Murray, Gospel of Life: Theology in the Fourth Gospel (Peabody, MA:
Hendrickson, 1991), p. 72.

45 Andrew T. Lincoln, Ephesians (Word Biblical Commentary; Dallas, TX: Word
Books, 1990), p. 153.

46 Rudolf Schnackenburg, Ephesians (trans. Helen Heron; Edinburgh: T. & T.
Clark, 1991), p. 123. The fact that in both passages 'apostles and prophets' is governed
by a single definite article may suggest that the same group of people is meant: apostles
who have a charismatic, prophetie function, such as the Apostle Paul who is also a
prophet (Acts 13.1). Ephesians 4.11 distinguishes them as separate groups, but does not
refer to their foundational work.
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4. The Communion oi the Holy Spirit 89
as each part of the body grows (Eph. 4.15_16).47 While the point
should not be pressed too far, this conflation of temple and body im-
ageries (cE Jn 2.21, where the temple is the body of Christ) might in-
dicate that even where an image might suggest an extrinsie or 'spatial'
relationship of the Spirit to the church as occupant to a building, the
ontologie al and organic nature of the relationship is not too far from
Vlew.
The continuing growth of this organic, spiritual temple, made of
'living stones' and founded on the living Stone (1 Pet. 2.4, 5) includes
growth in the church's understanding of the faith. The faith which is
'once delivered to the saints' is still in need of further clarification as
the church matures. This does not mean that new revelations are added
to the church's faith, but since she still sees through a glass daddy, she
needs constant illumination by the Spirit (Eph. 1.17, 18).
But growth is not only necessitated by her present imperfeet state
and hazy vision. There is another kind of growth that sterns from the
very nature of the Trinitarian life in which the church participates.
Balthasar speaks of the love between Father and Son as an ever-
growing 'eternal miracle':
[I]t is logically incomprehensible that ... love should continually put
forth fresh blooms even higher than what seemed to be the highest
point of fulfillment between lovers, and that the lovers in turn should
be prompted to new games and inventions by the unhoped-for quality
of their power, their achievement, their inner reward and crowning.'8
The perfection within the Trinity is marked by an 'eternal fruitful-
ness' and an 'excess oflove': the love ofFather and Son 'objectified' in
the Third Person who is always 'coming into being ... within the
Godhead from the Father and the Son',49 and whose presence in the
church ensures not only new ways of 'speaking the truth in love' (Eph.
4.15) like 'variations on the [same] theme', but also the continuing
deepening of the church's understanding of the truth revealed in Christ
that can never be fully mastered. 50 Balthasar goes on to speak of the
distinctive work of the Spirit after the Ascension, which includes open-
ing up the 'pneumatic sense of the Scripture' without 'dissolving the
letter into the Spirit'. 51 The 'return of the W ord to the Father', which
47 Schnackenburg, Ephesians, p. 165.

48 Balthasar, Creator Spirit, p. 107 cf pp. 145-46. This ever-growing newness sterns
from Balthasar's understanding of the triune God as an 'event oflove'. See Antonio
L6pez, 'Etemal Happening: God as an Event ofLove', Communio 32 (Summer 2005),
pp. 214-245.
49 Balthasar, Creator Spirit, pp. 107, 155.
50 Balthasar, Creator Spirit, pp. 152-53.
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is the 'return of the temporal W ord into the eternal silence', coincides
with 'the going-forth of the liberated Spirit oflove, who can now give
an endless exposition of the double mystery of Father and Son: Silence
and Word, Word-Silence'. This word-silence corresponds to two as-
pects of the life of the church: 'the silent, loving contemplation of the
W ord' and her active involvement in the world in 'verbal, legal, and
institutional terms' .52 These two aspects are conveyed in two biblical
images of the church: 'the Bride wholly turned to her Bridegroom and
the Mother who is open to all men,.53 The on-going work of contem-
plation and action is needed to actualize the church as Bride and
Mother. In Orthodoxy this continuing actualization of the church is
called the 'living tradition' which is the life of the Spirit in the church.
The triune communion is marked by an ever-growing wonderment
and surprise. 54 Consequently, wonderment and surprise characterize the
life of the church which participates in the triune life through the in-
dwelling Spirit. It seems that the early Pentecostals had a profound
instinctive grasp of this truth. They had a persistent urge to look for
'new revelation' because they were very sure that 'God is doing a new
thing' (Isa. 43.19). The Spirit's own 'excess' and overwhelming pres-
ence creates a heightened expectation for 'more'. It was a risky move,
especially when new revelation was not adequately grounded in the
Great Tradition (see Chapter 5, p. 113), but it was not entirely
groundless since the Spirit Jesus promised to send 'will tell you what is
yet to come' On 16.13).
The Hiddenness of the Spirit

The paradoxes of the Spirit we have been looking at extend to the
mode of his operation. He is the active third person who plays an ano-
nymous role. In the Farewell Discourse where the personal identity of
the Holy Spirit is clearly revealed for the first time, his role is primarily
to point to Jesus. Not only does the Spirit testify aboutJesus On 15.26),
speaking only what he hears fromJesus and thus bringing glory to Jesus
On 16.13-14), his convicting work in the world is to vindicate Jesus.
The sin the Spirit convicts the world of is the sin of not believing in
Jesus On 16.9; cf. 1.11; 3.19; 15.22). The righteousness the Spirit con-
victs the world of concerns Jesus' returning to the Father (16.10); that
is, Jesus' resurrection and ascension is God's way of reversing the evil
verdict of the Sanhedrin and openly declaring that Jesus is indeed the
righteous one (cf. Acts 2.23-24; 3.13-15). Finally, he convicts the
world of judgment because the prince of this world is judged - a
52 Balthasar, Creator Spirit, p. 11 O.

54 L6pez, 'Eternal Happening', pp. 236-42.
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4. The Communion if the Holy Spirit 91
judgment which took place when Jesus was lifted up on the Cross On
12.31).55 He is the 'person without a personal face' whose chief con-
cem is to shine the spotlight on Jesus.
This dual role is grounded in the Trinitarian relationship. In Baltha-
sar's view, the Holy Spirit's anonymity is seen in his being the mutual
love of Father and Son. He is what the Father and Son have in com-
mon: the donation of love to each other. We might even say that in
the Trinitarian relationship, the attention is between the Father and the
Son, with the Holy Spirit forming the invisible bond between them.
Yet, paradoxically, he is also the fruit of that love, the free third person,
who 'transcends' the mutuality.
Thus the Spirit appears (first) as the eornmon fruit of the Father and the
Son, whieh (seeondly) ean beeome autonomous in relation to them
(the result is 'sent'), and, further (thirdly), as the gift of God to the
world, onee again perrnits the whole sovereign freedom of God to be
known in the manner in whieh it holds sway in ereation, in the eove-
nant, and in the Chureh. 56
It is as the fmit of the love between the Father and the Son that the
Spirit is sent into the world, exercising his sovereign freedom to lead
the world back to God through the church. He works freely and pow-
erfully like the wind blowing where it wills, yet always as the sent one
(passive) whose goal is to testify to Jesus and glorify hirn (active).
Balthasar notes how this dialectic of being hidden yet acting freely is
precisely what we encounter in Acts and Paul. In Acts, it is seen in the
Spirit's miraculous workings beyond human limitations and the bold
testimonies of the apostles to Christ where Spirit is the hidden source of
power. In Paul the freedom of the Spirit is seen in an oft-repeated
Pauline dialectic between the indicative and the imperative. The Spirit
accomplishes a fact in us, apart from us (the indicative). We are, as it
were, the passive recipients of his work. Yet it gives rise to the free-
dom on the part ofChristians to act (the imperative).57
Pentecostals generally have not always been successful in holding
this paradox together. Most tend to stress the Spirit as the active third
person and not his anonymity. To maintain this paradox would mean,
for instance, doing great works for God, even miraculous ones, with-
out paying them undue attention.
55 Beasley-Murray, Gospel if Lift, p. 77.

56 Balthasar, Creator Spirit, pp. 125-26. CE David L. Schindler, 'Institution and
Charism: The Missions of the Son and the Spirit in Church and World', Communio
25.2 (Summer 1998), p. 258.
57 Balthasar, Creator Spirit, pp. 128-31.
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Conclusion
If the church is the communion of the Spirit, it should display the
characteristically paradoxical workings of the Spirit. The Spirit comes
to indwell the church and also to indweH each believer; he works in
history to establish the institution and yet he comes from beyond his tory
to renew the institution with his charisms; he moves freely and sover-
eignly in the church and each person, yet he also moves anonymously,
never drawing attention to hirns elf but always pointing the way to
Jesus and the Father. He reminds the church of what has been and also
shows the church things to come. He illumines the church with an
ever-growing understanding of the faith which is once delivered to the
saints. A true Pentecostal ecc1esiology must hold these paradoxes to-
gether. Where traditional Pentecostals have failed it is in their rightly
drawing attention to the Spirit's work in the person and neglecting his
work in the church; desiring a 'personal Pentecost' without grounding
it in the Pentecost in salvation-history; stressing his coming from be-
yond history and not sufficiently stressing his work in history; cherish-
ing the Spirit's activity and freedom but failing to recognize his
passivity and anonymity.
Yet this failure is not due to any fundamental defect in the Pente-
costal way oflife. In the next chapter I will argue that there is an im-
plicit theology in Pentecostalism which allows for a holistic
ecc1esiology to emerge. What is needed is for its implicit theology to
be fleshed out more explicitly in dialogue with the larger Christian
tradition. This is a self-correcting process as weH as one that, hopefully,
will enrich the other traditions. But because the correction draws pri-
marily from the spiritual resources within the Pentecostal tradition
itself, it will not be experienced as an imposition of something 'foreign'
to Pentecostal spirituality but as a growing consciousness of something
deeply familiar but vaguely understood.
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5
Reshaping Pentecostal Spirituality
Any attempt to develop a Pentecostal ecc1esiology must seriously con-

sider the nature of Pentecostal experience and be consistent with it.
Pentecostals distinguish themselves from other Christians by a number
of distinctive experiences. To be sure, Pentecostals inherited some of
these from their Holiness predecessors; such were the doctrines of sub-
sequence and divine healing. 1 Other experiences are more definitive
for the Pentecostal self-identity, such as Spirit baptism with glossolalia
as its initial evidence. Theology does not develop in a vacuum but is
often shaped by one's experience. Take the matter of divine healing.
Very often it is one's own personal experience of healing that shapes
one's attitude and approach to a theology ofhealing. This was the case
with Y onggi Cho, whose remarkable recovery from tuberculosis be-
came the point of departure for his understanding and practice of di-
vine healing. 2
The importance of experience für Pentecostals is summed up in the
oft-repeated slogan that 'Pentecost is an experience, not a denomina-
tion'. This is sometimes taken to mean that creeds are unimportant or,
at best, occupy a place subservient to experience. But in point of fact,
for Pentecostals (as it would be for other Christians) experience is both
theologically formative and is itself formed by previous theologies.
Pentecostals are not content with just 'pure' experience because, as a
matter of fact, there is no such thing as a pure, uninterpreted experi-
ence. They need to make sense of their experience to others, and
above all to themselves. The first Pentecostal experience of Spirit bap-
tism (usually associated with Charles Parharn and his school in Topeka,
Kansas in 1901) accompanied by tongues came about from a direct
proof-text reading of the book of Acts, and not long afterward that
1 Divine healing was an important teaching of the founder of the Christian and Mis-
sionary Alliance, A.B. Simpson, who had a profound impact on the early development
ofPentecostal thinking on the subject. See Charles W. Nienkirchen, A. B. Simpson and
the Pentecostal Movement (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1992).
2 See Norberto Saracco 'The Holy Spirit and the Church's Mission ofHealing', In-
ternational Review cf Mission 93.37 (Jul/Oct 2004), pp. 413-20.
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explanation was formalized. 3 But even before that, there was already an
expectation derived from their holiness heritage that there was such a
thing called baptism in the Spirit which went beyond conversion (the
doctrine of subsequence). They had come to expect that in the Chris-
tian life there was always something more, and that 'more' was what
they found in Spirit-baptism. For Pentecostals, a theology is true if it
makes sense of one's deepest spiritual experience, whereas a theology
that is fundamentally at odds with what is experienced as true is not
likely to have any mileage.
A Pentecostal ecclesiology, therefore, must seek to 'corporatize'
Pentecostal experience rather than introduce something that is not
recognizable as 'Pentecostal' by the Pentecostal community. Trus does
not mean that Pentecostal experience remains unchanged; rather, any
new development in doctrine must be consistent with its core spiritual-
ity. The call, in this case, to Pentecostals to embrace the corporate
dimension of experience will be heeded if this new dimension can take
in their previous core experiences. Their previous experiences will
inevitably be modified in the process, but not so radically as to be un-
recognizable as essentially Pentecostal, still.
Our approach, then, requires us to examine the nature of Pentecos-
tal experience or spirituality, making explicit the Pentecostal spiritual
instincts in order to arrive at a theology that is consistent with it. A
true Pentecostal spirituality must at least begin with, even if it is not
confined to, the Pentecostal self-understanding. And if we are to ask
what this self-understanding might be, without question it has to do
with what early Pentecostals called baptism in the Spirit. Frank Mac-
chia calls Spirit baptism 'the crown jewel of Pentecostal distinctives'
and uses it as the interpretive lens for constructing a Pentecostal theol-
ogy.4 Macchia's work has demonstrated that there is far more to Spirit-
baptism than what early Pentecostals understood by it. Macchia has
shown that Spirit baptism has both a soteriological and a charismatic
dimension, and that both are integrated when Spirit baptism is under-
stood eschatologically.5 For the early Pentecostals Spirit baptism is the
personal appropriation of the corporate eschatological reality which
they termed 'the latter rain'. Spirit baptism, Macchia believes, is 'a
useful metaphor for getting at the pneumatological substance of escha-
tology'.6 Macchia further notes that 'Spirit baptism is weH suited as a
point of integration between sanctification and eschatology, since it is a
3 James R. Goff, Fields Hlhite unto Harvest: Charles F. Parham and the Missionary Ori-
gins of Pentecostalism (Fayetteville, AK: University of Arkansas Press, 1988), pp. 66-75.
4 Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit, p. 20.
5 Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit, pp. 16-17.
6 Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit, pp. 40-41.
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5. Reshaping Pentecostal Spirituality 95
metaphor that implies a participation in the life-transforming presence

ofGod,.7
Pentecostals experienced Spirit haptism in a much more compre-
hensive and integrated way, hut the way their doctrine was tradition-
ally formulated is rather restrictive. Spirit-haptism is usually understood
in terms of some demonstration of power. For instance, Article 7 of
the Assemhlies of God 'Statement of Fundamental Truths' on Spirit
haptism does not define what Spirit haptism is hut focuses almost ex-
clusively on its effects:
All believers are entitled to and should ardently expect and earnestly
seek the promise of the Father, the baptism in the Holy Spirit and
fire .... This was the normal experience of all in the early Christian
Church. With it comes the enduement of power for life and service,
the bestowal of the gifts and their uses in the work of the ministry
(Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4, 8; 1 Corinthians 12:1-31).
Even with the following sanctifYing effects added later to Article 7, the
corporate-eschatological dimension is still missing:
With the baptism in the Holy Spirit come such experiences as an over-
flowing fullness of the Spirit Oohn 7:37-39; Acts 4:8), a deepened rev-
erence for God (Acts 2:43; Hebrews 12:28), an intensified consecration
to God and dedication to His work (Acts 2:42), and a more active love
for Christ, for His Word and for the lost (Mark 16:20)."
Their explicit theology may not do full justice to what they actually
experienced, hut if we look at their implicit theology we discover that
what Spirit-baptisIIl and its accoIIlpanying doctrine of 'initial evidence'
does is that it schematizes a range of experiences that are quite central
to heing Pentecostal. I have dealt with this in my hook Pentecostal The-
ology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition and so will not repeat it. 9 Mod-
em scholars of Pentecostalism have not always appreciated this fact. lO
By looking only at the Pentecostal explicit theology, they have tended
to treat Pentecostal doctrines as signs of an encroaching institutionalism
and impediments to a fuller experience. We see this, for instance, in
Hollenweger's treating Pentecostal doctrines rather dismissively in fa-
7 Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit, p. 42.
" Constitution and By-Laws ofthe Assemblies ofGod ofSingapore, Article 4, no. 7.
The wording is an exact reproduction of that found in the AG, USA. These additions
are reflected in the AG, USA, position paper on baptism in the Spirit put forward in
1995. See Rybarczyk, Beyond Salvation, p. 185. See its more recent paper published in
2000: 'The Baptism in the Holy Spirit: The Initial Experience and Continuing
Evidences of the Spirit-Filled Life'. http://www.ag.org/top/Beliefs/Position_
Papers/pp_downloads/pp_4185_spirit-filled_life.pdf, accessed 4 May 2010.
9 Pp. 40-72.
10 As noted in the introduction.
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vor of experience. ll Consequently, studies in Pentecostal theology and

spirituality often fail to make the connection between their doctrine of
Spirit-baptism and their spirituality.12 Spirit baptism, as Pentecostals
have traditionally formulated it, is regarded as such a bad idea that it
should play little or no part at all in understanding Pentecostal spiritual-
ity.
Pentecostal Particularity
If for Pentecostals, as Macchia has pointed out, Spirit baptism is the
personal appropriation of an eschatologie al reality - the gift of the Spirit
of the last days - then the key to understanding Pentecostal spirituality
is personal particularity. On this point, they have much in common
with the Orthodox, whose theology of the person as the ultimate on-
tological category for understanding all of reality is at the heart of Or-
thodox spirituality. As we saw from Zizioulas in Chapter 1, all reality is
'hypostatized' in relation to the triune Hypostases. The persons of the
Father, Son and Holy Spirit are the ultimate reality; we cannot go any
further back to something more basic.
The Orthodox theologian David B. Hart has put it very well,
[I]f indeed God became a man, then Truth condescended to become a
truth, from whose historical contingency one cannot simply pass to
categories of universal rationality; and this means that whatever Chris-
tians mean when they speak of truth, it· cannot involve simply the dia-
lectical wresting of abstract principles from intractable facts. 13
God, for Hart, is revealed as 'transcendently determinate' Beauty;

that is to say, this beauty or the glory of God resists reduction to the
'symbolic' seen, for example, in Tillich's concept of'the ultimate,.14
Pentecostals could readily identify with this postmodern emphasis on
particularity since at the heart of Pentecostal spirituality is the focus on
the concrete person of J esus as 'the way, the truth and the life', whose
presence, they claim, be comes more real and more concrete when they
receive their baptism in the Spirit. This experience of the person of
Jesus explains why the early Pentecostals were suspicious of traditional
theology and theological training, especially seminary training. They
want to know Jesus as the Truth, not what others say about hirn, and
11Walter Hollenweger, 'Crucial Issues for Pentecostals', pp. 166-72 passim.

12As seen, e.g. in Steven Land's Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom
OPTSup 1; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993). Noted by Macchia, Baptized in
the Spirit, p. 24.
13 David Bentley Hart, Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), p. 5.

14 Hart, Beauty, pp. 24-28 cf 177.
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theology as reflections and generalizations of the concrete was feit to be

a step removed from the real truth. For at the heart of the Christian
faith is the 'transcendently determinate' Truth of the particular person,
Jesus Christ. In Jesus truth reaches its most concrete expression - the
reve1ation of the Second Person in human flesh.
The gospel, which is the proclamation of this truth, was a scandal to
the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews. Many people today
continue to be scandalized and stumbled. Yet, if Jesus is the concrete
Truth by which all other truths must be judged, then any approach
that reduces him to an abstraction, be it the 'cosmic Christ' or the
'Christic principle', is a parody of the Truth. If Jesus Christ could be
translated into some moral ideal or metaphysical principle, then con-
version to J esus would be unnecessary and any attempt to call people
to Christ would be sheer arrogance. All one needs to do is adopt the
moral ideal or metaphysical theory Jesus exemplifies. An 'inclusivist'
understanding of truth is ultimately contradictory to the deepest Pente-
costal spiritual instinct. 15
The Personhood of the Spirit

This focus on personhood underlies a cluster of characteristics that
distinguishes Pentecostal spirituality as Pentecostal, especially those
relating to the baptism in the Spirit. It explains why most classical Pen-
tecostal denominations have some form of 'initial evidence' doctrine. 16
Even if the doctrine as it stands is open to question, the implicit theol-
ogy underlying it is basically sound: Pentecostals understood frorn their
experience of the baptism in the Holy Spirit an intimate connection
between the overwhelming presence of God and the characteristically
personal 'speech' response to that presence. This is why despite persis-
tent questions raised about the appropriateness of the 'initial evidence'
doctrine, Pentecostals find the 'initial evidence' experience too valuable to
be given up.
Pentecostalism is essentially the spiritual impulse driving the Chris-
tian towards personal intimacy with God. Such impulse is consistent
with what we have noted in Chapter 3, that the full revelation of the
triune God is associated with the coming of the Spirit in his own person
to indwell the church. If the Pentecost event is about personal indwell-
15 This is why I have serious reservations whether Amos Y ong's pneumatological
approach to other religions could be properly caIled Pentecostal. See above, pp. 17-18.
16 Most white denominations in North America have an initial evidence doctrine
while some African-American ones have variations of it. See Gary McGee, 'Initial
Evidence', International Dictionary of the Pentecostal and Charismatic Movement, rev. ed.
Stanley M. Burgess (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), p. 789.
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ing, the Pentecostals are correct in making relation with the person of
the Holy Spirit a distinctive feature of their faith. In whatever way the
person of the Spirit is understood, Pentecostals are clear that what distin-
guishes their experience from non-Pentecostals is to be found in the
way the presence of the Holy Spirit is operative in their lives. The
language they use is particularly revealing. Evangelicals may speak of
being 'born again' , illuminated, etc. by the Spirit, but the person of the
Spirit is usually not directly referred to as the direct subject of their
spiritual experience. In the tradition of Reformed theology, the focus
is on the 'secret working of the Spirit' .17 Pentecostals, by contrast, often
use language that suggests a more direct working of the Spirit that im-
pinges upon their senses. The Spirit is referred to not only in terms of
powerful and supernatural activities, he is often spoken of as the subject
of those activities. The Spirit guides, speaks, empowers, restrains, etc.
This is decidedly the language of Acts (cf. Acts 13.4; 16.6-7; 20.22, 23,
28). This sense of personal presence is frequently encountered in classi-
cal Pentecostal preaching and testimonies, e.g. David du Plessis' classic
The Spirit Bade Me Go (cf. Acts 11.12 KJV) or David Y onggi Cho' s
The Holy Spirit, My Senior Partner. 'I suddenly feIt a warm glow come
over me. I knew this was the Holy Spirit taking over ... .' 'I knew that
the Holy Spirit was in contra!. ... ,18 Although their understanding of
the relationship between the person of the Spirit and the persons of the
Son and the Father may sometimes be prablematic (see below) , the
experience of the Spirit as personally present and active is the common
denominator in all Pentecostals and qualifies the experience as distinc-
tively a Pentecostal experience. If we are to use scholastic categories,
evangelicals tend to focus more on the 'created graces' of the Spirit
while Pentecostals tend to speak in terms of 'uncreated grace'. Their
language of personal presence would seem to make their understanding
of the Spirit's working in the believers closer to Rahner's concept of
'quasi-formal causality' rather than the evangelical concept of 'asym-
metry'.
17 This and similar phrases are used frequently by Calvin. See Institutes of the Chris-
tian Religion 3.1. Interestingly, Eugene F. Rogers, Jr. in an insightful article on the
pneumatologies of Calvin, Rahner and Florensky has shown that the reticence to speak
directly about the Spirit and more in terms of his hidden workings - what he calls the
apophaticism of the Spirit - is quite pervasive. Rogers suggests that this view spread
across diverse traditions may have been due to their common fear of enthusiasm (p.
256). 'The Mystery of the Spirit in Three Traditions: Calvin, Rahner, Florensky Or,
You Keep Wondering Where the Spirit Went', Modem Theology 19.2 (April 2003), pp.
243-60.
18 David du Plessis, The Spirit Bade Me Go: The Astounding Move of God in the De-
nominational Churches (Oakland, CA: David du Plessis, 1960), p. 16.
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It is primarily in terms of personal relations that Pentecostal spiritual-

ity could properly be understood. For example, if we consider Pente-
costal spirituality from the perspective of its religious affections as
Steven Land has done, we cannot avoid the fact that affections (or
passions) are essentially human qualities. Land qualifies these affections
as 'a passion for the kingdom' , a passion which, Pentecostals insist,
must fmd expression in the proclarnation of the 'full gospel'. Again, it
is in light of personal relations that we can understand the Pentecostal
emphasis on supematuralism and spectacular manifestations, and its
evangelistic zeal. Pentecostals are supremely interested in the truth not
as an abstraction, but in Truth as a concrete manifestation - as person,
specifically the second and third persons of the Trinity, usually with
the second person at the center of their devotion. 19 As Land puts it,
'Jesus is the center and the Holy Spirit is the circurnference' of Pente-
costal spirituality.20 It is their focus on personal intimacy that makes
sense of their most distinctive spiritual marker: glossolalia. Glossolalia,
as I have pointed out elsewhere, is ultimately about personal relation-
ship with God through the Holy Spirit. 21 Personal intimacy is what
Pentecostals treasure. But in ways that they themselves cannot fully
explain, personal intimacy is somehow linked to glossolalia. We see
this connection often recounted in Pentecostal testimonies. 22 But there
is perhaps a theological explanation for the Pentecostals' privileging
glossolalia and this is found in a characteristic that is proper to the Holy
Spirit. David Coffey has observed that 'alone of the three the Holy
Spirit in his personal property is the Godhead in purely receptive
mode' and as such 'he is the only one who can be, and is, communi-
cated in absolute (unqualified) immediacy to a created spirit, which
itself can only be understood as pure receptivity to God,.23 If receptiv-
ity is the distinctive mark of the Spirit in the Trinitarian relationship it
would explain the special significance of glossolalia as the sign of the
Spirit's personal and immediate indwelling. Speaking in tongues, Pen-
tecostals would rernind us, involves a crossing of the threshold from
one's normal reserve to a new freedom. 24 This transition can also be
found in the contemplative tradition where one moves from active
19 David Reed, 'In Jesus' Name': The History and Beliifs of Oneness Pentecostals
ÜPTSup 31; Blandford Forum, UK: Deo Publishing, 2008), 32-68.
20 Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, p. 23.
21 See Simon Chan, 'The Language Game of Glossolalia, or Making Sense of the
"Initial Evidence"', Pentecostalism in Context: Essays in Honor of William W. Menzies, ed.

Wonsuk Ma & Robert P. Menzies üPTSup 11; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press,
1997), pp. 80-95.
22 E.g. Hayford, The Beauty of Spiritual Language, pp. 189-91.
23 Coffey, Did You Receive, p. 38.
24 This is the image used by Leon ]oseph Suenens in his discussion on glossolalia.
See A New Pentecost? (trans. Francis Martin; New Y ork: Seabury, 1975), p. 102.
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prayer to passive 'mental prayer' .25 Pentecostals understand this truth

implicitly when they counsel total surrender, the need to 'let go and let
God' as a condition ofbeing filled with the Spirit. This favored expres-
sion of Pentecostals is, as Cheryl Bridges Johns has pointed out, 'a
statement announcing the death of the subject' or 'the decentering of
the subject' and its recentering in GOd. 26 The sign of their total surren-
der is the moment they crossed the threshold and broke out in ton-
gues. As in water baptism where the baptizand submits him or herself
to the watery tomb and emerges to new life, the candidate for a per-
sonal Spirit-baptism surrenders to death and is raised to new life of
spiritual empowering. The personal immediacy that Pentecostals cher-
ish has its basis in the Spirit's proper mode of existence as 'pure recep-
tivity' .
It is also in terms of personal relationship that the Pentecostal inter-
est in the miraculous could be properly understood. G.K. Chesterton
notes that it is in the very character of normal persons to do things
sometimes without a particular purpose: 'If any human acts may loosely
be called causeless, they are the minor acts of a healthy man; whistling
as he walks; slashing the grass with a stick; kicking his heels or rubbing
his hands. It is the happy man who does the useless things; the sick
man is not strong enough to be idle,.27 Freedom and unpredictability
are one of the most distinctive marks of anormal, healthy person - and
a healthy Christian. Only persons are capable of springing surprises,
whereas the behavior of other living things ruled by instincts is quite
predictable. There is an intrinsie connection between the God who
works miracles and the fact that He is Person. H.H. Farmer made this
astute observation some years ago:
The religious instinct to ding to the concept of mirade is at bottom
not the result of the craving for portends to gape at, or for accommo-
dations on the part of the universe to merely selfish desires, but for per-
sonality in God ... ; it is a protest against an all-indusive monism which
leaves the soul choking for want of air. 28
In terms of the Trinitarian doctrine of appropriation, this unpredict-

able feature of personhood could be said to be appropriated to the
person of the Holy Spirit. It belongs to the nature of the Spirit of God
to blow where he wills (cf. Jn 3.8), to work in ways that often do not
conform to human expectations or any predictable pattern. This is
25 Chan, 'The Language Game ofGlossolalia', pp. 87-88.

26 Cheryl Bridges Johns, 'Partners in Scandal: Wesleyan and Pentecostal Scholar-
ship' , in The Spirit and the Mind: Essays in Informed Pentecostalism, ed. Terry L. Cross &
Emerson B. Powery (Lanham: University Press of America, 2000), pp. 244-45.
27 G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: Image Books, 1959), pp. 18-19.
28 H.H. Farmer, The World and God (London: Nisbet & Co., 1946), p. 6.
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amply illustrated in the book of Acts. To the Samaritan Christians the

Spirit was not given until apostolic hands were laid on them. But on
Saul, later to become the great Apostle Paul, the Spirit came through
the hands of Ananias, who was not an apostle. On Cornelius and his
household the Spirit came without any hand-laying and even before
the Apostle Peter had finished his sermon! These observations have led
John Taylor to note, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, 'The Holy Spirit
does not appear to have read the rubries! He will not and cannot be
bound,.29
This drive towards personal intimacy through the Spirit who does,
to use a phrase from Jonathan Edwards, 'surprising work' is the pecu-
liar strength of Pentecostalism. 30 The intimate, personal knowledge of
Jesus Christ through the person and power of the Spirit gives Pente-
costals an unparalleled boldness to pro claim the five-fold gospel: Jesus
as savior, sanctifier, baptizer, healer and coming king; further, they do
it in a manner that is utterly convincing as only people with a deep
familiarity with the persons ofJesus and the Spirit can. The 'full gospe1'
for Pentecostals must include a miraculous component; if the surprising
works of the Spirit are excluded, the full personhood of the Spirit is
somewhat muted.
This focus on personhood underlies two other key Pentecostal con-
cerns: worship and mission. The two most conspicuous features of
Pentecostal churches are their spirited worship and boundless energies
expended in mission activities. W orship is understood as an occasion
for a deep personal encounter with God. But unlike evangelicals who
treasure a subdued personal relationship, Pentecostals seem to enjoy a
rather boisterous relationship with Jesus. As Daniel Albrecht observes,
there is a wide variety of ritual expressions, but 'at the center of the
variety exists the belief among the congregants that they are actually
experiencing the presence of God in an intimate, immediate, mystical
way' .31 Similarly, the proclamation of the gospel- the Pentecostal 'pas-
sion for the kingdom' as Land calls its spirituality - is about bringing
people into a 'personal relationship with Jesus'. To be sure, mission
includes a social dimension, and Pentecostals in recent years are seeking
to catch up on the social implications of the Pentecostal message. 32 But
getting people to know Christ has always been and still is the primary
focus of Pentecostal mission practice. Ask any Pentecostal for a reason
29 John Taylor, The Go-Between God: The Holy Spirit and the Christian Mission (Lon-
don: SCM, 1972), pp. 119, 120.

30 Jonathan Edwards, 'A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God' in The
Works cifJonathan Edwards, vol. I (Edinburgh: Banner ofTruth, 1987), pp. 344-64.
31 Daniel Albrecht, Rites in the Spirit: A Ritual Approach to Pentecostal-Charismatic Spi-
rituality OPTSup 17; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), p. 159.

32 See e.g. Called and Empowered, ed. Murray A. Dempster, et al.
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for preaching the gospel and the first thing that we are likely to hear is
that people need to know Jesus as personal savior.
Individualizing the Trinity

The traditional Pentecostal explanation of its own spirituality may not
always be consistent with what is best in its own spiritual experience,
and consequently its approach to worship and mission has been ad-
versely affected. Historically, the cultivation of personal relationship has
been to focus on one of the persons of the Trinity,33 usually either Jesus
or the Spirit resulting in either Christomonism or pneumatomonism,
both of which could be amply illustrated in Pentecostal history. The
problem could be understood as amisappropriation of the doctrine of
persons. The historical context from which Pentecostalism arose was a
major contributing factor. David Reed has noted that the early Pente-
costals inherited a doctrine of the Trinity from the Holiness move-
ment, whose concern to defend the deity ofJesus and the Spirit against
liberals and Unitarians led to a rather cmde conception of the Trinity
bordering on tritheism. 34 The problem could be described as the 'over-
hypostatization' of the Trinity, in which the Trinitarian persons are
treated as 'separate personalities'. This has resulted in a tendency to
view relationship with the Trinity in a highly individualized way. This
can be seen in a number of key Pentecostal doctrines. Peter Hocken,
for example, has noted that Spirit-baptism is seldom understood in the
context of salvation-history, i.e. in relation to the revelation of the
mystery ofthe triune God (cf Eph. 1.3-14), but almost exclusively as a
subjective experience of personal revelation: 'the revelation of the tri-
une God in me'. Similarly, the biblical framework of eschatology (the
Spirit as the gift of the last days) is transformed into a crisis eschatology
Oesus is coming at 'any moment'). This individualized experience is
usually linked to one particular person of the Trinity, so that the uni-
fied work of the triune God becomes separate 'works of grace': The
work of Jesus is to bring salvation, while the work of the Spirit is a
separate and 'subsequent' work to fill believers with power for service.
33 The separation of Father, Son and Holy Spirit has its preeedent in Joaehimism
whieh links them to three sueeessive epoehs of human history. See Yves Congar, I
Believe, I, p. 127. Some Penteeostals entertain a similar idea hy identifying the 20th-
eentury outpouring of the Spirit as the eoming of the age of the Spirit. But the separa-
tion of the Trinitarian persons oeeurs not only esehatologieally, hut also thematieally,
as the following makes dear.
34 Reed, 'In Jesus' Name'; The History and BelidS cif Oneness Pentecostals, eh. 3, esp.
49-50.
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The Spirit's work is divorced from the work of the Son and the Fa-
ther. 35
At its best this individualizing impulse creates a spirituality that
draws Pentecostals into a very vital relationship with the persons of
Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. However, without grounding it in a
stable Trinitarian structure, the relationship with Jesus and the Holy
Spirit threatens to become isolated and obsessive. Two instances could
be cited.
Oneness Pentecostalism and the Name cifJesus

Oneness Pentecostals share with their Trinitarian counterparts very
similar spiritual impulses. First, they were looking for a deeper relation-
ship with God through the Holy Spirit. Second, they inherited from
the Pietistic, Holiness, and Keswick traditions a strong Jesus-centered
devotion which included a special focus on the Name ofJesus.36 Third,
they often employed the category of personal 'revelation' as a means of
vindicating their claims. Revelation, in early Pentecostal parlance, does
not mean the disclosure of extra-scriptural truths, but usually means
truths that break forth from Scripture with a new existential depth and
urgency.37 What distinguishes Oneness believers from Trinitarians is
the way in which certain conclusions are drawn from these ideas, espe-
cially the second idea. An overwhelming sense of the Name of Jesus
coupled with a loosely conceived Trinitarian doctrine in which the
three persons are like a society of three individuals led Oneness Pente-
costals to decide that the only scriptural alternative was to understand
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in tenns of one God whose real name
in the New Testament is Jesus Christ. As one early Oneness Pentecos-
tal, Ewart, put it,
[W]e saw that if the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit was Jesus
Christ, then in some mysterious way the Father, Son and Holy Ghost
were made one in the person ofJesus Christ. We saw from this prem-
ise that the old trinity theory was unscriptural. 38
35 See the critique in Peter Hocken, 'The Meaning and Purpose of Baptism in the
Spirit', Pneuma 7.2 (Fall 1985), pp. 125-33 passim.

36 See Reed, 'Injesus' Name', pp. 9-68.
37 Reed, 'Injesus' Name', pp. 24-26. Such revelation could weIl represent a genuine
development of doctrine. In this respect, it has the same logical status as the catholic
idea of the Living Tradition. The critical difference is that in the larger Christian tradi-
tion the revelation of the Spirit occurs in the church (Orthodoxy) or through the
teaching office of the church (Roman Catholic), whereas for Pentecostals revelation is
given to the individual.
38 Ewart, 'The Unity ofGod', Meat in Due Season 1.13 Gune, 1916), p. 1. Cited by
Reed, 'New Issue, New Doctrine', Occasional Pentecostal Lecture Series at Asia
Pacific Theological Serninary (2002), p. 12.
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Lacking the conceptual tools to differentiate between hypostasis and

the modem idea of person, the position taken by Oneness Pentecostal-
ism could be seen as a tactical move to avoid any tritheistic connota-
tions. But the consequence of this move is equally, if not more,
problematic. There is the ever-present danger of reductionism, as indi-
cated in acharge brought by Ewart hirns elf that some Oneness advo-
cates were teaching that 'Jesus Christ the Son swallowed up the
Father's identity in His own person'.39 Although it tumed out to be
unfounded, David Reed has rightly noted that it 'struck a vulnerable
spot in the embryonic Oneness doctrine'.40
The turn taken by Oneness Pentecostals is not the only risk of an
excessive devotion to the person ofJesus. Even Trinitarian Pentecostals
run the risk of developing a spirituality of sentimental and individualis-
tic Jesus devotionism. This can be seen in many songs devoted to Jesus
popular among the early Pentecostals, such as
]esus, ]esus, ]esus
Never have I heard a name that thrilled my soullike Thine.
]esus, ]esus, ]esus
o what wondrous grace that links that lovely name with mine:'
'The Holy Spirit, My Senior Partner'

If Oneness Pentecostalism represents an extreme of 'Jesus devotion'
that ended with the reduction of the Trinity to the person of Jesus,
there are other Pentecostals who develop an excessive focus on the
person of the Holy Spirit. One such is the influential David Y onggi
Cho, pastor of the world's largest Pentecostal church in Korea. One of
the strengths of Cho's doctrine of the Spirit is his showing that the
traditional Pentecostal teaching concerning Spirit-baptism and the 'ini-
tial evidence' of speaking in other tongues is a practical doctrine
which, Cho believed, contributed in no small way to the success of his
church. 42 But an unintended consequence of such a pervasive practical
pneumatology is that undue attention is paid to the person of the Holy
Spirit to a point where it threatens orthodox Trinitarian theology.43
The Holy Spirit is Cho's 'senior partner' in ministry; one must there-
39 Cited by Reed, 'New Issue, New Doctrine', p. 11.

40 Cited by Reed, 'New Issue, New Doctrine', p. 11.
41 This short chorus is found in the Assemblies of God hymnal Melodies rif Praise
(Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1957), p. 77. More examples can be
found in David Reed, 'Injesus' Name'.
42 Yonggi Cho, Successful Horne Cell Groups (Seoul: Seoul Logos, 1997), p. 112.
43 Simon Chan, 'The Pneumatology of Paul Y onggi Cho', in David Yonggi Cho: A
Close Look at His Theology and Ministry, ed. Wonsuk Ma, William W. Menzies &
Hyeon-sung Bae (Seoul and Baguio City, Philippines: Hansei University Press and
APTS Press, 2004), p. 100.
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fore leam to cultivate fellowship with the Spirit. As he puts it, 'when
we read the bible, it not only commands us to have fellowship with
the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ, it also commands us to have
fellowship, or communion with the Holy Spirit (2 Cor 13:14)'.44 Fellow-
ship with the Spirit means recognizing hirn as 'a person' and addressing
hirn as aperson: 'Dear Holy Spirit, I welcome you, I recognize you
and I love you. I depend on you .... Dear Holy Spirit, now I'm starting
out. Let's go'.45 Like many ofhis Pentecostal forebears, Cho claims that
this is a new truth that God revealed to him. 46
What Cho has done with respect to the Holy Spirit is remarkably
sirnilar to the Oneness Pentecostals' understanding of and relationship
to the person of Jesus. When the Spirit is understood as an individual,
inevitably the Trinity comes to be seen in almost tritheistic terms (lead-
ing to Oneness Pentecostals rejecting the Trinity). Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit are treated as three coordinates with whom the Christian
could cultivate fellowship individually. It is no coincidence that with an
over-individualized pneumatology the Spirit tends to get isolated from
the Father and the Son, and the Spirit's operations become the subject
of one's intense focus, resulting in a tendency toward an over-realized
eschatology in which all the blessings of the Spirit could be fully ap-
propriated in the here and now. 47 If the person of the Spirit is truly and
fuHy among us and in us, it is logical to expect the full blessing of the
'fourth dimension' here and now. What Cho has failed to understand is
that the Holy Spirit, while truly present in person, can only be prop-
erly understood in relation to the Father and the Son, especially to the
absent Jesus. 48 There is a not-yet dimension oflife in the Spirit.
These problems could be overcome if personal relationship is devel-
oped in line with a proper Trinitarian understanding of relationship. As
Thomas Smail, one of the early leaders of charismatic renewal within
the Anglican Church, has correctly noted, Pentecostal-charismatics are
enamored of Christomonism and pneumatomonism because they have
forgotten the Father who 'is the integrating factor within the Godhead
and the gospel'. 49 Pentecostals, therefore, need to retrieve the doctrine
44 Succesiful Home Ce/l Group, p. 124 (author's emphasis).

45 Succesiful Home Ce/l Group, p. 124.
46 The Fourth Dimension: More Secrets Jor a Succesiful Faith Life, vol. II (Plainfield, NJ:
Bridge Publishing, 1983), pp. 9-11.

47 Chan, 'The Pneumatology ofPaul Yonggi Cho', pp. 109-12.
48 The unique economy of the Spirit is that it involves a special mode of personal
presence which is also a mode of absence. Douglas Farrow calls it a 'eucharistie pres-
ence'. See Ascension and Ecclesia: On the Significance oJ the Doctrine oJ the Ascension Jor
Ecclesiology and Christian Cosmology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999).
49 Thomas A. Smail, The Forgotten Father (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980), p. 17.
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of the Father. They would do weIl to learn from the older traditions,
especially Orthodoxy's doctrine of the monarchy of the Father.
The Monarchy of the Father

The monarchy of the Father is accepted in both the Eastern and West-
ern churches. 50 It is after all an idea that develops directly out Scripture:
the economy of the Trinity is always presented as a movement in
which the Father is the source: he sends the Son and the Spirit and not
vice versa. According to Pannenberg, this Trinitarian distinction and
order should not be seen solely as a 'relation of origin' (the generation
of the Son and procession of the Spirit) but also in their continuing
relationship: 'The Son is not merely begotten of the Father. He is also
obedient to him and he thereby glorifies hirn as the one God. The
Spirit is not just breathed. He also fills the Son and glorifies hirn in his
obedience to the Father, thereby glorifying the Father hirns elf .51 The
concept that each person of the Trinity has his own proper hypostatic
characteristics (proprium) implies a certain irreversibility of relation be-
tween Father and Son: 'the Father is not begotten of the Son or sent
by hirn'. 52 The same could be said of the relationship between the Son
and the Spirit. The 'subordination' of the Son to the Father shows the
distinction of the Son from the Father, and similarly the 'subordina-
tion' of the Spirit to the Son (the Spirit's glorification of the Son)
shows the distinction of the Spirit from the Son. 53 But the relationship
is not only hierarchical but also reciprocal. There is a mutual depend-
ence in that just as the Son and the Spirit depend on the Father for
their origin, the Father is dependent on the Son to reveal his Father-
hood and lordship: He is Father in relation to the Son. 54 Similarly, the
Father is dependent on the Spirit's glorifying the Father and the Son to
reveal his deity.55 Pannenberg insists that only in this way can the
Trinitarian distinction involving order and equality be upheld. 56 At the
same time, in their mutuality, the monarchy of the Father is estab-
lished. 57 'By their work the Son and the Spirit serve the monarchy of
50 See 'A Lutheran-Orthodox Common Statement on Faith in the Holy Trinity',
§3. www.elca.org/ecumenical/ecumenicaldialogue/ orthodox/trinity.html (accessed 2

November 2006).
51 Pannenberg, ST, I, p. 320.
55 Pannenberg, ST, I, pp. 316, 330. On this point Pannenberg is in agreement with
Moltmann.
57 Pannenberg, ST, I, pp. 322-27.
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the Father'.58 We may thus say that the Trinitarian relationship is both
monarchical and reciprocal, but even the reciprocity is 'asymmetrical'
and not purely mutual. 59
The asymmetrical nature of the Trinitarian relations fundamentally
defines the Orthodox understanding. 60 Within the internal (ad intra) life
of the Trinity the Father is the one 'without origin' (anarchos) or 'un-
begotten' (aggenetos). To speak of the Father as 'monarch' is to say that
he is the 'single principle' (mone arche) by whom the Son is generated
and from whom the Spirit proceeds. The Father is the single principle
of 'the identical, unshared, but differently communicated divinity of
the Son and the Holy Spirit. The notion of monarchy therefore de-
notes in a single word the unity and the difference in God, starting from
. . 1e' .61
a persona1pnnClp
This point is crucial for a proper understanding of the doctrine of
monarchy: the monarchy of the Father is not about power and domi-
nation, but about personhood. All modem Trinitarian theologies are
agreed that God is constituted as persons-in-communion, but they are
not agreed on how the oneness of God is to be conceived. The West-
ern church has traditionally conceived the unity in terms of the one
divine substance. The oneness of God is identified with the one sub-
stance that the three persons share, in which case the divine nature and
not persons becomes the ultimate reality. Others, driven by modem
egalitarian interests, have argued for the simultaneous 'co-emergence' of
the Three, conceiving of the communion of the triune persons as one
of mutual co-inherence. The one God refers to the unity of the persons.
But if this is the case, then, as Zizioulas has rightly po in ted out, rela-
tionality itself becomes the ultimate reality.62 The problem with these
conceptions of oneness is that they fai! to give a proper account of the
nature ofChristian worship. When]ews and Christi ans pray to the one
God, they are not praying to a 'substance' or a 'relationship' but the
person who in Scripture is identified as the God and Father of our Lord
]esus Christ (1 Cor. 1.3; Gal. 1.1; Eph. 1.3; etc.).63 The monarchy of

59 Cf Thomas Smail, The Forgotten Father, p. 37.
60 One of the reasons for rejecting the filioque dause is that it undermines the mon-
archy of the Father, since it would imply that the Father is not the sole cause of the
essential Trinity. Modem Orthodox theologians, however, are prepared to accept a
double procession (from the Father through the Son) in the economy of salvation. See
'A Lutheran-Orthodox Common Statement on Faith in the Holy Trinity', §11.
61 Lossky, Orthodox Theology, p. 46 (author's emphasis). That is, person, not sub-
stance, is the ultimately reality.

62 Zizioulas, Communion and Othemess, pp. 134-37.
63 Cf Pannenberg: 'If the Father, Son, and Spirit are at one in contributing to the
monarchy of the Father, there is no justification for applying the term Father to the
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the Father is the only way of ensuring that personhood could be me an-
ingfully predicated of God, whether we are referring to each person in
their distinction or the one God.
Monarchy also implies order (taxis), but order does not me an subor-
dination but a way of relating within the Trinity that distinguishes
Father from the Son and from the Spirit. This relationship within the
Trinity is consistent with its manifestation in the economy of salvation.
For instance in Eph. 2.18: 'For through hirn [Christ] we both have
access to the Father by one Spirit'. In fact we know what the Trinity is
ad intra from what is revealed ad extra. As we are reminded by Rahner' s
Rule: The economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity.64 Their relation-
ship as manifested in the work of salvation is well summed up in
Lossky: 'The Spirit leads us, through the Son, to the Father, where we
discover the unity of the three. The Father, according to the terminol-
ogy of St. Basil, reveals Hirnself through the Son in the Spirit'.65 Ire-
naeus expresses the same idea more picturesquely, referring to the .son
and Spirit as the two hands of the Father. 66 Zizioulas well sums up the
personal ordering of the Trinity:
It is clearly a movement with personal initiative. It is not that the Three,
as it were, moved simultaneously as 'persons in communion'; it is the
one, the Father, that 'moved' ... to threeness,.67
According to Zizioulas, this particular way of divine ordering - the
movement from the Father to the Son and Spirit - should be the way
to order human lives by, not the reverse. We should 'allow God's way
ofbeing to reveal to us true personhood'.68 How then does divine mo-
narchy reveal true personhood? Zizioulas draws out some implications
for theological anthropology. First, a person is always a gift from an-
other person, not a product of nature. It is person causing another per-
son that gives rise to true personal otherness. Second, the fact that we
are caused by another person and ultimately by the Father and not
bound by nature is what makes us truly free persons. Third, the relation
of the person caused by another person implies that the relationship is
always asymmetrieal. The other person who caused is always 'greater
than' the one who is caused. Thus 'the Father is greater than l' On
triune God as a whole as weil as to the first person of the Trinity' (ST, I, pp. 325-25).
'In his monarehy the Father is the one God' (op. eit., p. 326).
64 Questions have been raised, however, over the 'viee versa' ofRahner's Rule as it
would seem to suggest a eollapsing of the immanent Trinity into the eeonornie Trin-
ity. Congar, I Believe, III, p. 13.
65 Lossky, Orthodox Theology, p. 48.
66 Against Heresies, 4.20.1; 5.6.1.
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14.28). There is a hypostatic hierarchy, but not moral or essential hier-

archy in God and in human relations. Hierarchy becomes a problem
only when the other is seen as essentially or morally inferior, not when
what is brought forth is essentially the same with the one who caused.
All personal causations must finally fall back on the Father who is the
'uncaused cause of all personhood'.69 Zizioulas notes that rejection of
hypostatic hierarchy for fear that it threatens the integrity of the 'other'
results, paradoxically,
in an egalitarianism in which otherness is finally reduced to functional-
ism and personal identity to personally-based utilitarianism; or a sub-
mission of the particular to a 'dass' of social or natural stereotypes and
'universals' in which otherness would cease to be personal and become
natural, that is, determined by natural qualities. 70
In other words, monarchy is what preserves true personal freedom

and otherness and prevents either a false egalitarianism or authoritarian-
ism from arising. The first scenario (egalitarianism) is seen in the mod-
ern West, where the 'other' who is supposedly my equal, my fellow-
human being, is reduced to his or her functions. What results from this
is not a pure egalitarian relationship but a functional hierarchy as seen
in social and industrial relations. It shows that whatever is regarded as
definitive for human life is that around which a hierarchical relation is
structured. Human existence is inescapably hierarchical. The question,
then, is not whether relations should be based on a hierarchical or ega-
litarian principle, but rather, upon what is the hierarchy built? A per-
sonal hierarchy based on the monarchy of the Father is what ensures
the freedom and equality of the 'other' as person. 71
The Church and the Monarchy cf the Father

A hypostatic hierarchy not only overcomes false egalitarianism but also
all forms of authoritarianism and preserves personal freedom. This is
again seen in Orthodoxy, where the asymmetrical relations hip in the
liturgical assembly is firmly grounded in the monarchy of the Father.
Orthodox theologians see a dose relationship between the taxis of the
Trinity and the taxis of the church. According to Schmemann, the
nature of the church as both conciliar and hierarachical is based on the
fact that '[t]he Trinity is perfect council because the Trinity is the per-
fect hierarchy'.72 The conciliar and hierarchical nature of the church is
reflected in the distinctively Eastern concept of the church as the eu-
69 Zizioulas, Communion and Othemess, pp. 141-44 passim.

72 Schmemann, Church, World, Mission (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir Seminary
Press, 1979), p. 165.
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charistic assembly in which the order of bishop and people exists in a

relationship of mutual dependence. In other words, the order of the
church is not only based on the Trinitarian order, but is also necessi-
tated by the fact that the church is defined essentially by its eucharistie
celebration. The church is the gathering of God's people in Jesus'
name for the liturgy of word and sacrament. W ord and sacrament con-
stitute the essential liturgie al order of Christian worship, with the eu-
charist as the difining and culminating event. 73 The word is the
preparation for and finds its fulfillment in the eucharist: it is the eucha-
rist that makes the church. 74
The nature of the liturgical celebration requires a special ordering of
the worshippers. For the word to be heard and responded to, it needs
to be read and proclaimed. For the bread and wine to be received,
someone has to distribute them. In any form of worship, there needs to
be, even minimally, someone who leads and others who respond to the
leader. The concept of church order, therefore, is not primarily for the
purpose of ecclesiastical organization but grows out of and is necessi-
tated by the celebration of the Eucharist, which defines the very nature
of the church. The whole church, made up of leader and people, con-
stitutes the eucharistie assembly. Leader and people exist in a relation-
ship of 'mutual dependence' in the eucharistie assembly.75 The mutual
dependence is established right at the beginning of the liturgy in the
mutual salutation of leader and people: 'The Lord be with youl And
also with you'. If, as Peter Brunner claims, this is no mere wish (exopta-
tio) but a gift (donatio), then what occurs in the mutual salutation is that
leader and people receive areal blessing from each other by pronounc-
ing the Lord's presence on each other, and so are bound together in
one fellowship in the Lord. 76 This inter-personal dynamic - this or-
dered koinonia - is what episcopal order is primarily about. According to
73 Although the liturgy consists of two parts, the liturgy of the word and the liturgy
of the sacrament, the whole liturgy is defined eucharistically. The 'gathering' is the
gathering for the meal; the liturgy of the word is essentially the 'conversation' at the
table. See Irmgard Pah!, 'The Paschal Mystery in its Central Meaning for the Shape of
the Liturgy', Studia Liturgica 26 (1996), pp. 16-38 (29).
74 Paul McPartlan, Ihe Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas
in Dialogue (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1993). The statement 'the Eucharist rnakes the
church' originated with Henri de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum: Ihe Eucharist and the Church
in the Middle Ages, Historical SUIVey (trans. Gemma Smmonds, CJ with Richard Price &
Christopher Stephens; ed. Laurence Paul Hemrning & Susan Frank Parsons; Notre
Dame, IN: University ofNotre Dame Press, 2006), p. 88.
75 Alexander Schmemann, Ihe Eucharist (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladirnir Serninary
Press, 1987), p. 14. Cf Nicholas Afanasiev, Ihe Church cifthe Holy Spirit (trans. Vitaly
Perrniakov; ed. Michael Plekon; Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,
2007), pp. 136-38.
76 Cf Peter Brunner, Worship in the Name ofJesus (trans. M.H. Bertram; St. Louis:
Concordia Publishing House, 1968), pp. 134-36.
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Manasiev, the distinction is not between the ordained and the non-
ordained since the whole church is a royal priesthood, but a distinction
of charisms in which the celebrant stands as a 'type' of Jesus Christ as
the High Priest but still sharing in the same royal priesthood. 77 Episco-
pacy, therefore, is not about the institutionalization of apower struc-
ture, but a way of ordering the essentially eucharistic nature of the
church. 78 There is an integral relationship between the monarchy of the
Father and the church in its sacramental, liturgical, and episcopal di-
menSlOns.
If the monarchy of the Father is needed to stabilize the all too fluid
nature of Pentecostal spirituality, and if monarchy entails a certain un-
derstanding of church, namely, the church as sacramental, liturgical,
and episcopal, then the question is whether Pentecostals would also
need to inelude these features in their own ecelesiology to sustain their
distinctive spirituality. The reason for raising the question is that these
features of the church appear to be quite foreign to many Pentecostals.
This is evident in the Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogues. 79 In the
Dialogues the Pentecostals show that they are not averse to a sacramen-
tal interpretation of the Lord's Supper and baptism;80 however, their
inclination toward a 'charismatically structured fellowship' means that
apostolicity is understood largely in terms of the church's charismatic
relationship with the Holy Spirit rather than in terms of historical suc-
cession. 81 The sacraments are linked to the direct operations of the Holy
Spirit and not necessarily to the visible orders of church rninistry (epis-
copacy) and church worship (liturgy). It must be remembered, how-
ever, that the Pentecostal representatives in the Dialogues are all from
elassical Pentecostal churches and mainline denominations in the West.
If global Pentecostalism is represented, the dialogues would probably
have moved in quite a different direction as far as ecelesiology is con-
cemed. When Pentecostalism is viewed from a global perspective, one
will soon discover implicit beliefs underlying their practices that bear
elose affinities with ancient forms of church life, ineluding the ancient
episcopate and the liturgy.
77 Afanasiev, The Church ofthe Holy Spirit, pp. 137,220-35.

78 Miroslav VoIf, too, recognizes the need for the distinction between c1ergy and la-
ity, but would insist, in line with Free Church principles, that the functions are not
pennanent and may even be reversed. After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the
Trinity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), p. 213.
79 See the study by Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Spiritus ubi vult spirat: Pneumatology in
Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue (1972-1989) (Helsinki: Luther Agricola Society,

1998).
80 Kärkkäinen, Spiritus ubi vult spirat, pp. 272-73.
81 Kärkkäinen, Spiritus ubi vult spirat, pp. 310, 352.
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Pentecostal 'Episcopal' Impulse

The claim that Pentecostals are predominantly Free Church in their
ecclesiology is not borne out by the facts. Historically, there is a wide
diversity of ecclesiastical structures in classical Pentecostal denomina-
tions ranging from the Free Church-type to Episcopalian-type. 82 The
Assemblies of God is usually categorized as a Free Church denomina-
tion, but in point of fact, it is partly congregational and partly Presbyte-
rian. Each local church is autonomous, but there is also a central
governing body, the general presbytery or executive council, which
issues credentials to AG ministers. It is true that initially the AG was a
'fellowship' but various historical circumstances, among them, the need
to license ministers to obtain cheap train fares and the Oneness issue,
caused it to develop a central structure within the first few years of its
existence. The reasons for the 'fellowship' becoming what it is, is be-
side the point; what is significant is that it developed a Presbyterian
structure and did not see it as inherently opposed to being Pentecostal.
Perhaps a more telling sign of episcopal inclination is seen in the
widespread practice of distinguishing between ordinary Christi ans as
Spirit-filled and the pastor as having a 'special anointing'. Again, one
might question its theological validity and the motivation behind the
distinction, and the abuse that sometimes accompanü:s it,83 but the fact
that it is widely accepted at the popular level is suggestive. I am in-
clined to think that the underlying truth has something to do with the
long his tory of the place of the bishop in the church. From time to
time attempts have been made to rationalize the existence of this spe-
cially 'anointed servant' of God: the Latter Rain movement of the
1940s, the 'shepherding' movement in the 1970s, and more recently,
the 'apostolic' movement championed by Peter Wagner. It is notewor-
thy that these movements often appeal to the same classic text of Eph.
4.11 to legitimize their claims to special authority. They focus on spiri-
tual gifts through the laying on of hands by 'apostles and prophets'
rather than 'tarrying' for the Holy Spirit as found in the early days of
the Pentecostal movement. 84
The 'episcopal' instinct is even more evident among Pentecostals in
the Third W orld. Allan Anderson notes in his study of African lnitiated
Churches (AIC) that many of them began with someone having a
82 Most Pentecostal groups which came out of the Holiness movement and Meth-
odist roots and most African-American Pentecostal groups tend to have an Episcopa-
lian type of church govemment.
83 For some tragic examples of such ahuse, see Stephen Parsons, Ungodly Fear: Fun-
damentalist Christianity and the Abuse of Power (Oxford: Lion, 2000).

84 See R.M. Riss, 'Latter Rain Movement', Ihe New International Dictionary of the
Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements.
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vision that authenticates his or her mission. This gives rise to a church
structure in which the founder-Ieader has 'absolute final authority,.85
The AICs proliferate through mass lay involvement and itinerant
preachers who revert to their headquarters, the new 'Zion' or 'Jerusa-
lern' . They find their inspiration from their prophetic leader. Anderson
notes, 'The significance of these "holy cities" cannot be underesti-
mated,.86
The basic problem with these 'apostolic' movements is that, while
they have seized upon an important aspect of historic episcopacy, they
have divorced it from its historical context and made it into a general
principle that could be reproduced at will. Wagner's 'International
Coalition of Apostles' is strictly his own creation based on what he
claims to be new revelation. 87 Similar claims had been made in the past,
as early as the third century - by the Gnostics! According to Irenaeus ,
the Gnostics claimed to have the truth direct from God without having
to go through the Catholic Church, whose claim to apostolicity was
based on historical continuity with the apostles. lrenaeus' objection to
the Gnostics could be equally leveled against Wagner: There can be no
genuine apostolic faith without apostolic succession. 88 The issue is not
even the question of accountability - Wagner appears to have many
levels of accountability in his system - 89 but has to do with the ques-
tion of truth-claims. According to Irenaeus, the truth of any apostolic
claims has to be established on the basis of actual historical link with
the historic Church. Wagner's claim is based on new revelation,
which, since the claim is allegedly based on Scripture, must mean that
he is given privileged access to its correct interpretation. But by the
lrenaean test, this is Gnostic faith, not the faith of the apostles!
Despite these aberrations the Pentecostal episcopal instinct should not
be lightly dismissed; in fact, it is quite essential to the continuing exis-
tence of the movement as Pentecostal. It was the recognition of the
need for order that led to the emergence of all kinds of 'apostolic' and
'shepherding' movements. But the perennial abuse of apostleship in the
Pentecostal movement suggests that what is needed is not to reject the
concept itself but to find a more adequate ground for it within the
85 Allan Anderson, Zion and Pentecost: The Spirituality and Experience of Pentecostal and
Zionist/Apostolic Churches in South Africa (Pretoria: University of South Afriea Press,

2000), p. 312.
86 Anderson, Zion and Pentecost, p. 315.
87 'Introduetion to the New Apostolie Reformation', 9 November, 2006.
<http://www.globalharvest. org/ index.asp ?aetion =apostolie> .

88 Wagner's aposdeship does not even bear any conceptual similarity to historie apos-
deship. His is based on authority given to individuals. See n. 90 below.

89 See C. Peter Wagner, 'Global Harvest Ministry: Yesterday, Today, and Tomor-
row!' 3 November 2006 < http://www.globalharvest.orglindex.asp?aetion=about>.
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historie Christian tradition. This move requires a rethink about the

nature of ecclesial communion. Unlike Wagner's apostolic churches,
where authority is concentrated in the individual,90 the traditional con-
ception of the bishop especially in Orthodoxy is one who stands in a
symbiotic relationship with people of God. What episcopacy signifies is
not primarily authority but communion or, in the language of the
Eastern Church, sobornost. The church as the icon of the Trinity re-
fleets the communion of the Trinity. In much of Western Trinitarian
discussion, this communion is usually based on the concept of the
Three Persons as a society of equals in a relationship of reciprocity.91
Episcopacy, however, acknowledges another aspect of communion in
the church: the communion between leader/overseer (episcopos) and
people. This communion is such that both hierarchy and reciprocity
qualify each other. Hierarchy cannot be understood apart from recip-
rocity and vice versa. The bishop exercises his authority always in
communion with the people. This is seen in the liturgical celebration.
The relationship could be described as hierarchical in so far as the bi-
shop leads the congregation, pronounces absolution and blessing, etc.,
but it is also reciprocal in that without the assent (the liturgie al 'amen')
of the people of God (the laos), there is no liturgy.92 The interdepend-
ence of bishop and laity is most evident in the question of apostolic
authority. As Zizioulas has noted,
[O]nly bishops who are heads of actual communities can participate in
council. It is evident from this that the charisma veritatis of the bishop is
not an individual possession transrnitted through ordination but is tied
up with the entire community.93
We might say that without the consent of the laity, no rightful epis-
copal authority can be exercised. The bishop is as much needed by the
people as the people are needed by the bishop. Thus the common
90 According to Wagner, this is what is unique about his 'New Apostolic Christian-
ity': In traditional Christianity, authority resided in groups such as church councils,

sessions, congregations, and general assemblies. New Apostolic Christianity sees God
entrusting the govemment of the church to individuals 'Arise Magazine Article: New
Apostolic Reformation' 6 November 2006 <http://www.globalharvest.org/apostreE
htm>.
91 A contemporary theologian who has developed this egalitarian concept most con-
sistendy is Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God (Lon-
don: SCM, 1981).
92 See Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 218. CE Alexander Schmemann: 'There is re-
ally no service, no liturgy without the 'Amen' of those who have been ordained to serve
God as comrnunity, as Church'. 'Clergy and Laity in the Orthodox Church', 8 Novem-
ber 2006 <http://www.schmemann.org/byhim/clergyandlaityinthechurch.htm1>
(emphasis author's).
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saying no church without abishop' contains only half the truth; it

should be complemented by 'no bishop without the church' .94
It is as hierarchical and reciprocal that the church images the Trinity
most fully. The relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit is not
purely reciprocal or egalitarian; it is also a relationship that is distinct
and irreversible, in which the Father always sends the Son and the Spi-
rit, not the reverse; and this irreversibility is preserved in the doctrine
of the monarchy of the Father, which is rnirrored in the communion
ofbishop and people.
Historically, Pentecostals have vacillated between individualistic en-
thusiasm and authoritarianism. An unbridled enthusiasm is often over-
corrected by an extreme authoritarianism and vice versa. These prob-
lems can be overcome, and a more stable ecclesial structure could
emerge, if the mutual dependence between leaders and people in epis-
copal communion is recognized. Whether the communion is called
episcopal or apostolic (early Pentecostals preferred the latter term) is a
moot point. What is important is for the Pentecostal church to build
on its own episcopal spiritual impulse using an already available spiri-
tual resource found in historie episcopacy, especially Orthodoxy.
Pentecostal Sacramental Universe

We have noted above how an 'episcopal' order of leader and people
and a 'liturgie al' order of word and sacrament arise from the fact that
the church is the gathering of God's people to celebrate the Eucharist,
'the sacrament of sacraments'. The church's sacramentality is the un-
derlying reality; liturgie al order expresses that reality and episcopacy is
the means to sustain it. The current surge of interest in sacramental
theology in traditionally non-sacramental churches could be seen as a
rediscovery of this insight. 95 Among them are advocates of the emerg-
ing church,96 Federal Visionists,97 Baptist sacramentalists,98 and various
94 Manasiev, The Church cifthe Holy Spirit, p. 37.

95 For abrief survey of this development see Simon Chan, 'New Directions in
Evangelical Spirituality',Journalfor Spiritual Formation and Soul Care 2.2 (Fall 2009), pp.
219-37.
96 For a comprehensive introduction to the emerging churches see Eddie Gibbs &
Ryan K. Bolger, Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures

(Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005). Its better-known representatives are Brian D. McLaren,
A Generous Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006) and Dan A. Kimball, The
Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations (Grand Rapids, MI: Zonder-
van, 2003); They LikeJesus But Not the Church: Insightsfrom Emerging Generations (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 2007).
97 For an introduction to federal vision see Steve Wilkins & Duane Gamer, eds.,
The Federal Vision (Monroe, LA: Athanasius Press, 2004). A summary of the main ideas
of federal vision can be found in Joseph Minich, 'Within the Bounds of Orthodoxy?
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convergence movements seeking to bring together the charismatic,

evange1ica1 and sacramental dimensions of spirituality.99 But among
Pentecostals in the non-Western world, there has always been a strong
sacramental instinct. This is because their context is essentially a sacra-
mental universe. Haro1d Turner, the pioneer of the study of new reli-
gious movements (NRMs), has no ted the 'deep affinity' between
Christianity and primal religions. loo Subsequent studies of Pentecostal-
charismatic movements in Asia, Mrica, and Latin America have made
sirnilar observations. 101 Allan Anderson, for examp1e, has shown that
African charismatics have a much stronger sense of sacramenta1 reality
than their western counterparts, as seen in the widespread use of ho1y
or 'b1essed' water, anointing oi1, and other physica1 objects in healing
. 102 S'Iml'1ar examp1es can b e r:loun d'In A'Sla. 103
an d exorClsm.
An examination of the Federal Vision Controversy', http://federal-

vision.com/rninich_bounds_oCorthodoxy.htrnl, accessed 21 Jan 2009.
98 E.g. D.H. Williams, Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer
Jor Suspicious Protestants (Grand Rapids, Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1999); Baptist Sacramen-
talism, ed. Anthony R. Cross & Philip E. Thompson (CarlisIe: Paternoster, 2003);
Steven R. Harmon, Towards Baptist Catholicity (Eugene, OR; Wipf & Stock, 2006);
Steven Holmes, Listening to the Past: Ihe Place of Tradition in Iheology (CarlisIe: Pater-
noster, 2002); S.K. Fowler, More Ihan a Symbol: The British Baptist Recovery of Baptismal
Sacramentalism (CarlisIe: Paternoster, 2002); John Colwell, Promise and Presence: An
Exploration of Sacramental Theology (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2006); Christopher
Ellis, Gathering: A Theology and Spirituality of Worship in the Free Church Tradition (Lon-
don: SCM, 2004); Philip E. Thompson, 'A New Question in Baptist History: Seeking
a Catholic Spirit among Early Baptists', Pro Ecclesia 8.1 (Winter, 1999), pp. 51-72;
Mark Medley, 'Catholics, Baptists, and the Normativity of Tradition', Perspectives in
Religious Studies 28.2 (Summer 2001), pp. 119-29; B. Harvey, 'The Eucharistic Idiom
ofthe Gospel', Pro Ecclesia 9.3 (Summer, 2000), pp. 297-318; Curtis Freeman, 'Where
Two or Three Are Gathered: Communion Ecclesiology in the Free Church', Perspec-
tives in Religious Studies 13.03 (2006), pp. 259-72. See the landmark document 'Re-
Envisioning Baptist Identity: A Manifesto for Baptist Communities in North America'
put out by some members of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. It is reproduced in
Perspectives in Religious Studies 24.3 (2006), pp. 303-10 and in Harmon, pp. 215-23.
99 There are at least three convergence 'communions': the International Commun-
ion of the Charismatic Episcopal Church (founded in 1992), http://www.iccec.org/ ,

accessed 27 February 2009; the Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches
(1993), http://www.theceec.org/WhoWeAre.htrnl, accessed 27 Feb 2009; and its
sister communion, the Communion of Convergence Churches (2005), http://www.
ccc-usa.org.
100 Harold Turner, Ihe Rools of Seience: An Investigative Joumey through the World's Re-
ligions (Auckland: The Deep Sight Trust, 1998), p. 142.

101 E.g. Walter Hollenweger, Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide
(Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997); Harvey Cox, Fire From Heaven:; David Martin,
Pentecostalism: Ihe World Iheir Parish (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002); Allan Anderson, An
Introduction to Pentecostalism; Philip Jenkins, Ihe Next Christendom: Ihe Coming of Global
Christianity (rev. ed.; New Y ork: Oxford University Press, 2007).
102 Allan Anderson, Zion and Pentecost, pp. 290-300; 'African Initiated Churches of
the Spirit and Pneumatology', Word and World, 23.2 (Spring 2003), pp. 178-86. For a
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Pentecostal sacramentality, however, is not entirely absent in the

West. Richard Bicknell of the Elim Pentecostal Church observes that
in the United Kingdom, some of the early Pentecostals were Methodist
and Anglican ministers who retained their sacramental sensibilities even
after they became Pentecostal. 104 He further not es that although many
of the early British Pentecostals adopted an explicitly memorialist un-
derstanding of the 'ordinances' in line with other evangelicals, yet these
ordinances were regarded more like sacraments in their practice. IOS The
same situation obtains in America. Pentecostal theologian Howard
Ervin observes that there is 'an intuitive awareness of sacramental reali-
ties in the Pentecostal experience' like tongues, healing, etc. 106 Among
the early Pentecostals was P.c. Nelson, whose Bible Doctrines had nur-
tured cohorts of students from Pentecostal Bible institutes. Nelson
referred to the Lord's Supper as a healing ordinance:
The Lord's Supper is a healing ordinanee. If you are siek or afllieted in
your body and ean diseern the healing virtue in the body of our Lord,
typified by the bread, you may reeeive healing and strength for your
body as weil as for your spiritual nature. 107
Given Pentecostalism's strongly implicit sacramental theology, some
re cent Pentecostal scholars are calling for a re-think of its explicit the-
ology. Kenneth Archer argues for 'the need to re-vision the traditional
Pentecostal understanding of ordinances into 'sacramental' ordi-
nances,.108 At the popular level, a number of influential Pentecostal-
charismatics have highlighted the importance of the Lord's Supper as a
means of grace. William L. De Arteaga, a charismatic and ordained
priest of the Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches, has ar-
gued that major revivals in the past have been built on the central ob-
defenee of the use of 'blessed water' see J. Ade Aina, 'The Chureh' s Healing Ministry',
in A Reader in AJrican Christian Theology, rev. ed. John Parratt (London: SPCK, 1997),
pp. 104-108.
103 E.g. Myung Soo Park, 'Korean Penteeostal Spirituality as Manifested in the Tes-
timonies of Believers of the Y oido Full Gospel Chureh' in David Yonggi Cho: A Close
Look at his Theology and Ministry, ed. Wonsuk Ma, William W. Menzies & Hyeon-sung
Bae (Baguio, Philippines: APTS Press, 2004), pp. 50-51.
104 Riehard Bieknell, 'The Ordinanees: The Marginalised Aspeets ofPenteeostalism',
in Pentecostal Perspectives, ed. Keith Warrington (Carlisie, UK: Paternoster, 1998), pp.
213-14.
105 Bieknell, 'The Ordinanees', p. 216.
106 Cited in Kärkkäinen, Spiritus ubi vult spirat, p. 273.
107 Cited in Kärkkäinen, Spiritus ubi vult spirat, p. 282.
108 Kenneth J. Areher, 'Nourishment for Our Journey: The Penteeostal Via Salutis
and Sacramental Ordinanees',Joumal cf Pentecostal Theology 13.1 (Oetober 2004), p. 83.

See also Seott Wesley Biddy, 'Re-envisioning the Penteeostal Understanding of the
Eueharist: An Eeumenieal Proposal', Pneuma 28.2 (Fall 2006), pp. 228-51.
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servance of the Lord's Supper. 109 Swedish charismatic DIf Ekmann be-
lieves that communion is 'a means to a more powerful spirituallife and
... more intimate fellowship with Jesus'.110 Singapore mega-church
pastor Joseph Prince speaks of the consumption of the broken body of
Christ for physical healing in quasi-magical terms when he encourages
his members to have private communion as frequently as possible to
ensure good health: '... if you are siek, I would recommend that you
have Communion daily.... I know of people who are so radical that
they take it like medicine - three times a day.... They get radical re-
sults' .111
There are many fads in the Pentecostal-charismatic movement to-
day, but the recovery of the sacramental dimension oflife and worship
is not one of them; rather, it reflects something that is deeply embed-
ded in the Pentecostal spiritual consciousness. Its recovery can be ex-
plained by the fact that in their ecumenical engagements, Pentecostals
are discovering the conceptual tools to help make explicit what has
hitherto been implicit in their experience. Their theology of the Lord's
Supper may sound crode, but there is no denying that they have dis-
covered from experience something real and life-transforming.
Pentecostal liturgy?
Preliminary consideration
Before considering the final component in the reshaping of Pentecostal
spirituality, some clarification is needed on what we mean by liturgical
worship. Much of the confusion sterns from how the liturgy is under-
stood. When liturgy is viewed from a social science perspective, such as
from the perspective of ritual studies, any form of worship could be
called a liturgy. There are set rituals in a charismatic service no less
than in a traditional service. ll2 Issues relating to liturgy understood in
this sense become largely a matter of personal preferences and tastes.
Some prefer the spontaneous charismatic form to the written form of a
traditional service. The distinction I would like to make between litur-
gical and non-liturgical worship is a theologie al one. Theologically,
'[t]he liturgy .. .is making present in word, symbol and sacrament of the
paschal mystery of Christ so that through its celebration the men and
109 William L. De Arteaga, Forgotten Power: The Significance 01 the Lord's Supper in Re-
vival (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002).

110 UlfEkmann, Take, Eat - A Book on Holy Communion (n.p.; 2006), p. 4.
111 Joseph Prince, Health and Wholeness through the Holy Communion (Singapore: 22
Media, 2006), p. 45.

112 E.g. Daniel E. Albrecht, Rites in the Spirit looks at Pentecostal-charismatic wor-
ship from the perspective of ritual studies.
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women of today make a saving encounter with God,.113 Liturgical wor-

ship seeks to enact ('making present') 114 certain theological givens. It is
like a drama in which all the worshippers are engaged in acting out a
given script. It is not a drama in which the worship leader acts and the
congregation watches and responds to the cu es from the leader. The
liturgical drama enacts the revelation-response dynamic in which the
congregational response is a constitutive part of the liturgical drama
itself The congregation is active, but in liturgical worship the act of
the worshippers is primarily the act of 'indwelling', immersing them-
selves in the story by playing their part weIl. Just as good actors need to
indwell the text and become part of the world of the text, faithful wor-
shippers need to indwell the redemptive drama and be shaped by it.
Indwelling is a deeply formative process. 115 This is the 'active participa-
tion' enjoined in the Constitution of the Sacred Liturgy.116 In liturgical
worship the given content of the liturgy is the revelation of the triune
God culminating in the Paschal Mystery. The gospel of Jesus Christ is
utterly basic to the liturgical celebration. Therefore, to change the basic
content of the liturgy is to make it into something other than the liturgy.
N on-liturgical worship, on the other hand, is essentially 'expressivist' .
This is especially the case in so-called 'contemporary' worship. There is
something being done on the stage and the people are called upon to
respond to it. The active participation takes a different emphasis. W or-
ship leaders are essentially motivators and the people are urged to be
engaged. While the content of worship may still be God and the gos-
pel, the focus is on the worshippers' response to God: we ascribe praise
to God; we express our feelings for God; we tell God how much we
love hirn, etc. Or, more frequently, I tell God how much I love hirn.
For whether the expressions are made singly or together, the important
thing is for every worshipper to experience the effects of the gospel.
The difference between liturgical and non-liturgical worship is
broadly similar to Bradshaw's distinction between two ways of praying:
the cathedral and monastic prayer respectively.117 In cathedral prayer,
the people of God pray the prayers of the church; they apply them-
113 The Study ofLiturgy, ed. CheslynJones, Geoffrey Wainwright, Edward Yarnold,
SJ, & Paul Bradshaw (London: SPCK, 1992), p. 17.

114 To enact is to 'bring to becorning' the content of the liturgy, namely, the Paschal
Mystery. See Anton Ugolnik, 'Tradition as Freedom from the Past: Eastern Orthodoxy
and the Western Mind', Joumal ofEcumenical Studies, 21.2 (Spring 1984): 286-87.
115 For an application of the Polanyian concept of indwelling see Lesslie Newbigin,
The Gospel in a Pluralist Soaety, pp. 29-38.

116 Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, no. 30.
117 Paul F. Bradshaw, Two Ways of Praying: Introduang Liturgical Spirituality (London:
SPCK, 1999).
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selves to a given embodied in the church's liturgicallife; they indwell

the church's liturgy. As Bradshaw puts it,
Recalling to mind what God has done, we are interpreting our human
experience in religious terms; we are making our creedal confession of
faith; we are proclaiming our gospel to the world; we are restoring
ourselves and all creation to a relationship of holiness to God; and all
this not for ourselves but so that God may be glorified. 118
Monastic prayer, on the other hand, takes the truth and applies it to
oneself in order that it may have a decisive effect on one's life. This is
usually achieved through intensive meditation. Or, the meditator may
derive lessons or applications from the truth meditated upon. The fo-
cus of monastic prayer, as in non-liturgical worship, is what the truth
means for me. It must be added, however, that in today's church the
'traditional' and 'contemporary' forms ofworship do not correspond to
Bradshaw's 'ideal types' at every point. Modem liturgical worship is
likely to indude some elements of 'monastic' prayer (such as the indu-
sion of personal reflections);119 the so-called 'contemporary' worship,
while generally concemed with the application of the gospel to oneself,
is more often an occasion for individuals to express their feelings to or
about God.
A Trinitarian liturgy
If there is already an implicit sacramentality and episcopal order in
Pentecostal spirituality, liturgical worship as defined above is the most
appropriate way of making them explicit. But compared to the first
move, this one would require a major paradigm shift for Pentecostals.
For while sacramentality and episcopacy might be said to involve the
re-ordering of impulses already present in Pentecostalism, the move
towards liturgical worship cannot appeal to any historical precedent.
But as we have no ted earlier there is a dose connection between epis-
copacy and liturgy: they both image the monarchy of the Father in
church order and church practice respectively. Jf worship is the re-
sponse to the revelation of the triune God, liturgical worship structured
around word and sacrament is the most adequate response to that God.
As a matter of fact, if we examine the traditional Sunday liturgy, we
find that it is marked throughout by a deep Trinitarian structure: the
doxology, the Creed, the eucharistic prayers, the whole liturgical cal-
endar, are thoroughly Trinitarian.
118 Bradshaw, Two Ways of Praying, p. 55.

119 E.g. in the modern Roman Missal, where personal reflections at certain points of
the liturgy, such as after the Scripture lessons, are encouraged.
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The liturgy not only grounds the church solidly in Trinitarian the-
ology but more specifically in the monarchy of the Father. This
grounding is especially important for Pentecostals. For without the
Father as 'the integrating factor within the Godhead and the gospel'
the result can only be either a christomonistic or pneumatomonistic
spirituality .120 This tendency could be corrected in the liturgy where
the Trinitarian relationship is clearly spelled out: to the Father, through
the Son, in the Spirit. 'The Spirit leads us to the Son who leads us to
the Father' - this basic structure of liturgical worship is frequently reit-
erated by the church fathers. As Yves Congar observes, 'The whole
liturgy expresses ... a movement of God towards us and of us towards
God. This movement passes from the Father through the Son in the
Spirit and returns in the Spirit through the Son to the glory of the
Father, who takes us, as his children, into communion with him,.121
The Spirit is the criticallink between the worshipping church and the
triune God. This is why his presence is always invoked in every liturgi-
cal celebration.
The question that might arise is, will the monarchy of the Father
threaten to overshadow the persons of the Son and the Holy Spirit,
resulting in the loss of a warm and lively encounter with the persons of
Jesus and the Spirit? Pentecostals are understandably concerned about a
form of worship that could become merely formal. But if the liturgy
reflects the reality of the Trinitarian relationship, the problem is not
inherent in the liturgy itself; nonetheless it is areal practical problem.
This is why the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy urges 'active par-
ticipation' .
But what could active participation within the liturgical context
mean for Pentecostals? How do they gain the needed focus on the
persons of the Son and the Spirit without overshadowing the Father?
In other words, can we be Christocentric without becoming Christo-
monistic? Can we be pneumatic without becoming pneumatomonis-
tic? I believe it is precisely active participation in the liturgy that ensures
both possibilities. There are a number of places within the liturgy for
distinctly Pentecostal expressions of worship to take place. For in-
stance, there is no reason why a time of free 'praise and worship' could
not accompany the singing of the Gloria. In the liturgy, the gospel of
Jesus Christ is always central. The Pentecostal preacher may faithfully
and confidently proclaim the gospel with a view to the conversion of
sinners and transformation of saints. There is no reason why the liturgy
of the word could not end with the typical Pentecostal altar call, altar
ministry, sinner's prayer, etc. But the service does not end there. The
120 Thomas A. Smail, Ihe Forgotten Father, pp. 17, 20-21.

121 Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, I, p. 104.
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Eucharist follows the W ord; and between the Eucharistic prayer and
the reception of the bread and wine, the people offer to one another
the sign of peace. The gospel is not only proclaimed in the first part of
the liturgy; it becomes alive where 'the Peace' of reconciliation is ac-
tively pursued before the Eucharistic meal. 122 W orshippers look beyond
themselves and realize that communion in the body and blood of
Christ also means responsibility to and for neighbors. Communion
with Christ cannot be with Christ alone, but includes our neighbors,
especially those with whom we have difficulty relating.
Secondly, within the liturgy the works of the Spirit are given their
proper emphasis. Although there are no lengthy descriptions of the
Holy Spirit in the liturgy (which is in keeping with the fact that he is
the hidden Person in the Trinity), his works occur throughout the
liturgy even when they are not explicitly acknowledged. 123 The Spirit
makes ordinary bread and wine to 'be for us the body and blood of
Christ'. Given the Pentecostal belief that the Lord's Supper is a healing
ordinance, at this juncture prayer for and anointing of the sick may
appropriately be carried out. The Pentecostal freely exercises the gifts
of the Spirit in the realization that they are the foretastes of the new
creation. But if Pentecostals are tempted to 'over-realize' their escha-
tology, the liturgy quickly brings them back to earth in a number of
different ways: in the Eucharist, where we anticipate the Marriage
Supper (the full celebration is still future); in the intercession that in-
cludes the remembrance of the dead (yes, death - the old creation - is
still around!);124 in the 'memorial acclamation' which affirms Christ's
death, resurrection, and coming again (the new creation is still to
come); in the Lord's Prayer, where we acknowledge that trials are still
real and the evil one is still present.
Conclusion
The liturgy helps to hold together and make explicit the Pentecostal
sacramental and episcopal instincts. It is the deterrnining factor in giv-
ing Pentecostal spirituality its own distinctive shape without compro-
mising anything that is integral to Pentecostal faith and experience.
Pentecostal sacramentality is preserved in the liturgy not only because
the liturgy culminates in the Eucharist, but also because the whole
liturgical celebration (i.e. the work of the people of God) is the work
122 The Roman Missal places the Peace before the Eucharistie meal, while the BCP
(1979) puts it before the Great Thanksgiving.

123 See The Spirit in Worship - Worship in the Spirit, ed. Teresa Berger & Bryan D.
Spinks (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009).

124 See the Roman Missal.
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of the Spirit. '25 The liturgy is the very means by which the Holy Spirit
accomplishes his work of forming the church through the church's
'core practices' .'26 In short, the whole liturgy is sacramental. The Pente-
costal episcopal instinct is better preserved in the liturgy in that it is the
need to maintain liturgie al integrity that gives rise to episcopacy in the
first place. The institution of episcopacy in the church is not meant to
take a life of its own but is for the liturgy. It is in the context of the
liturgie al celebration that the true meanings of and the proper relation-
ship between the episcopos and the laos are established. There we dis-
cover the true meaning of communion: personal and hierarchieal.
This confluence of sacramentality, episcopacy, and the liturgy can be
seen in the convergence phenomenon that is attracting significant
numbers of Pentecostals and evangelicals in recent years. The conver-
gence movement seeks to integrate the charismatic and evangelical
dimensions of the Christian faith with the sacramental, episcopal, and
liturgieal. A common feature of the convergence churches is that they
are seeking to be a church 'whose worship is fully charismatic, fully
evangelical, and fully sacramental and liturgieal' .'27 What is unique
about the convergence churches is that unlike previous renewal
movements that simply broke away from their parent churches or re-
main within the existing church, they see themselves as a 'communion'
rather than adenomination.
In contrast to adenomination, a cornrnunion expresses the organic
unity Jesus Christ originally established in His Body, the Church.
Rather than emerging from divisions ereated by historie differenees
over doctrine and practice, a cornrnunion represents return to unity
based on the recovery of the essential oneness of the ancient, medieval,
and contemporary church. '28
They seek for some form of organic unity with the one church
through the 'historie episcopate'. In other words, they believe that
some form of apostolic succession is needed to legitimize their status as
a communion. Thus the consecration of the first bishops of the Com-
munion of the Evangelical Episcopal Church was carried out 'in apos-
tolic succession' in the presence of an Eastem Orthodox and a Catholic
125 See Simon Chan, 'The Liturgy as the Work of the Spirit' in The Spirit in Worship
- Worship in the Spirit, ed. Teresa Berger & Bryan D. Spinks (Collegeville, MN: Litur-
gical Press, 2009), pp. 41-58.
126 See above, Chapter 3, pp. 45-49.
127 From the website of the International Communion of the Charismatic Episcopal
Church, http://www.iccec.org/, accessed 27 February 2009.

128 From the website of the Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches,
http://www.theceec.org/whoweare.htrnl, accessed 27 Feb 2009.
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bishop .129 This is quite unpreeedented in the history of the Penteeostal

movement. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen was perhaps right that historieally
there were no Penteeostal eedesiologies that believed in the neeessity
of the historie episeopate,130 but what we are seeing in the eonvergenee
movement is that when Penteeostals start to think eedesiologieally,
they seem to discover the need for one. Whether their 'eommunions'
are reeognized as indeed in historie sueeession with the apostles is be-
side the point; what is signifieant is that they reeognize the need to be
part of the one ehureh eatholie, and in seeking to ineorporate the ehar-
ismatie and evangelieal elements into the historie forms of the ehureh,
they discover that the issues of apostolie sueeession, saeraments and
liturgy are inseparable.
Whether it is the growing eonseiousness of the sacramental and epis-
eopal dimensions of Penteeostal spirituality whieh led them to gravitate
towards the liturgy of the aneient ehureh ar the liturgy whieh awakens
their sacramental and episeopal eonseiousness, there is no question that
the liturgy has become for them the most appropriate avenue far ex-
pressing their Penteeostal sacramental and episeopal impulses. Perhaps
this is beeause in things that matter most to both Penteeostals and those
in the liturgieal traditions, they have diseovered a similar language for
expressing their eneounter with the ineffable God. For Penteeostals it
is, of course, glossolalia. In the Catholie tradition, Catherine Pickstock
has pointed out many linguistie phenomena in the medieval liturgy
whieh point to the mystery of God: the liturgieal 'stammer' , the repeti-
tion, and even a lack of order. 131 Just to highlight one example: the
eontinuous flow of the Creed without 'any disjunetive effeets of full-
stops,132 is funetionally very similar to the eontinuous outpouring of
glossolalie praises eommonly found in Penteeostal worship. In some
Eastern Orthodox liturgies, aeeording to Peter Galadza, the presenee of
the Spirit is signaled by the 'kalophonie eaeophony' - the dash of
ehants in different keys whieh reminds us of the eaeophony of tongues
on the day of Penteeost. 133 Their respeetive languages of eneounter
with the Mystery have the same logieal funetion, a kindred spirit. In
eonvergenee, Penteeostals will begin to discover that their most inti-
129 'Initial History and Growth of the CEEC' , http://www.theceec.org/htrnl

/history_oCthe_ceec.htrnl, accessed 27 February 2009.
130 Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, One with God, p. 114.
131 Catherine Pickstock, After Writing: On The Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), pp. 178, 190. Pickstock is referring to the medievalliturgy,
not the overly simplified post-Vatican II Roman missal.
132 Pickstock, After Writing, pp. 206-207.
133 Peter Galadza, 'The Holy Spirit in Eastern Orthodox Worship: Historical En-
fleshments and Contemporary Queries' in The Spirit in Worship - Worship in the Spirit,
p.137.
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mate language, the 'spirituallanguage' of the heart, is also the language

at the heart of the ancient liturgy. The saeramentality of glossolalia
finds its fulfillment in the Eucharist, 'the saerament of saeraments,134 and
the culminating event of the liturgy. The liturgy, far from stifling the
spontaneity of glossolalie utteranees, actually lends struetural support to
those utterances.
The Orthodox Nikos Nissiotis onee noted: 'We are superb pattern
makers but lack the equivalent skills to be practical technieians'.135 Or-
thodox theology has the strueture to make things work, but lacks the
praetitioners to put them to work. The opposite could be said of Pen-
tecostals: They have the praetitioners to do the job but lack the 'pat-
tern' to ensure that what they do is true, worthwhile, and enduring.
What Penteeostals need is to find that 'pattern' and work aecording to
it. They need an ecclesiology to ensure effeetive traditioning and the
faithful development ofPenteeostal faith and experienee. Perhaps if the
pattern makers and practical technicians eould learn ±rom one another
it will be to the great benefit of all. 136
134 Catechism ofthe Catholic Church (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1994), §1330.
135 Nikos Nissiotis, 'The Theology of the Church and its Accomplishrnent', p. 75.
136 In October 2010, the Orthodox and Pentecostals began official contact.
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Index of Modern Authors
Afunasiev, N. 110,111,115 Castro, E. 26

Aina,J. 117 Chan, S. 64, 99, 100, 104,
Albrecht, D. 101,118 105, 115, 123
Anderson, A. 49, 112, 113, Chesterton, G.K. 100
116 Cho, Y. 93,98, 104-105,
Archer, K.J. 1,117 117
Clifton, S. 1,3-4
Bacote, V.E. 15 Coffey, D. 42, 61, 99
Badcock, G. 10,35, 77-78, 80 Coloe, M.L. 75
Bae, Hyeon-sung 104, 117 Colwell, J. 116
Barth, K. 13, 20, 32-43, Congar, Y. 48,49,51,58,
46-49,54,69 67, 71, 74, 76, 78, 79, 81,
Beasley-Murray, G.R. 87-88, 91 86, 87, 88, 102, 108, 121
Bender, K.J. 34-35,37 Cox,H. 17, 116
Berger, T. 122-123 Cross, A.R. 116
Bryan D.S. 122-123
Bicknell, R. 117 D'Costa, G. 12, 13
Biddy, S.W. 117 Dabney, D.L. 7, 37, 60
Billings, J. T. 37 Dalferth, 1. U. 33
Bloesch, D. 38-40 Dayton, D.W. 2, 53
Bobrinskoy, B. 62 De Arteaga, W.L. 117-118
Bradshaw, P.F. 24,119-120 DeI Colle, R. 42, 61-62, 67, 78
Brown, R.E. 56-58, 62, 65 Dempster, M.A. 15, 101
Brunner, P. 110 Dix, G. 24
Buckley, J.J. 35 du Plessis, D 98
Bulgakov, S. 30-31, 52, 62 Dulles, A. 10, 79
Burgess, S.M. 97 Dunn, J.D.G. 55, 70
Calvin,J. 37-38, 59, 98 Edwards, J. 101
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Index,!! Modern Authors 139
Eichrodt, W. 55 Hütter, R. 35,46-47, 66

Ekmann, U. 118 Jenkins, P. 116
Ellis, C. 116 Jenson, R.W. 35,36,41, 51,
Elwood, D. 14 57,59,64
Johns, C.B. 100
Fanner, H.H. 100 Jones, Cheslyn 119
Fee, G. 23-24,77 Jungmann, JA. 24
Ferguson, S. 15,24
Fiddes, P. 44 Kärkkäinen, V-Mo 19,44,69,
Florovsky, G. 72 111,117,124
Fowler, S.K. 116 Kim, K. 14,21-22, 27
Freeman, C. 116 Kimball, D.A. 115
Kinnamon, M. 12
Galadza, P. 124 Kizhakkeparampil, I. 48, 49
Gamer, Duane 115 Kuyper, A. 15
Gibbs, E. 115
Goff,JR. 94 Ladd, G.E. 15
Grenz, S. 19,34,38 Land, S. 96, 99, 101
Groppe, E.T. 49 Lee, M. 46, 60
Guder, D.L. 52 Leithart, P.J. 22
Gunton, C. 20,27-28,40 Lewis, C.S. 11
Guroian, V. 22 Lincoln, A.T. 88
Longman, P. 84
Hannon, S.R. 116 Lossky, V. 8, 29, 59, 61, 62,
Hart, D.B. 96 63, 77-78, 84, 107, 108
Harvey, B. 116 Luther, M. 43,44-46
Hauerwas, S. 35
Hayford,J. 4, 99 Ma,W. 99,104,117
Healy, N. 34,35,36,38 Macchia, F.D. 2,17,20,52,56,
Heim, S.M. 13 74,94-95,96
Hick,J 21 MacIntyre, A. 7,21
Heron, A. 20 Mangina, JL. 35-37
Hocken, P. 102-103 Mannennaa, T. 44
Hollenweger, W. 49,96,116 Martin, D. 116
Holmes, S. 116 McDonnell, K. 51, 55
Hughes III, R.D. 87 McGee, Gary 97
Hunsberger, G.R. 34, 52 McLaren, B.D. 115
Hunter, H.D. 5, 18 McPartlan, P. 23, 28, 110
Husbands, M. 38 Medley, M. 116
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Menzies, R.P. 99 Saucy,M. 38,40

Meyendorff, J. 7,60,61 Schindler, D.L. 91
Minich,J. 115-116 Schmemann, A. 30,68, 109, 110,
Moltmann,J. 12,44,51,62, 114
83,106,114 Schnackenburg, R. 88-89
Moule, C.F.D. 23 Skira, J. Z. 29
Millen, H. 82 Smail, T. A. 23, 63, 82, 105,
Müller-Fahrenholz, G. 12, 16 107,121
Smith, J.K.A. 1
Newbigen, L. 34 Stackhouse, J.G. 38
Nienkirchen, C.W. 93 Stewart-Sykes, A. 24
Nissiotis, NA 25,35,48,51, Stubbs, D.L. 47
56, 60, 64, 81, 87, 125 Studebaker, S.M. 3
Suenens, L. J. 99
Ouspensky, L. 30 Sugden, C. 15
Sumner, G. 13
Pahl,L 110
Panikkar, R. 14, 21 Taylor,J. 101
Pannenberg, W. 16-19,23,26, Thomas, J. C. 53
64, 106-107 Thompson, P.E 116
Park, M.S. 117 Torrance, A.J. 20,63
Parker, D. 48 Turner, H. 116
Peterson, D. 75-76 Turner, M.M.B. 23, 56-58
Philippou, A.J. 67
Pickstock, C. 124 Ugolnik, A. 119
Pinnock, C. 17,20,24,44
Placher, W. 69 Van Gelder, C. 52
Prince,J. 118 van Rossum, J. 58
Vandervelde, G. 38-39, 78
Ratzinger, J. 66-67,81 Volf, M. 37,46,60,111
Reed, David 99, 102-104 Vondey, W. 5, 36, 52
Riss, R.M. 112
RobeckJr., C.M. 5, 18 Wagner, c.P. 69, 112-114
Rogers Jr., E.F. 36, 98 Wainwright, G. 24, 78, 119
Rosato, P. J. 13, 36 Wallace, M.L 12,14
Rybarczyk, E.J. 44, 95 Webster,J. 38, 40-41, 47
Welker, M. 18, 21
Samuel, V. 15 Wells, D. 34
Saracco N. 93 Wilkins,S. 115
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Index qf Modern Authors 141
Williams, D.H. 116

Work, T. 8,78
Wright, N.T. 5, 54, 55
Yeago, D.S. 45-46

Yocum, J. 35, 36, 37
Yong, A. 5,8,13,17-18,
69. 97
Zizioulas, J.D. 20, 23, 25-29,

42-44, 59, 65, 67-68, 85,
96, 107-110, 114
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Index of Biblical References
Genesis loel 1:11 90

1:3 16 2:28 55 1:14 39,54,
2:7 58 62, 64, 75
28:10-22 74 Matthew 1:18 75
28:17 74 3:11-12 55 1:26-27,33 55
5:46-47 84 2:19-21 64
Exodus 6:19 59 2:19,21 75
33:7-11 75 18:18 59 2:21 62,76,
40:34 75 27:50-51 75 88,89
2:22 76
Numbers Mark 3:8 JOO
7:89 75 1:8 55 3:14 54
11-12 75 1:9 64 3:19 90
1:12 64 5:41 86
1 Kings 1:14 64 6:46 54
8:27-28 75 1:14-15 70 7:18 86
1:21-34 70 7:37-39 95
Isaiah 14:58 76 8:28 54
43:19 90 15:37-38 75 12:23-24 54
16:20 95 12:31 91
leremiah 12:32 54
31:33-34 55 Luke 13:34 55,82
3:6 55 13:35 55
Ezekiel 23:45-56 75 14-16 56, 65, 87
36:26-27 55 24:45 58 14:8,9 54
37:14 55 24:49 56,95 14:12 65
39:29 55 14:15-17 88
lohn 14:16-26 56
1:5, 10 87 14:17 61,88
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Index cif Biblical Riferences 143
14:25-26 88 13:9-11 76 Ephesians

14:26 76,88 16:6-7 98 1:3 107
14:28 108-109 20:22, 23, 28 98 1:4 52,36
15:22 90 1:10-12 86
15:26 56,90 Romans 1:13-14 102
15:26-27 88 6:4 86 1:17-18 76,89
16:7 65,86 8:14-17,21,29 51 2:1-6 86
16:7-11 88 8:15 63 2:18 76, 108
16:8-11 88 8:21 28 2:20 87,88
16:9 76,90 8:22,23,26 70 2:20-22 62
16:10 90 8:26 70 2:21-22 76
16:12-15 88 8:29 36 2:21 86
16:13 57,90 2:22 64
16:13-14 90 1 Corinthians 3:5 88
16:14 71,86 1:3 107 3:16-19 62
17:1 54 3:16 86 4:1-2 87
20:19-23 78 3:16,17 77 4:3 87
20:21 58 3:17 64 4:4-5 87
20:22 58, 60, 67 6:15 77 4:11 88, 112
6:18 77 4:12-13 87
Acts 6:19 64,77 4:13 62
1:4,8 95 12:1-31 95 4:14-16 87
1:5 55 12:7-11 80 4:15 89
2:4 77 12:13 68, 80, 81 4:15-16 89
2:17 55,59 12:27 40,77 4:25 68
2:23-24 90 13 81 5:18 82
2:38 81 5:21 82
2:42 95 2 Corinthians 5:22-6:9 82
2:43 95 5:17 68,86
3:13-15 90 6:16 64,77 Philippians
4:8 77,95 13:14 55,81, 2:1-3 85
8:20 81 105 2:1-4 87
9:17 77 2:9-11 86
10:45 81 Galatians
11:12 98 1:1 107 Colossians
11:16 55 4:4-6 51 2:7 88
13:1 88 4:6 63,82 2:9-10 76
13:4 98 4:26 78
13:9 77
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1 Timothy
3:15 68
Hebrews
6:4 81
12:28 95
1 Peter
1:20 52
2:4-5 76,89
2:4-9 66
2:5 86
2:9 86
1John
1:1-3 53
4:12 39
Revelation
13:8 52
21:2 31
21:12, 14 31
21:17 31
21-22 30
22:3b-4 21
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Journal ofPentecostal Theology
Supplement Series
1. Steven]. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passionfor the Kingdom. ISBN 1 85075442 X.

2. Cheryl Bridges Johns, Pentecostal Formation: A Pedagogy among the Oppressed. ISBN
1 85075 438 1.
3. ** Jon Ruthven, On the Cessation of the Charismata: The Protestant Polemic on
Miracles. ISBN 1 85075 405 5. ** Out of print. NEW EDITION: see no. 33.
4. Harold D. Hunter & Peter D. Hocken (eds.), All Together in One Place: Theological
Papers from the Brighton Conference on World Evangelization. ISBN 1 85075 406 3.
5. Mark Wilson (ed.), Spirit and Renewal: Essays in Honor of J. Rodman Williams.
ISBN 1 85075 471 3.
6. Robert P. Menzies, Empowered for Witness: The Spirit in Luke-Acts. ISBN 1 85075
7216.
7. Stephen E. Parker, Led by the Spirit: Toward a Practical Theology of Pentecostal Dis-
cemment and Decision Making. ISBN 1 85075746 1.
8. Larry R. McQueen, Joel and the Spirit: The Cry of a Prophetic Hermeneutic. ISBN 1
850757364.
9. Max Turner, Power from on High: The Spirit in Israel's Restoration and Witness in
Luke-Acts. ISBN 1 850757569.
10. ** D. William Faupel, The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the
Development of Pentecostal Thought. ISBN 1 85075 761 5. ** REPRINT by DEO
11. W onsuk Ma & Robert P. Menzies, Pentecostalism in Context: Essays in Honor of
William W. Menzies. ISBN 1 85075 803 4.
12. John Michael Penny, The Missionary Emphasis of Lukan Pneumatology. ISBN 1
85075800 X.
13. John Christopher Thomas, The DeviI, Disease, and Deliverance: Origins of fllness in
New Testament Thought. ISBN 1 850758697.
14. Samuel Solivan, The Spirit, Pathos and Liberation: Toward an Hispanic Pentecostal
Theology. ISBN 1 85075 942 1.
15. Allan H. Anderson & Walter]. Hollenweger, Pentecostals cifter a Century: Global
Perspectives on a Movement in Transition. ISBN 1 841270067.
16. Roger Stronstad, The Prophethood of All Believers: A Study in Luke's Charismatic
Theology. ISBN 1 84127 005 9.
17. Daniel E. Albrecht, Rites in the Spirit: A Ritual Approach to PentecostallCharismatic
Spirituality. ISBN 1 84127 017 2.
18. Blaine Charette, Restoring Presence: The Spirit in Matthew's Gospel. ISBN 1 84127
0598.
19. Matthias Wenk, Community Forming Power: The Socio-Ethical Role of the Spirit in
Luke-Acts. ISBN 1 84127 125 X.
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20. Amos Yong, Disceming the Spirit(s): A Pentecostal-Charismatic Contribution to Chris-
tian Theology <if Religions. ISBN 1 84127 133 O.
21. Simon Chan, Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition. ISBN 1
841271446.
22. Gerald Hovenden, Speaking in Tongues: The New Testament Evidence in Context.
ISBN 1 841273076.
23. Lynne Price, Theology out <if Place: A Theological Biography <if WalterJ. Hollenweger.
ISBN 0 82646 028 3.
24. Wonsuk Ma & Robert P. Menzies, The Spirit and Spirituality: Essays in Honour <if
Russell P. Spittler. ISBN 0 56708 167 2.
25. Peter Althouse, Spirit of the Last Days: Pentecostal Eschatology in Conversation with
Jürgen Moltmann. ISBN 0 82647 1625.
26. Martin William Mittelstadt, The Spirit and Sr!ffering in Luke-Acts: Implications for a
Pentecostal Pneumatology. ISBN 0 82647 164 1.
27. S. David Moore, The Shepherding Movement: Controversy and Charismatic Ecclesiol-
ogy. ISBN 082647 1609.
28. Kenneth J. Archer, A Pentecostal Hermeneutic for the Twenty-First Century: Spirit,
Scripture and Community. ISBN 0 56708 367 5.
Volumes 1-28 were originally published by Shfjfield Academic Press/Continuum.

Subsequent titles are published by Deo Publishing under ISSN 0966 7393:
29. Kimberly Ervin Alexander, Pentecostal Healing: Models in Iheology and

Practice. ISBN 90 5854 031 6 / 978 90 5854 031 7.
30. Robby WaddelI, Ihe Spirit of the Book qf Revelation. ISBN 90 5854030 8
/ 978 90 5854 030 o.
31. David Reed, "In Jesus' Name": Ihe History and Beliifs <if Oneness Pentecos-
tals. ISBN 978 1 905679 01 O.
32. Lee Roy Martin, Ihe Unheard Voice of God. A Pentecostal Hearing <if the
Book <ifJudges. ISBN 978 1 905679072.
33. Jon Ruthven, On the Cessation of the Charismata: Ihe Protestant Polemic on
Post-biblical Miracles. Revised edition of no. 3. ISBN 978 1 905679 04 1.
34. Opoku Onyinah, Pentecostal Exorcism: Witchmift and Demonology in Ghana.
ISBN 978 1 905679 06 5.
35. Riekie D. Moore, Ihe Spirit <if the Old Testament. ISBN 978 1 905679 11
9.
36. Stephen J. Land, Riekie D. Moore, and John Christopher Thomas, eds.,
Passover, Pentecost, and Parousia: Studies in Celebration cif the Life and Ministry
cif R. Hollis Gause. ISBN 978 1 905679 12 6.
37. Matthew K. Thompson, Kingdom Come: Revisioning Pentecostal Eschatology.
ISBN 978 1 905679 14 o.
38. Simon Chan, Pentecostal Ecclesiology. ISBN 978 1 905679 157.
Note: Pentecostal Commentary series titles are now also published by Deo Publishing.
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Pentecostal Ecclesiology

Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9

John Christopher Thomas

ISSN 0966 7393

Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9

An Essay on the Development oJ Doctrine

Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9

Copyright © 2011 Deo Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated,

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data

Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9

the Orthodox and Pentecostal panelists

the Pentecostal-Orthodox Dialogues

May their efforts,

Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9

Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9

Bibliography .......................................................................................... 126

Index of Modern Authors ..................................................................... 138

Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9

The number of books on ecclesiology by evangelical scholars within

Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9

ism has a lot more to offer eompared to evangeliealism and mainline

Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9

The Pentecostal movement as a revival movement has always been

I The Assemblies of God National Evangelist Office sponsored a major conference

Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9

by Donald W. Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Grand Rapids: Francis Asbury

ids: Zondervan, 2006).

tology', Journal of Pentecostal Theology 11.2 (2003), pp. 248-70.

Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9

person is Shane Clifton of the Assemblies of God in Australia who has

7 Shane Clifton, 'The Spirit and Doctrinal Development: A Functional Analysis of

Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9

Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9

Doctrinal development is about the future of the church which is part

(Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003).

dey', Pneuma 28.2 (Fall 2006), pp. 319-20.

Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9

modem Pentecostal scholars. Its rejection is symptomatic of a disturb-

field: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), pp. 49-57.

Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9

liturgical tradition a new infusion of spiritual vitality. A genuine devel-

18 Paraphrasing Alasdair MacIntyre's understanding of tradition in After Virtue: A

Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9

Chapter 2) Pentecostals would do weIl to look further afield. Much of

Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9

Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9

spiritual affinities, in order to give it an ecclesial shape. By engaging the

Badcock, The House Where God Lives, p. 6.

Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9

appreciate better the Pentecostal dimension of the church as a practical

Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9

Spirit, Creation, and Church:

(Geneva: WCC, 1991).

Howard A. Snyder, Models of the Kingdom (Nashville: Abingdon, 1991).

Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9

riology, but his pneumatological proposal is framed within a creation-centered narra-

Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9

'ecological pneumatology' (p. 9).

Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9

account of this Calvinistic vision is Abraham Kuyper. 12 A second fea-

12 Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987); Vincent

Simon K.H. Chan - 978-90-04-39714-9