TOWARD A PENTECOSTAL THEOLOGY

OF THE LORD’S SUPPER

FORETASTING THE KINGDOM

 TOWARD A
PENTECOSTAL THEOLOGY
OF THE LORD’S SUPPER

FORETASTING THE KINGDOM

Chris E.W. Green

CPT Press
Cleveland, Tennessee
 DEDICATION
To Nan and Paz, for all your incredible generosity and support
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Abbreviations
Chapter 1
Introduction
Purpose and Focus of the Study
Structure and Flow of the Argument
Chapter 2
The Sacraments in Pentecostal Perspective(s):
A Bibliographic Review
Introduction
Reading Pentecostals on the Sacraments
Conclusions
Chapter 3
(Re)Discovering the Sacramentality of Early Pentecostalism: An
Exploration of the Early Periodical Literature
Prolegomena
Wesleyan-Holiness Periodicals
Finished Work Periodicals
The Boddys and British Pentecostalism:
Confidence Magazine
Early Pentecostal Sacramentality:
Summary and Conclusions
Chapter 4
The Lord’s Supper in the Church’s Scripture
Introduction
(Re)Imagining a Pentecostal Hermeneutic
Eating the Word: Eucharistic Theology in the
Conclusions: Toward a New Testament Theology of
the Eucharist
Chapter 5
Toward a Pentecostal Theology of the Lord’s Supper:
Discernment and Construction
Introduction
Prescription: What is Required of Us?
 Promise: What Does God Do for Us?
Presence: How Does God Do What God Does?
Praxis: What Does This Mean for Pentecostal Thought
Chapter 6
Contributions and Suggestions for Further Research
Contributions
Implications and Suggestions for Further Study
Bibliography
PREFACE
It seems most fitting to begin a book dedicated to the Eucharist by giving thanks
to those who have made it possible. So, first, I want to thank my Doktorvater,
John Christopher Thomas, who has provided skillful and wise direction at every
stage in the process of developing and completing this work. To my
grandparents, Nan and Paz; my mom and dad, Robert and LaCrisa Green; my
parents-in-law, Chuck and Irene Niemyer; and everyone at Divine Life Church, I
want to say that I am beyond grateful for your tremendous generosity and
constant support. A special thanks is due to a host of other friends as well,
including my fellow PhD students and a number of colleagues at Oral Roberts
University, Southwestern Christian University, and – as of this
summer – Pentecostal Theological Seminary. I need to mention, in particular,
Jeff Lamp and Don Vance. How many times I held them captive in heavy
conversation for hours on end and they never failed to provide valuable
affirmation and critique. Obviously, my greatest debt is to my wife, Julie, and to
my kids, Zoë and Clive. Over the past few years, they have reordered their lives
to make room for me to devote myself to this work, and somehow they did it
joyfully, always believing in me and cheering me on along the way.
The idea for this book began to germinate years ago during undergraduate
conversations with my good friend, Dr Doug Beacham, and grew to form over
time in worship at Divine Life Church, where we celebrated weekly Communion
and devoted many times together to teaching and to prayerful study and
reflection on the meaning of the Eucharist-event for us as a community. Without
that experience, and the many mysterious effects it worked on my heart and
mind, I simply would not have had the power to imagine the shape of this work
and the energy necessary to complete it.
My work, whatever its faults, is rooted and grounded in the Pentecostal
tradition; and though some of the roots no doubt run under the wall, it is
intended first and foremost as a conversation starter for the Pentecostal
communities. Nothing would please me more than for the book, in spite of its
weaknesses and limitations, in some way to contribute to a renewal of
Pentecostal sacramental thought and practice. Of course, I also hope the
branches reach over the wall so that Christians of other traditions find good fruit
as well.
I am honored to publish this work with CPT Press, to have it listed in the
company of landmark works like John Christopher Thomas’ The Devil, Disease
and Deliverance, Steven Land’s Pentecostal Spirituality, Roger Stronstad’s The
Prophethood of All Believers, Larry McQueen’s Joel and the Spirit, and Ken
Archer’s A Pentecostal Hermeneutic. I hope my own work is received as
companion to works like these.
ABBREVIATIONS
Early Pentecostal Periodicals
AF The Apostolic Faith
CE The Christian Evangel
COGE The Church of God Evangel
LRE The Latter Rain Evangel
PE The Pentecostal Evangel
PHA The Pentecostal Holiness Advocate
PT Pentecostal Testimony
TBM The Bridegroom’s Messenger
TP The Pentecost
WE Weekly Evangel
WW Word and Witness

Other
AJPS Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies
ANF A Select Library of Ante-Nicene Fathers
ATR Anglican Theology Review
BEM Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, Faith and Order Paper No. 111
(Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982).
BNTC Black’s New Testament Commentary Series
BTC Brazos Theological Commentary Series
CPT Centre for Pentecostal Theology
DPCM Burgess, S.M. et al. (eds.), Dictionary of Pentecostal and
Charismatic Movements (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988).
IJST International Journal of Systematic Theology
IVP InterVarsity Press
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JEPTA Journal of European Pentecostal Theology Association
JETS Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
JPT Journal of Pentecostal Theology
JPTSup Journal of Pentecostal Theology Supplement Series
JSNTS Journal for the Study of New Testament Supplement Series
NIDPCM Burgess, S.M. and E.M. van der Maas (eds.), The New International
Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 2003).
NPNF A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers
NTT New Testament Theology Commentary Series
OUP Oxford University Press
Pneuma Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies
SBL Society of Biblical Literature
SNTSMS Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas Monograph
Series
SVS St Vladimir’s Seminary Press
SVTQ St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly
TPNTC Pillar New Testament Commentary Series
WJKP Westminster John Knox Press
1
INTRODUCTION
Purpose and Focus of the Study
The purpose of this study is to develop a distinctly Pentecostal theology of the
Lord’s Supper that contributes to the larger project of ‘revisioning’ Pentecostal
theology.[1] Owing to the fact (or at least perception) that Pentecostals have
devoted comparatively little attention to the sacraments, this study is needed.[2]
Several presuppositions undergird the structure and flow of the argument.
First, as a ‘living tradition’, Pentecostalism can and should be revisioned
constantly without betraying itself or losing its character.[3]
Second, in the effort to revision itself faithfully, Pentecostal theology should
be informed by a critical conversation with the earliest years of the movement;
for, as Walter Hollenweger first argued, the spirituality of early Pentecostalism
represents the heart and not the infancy of the movement.[4]
Third, it is necessary for a self-consciously Pentecostal theology to be as
concerned with method as it is with content. For, as Terry Cross and others have
contended, Pentecostal experience makes possible and so calls for the
articulation of a unique theological methodology.[5]
Fourth, owing to the role of Scripture in the tradition, Pentecostal theology
should be deeply biblical, rooted in and directed by the reading of the canonical
scriptures. However, this affirmation alone is not enough. A Pentecostal
approach to Scripture requires a hermeneutical strategy that remains at all points
in keeping with the core convictions of the movement’s spiritual and theological
tradition. Such a hermeneutic would include inter alia narrative sensitivity, a
concern for canonical context, and even go so far as to take seriously the texts’
effective history, including but not limited to the witness of early Pentecostal
interpretations.
Fifth, Pentecostal theology necessarily concerns itself with praxis, with what
the proposed claims mean for the church’s life in mission and worship.[6] Put
differently, Pentecostal theology in order to be true to itself, must carry through
‘theory’ and systemization to engagement with ‘real life’ issues and the specific
concretions of the church’s critical and reflective thought in the life of adoration,
witness, and discipleship. In other words, attempts at articulating orthodox
theologoumena must always already concern themselves with orthopraxy as
well.
Sixth, Pentecostal theology should be conversant with the theological
tradition(s) of the church catholic, so that the finished product is not only
distinctly Pentecostal but also recognizably Christian. Although this study is not
intended first and foremost as a contribution to the ecumenical conversation, it
assumes that ecumenical resonance is one of the final tests for the viability of
any proposed theologoumena. Also, as Simon Chan and others have insisted, I
assume that Pentecostals have much to learn from as well as to teach their
ecumenical partners.[7]
Structure and Flow of the Argument
Given the assumptions that guide this study, the argument begins (Chapter 2)
with a survey of the scholarly literature, documenting what Pentecostal scholars
have said and are saying about the sacraments in general and the Lord’s Supper
in particular.
Chapter 3 includes a careful reading of the early Pentecostal periodical
materials, following the model Kimberly Ervin Alexander used in her work on
early Pentecostal soteriologies and healing practices.[8] A wide range of material
is covered, both in terms of chronology (from 1906-1931) and in terms of the
various denominations and movements (e.g. the Wesleyan-Holiness and Finished
Work ‘streams’) within early Pentecostalism. This reading seeks to search out
and to sketch the contours of early Pentecostal sacramentality on its own terms.
Chapter 3 ends with a summation of the sacramental convictions and habits that
characterized the earliest days of the movement.
Chapter 4 makes two discrete contributions: it opens with the development of
a proposed Pentecostal interpretive strategy in conversation with an emerging
Pentecostal hermeneutical paradigm, and informed by this engagement with
early Pentecostal sacramentality turns next to sustained narrative-theological
readings of three New Testament Eucharistic texts. In these readings, I draw
heavily on the texts’ ‘effective history’, allowing what the texts have meant to
other Christian readers, pre-modern and contemporary, to influence the shape of
my own reading.
Chapter 5 is devoted to a constructive Pentecostal theology of the Eucharist,
addressing in detail those issues that are judged to be especially important to
Pentecostals. This includes questions of how God works in and through the
church’s celebration of the Communion rite and how Christ and the Spirit are
personally present and active in the eating and drinking of the Eucharistic bread
and the wine. Considerable attention is devoted to issues of praxis, including an
exploration of how it is that frequent, regular participation in the Eucharist might
be done without betraying Pentecostal distinctives.
The study concludes (Chapter 6) with a description of major contributions and
an invitation to further research.
2
THE SACRAMENTS IN PENTECOSTAL
PERSPECTIVE(S): A BIBLIOGRAPHIC
REVIEW
Introduction
It is widely believed – both within and without the movement – that
Pentecostals[9] have given comparatively little attention to sacramental thinking
and practice, and the facts are that Pentecostals often have spoken about the
sacraments in predominantly negative terms, articulating what they do not
believe regarding the sacraments rather than positively stating their beliefs. This
is far from the whole of the story, however. Recently, Pentecostal scholars have
been devoting increased attention to the sacraments, sometimes with a view to
developing a self-consciously Pentecostal theology of the sacraments. With those
developments in mind, this chapter examines the state of Pentecostal theological
reflection with regard to the sacraments, generally, and the Eucharist,
specifically. For the most part, this chapter restricts itself to engagement with
scholarly Pentecostal works, and while it does not claim to be exhaustive, it
does aim to engage the key influential works of leading Pentecostals from
various corners of the tradition. These works are engaged in chronological order,
ranging from 1932 to present day. This chapter, then, is set aside exclusively for
engagement with Pentecostal theological scholarship, but a separate chapter is
devoted to the literature of the first generation of Pentecostals (from 1906-1931),
and the constructive part of the thesis (Chapter 5) engages key ecumenical
voices and non-Pentecostal assessments of Pentecostal sacramentality.
Reading Pentecostals on the Sacraments
Myer Pearlman
In a 1934 Pentecostal Evangel article, Myer Pearlman, who published the first
systematic treatment of doctrine from a Pentecostal perspective, orders his
thoughts on the Lord’s Supper as an exposition of Paul’s instructions to the
Corinthians (1 Cor. 11.23-26). He designates the Supper as ‘the distinctive rite of
Christian worship’ and the church’s ‘most sacred rite’.[10] The meal, Pearlman
explains,
consists of the religious partaking of bread and wine, which, after having been
presented to God the Father in memorial of Christ’s inexhaustible sacrifice,
becomes a means of grace whereby we are inspired to an increased faith and
faithfulness to Him who loved us and redeemed us.[11]
The celebration of the Lord’s Supper, he believes, is a ‘means of grace’
because it communicates a triad of values to the church. First, it ‘sets forth
symbolically the two fundamental doctrines of the gospel: the Incarnation and
the Atonement’.[12] Second, it serves as ‘the most impressive means for
continually presenting before our minds and hearts the central fact of His life’; it
manages to do this because it ‘enlists the services of three senses, sight, taste,
and touch’ to remind us of Christ’s work on our behalf. This is exactly what
Christ intended in instituting the Supper, because he ‘foresaw our need of being
regularly reminded of what He means to us’. Third, the Lord’s Supper has
inspirational value. It ‘stirs our souls’[13] and provokes God-ward adoration and
worship and passion for mission and evangelism.
Pearlman finds an immensity of meaning in the symbols of bread and wine.
As he sees it, the bread of the Table teaches us that Christ is ‘the food of the
soul’ that we must consume; the wine, that we can be partakers of the divine life
and nature. Somewhat bizarrely, Pearlman compares the eating and drinking of
the Communion elements to the ‘savage’ custom of eating a victim’s heart in
order to ‘partake of his spirit’.[14] Affection is critically important to proper
receiving of the Lord’s Supper. When Paul warns against partaking ‘unworthily’,
Pearlman understands this as a caution against partaking ‘irreverently’. That
occurs, he believes, ‘when a person approaches the Lord's table, intoxicated so to
speak, by a wrong emotion that blinds him for the time being to the true
significance and appreciation of the sacred ordinance’.[15]
Nearly a decade later, Pearlman addresses the issue again. He continues to
hold that baptism and the Supper, known by the church as sacraments because
‘they are ceremonies by which we show outwardly our devotion to the Lord
Jesus Christ’,[16] are ‘means of grace’ – along with prayer, church attendance,
and Bible reading – by which we may grow spiritually’, provided we partake
‘intelligently’.[17] By this Pearlman means a discernment of the spiritual
realities ‘beyond’ the bread and wine.
Let us also remember that as we partake of the emblems we are to look
beyond them, and beyond the server, and see the Lord Jesus Christ Himself,
who said, ‘I am the Bread of Life’. Beyond the wine we must see His shed
blood, which is His divine life poured out for us. The Head of the church will
Himself administer the Sacrament, as we receive Him by faith.[18]
In conclusion, Pearlman reminds his readers to prepare carefully for the
celebration of Holy Communion, for ‘in the communion service we signify the
fact that we are having fellowship with the Son of God Himself’.[19]
Ernest Swing Williams
In the third installment of his three-volume systematics, Assembly of God
theologian and church officer E.S. Williams devotes a chapter to the ‘ordinances
of the church’. He lists two: water baptism and the Lord’s Supper; no mention is
made of footwashing.[20] The Christian rite of water baptism, according to
Williams, ‘signifies our identification with Christ’. He is careful to insist that the
water rite is not a ‘saving ordinance’, but merely ‘follows, or accompanies
repentance and salvation’.[21] Infant baptism – a practice he repudiates,
devoting considerable space to arguments against it – is both flatly ‘unscriptural’
and in the final analysis unnecessary, in Williams’ opinion, because ‘baptism
makes no change’ in the infants’ relation to God for they are already ‘saved
through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus’ so long as they die ‘before
accountability’. It would seem that the question of the appropriateness of infant
baptism was a critical issue in debates of the time, because Williams
acknowledges that if it were not for the fact that some consider infant baptism a
saving ordinance, he would not object to the use of water in the dedication of
children, for Jesus himself ‘put His approval on the use of different material
elements in association with faith in Him’.[22] As it is that many abuse the
practice, however, he must stand against it in no uncertain terms.
Comparatively speaking, Williams devotes little space to the Lord’s Supper,
slightly more than a paragraph, in fact. After observing that many refer to the
Lord’s Supper as the Eucharist ‘because of [the] thanks offered before the
Sacrament’,[23] he quotes from an unnamed theological dictionary that defines a
sacrament as ‘an outward ceremony of the Church, ordained as a visible sign of
an inward and spiritual grace … a sign of the union of the soul with God’.[24]
Williams does not distance himself from this definition, leaving the quotation to
stand without comment, which would seem to indicate some form of basic
agreement. He concludes his brief treatment of the Lord’s Supper with four one-
sentence summary statements: (1) the Lord’s Supper has ‘taken the place of the
Passover’, (2) the Supper ‘shows forth the death of Christ, with promise of His
return’, (3) the Supper ‘is to be partaken of in a worthy manner’, and (4) the
Supper ‘signifies our union with Christ and with one another’.[25] After each
statement, he parenthetically cites Scripture references as support for his
assertions.
C.E. Bowen
In the mid-1950’s, C.E. Bowen, a licensed minister in the Church of God
(Cleveland, TN), published a book-length treatment of footwashing and the
Lord’s Supper.[26] In keeping with the ethos of the Pentecostal movement,
Bowen emphasized the importance of obeying Jesus in observing the instituted
ordinances, and of imitating him in the enacting of the rites.[27] And he is
careful to connect the institution of the rites of Communion and footwashing
also to Israel’s history: nearly half the book is devoted to an exploration of the
myriad connections between Israel’s rituals and experiences of God and the
church’s observance of the dominically-instituted sacraments. As Bowen sees it,
the Lord’s Supper has replaced the Passover;[28] the Passover pointed forward
to Christ’s death, whereas Communion points forward to Christ’s ‘second
coming’; the Resurrection made Passover obsolete.[29]
Like many of his Pentecostal brothers and sisters of the time, Bowen was
convinced that the Supper was a means of healing for those who received the
meal in faith. The Supper, when properly observed and received in faith, is not
only a ‘symbol’ of Christ’s atoning death but also a ‘spiritual feast of good
things’.[30] At the Table, he says, ‘we are taking into our beings life and power
to heal our bodies …’[31] He is confident:
… if we come together in faith to commemorate the death of Jesus Christ and
in the proper order, we will not be weak and sickly as was the Corinthian
Church. For if we are sick when we meet, we can be healed while we eat the
bread – a symbol of his body – if our heart is right in the sight of God, and we
discern the Lord’s body and it broken for us. Seeing the purpose and believing
with all of our heart and accepting the provision made for us in the atonement,
we can go away from this supper with strong bodies, possibly live a much
longer life and a more useful life in the service of God.[32]
 Bowen is troubled that so few churches observe the Supper and footwashing
frequently and that fewer still do so with genuine appreciation for the rites’
power and beauty. Those who come to the Table only once a quarter ‘do not
know what they are missing’. He believes that churches should celebrate
Communion at least once a month,[33] and that this can be done without descent
into mere ritualism. If Roman Catholics err, it is not from observing the Supper
too often.[34]
M.A. Tomlinson
In 1961, while he served as the general overseer of the Church of God of
Prophecy, M.A. Tomlinson, the son of A.J. Tomlinson and brother of Homer
Tomlinson, published a collection of his radio sermons under the title Basic
Bible Beliefs. In the book, he dedicates several sermons to the three ordinances:
water baptism, Holy Communion, and footwashing. He acknowledges that
almost every Christian denomination and movement recognizes some ordinance
which ‘makes use of the bread and the fruit of the vine’, whether they refer to
this rite as the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, or the Sacrament.[35]
Regardless of superficial differences, he stands convinced that the reasons for its
observance are the same for all Christians. It would seem, then, ‘hardly
necessary’ to speak at length or in any detail of the meaning and purpose of the
Lord’s Supper. Inexplicably, however, some individuals fail to realize ‘the
importance of observing the Lord’s Supper and the great spiritual blessings that
can be obtained from it’.[36] Tomlinson admits that he cannot countenance the
arrogance of those who refuse to take the Lord’s Supper or observe it only rarely,
and he draws on a biblical analogy to reprove them:
If such terrible vengeance were pronounced upon those who failed in the
observance of the Passover, how much more do we displease God if we fail to
commemorate the death of His Son who was wounded for our transgressions
…[37]
To him, the issue is as straightforward as it can be: given the command of Jesus
and the promise of God, the believer should be ‘eager to partake of the Supper at
every opportunity’,[38] a claim that perhaps reveals his indebtedness to the
Wesleyan sacramental heritage.
James L. Slay
In the early 1960’s, missionary James L. Slay authored and published This We
Believe, a text that served as an official training course for the Church of God
(Cleveland, TN). He opens the chapter dedicated to the doctrine of the church’s
ordinances with a caveat: Church of God worship is spontaneous and simple, in
keeping with the ‘primitive Christian church’; therefore, only three ordinances
are observed, and these are accepted only because they have clear biblical and
apostolic approval.[39] In his judgment, so long as worshippers are ‘really led of
the Spirit’, then no ‘prescribed liturgical form’ is necessary, for the Spirit ‘will
govern our activity’.[40]
Slay takes up the ordinance of water baptism first. In keeping with the
prevailing opinion in the Pentecostal movement at the time, Slay insists on so-
called ‘believer’s baptism’. The waters of baptism do not save, he says, so only
those who have already been regenerated may properly be baptized. Put another
way, baptism is nothing less or more than ‘the profession of a spiritual change
already wrought’ prior to and entirely apart from the rite of washing. Baptism,
then, is not for the sake of the convert but for the sake of the convert’s friends,
family, and fellow believers. ‘People are baptized, not in order to be saved, but
to show others that they are really saved.’[41] Infants are not to be baptized, for
the Church of God ‘has found no Scriptures which would implicitly or explicitly
warrant a belief in infant baptism’.[42] Although he does not provide any
historical support for the claim, Slay states that paedobaptism was not an
apostolic teaching but ‘came about as a result of the influence of sacramentalism
in the early days of Christianity’.[43]
A certain disdain for ‘sacramentalism’ permeates Slay’s work. In his view, the
rite of the Lord’s Supper has been ‘grossly perverted’ by the church and ‘so
misinterpreted and abused as to subvert many and cause dissension’ among
believers is unsurprising.[44] Slay finds it appalling that the erroneous view of
the Catholics persists in spite of the plain witness of Scripture; although he does
not believe it should be necessary, he nonetheless takes space to address the
notions of transubstantiation and consubstantiation, the latter of which he finds
as nothing less than a ‘Lutheran compromise’ with the former mistaken,
unbiblical position.[45] These doctrines, he maintains, are ‘falsely based’ on
Jesus’ statements: ‘This is my body’ and ‘This is my blood’. It is ‘certain’, Slay
believes, that Jesus could not have been speaking ‘literally’; his words were
intended metaphorically. ‘The bread, crumbled in His hands, was not His flesh,
but a symbol of His broken body.’[46] The wine, similarly, was ‘only a symbol
of His efficacious outpouring’.[47] Slay admits that ‘our Lord undoubtedly used
the fermented juice of the grape’, but he does not find the Church of God’s use
of unfermented grape juice an unwarranted departure.[48] Unlike Roman
Catholics, who forbid the cup to communicants, Slay insists that everyone
should partake of both elements.
Given his distaste for the high sacramentalism of the Catholic and Lutheran
traditions, it might be found surprising that Slay believes the Lord’s Supper
belongs at the heart of the Pentecostal life. In his judgment, the ‘believing and
victorious Christian’ partakes of the Communion meal ‘as often as possible’, for
in so doing the believer responds to ‘a divinely appointed ordinance’,
commemorates ‘the death and victory of Christ for himself’, and obtains
‘inspiration and assurance for the current Christian conflict’.[49] In keeping with
his Pietistic leanings, Slay insists on the importance of the participants’
affections. The Supper should be celebrated with ‘joyful reverence’, never
‘casually nor with a spirit of frivolity or irreverence’, and should be observed
often enough ‘to keep Calvary fresh’ in the minds of the participants, but ‘not too
often to cheapen its value or minimize its significance’.[50]
Walter Hollenweger
Walter Hollenweger’s pathbreaking work on Pentecostalism, first published in
German in 1969 by R. Brockhaus (Wuppertal) as Enthusiastisches
Christentium: die Pfingstbewegung in Geschichte und Gegenwart, devotes
considerable attention to early Pentecostal understanding of the sacraments. He
begins with the observation that so far no ‘fully developed Eucharistic doctrine
in the Pentecostal movement’ has emerged.[51] According to him, Pentecostals,
at least typically, exhibit in their explicit theological statements – insofar as such
statements are made at all – what is best identified as a version of the Zwinglian
understanding of the Lord’s Supper. He finds that a tension between liturgical
rubrics and the dynamic, charismatic work of the Spirit remains ever-present,
especially among the older, classical Pentecostal denominations. In his view,
however, the distrust of liturgical rites and the relative lack of theological
sophistication do not efface the vibrancy of Pentecostal liturgical practice, even
though it exists under another name. In fact, as he sees it, Pentecostals evidence
‘a clear and well-developed pattern of Eucharistic devotion and practice’.[52] He
readily admits that this seems surprising, given that Pentecostals belong to the
free-church tradition and emphasize the believer’s immediate experience of the
Spirit. Nonetheless, his study of various Pentecostal movements convinces him
that the celebration of the Eucharist rite is the ‘central point of Pentecostal
worship’, a veritable ‘holy of holies’ of the worship service. To underscore the
point, he cites the Italian Assemblee di Dio’s statement that speaks of the Lord’s
Supper symbolizing Jesus’ sacrificial death and the doctrinal declaration by the
Congregacao Crista that the Eucharist is a means of ‘intimate communion’ with
Christ.
In Hollenweger’s judgment, in spite of the fact that Pentecostals come to the
Table out of a sense of obligation – the chapter in his book is entitled: ‘“To
Them that Obey Him”: The Sacraments’ – Pentecostals nonetheless ‘expect from
this communion with the Son of God the strengthening of their inner being,
strength in everyday temptations, and the healing of sickness’.[53] This is due to
what he believes is the distinctive character of Pentecostal sacramentality:
… a combination of the ‘love of Jesus’, that is love for the faithful friend who
is called Jesus, ‘blood and wounds mysticism’, an absorption in the suffering
and death of Jesus, and a looking forward to the coming marriage feast with
Jesus, in the experience of the sacrament.[54]
He also finds in certain aspects of Pentecostal Eucharistic devotion – especially
their understanding of the meal as a community event, not restricted to a priestly
caste or even to the pastor and deacons – a prophetic critique of the church
catholic and its sacerdotal practices.[55]
Raymond Pruitt
In 1981, Raymond Pruitt, an ordained minister in the Church of God of
Prophecy, published his Fundamentals of the Faith. The foreword, written by
General Overseer M.A. Tomlinson, describes the book as ‘a rather
comprehensive work’ and an ‘introduction to doctrinal studies’, although he does
not give the book official sanction and admits that some of the contents may not
meet with universal approval on all points. Pruitt addresses himself to the
ordinances (as usual: water baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and footwashing) in the
chapter dedicated to the ‘membership, function, and destiny of the church’.[56]
He prefaces his remarks about the ordinances with a brief word about the
inexpressible depth of human communication. ‘Words are inadequate to express
the deeper meanings even of human relationships, to say nothing of those
transcendent, indescribable experiences with God.’ No words, regardless of how
expertly written or spoken, can express love as well as ‘the touch of a hand, the
affectionate kiss, the light of the eyes, or the radiance of the face’. He finds it
undeniable, then, that these non-verbal ‘signs and symbols’ sometimes serve as
better, more effective communiqués of certain dimensions of meaning than do
words. ‘A single tear coursing down the cheek expresses sorrow better than ten
thousand words.’ It follows, then, that ‘the experiences of the soul and spirit are
best expressed in the universal language of signs and symbols’. Given this, it
should come as a surprise to no one that Christ has given his Church such
‘means of expression in the ordinances, or sacraments, which He has instituted’.
[57] This does not mean, however, that the signs and symbols themselves
actually impart ‘spiritual grace’. They are not sacraments in that sense, Pruitt
says, for they are only ‘expressions of what has been imparted through our
relationship with Christ’ immediately by the Spirit.[58] For instance, he holds
that the Lord’s Supper commemorates Jesus’ death; that is to say, it portrays the
realities of redemption, and symbolizes both the believer’s ‘participation in the
crucified Christ’ and believers’ union with one another.[59] In the same way that
water baptism substituted for circumcision, the Lord’s Supper substitutes for the
Old Testament rite of Passover, for Christ fulfilled all the symbolism and
foreshadowing of the Mosaic Law.[60] The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper
‘points back’ to Jesus’ death exactly as the Passover meal ‘pointed forward’ to it,
and the bread of Communion is his body in the same way that the bread of the
Passover was his body – symbolically.[61]
In Pruitt’s judgment, however, it is not enough to say that communicants
merely reflect on the symbols, as if Communion effects a merely cognitive
experience. Instead, celebrants actually ‘feed upon’ the symbols – as well as the
‘emblems’, and figuratively eat Jesus’ flesh and blood. And in this way, they
demonstrate that they have indeed ‘appropriated the benefits of His sacrificial
death’ to themselves.[62]
Pruitt acknowledges the long and heated controversy regarding Jesus’ words
of institution (Mt. 26.26; Mk 14.22; Lk. 22.19; 1 Cor. 11.24). The Roman
Catholics, he explains, take a ‘very literal view’ in their doctrine of
transubstantiation, which teaches that when the elements are blessed they
‘become the very body and blood of Christ’ so that communicants actually
receive the ‘saving and sanctifying grace from God’. As one might expect, Pruitt
rejects this position outright:
Of course, this view must be rejected for valid reasons: (1) If Jesus had meant
the elements to be taken literally, there would have been two bodies of Christ
present at the last supper – the Person offering the elements would have been
one body, and the elements themselves would have been the other. (2) If the
elements are the actual body of Christ, partaking of them smacks of
cannibalism and is repugnant. (3) Such a notion also denies that Christ’s
offering of Himself on the cross was a once-for-all sacrifice for sin.[63]
Strong as the rejection is, Pruitt offers no comparable alternative, presumably
because he believed it unnecessary.
Regarding the administration of the Supper, Pruitt indicates that churches of
his denomination observe the ordinance at least once a quarter, even though the
Scriptures do not set a specific number of times the rite should be observed per
year. Also, he holds that only ‘licensed or ordained male ministers’ should
officiate the Communion rite, in keeping with the ‘high and holy nature’ of the
event, and given the fact that the New Testament provides no examples of
‘women or of lay members either baptizing candidates or administering the
Lord’s Supper’.[64] Further, small children should almost certainly not be
allowed to partake of the meal, because they ‘normally do not have the maturity
to participate worthily’ because they ‘cannot discern their relationship to Christ,
and cannot recognize the difference between the bread and wine as symbols of
the body and blood of Christ, and ordinary bread and grape juice’. If this is so,
then ‘they are not ready to participate’.[65]

Guy Duffield and N.M. Van Cleave

In the early 1980’s, Foursquare theologians Guy Duffield and N.M. Van Cleave,
instructors at L.I.F.E. Bible College, produced a kind of systematic theology for
Pentecostals.[66] In the book’s preface, the authors evince their Evangelical
convictions regarding theological method: ‘The Pentecostal movement is not just
based on an inspirational experience. It is grounded upon the entire Bible as the
Word of God. We are a Bible-believing people. We subscribe to “all the counsel
of God” (Acts 20:27)’. Pentecostal theology, then, is systematic insofar as it is a
faithful compilation and re-presentation of ‘the Scriptural teachings’. Theology,
in the final analysis, is nothing more or less than the synthesizing of the whole
range of scriptural teaching, the full Gospel. For obvious reasons, this biblicist
methodology shapes Duffield’s and Van Cleave’s theology of the ordinances.
They define the ordinances as ‘outward rites or symbolic observances
commanded by Jesus, which set forth essential Christian truths’.[67] In their
judgment, only two ordinances – baptism and the Lord’s Supper – are ‘clearly
and unmistakably commanded’ by Scripture. They do not comment on any other
Christian tradition, although they do specify the Roman Catholic observation of
seven sacraments an unfortunate medieval accretion without in fact
anathematizing it altogether.
After giving only cursory attention to water baptism,[68] the authors address
the rite of the Lord’s Supper, which they contend was instituted by Jesus at his
‘last Passover’ as a ‘memorial of His Atoning Death’.[69] The clearest evidence
for the sacramental nature of the Lord’s Supper, according to the authors, is
found in 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul warns that those who partake ‘unworthily’
eat and drink condemnation to themselves so that many become sick, even to
death. They sketch four of the views on offer regarding the nature of the
Eucharistic elements. They dismiss the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation on
the grounds that it is ‘contradicted by experience’ and by logic, and the Lutheran
doctrine of consubstantiation because it is unsupported by Scripture and
encourages superstition by overemphasizing the physical dimension of the
Supper, losing sight of its spiritual blessing. They also reject the teaching that the
Supper is ‘merely a memorial act that mediates no blessing’, which they
characterize as the other extreme from the Catholic and Lutheran position. They
conclude that the ‘more scriptural view’ is the Reformed view, i.e. of ‘Calvin and
the majority of reformers’: ‘The elements, when received by faith, mediate to the
believer the spiritual benefits of Christ’s Death’.[70] The bread and wine, in
themselves, are ‘only tokens’. Still, ‘real communion with the Lord is
experienced’ when believers receive them in faith.[71] The section concludes
with the Foursquare declaration of faith regarding the Lord’s Supper:
We believe in the commemoration and observing of the Lord’s supper by the
sacred use of the broken bread, a precious type of the Bread of Life even Jesus
Christ, whose body was broken for us; and by the juice of the vine, a blessed
type which should ever remind the participant of the shed blood of the Savior
who is the True Vine of which His children are the branches; that this
ordinance is a glorious rainbow that spans the gulf of the years between
Calvary and the coming of the Lord …[72]
John Bond
In 1989, John Bond, a South African Assemblies of God pastor, in a chapter-
length contribution to a book co-edited by University of South Africa professors
Henry Lederle and M.S. Clark, championed what he deemed to be the distinctive
features of classical Pentecostal theology.[73] Bond argues that, generally
speaking, Pentecostals adhere to Evangelical convictions, which means that
Pentecostal theological reflection tends to be, in his words, ‘conservative and
usually fundamentalist’. In his judgment, Pentecostals do not so much differ
from Evangelicals in what they believe – with the exception of their beliefs
regarding the baptism in the Spirit – as in how they believe it, that is, with
‘unique intensity’.[74] Their basic affinities with Evangelical theology
notwithstanding, Pentecostals do work from a distinctive epistemology
characterized by the privileging of the immediate experience of God’s presence.
According to Bond, the authentic Pentecostal always ‘eschews the thought of
truth merely as conceptualised [sic] in a theory or an abstraction’, instead
holding that truth must be experienced, and that otherwise it is not valid – ‘a
mere form of religion without power’. Therefore, Pentecostal thinking resists
formalization and structure. In some ways, this distinctive epistemology emerged
as a defense against the fury of the mainline Protestant resistance to the
Pentecostal revival. In Bond’s opinion, ‘[f]ormal theology failed in the beginning
of the revival when it sat in judgment’ against the charismatic manifestations and
‘[s]tructured religion’ anathematized those seeking the Pentecostal experience.
[75]
 Given all of this, one cannot be surprised to find that Bond strongly resists
sacramentalism in any form. For example, while water baptism retains in his
view an important place in Pentecostal missional practice, it does so only as a
‘step of obedience’, an act that for all its importance is never to be regarded as
‘necessary for salvation or as being a means to regeneration’. Regarding the
Lord’s Supper specifically, Bond admits that he is deeply concerned that the
popular attitude among Pentecostals regarding the bread and wine ‘betrays a
doctrinal shallowness and even savours [sic] of superstition’. More than that, he
believes that many Pentecostals hold a quasi-magical view of the elements, in
spite of the fact that such a view is fundamentally out of sorts with traditional
Pentecostal theology, as he understands it. Somehow, the sacerdotalism that
accompanies the traditional sacramental practices of the ‘high church’ traditions,
Catholic and Protestant, also has worked its way insidiously into Pentecostal
worship, he says. So much so that ‘one feels that sometimes the Communion
table in a subtle unconscious way is treated as an altar, and the officiating pastor
very often acts somewhat as a priest’.[76] Committed as he is to the distinctives
of classical Pentecostal spirituality, Bond worries that the thought and practice of
the burgeoning charismatic movement, especially of the ‘sacramental school’,
threatens to efface the genuinely Pentecostal experience.[77] For instance, the
liturgical changes effected by the charismatic renewal, such as singing and
dancing in the Spirit, in his estimation have negatively altered the shape of the
Pentecostal worship service so that less time remains in the service for
‘individual response of worship or praying’, a change that he finds ‘damaging
and pernicious to the experience of Holy Ghost moving which Pentecostal
theology extols’.[78]
William Menzies, Stanley Horton, and Michael Dusing
In the early 90’s, Assemblies of God systematic theologian Stanley Horton
edited, and with William Menzies – a fellow AG theologian – expanded
Menzies’ Understanding Our Doctrine, previously published (1971) treatment
of Assemblies of God beliefs, republishing the book under the new title Bible
Doctrines. The introduction identifies the book’s agenda as providing a
treatment of ‘fundamental truths’ from a ‘Pentecostal perspective’, and the
chapter on the ordinances opens with a direct, fundamentalist assertion: ‘Biblical
Christianity is not ritualistic or sacramental’.[79] The authors claim that no
‘special merit’ or ‘saving power’ derive from the ‘mechanical performance’ of
water baptism or the Lord’s Supper, or even from the obedient observation of
them. What matters is personal relationship with God, so that whatever blessing
one may receive from the ordinance is strictly ‘a matter of the heart’.[80] Water
baptism, then, is merely ceremonial, symbolizing the ‘beginning of the spiritual
life’ by publicly identifying the believer with Jesus. Therefore, they hold that the
rite of ‘water baptism is for believers only’, exactly as the New Testament
teaches.[81] As Horton and Menzies understand it, no ground – biblical or
theological – can be found to support the practice of infant baptism; those who
argue that water baptism is a new-covenant substitute for the ancient rite of
circumcision are simply misreading the biblical texts.
Similarly, according to Horton’s and Menzies’ view, the Lord’s Supper is
merely ‘commemorative, instructive, and inspirational’, rather than sacramental.
Like Duffield and Van Cleave, the authors of Bible Doctrines believe that Jesus’
claims regarding the bread and wine are metaphorical, for Jesus was indisputably
‘actually present with the disciples when He said this’.[82] Like those who
defend infant baptism by appeals to Israel’s circumcision rite, those who hold to
transubstantiation or consubstantiation are mishandling the Scripture. To be sure,
believers are required to partake of the Supper as Christ directed, although
Scripture does not prescribe either a rubric for the observance of the Lord’s
Supper or impose a rule for how often the church should celebrate it. And
Communion is indeed a ‘solemn time for remembering the focal point of Christ’s
work’; it may at times become a moment for ‘great spiritual blessing’, but only
insofar as participants come to the Lord’s Table in the ‘proper frame of mind’.
[83] Therefore, communicants must take seriously Paul’s warning (1 Cor. 11.27-
30) and examine themselves for unconfessed sins and ‘unworthiness of attitude
and behavior’; otherwise sickness or even death may fall on them.[84]
The official Assemblies of God Systematic Theology, edited by Stanley
Horton and published in 1994, more or less reiterates the positions of Menzies
and Horton outlined in their Bible Doctrines, although at certain points it
engages those positions in more detail. Michael Dusing, then professor of
theology and philosophy at Southeastern College of the Assemblies of God, is
author of the chapter in the systematics that treats the doctrine and practice of
ordinances.[85] Pentecostals, Dusing explains, prefer the term ‘ordinance’ to
‘sacrament’ in order to avoid magical connotations, and in so doing they agree
with the Reformers, who also intended to effect a departure from the Catholic
sacramental tradition. According to Dusing, most Pentecostals and Evangelicals
do not perceive the ordinances as ‘producing a spiritual change by themselves’;
instead, they regard them as ‘symbols or forms of proclamation of what Christ
has already spiritually effected in the believer’s life’.[86] Water baptism
‘symbolizes a great spiritual reality’, to be sure; but ‘the symbol itself should
never be elevated to the level of that higher reality’ that comes by the immediate
work of the Spirit apart from the rite of washing. Most Christians agree that
Christ is present in some sense at His table, but this reality is understood in many
different ways, four of which Dusing briefly considers. Most Pentecostals, he
finds, hold to a position that combines and modifies the Zwinglian and Calvinist
positions. Beyond this brief description of typical Pentecostal thought and
practice, he offers no substantial comment or prescription.
Horton himself, perhaps owing to his strong Pietistic leanings, was deeply
suspicious of sacramentalism, practices he associated with the rise of the (in his
judgment, apostate) Roman Catholic Church. In his Into All Truth, written for
layman and published in the mid 1950’s, Horton provides a brief but pointedly
critical reading of the church’s history, laying out the case of the need for a
‘restoration’ of the ‘full gospel’. His restorationism is complete and
unadulterated. ‘Take a look back through church history’, he says, ‘and it will be
apparent that we today are far more fortunate and the truth is now far more
widely accepted than at any time since the first century’.[87] On his reading,
Christians began to lose touch with the Spirit and with the truth of the gospel as
they engaged in philosophical debates with unbelievers, taking up the categories
and concerns of pagan philosophy in the course of these debates. He cites Justin
Martyr and Origen as telltale examples of this error that led Christian doctrine to
become ‘more and more a matter of the mind rather than of the heart’ and the
perfectly clear teachings of Scripture were obscured by the allegorical readings
used to satisfy the curiosities of the philosophers. At the same time, as the
church grew in numbers and cultural power, the persecution died away; the
church became ‘fashionable’, and soon enough the degeneration was full-blown:
ungodly men rose to power in ecclesial office, the doctrine of Christ’s ‘second
coming’ was spiritualized, miracles and charismatic manifestations became rare,
and – perhaps most egregiously – the biblical teaching of salvation by grace
alone was perverted, as the churches began to teach that God worked salvation
through the sacraments. The rite of baptism was believed to bring about
salvation, rather than faith alone, and ‘under the influence of Stoic philosophy
which made matter and spirit an essential unity, magical effects were ascribed to
the water’ of the initiating rite. Given his view of the sacrament of water
baptism, Horton’s rejection of the early Christians’ view of the Lord’s Supper is
unsurprisingly forceful:
Another perversion was the gradual change of the communion of the Lord’s
Supper into the mass where the bread and wine were treated as a sin-offering
magically changed into the real and actual body of Jesus, so that Jesus was
crucified all over again in each mass.[88]
As a strong restorationist, Horton believed that throughout the church’s history
the Spirit has continually worked to restore the faith and holiness of the first
Christians. Here and there, Spirit movements, such as Montanism, emerged as a
beginning of the full restoration of the true church, although these movements
were always quickly suppressed by the hierarchical, ecclesial powers. In the late
middle ages, the Reformers recovered the authority of Scripture and the doctrine
of salvation by grace alone, and the Anabaptists recovered the biblical practice
of full immersion for adult believers. In the early 19th century, J.N. Darby and
the Plymouth Brethren rediscovered the plain teaching of Scripture on the pre-
millennial coming of Christ, and later in the same century the doctrine of healing
in the atonement and the promise of divine healing was restored to the church.
Horton believed that the Pentecostal movement – and especially its distinctive
experience of and teaching on Spirit baptism – was the last in this series of
recoveries that constituted the restoration of the true faith. With the coming of
the Holy Spirit in the Pentecostal experience, ‘the full restoration of the whole
gospel’ was accomplished.[89] ‘With the Pentecostal revival, not just a part, but
ALL the gospel has been preached.’[90]
John Christopher Thomas
In his monograph on footwashing,[91] first published in 1991, the Church of
God (Cleveland, TN) New Testament scholar and biblical theologian John
Christopher Thomas surveys traditional churchly and critical readings of John
13.1-20,[92] a text that has invited a dizzying variety of interpretations including
some that are mutually exclusive.[93] Based largely on his own close reading of
the text, Thomas proposes that footwashing was for the Johannine community a
discrete religious rite that ‘signified the forgiveness of post-conversion sin’.[94]
In fact, as he sees it, footwashing was at least for that community the ‘model
sacrament’, alongside if not over against the Eucharist or water baptism.[95] In
conversation with the luminaries of Johannine scholarship, Thomas insists that
although the Gospel of John is not outright anti-sacramental, it nonetheless is
critical of the sacramental views and practices of other communities, or perhaps
of some within the Johannine community itself. He suggests that the Fourth
Gospel may offer a corrective to an emerging ‘quasi-magical view of the
sacraments’, perhaps on the order of that later expounded by Ignatius of Antioch
and others like him.[96] Seen in the light of John’s Gospel, then, the traditional
Pentecostal practice of footwashing, as well as the observance of the rites of
water baptism and the Lord’s Supper, are truly sacramental, but are not in any
sense ‘magical rites’. This means, essentially, that they do not ‘stand alone’ but
must be ‘accompanied by faith’.[97]
Thomas reiterates this warning against hyper-sacramentalism in his The Devil,
Disease, and Deliverance, a monograph on sickness, divine healing, and the
will of God. In that work, Thomas engages at length 1 Cor. 11.27-34, a textus
classicus of sacramental theology. He suspects that the Corinthian
Christians – much like those to whom the Fourth Gospel is addressed – might
have held an extremely high, even ‘quasi-magical’, view of the sacraments; a
view which Paul felt compelled to confront, apostolically and pastorally.[98]
When Paul warns the Corinthians that their ‘unworthy’ participation in the
Eucharist has brought about sickness and even death, Thomas acknowledges that
it is possible that the text means ‘sickness and death are related to the
Eucharistic elements in a causal way’. Nonetheless, he holds that one need not
conclude that, for ‘while the Corinthians may have had a somewhat magical
view of the sacraments, there is no indication that Paul did’.[99]
Notwithstanding his repeated warnings against forms of ‘quasi-magical’
sacramentalism, Thomas insists that the sacraments do have a rightful and even
central place in the Pentecostal life. In his 1998 Society for Pentecostal Studies
presidential address, he calls for a re-appropriation of the sacraments along the
lines of the traditional five-fold gospel.[100] He considers it unfortunate that
Pentecostals have not thought deeply enough about ecclesiology or about
sacraments, and calls for the development of a genuinely Pentecostal account of
the church and the sacraments.[101] In particular, he invites the emerging
generation of Pentecostal scholars to address these issues – and other issues like
them – by constructing authentically Pentecostal theological paradigms that both
express an earnest gratitude for their Pentecostal forbearers and at the same time
prove ‘faithful to the ethos and worldview of the tradition’ even while they
revision it.[102] More specifically, Pentecostal theology should be fired by a
‘passion for the theological heart of Pentecostalism’,[103] which Thomas, in
conversation with Donald Dayton and Steven Land, believes is the five-fold
gospel. In his own words, ‘when a Pentecostal theology is written from the
ground up, it will be structured around these central tenets of Pentecostal faith
and preaching’.[104] Hence, his own proposal – he calls it a ‘trial balloon’ –
suggests a sacramental practice corresponding to each one of the tenets of the
five-fold: water baptism for salvation, footwashing for sanctification, glossolalia
for Spirit baptism, anointing with oil for healing, and the Eucharist for the
second coming.
J. Rodman Williams
J. Rodman Williams, a charismatic Presbyterian and a leading theologian of the
charismatic renewal movement, published the first volume of his three-volume
systematics in 1988. Although he does not disparage the sacramental traditions,
he is careful to point out that the preaching of the Word and the administration of
the sacraments in and of themselves do not bring about any real encounter with
God. ‘Often, even the gospel is preached, the Bible fully accepted as the Word of
God, and the sacraments regularly shared in, there is little spiritual vitality.’
[105] This changes only by the outpouring of the Spirit on the worshipping
community. Williams wants to focus attention on Christ’s mandate, and so
prefers the term ‘ordinance’ to ‘sacrament’ for naming the rites of baptism and
Eucharist. Whatever formula one may use in baptizing converts, Christ
personally is the ‘central reality’ of the rite of baptism, a rite that Williams
regards as ‘a sign, a seal, and a means of grace’.[106] In the hope of avoiding
extremes, he stops short of defending the traditional teaching of baptismal
regeneration, but nonetheless maintains that the rite of washing may be the
‘channel’ through which regeneration and the forgiveness of sins come.[107]
The Lord’s Supper, which Williams believes is ‘the vivid symbol and continuing
reminder of that new covenant, which Christ’s death made possible’ is also an
‘occasion of remembrance’ a graceful means of ‘present personal communion’
with Christ.[108] Williams decides against the idea that Christ is bodily present
in the bread and wine of the Communion rite; instead, drawing on a standard
reading of the bread of life discourse in John 6, he argues for the Reformed idea
of spiritual communion with Christ.[109] After having raised the Catholic
transubstantiationist and Lutheran consubstantiationist positions, Williams cites
Calvin’s description of ‘partaking’ of Christ’s ‘substance’ (Institutes 4.17.11) but
concludes that even this is stated too strongly; it is ‘better’, he believes, ‘not to
speak of partaking of Christ’s substance but of communing with Christ
spiritually through partaking of the elements of bread and wine’.[110] Although
believers enjoy this communion even apart from the Supper, there is a special
‘enhancement’ of communion in sharing at the Lord’s Table.[111]
French Arrington
French Arrington, a Church of God (Cleveland, TN) biblical theologian, devotes
a section of the third volume of his three-volume Christian Doctrine: A
Pentecostal Perspective to the ordinances. He includes in this section five
practices characteristic of Pentecostal worship, only three of which are properly
designated ordinances.[112] Unlike Duffield and Van Cleave, Arrington does not
reference the sacramental views of other Christian traditions. He makes no use
of the term ‘sacrament’, but nonetheless does propose an expansive definition of
‘ordinance’. ‘The ordinances of the church are visible signs of the saving work
of Jesus.’ Although they are strictly ‘outward representations’, they nonetheless,
for believers, are ‘not mere ceremony’ but in fact prove to be ‘a means of real
communion with God and of strengthening grace’.[113]
Arrington advances a series of propositions on the Lord’s Supper, as
previously he had done with baptism. He insists that the Supper is ‘a
remembrance of the Lord’,[114] and a proclamation of Christ’s death in the time
before the parousia.[115] Arrington holds that the Supper, like water baptism,
‘requires faith for proper participation’.[116] However, he also offers that the
church’s experience at the Table of the Lord’s Supper is genuine communion
(koinonia), by which there is a ‘partaking of the blood of Christ – His saving
benefits – in a spiritual way’.[117] Believers are ‘spiritually nourished by
Christ’, who is ‘the host of the Supper’. In fact, as believers engage in
Communion, ‘Christ is present to give us the spiritual blessings signified by the
bread and cup’.[118] In what might strike some as a surprising move given
typical Protestant distaste for thinking of Communion in sacrificial terms,
Arrington speaks of Eucharistic participants appearing ‘in the presence of God
with our sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving for the Sacrifice of Calvary’.[119]
In the final analysis, Arrington seems to hold at least a quasi-sacramental view
of the Supper. Certainly, there are sacramental overtones to his position. Much of
what he says fits the profile of mere memorialization, to be sure; but others of
his statements betray the conviction that there is an effective dimension to the
Communion celebration. For instance, even when speaking of the Supper as a
‘remembrance’ (anamnesis), Arrington argues that ‘this word is so powerful it
signifies that the death of Christ is made effective now and brings blessings into
the present’.[120] He reports that sometimes people receive healing or are
baptized in the Spirit when participating in the Communion meal.[121]
Pentecostals, he says, ‘have a sense of the profound presence of Christ and His
blessing at the Supper’.[122]
Harold Hunter
In his response to Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry – the so-called Lima
document[123] published by the World Council of Churches in
1982 – theologian and ecumenist Harold Hunter indicates that Pentecostals, as
well as Christians of other traditions, welcome the ‘renewed excitement about
ground gained and hope for more converging paths’ accomplished by the
emerging ecumenical consensus.[124] Speaking for classical Pentecostals,
Hunter appreciates the document’s ‘healthy respect for scripture’,[125] which he
predicts will go a long way toward allaying many of the fears of Pentecostals
regarding the agenda of the ecumenical movement. Nonetheless, he insists that
Pentecostal spirituality remains categorically different from that of Evangelicals
who defend the ‘primacy of the spoken word as a means of grace’ on the one
hand, and ‘“high-church” traditionalists’ who emphasize ‘sacramental acts’ on
the other hand. Pentecostals ‘look to multiple manifestations of deity’, instead.
[126]
Of the water baptism rite in particular, Hunter declares that ‘Pentecostals at
large will not own a view of sacramental efficacy … independent of the
participants’ faith’[127] – as evidenced he believes by Pentecostals’ reluctance to
use the term ‘sacrament’; but he remains confident that Pentecostals can find
ways to take seriously other traditions’ views of baptism. In spite of the fact that
most Pentecostals[128] decry paedobaptism and regularly practice rebaptism,
[129] Hunter finds ‘hopeful signs’ developing among Pentecostals that indicate a
possible acceptance of the basic understanding of baptism laid out in BEM,
although he does not quite call for Pentecostals to accept it. As for Communion,
Hunter deems it extremely ‘unlikely that Pentecostals en masse would be given
to accept the eucharist as “the central act of the Church’s worship”’,[130] and he
cites the fact that ‘no major pentecostal denomination in the U.S.A. is moving
toward a weekly observance of the eucharist’ as evidence of this fact. He
suspects that ‘Pentecostal defaming of the anglo-catholic view of the sacraments
may owe something to evangelical influence’,[131] an influence that also shows
itself in the Pentecostal privileging of the Bible in worship and theology.[132]
Pentecostals, in keeping with most in the Protestant tradition, have not
developed the concept of the Lord’s Supper as a sacrifice for fear that it might
‘compromise the uniqueness of the death of Christ on the cross’; and they
discern Christ’s presence ‘not in the elements but among the devotees’, in line
with the Zwinglian tradition. In spite of all this, Hunter does believe Pentecostals
‘may reverently concede’ that Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is ‘unique’[133]
and may accept the ‘conjoining of anamnesis and epiklesis ‘ if ‘magical
connotations relative to the elements’ do not come into play.
Hunter’s concerns seem to be largely descriptive and analytical, rather than
prescriptive or constructive. In most of his writing, at least, he attempts to
provide a faithful account of what it is that Pentecostals do believe and what they
are likely to find acceptable or unacceptable in the ecumenical conversations. He
admits that traditional Pentecostalism was and is ‘far from uniform’, even in
some of the most basic doctrines and practices.[134] On his reading, the early
Pentecostals generally regarded water baptism and Holy Communion as
‘external rites directed by Scripture and observed by the gathered people of
God’, whether they used the used the term ‘ordinance’, most commonly, or
‘sacrament’, which they did only rarely, concerned to avoid the implications of
‘self-contained efficacy’. Even now, Pentecostals typically do not find in the
Eucharist a source of forgiveness for sins. Unlike Roman Catholics, Pentecostals
virtually from the beginning of the movement have insisted that communicants
partake in ‘both kinds’, that is, of both the loaf and the cup. Pentecostals, also
unlike the high-church traditions, do not restrict the administration of the
sacraments to the ordained clergy. As Hunter has it, they find this practice
‘biblically allowable but not mandatory’. Western Pentecostals,[135]
particularly, seem unconcerned with certain dimensions of traditional Eucharistic
practice, such as the use of an altar or the posturing of the minister’s body.
Further, classical Pentecostals, at least an overwhelmingly majority of them,
refuse the use of fermented wine in the Eucharistic celebration.[136]
Intercommunion is seldom if ever an issue, as Pentecostal churches practice
open communion.
Steven J. Land
According to Steven Land’s seminal work, Pentecostal Spirituality, published in
early 1990’s, the first Pentecostals’ celebration of the ordinances[137] witnessed
their deeply-held conviction that ‘bodily dedication was necessary’, that the
spiritual and the corporeal were not opposed but existed as complimentary
dimensions of God’s reality.[138] The ordinances themselves they regarded as
‘signs’: baptism was ‘the sign of starting out in service to the Lord or the way to
the kingdom’ and the Lord’s Supper was ‘the sign of ongoing nurture and
fellowship’.[139] Because the Spirit was immediately present to the worshipping
community, the ordinances belonged to the larger order of God’s intervening
work in and for the believers. Christ could and did work through a range of
activities, including but not restricted to testimonies, songs, prayers, offerings,
manifestations of gifts, preaching, and teaching.[140] All of these – and not
merely baptism and the Lord’s Supper – were ‘means of grace’, and the whole
congregation engaged in these activities, not only the clergy.[141] Evidently,
this democratic and egalitarian impulse marks the Pentecostal spiritual tradition,
now as well as then.
The early Pentecostals, Land says, did not often use the term ‘sacrament’
because they saw it as a ‘non-biblical word of Roman Catholic derivation which
was associated with mechanical ritual’.[142] They differed from the classical
Christian tradition in numerous ways: they did not consider baptism or the
Lord’s Supper as ‘converting’ ordinances;[143] they rarely baptized infants,[144]
regularly practiced re-baptism in keeping with the Anabaptist tradition, and they
celebrated the Lord’s Supper only occasionally.[145] Nonetheless, Pentecostal
baptisms and celebrations of Communion were not mere memorializations, for
there remained a ‘richness of the actual practice’ that always exceeded the
theological explanations on offer, which were few and inchoate, if they appeared
at all. Still, whether they could make theological sense of it or not, first-
generation Pentecostals believed ‘Christ was made effectively present by virtue
of the Holy Spirit’.[146] ‘To eat, drink, baptize and wash feet was to do it unto
the Lord; and he was present in, with, under and through these acts.’[147] Jesus,
through the Spirit, acted on the believers during the celebration of the Lord’s
Supper. ‘Persons could be converted, healed, sanctified and filled with the Spirit
in conjunction with the Lord’s Supper.’[148] In other words, the saving and
healing power of the Spirit was not mediated directly through the eating and
drinking of the Communion elements, but was made effective
indirectly –alongside the meal, so to speak.
Land refers to the ordinances as ‘means of grace’, as has been mentioned
already. However, he also insists in another place that Pentecostal theology
resists the use of this language as unnecessarily impersonal and abstract. In fact,
he goes so far as to criticize the ‘domestication of the Holy Spirit’[149] effected
by doctrines that speak of receiving ‘grace’ rather than God the Holy Spirit. On
his view, the Lord’s Supper is genuinely a ‘means of grace’ in the sense that the
Holy Spirit uses it to nurture the life of Christ in the believer and in the believing
community. The ‘moral integration’ that emerges from the Spirit’s transformative
work happens through ‘an ongoing, daily gift of grace’ received through ‘all the
means of grace’, including but not limited to the Eucharist. He provides no
definitive list, but cites confession and footwashing as among the several means
that belong to the same order as Holy Communion.[150] For Land, then, the
means of grace are best understood as (trans)formative practices, practices that
by dint of habit-forming repetition discipline the heart, mind, and body for life in
the Spirit. Living in the presence of God, Land believes, is the essence of
Pentecostal spirituality, but such a life is not always entail ‘constant sensations’;
instead, a certain praxis involving ‘private and corporate prayer, living in the
Scriptures, walking in fellowship, the Lord’s Supper, fasting’ make possible this
life in God’s presence, training one to ‘attend to the Spirit in following Christ’
even in the non-sensational moments of life in Christ.[151]
Peter Hocken
Father Peter Hocken, a charismatic Catholic theologian and a historian of the
charismatic movement, believes his Pentecostal experience of Spirit baptism has
fundamentally altered his view of the parousia and its implications for the
church’s life. Before his Spirit baptism, Christ’s ‘second coming’ was, he admits,
merely an ‘external’ reality that in no way affected his own ‘inner life’.[152]
After the renovation of his faith experienced in the charismatic renewal, Hocken
found himself awakened to a deep and vibrant hope for the second coming of
Jesus, an awakening he came to desire for others. For, ‘as we welcome the gift of
the Spirit in this life, we experience a desire for the fullness of the gift of the
Spirit in the resurrection’.[153] Hocken quickly recognized that this realization
would bear fruit for a theology of the sacraments. In the Catholic catechism, he
found the Eucharist spoken of as the ‘pledge’ of the world to come, an
‘anticipation of the heavenly glory’.[154] Further, history shows that the church
has from the beginning aimed her liturgy toward the ‘Marana tha!’, and
understood the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer – ‘Thy Kingdom
come’ – within the context of the Eucharistic celebration, facts that point
unmistakably to the church’s hope in Christ’s return and the eschatological
meaning of the sacrament.[155] If ‘the Holy Spirit makes the church more
eschatological’, the sacraments, and in particular the Eucharist, embody this
truth most completely. Through the Spirit, the sacraments and especially the
Lord’s Supper become a way of God’s directing the community’s life to the hope
of ‘total salvation’ and
the deliverance of all creation from its bondage to decay, the establishment of
the new heavens and the new earth, our resurrection in glorified spiritual
bodies, in which there will be total communion with all the saints and angels
in the perfect harmony and eternal life of the Most Holy Trinity.[156]
In sum, then, Hocken’s account of the sacraments is radically eschatologized, so
that, for example, the signum/res relation in the Sacrament is body of Christ/joys
of the Eschaton.
Frank Macchia
Few Pentecostals or charismatics have made more creative contributions to
sacramental theology than Frank Macchia, a Basel-trained systematician and
professor of theology at Vanguard University, an Assemblies of God institution.
In his 1993 essay ‘Tongues as Sign’, Macchia argues that in spite of the shape of
Pentecostal practice at the grass roots level, Pentecostal spirituality ‘does not
advocate an unmediated encounter with God, nor a subjectivist emotionalism
unrelated to an objective means of grace’,[157] as a close inspection of the
Pentecostal emphasis on visible/audible signs such as glossolalia and healing
makes clear. In spite of the fact that many if not most Pentecostals are
uncomfortable with the term ‘sacrament’ because of its associations with
institutionalism, formalism, clericalism, and the like, and their fear that
‘sacramental efficacy’ might be understood as ‘necessitated by a causative
dynamic intrinsic in the elements’,[158] Macchia maintains that Pentecostal
spirituality can rightly be designated ‘sacramental’ – if the term is carefully
defined.[159] Further, he believes that even if many Pentecostals claim a
Zwinglian view of the Eucharist, ‘their actual Eucharistic devotion is more
complex’.[160] Despite the non- or weakly-sacramental theological descriptions
of their experiences, Pentecostals nonetheless experience baptism and the Lord’s
Supper as ‘occasions for God's redemptive presence through the power of the
Spirit’.[161] He considers it fortunate that Pentecostal sacramental practice
surpasses the theology of the sacraments so far advanced by Pentecostal
theologians. He believes the time has come for Pentecostal sacramental theology
to attempt to ‘catch up’ to the community’s experience.
Still, Macchia does not want to dismiss too quickly the characteristic
Pentecostal ‘uneasiness’ with the liturgical formalities of the high-church
traditions.[162] It is not without reason that Pentecostals have an ‘allergic
response’ to the sacramentalism of these traditions: on the one hand, it shows the
healthy fear of the dead ritualism that has dogged many liturgical traditions, and
on the other hand, it points up the Pentecostal commitment to the ‘spontaneity
and freedom of the Spirit’. Glossolalia, then, is a different kind of sacrament, one
that befits characteristic Pentecostal spirituality. For, as he says, speaking in
tongues ‘accents the free, dramatic, and unpredictable move of the Spirit of God,
while the liturgical traditions stress an ordered and predictable encounter with
the Spirit’.[163] He concludes that Pentecostals possess a ‘chaotic’ or ‘protest’
sacramentality that emerged from the ‘protest to any attempt at a formalization
or objectification of the Spirit in liturgical rites’.[164] In Macchia’s judgment,
this distinctively Pentecostal sacramentality arises from a theology that is ‘more
“theophanic” than incarnational’. This is due to the fact that Pentecostal
spirituality – which understands itself in light of the ‘dramatic descent of the
Spirit on the Day of Pentecost’ – has developed as a way of life characterized by
‘a fervent expectation for the signs and wonders of God’s Spirit’.[165]
Throughout his work, Macchia writes with ecumenical concerns, which for
obvious reasons affect the whence and whether of his project. He engages
Roman Catholic theology at many points in his oeuvre, and although he assumes
that in the final analysis Pentecostals will maintain theological and practical
commitments that are unacceptable for those in the Catholic tradition, he
nonetheless believes Pentecostals have much to gain from Catholicism,
especially given the changes initiated by Vatican II. Drawing on Karl Rahner’s
discussion of ‘charismatic manifestations’ and ‘ecclesial sacraments’, he finds
that the theological accents of Pentecostals and Catholics are ‘more
complementary than contradictory’ and that a renewed and deeper appreciation
for the sacraments among Pentecostals can help Pentecostals ‘bridge’ their
charismatic spirituality and efforts for social justice and peace-making.[166] He
is quick to add that Pentecostals have much to teach Catholics, as well. The
Pentecostal ‘protest’ or ‘inchoate’ sacramentality serves to remind Catholics that
‘both worship and social renewal require spontaneous and unpredictable turns
toward liberation and healing’ and the Spirit’s freedom is always already ‘calling
for the need to question and renew our programs and institutional structures’.
[167]
In the last few years, Macchia has begun to work out in increasing detail a
fully-orbed theology of the sacraments in conversation with the witness of early
Pentecostals, contemporary Pentecostals scholarship (especially the work of
John Christopher Thomas, Simon Chan, and Amos Yong), and a coterie of
dialogue partners from around the ecumene. For Macchia, the sacraments signify
the ‘reality of the coming Kingdom’, and the Lord’s Supper, in particular,
‘anticipates the messianic feast and the renewal of the earth’. Moreover, he is
concerned not only with the eschatological dimensions of the sacred meal, but
also its missional character. In his vision, the communion with Christ that the
church’s celebration of the Lord’s Supper facilitates is ‘a communion in the love
of God for the world’. Hence, at the Eucharistic table believers both ‘commune
with Christ crucified and risen for the world’ and ‘renew [their] dedication to
participate in his act of reconciling the world to God’.[168] He is committed to
the view that the Lord’s Supper belongs at the heart of Pentecostal worship,
along with preaching and the charismata.[169]
But Macchia is also deeply concerned with intra-Pentecostal conversations,
and often brings his knowledge of ecumenical sources to bear in his engagement
with Pentecostal concerns and issues. For example, in his review of Thomas’
monograph on footwashing, Macchia praises Thomas for helping him ‘rethink
how [Pentecostals] view baptism and the eucharist’, exploring ways in which
they might approach these principle sacraments.[170] This is particularly
needed, Macchia believes, for in spite of the fact that many Pentecostals do in
fact observe the rites of water baptism and the Lord’s Supper, they typically do
so with a truncated vision of their theological import. In his own words,
… though [Pentecostals] do observe baptism and the eucharist, [they] have
often regarded them theologically more as acts of repentance or symbolic
testimonies than as ‘sacraments’ in the sense of events in which the dynamic
presence of Christ through the Spirit is encountered.[171]
Macchia believes Thomas’ view of the footwashing rite as a sacrament provides
an instructive and imitable paradigm for Pentecostal theological reflection on the
(other) sacraments. First, he applauds Thomas for not mechanizing the rite.[172]
Second, he appreciates Thomas’ eschatological emphasis. He believes that the
‘ultimate horizon’ of the sacraments is Christ’s parousia, ‘when the master
returns as the crucified and resurrected Servant/Lord to assert once and for all
the Lordship of love and liberation over hate and oppression’.[173] Further, he
suggests that perhaps footwashing may serve as a ‘link’ between water baptism
and the eucharist that can ‘bridge the original confession of faith found in
baptism with the Eucharistic meal that celebrates the cross by looking ahead
explicitly to the messianic banquet’.[174] Third, Macchia affirms Thomas’
christocentrism, agreeing that the sacraments receive their meaning from Christ,
particularly his death and resurrection, and direct the church’s attention to Jesus
and his past, present, and future work.[175] These three points of emphasis seem
to form the basic conceptual framework for Macchia’s developing sacramental
theology.
Richard Bicknell
In a contribution to a treatment of distinct Pentecostal doctrines, Elim
Pentecostal theologian Richard Bicknell takes up Pentecostal sacramental
thought and practice for consideration. Like Harold Hunter, et al., Bicknell
attempts to articulate the characteristic shape of Pentecostal sacramentality. He
finds that Pentecostals do have an incipient and inchoate sacramental theology,
one that needs further development and more careful articulation. First, he holds
that Pentecostals do insist on the observation of these ordinances, even though
they do not regard them as essential to salvation. Instead, ‘obeying Jesus’ serves
as the motivating force. Also, Pentecostals reject any notion of a ‘mechanical
transfer of saving grace’ – one of the points that nearly every Pentecostal feels
compelled to make.[176] In this, Bicknell believes that Pentecostals are simply
following an Evangelical/Pietistic impulse that ‘supplies a general anti-
sacramentalist outlook by which acts are seen as symbolic and non-effectual’.
[177] Consequently, like the majority of Evangelicals, Pentecostals insist on the
use of symbolic terminology – hence, the use of the term ‘ordinance’ – expressly
to defend against a slide into sacramentalism.[178] Bicknell maintains that
Pentecostals reject any notion of a real bodily presence, whether in the form of
the transubstantiation of the Catholic tradition or the consubstantiation of the
Lutheran tradition. Christ is, quite simply, ‘not in the emblems’, not ‘localised in
the bread and wine’.[179] It is ‘not through the elements that the believer is
strengthened’ but through the sharing of the meal and Spirit-led reflection on its
meaning. Pentecostals typically refrain from referring to the symbols of bread
and wine as ‘body and blood’, and never speak of them as ‘host’, for they do not
believe that grace is in any sense imparted through the actual eating and drinking
of these elements. Instead, salvation comes through ‘the physical act of Christ
dying’ and through ‘the normal channels of communication’.[180] As Bicknell
sees it, for Pentecostals the Lord’s Supper is, above all, a memorial feast. This is
so in two distinct but inseparable senses: the bread and wine are taken ‘in
memory of the Lord’s death’ and the Communion meal ‘carries us back to the
most vital moment in our lives, the moment when Jesus became real to us’.[181]
This anamnesis intends a recalling of initial commitment for the sake of a
renewal and furthering of dedication. Further, Pentecostals remember not only
what Christ has done at the cross, but also who he is, and what he is doing
presently.
All this notwithstanding, Pentecostals do expect Christ himself ‘to be present
at the communion service’; although Bicknell insists it is not the ‘real presence’
(in the loaf and the cup) but the ‘realized presence’ (in the congregation and to
the celebrants) that they anticipate and experience. Christ is personally present
via the work of the Holy Spirit in response to the faithful gathering and
communing of the saints, so that Pentecostals can speak of the Supper so
understood and experienced as a ‘Divine contact point’, a moment of
‘encounter’, even the ‘focal point of fellowship’ with Christ through the Spirit.
[182]
In another essay, Bicknell traces more carefully the sources and outcomes of
the ‘Eucharistic expression’ of the Elim Pentecostal tradition,[183] the roots of
which, Bicknell believes, are to be found in the Reformed tradition that ‘sprang’
from the thought and practice of the Swiss Reformers, Zwingli and Calvin, and
even more particularly and recently from the memorialistic theologies of the
‘Nonconformist bodies’ of Congregationalists and the Plymouth Brethren, also
known as Free Churches.[184] Bicknell insists that the present-day Elim
Pentecostal sacramental thought and practice derives from the nineteenth-
century Free Church adaptations of Calvin’s and Zwingli’s views, although he
admits that in most instances Zwingli’s memorialism won the day, so that
Calvin’s sacramental theology plays much less a part in Elim Pentecostals’
understanding and practice of the Lord’s Supper than does Zwingli’s.[185] In
fact, in actual practice if not in theological statement Elim Pentecostals reduce
even Zwingli’s ‘bare commemoration’ to nothing more than retrospection,[186]
a tendency Bicknell knows some Pentecostals find lamentable. Bicknell himself
characterizes the view as ‘extreme memorialism’.[187]
Much of Elim’s treatment of the Lord’s Supper is ‘anti-sacramental’, Bicknell
insists, and he provides this example: when candidates apply for entry into Elim
Pentecostal ministry they are asked to distinguish between four main
interpretations of the Eucharist, and they ‘know better than to espouse any form
of sacramentalism’.[188] As a matter of fact, Bicknell identifies anti-Catholic
sentiment as one of the ‘major forces active in shaping Elim’s Eucharistic
expression’.[189] Given the symbolic nature of the Meal, ‘it matters little that
real bread and wine are used’, so crackers often substitute for unleavened bread
and fruit juice for fermented wine. Elim Pentecostalism distances itself from
talking of the ‘real presence’ in either transubstantiationist or
consubstantiationist terms, decrying both views as equally unscriptural. Again,
Bicknell makes the argument that Christ is present not in the emblems but ‘in the
dynamic activity of the Holy Spirit’. On his view, not ‘real presence’ but
‘realised [sic] presence’ is what makes the Sacrament what it is.[190]
One might argue, Bicknell admits, that since Elim Pentecostals hold that
‘Christ is not in the emblems’ and that ‘reception of Christ cannot be via the
emblems’ that Christ is not present in the Communion service. But such a
conclusion would be mistaken, he says, for again and again the testimonies of
Elim Pentecostals affirm that Christ is really, if only spiritually, received in the
Communion Meal, and the Lord’s Supper ‘is where the human and divine meet’.
Bicknell believes that Elim Pentecostals have no theological justification for
these claims. For, while they insist that Christ is present at the Supper, they also
contend that his presence is not limited to the Eucharistic context. It is unclear,
then, how it is that one might differentiate Christ’s presence in the Supper from
his presence at other times.[191] In spite of these ambiguities, Elim Pentecostals
do hold that the Eucharist promises real benefits to participants, even though it is
‘not necessarily effected through the rubrics and setting of the service itself’, for
‘it is the presence of Christ in the believer that is the source of this strength’.
Bicknell concludes, then, that it is difficult if not impossible to imagine or
describe what ‘special’ or unique role can be accorded to the Elim Pentecostal
experience of the Lord’s Supper, given that they believe ‘all of the benefits of the
Supper can be gained at any other time, and in differing circumstances, simply
through communion with Christ’.[192] In effect, one can discern little difference
between a Communion service and any other service: ‘both have exactly the
same potential to supply exactly the same needs of the believer, for in both,
communion with Christ is assured’.[193]
Having laid out this description, Bicknell turns at last to prescriptive
commentary, offering a few constructive suggestions and criticisms. He regrets
that for many communities, the rite of Communion has no real significance; it
has been, he says, ‘effectively reduced to a token gesture’[194] that lasts only a
few minutes. He blames the ‘newer style of celebratory service’ for this
minimalization of the Eucharist. A ‘balanced Eucharistic theology’[195] is
needed, one that does not reject the notion of commemorating Christ’s death, but
includes an emphasis on the church as Christ’s body, and arises from a
‘meaningful theology of the work of the Spirit in the Supper’.[196] Calvin’s
theology of the Eucharist would probably provide a ‘good starting point’,
Bicknell believes, for a much-needed revisioning of Elim’s Eucharistic faith and
practice.
Simon Tan
In a 2003 essay, Simon Tan, an ordained Assembly of God minister and a
lecturer in systematic theology, calls for a reassessment of the practice of
believer’s baptism, which most Pentecostals regard as ‘the biblical position’.
[197] Tan’s explains that his personal interest in the issue arose from his
discerning reflection on the reasons offered against infant baptism. He argues
that Pentecostals’ adherence to believer’s baptism betrays the influence of
‘individualistic orientation of the West’ and does not fit Asian societies. On his
view, infant baptism does not oppose biblical teachings, in Tan’s judgment. In
the course of his argument, Tan addresses the different presuppositions that
underlie the various approaches to the ‘ordinance’ of water baptism. One
interpretation ‘emphasizes the importance of a faith response’. An opposing
interpretation emphasizes the ‘reality of the grace of God in the life of the
individual’.[198] Appreciating the importance of the former position, Tan sides
with the latter, finding infant baptism the more appropriate practice. He worries
that the typical Pentecostal emphasis on personal faith response threatens to
overemphasize human ‘heroics’ and to collapse into subjectivism. Further, he
believes that the question is not whether the church may baptize infants but
‘whether we have any legitimate reason to withhold baptism from them’.[199]
Refusing to baptize infants may disclose a ‘loss of confidence in the truth of the
gospel’.[200]
Although Tan does not address the Eucharist specifically, the implications of
his position for a theology of the Lord’s Supper appear readily applicable. First,
it seems he would affirm a strongly sacramental view of the Supper, given that it
would emphasize the ‘objectiveness’ of God’s grace in the believer’s life.
Second, it seems that he would hold that the burden of proof rests on those who
reject a sacramental view of the Supper. Third, it would appear that he would
reject a strictly biblicist account of the Eucharist’s meaning and purpose in the
Christian life.
Daniel Albrecht
In his work on Pentecostal/charismatic ritual published in 1999,[201] the liturgist
Daniel Albrecht, then a Professor of Christian History at Bethany College in San
Francisco, attempts to identify and describe the shape of Pentecostal worship.
[202] Albrecht carefully observes and analyzes the rituals and spirituality of
three Pentecostal/charismatic communities,[203] with careful attention to their
appropriation of Pentecostal symbols. Albrecht is convinced that Pentecostal and
charismatic worship services are designed to provide context for ‘mystical
encounter, an experience with the divine’ that is ‘mediated by the sense of the
immediate divine presence’,[204] a fact that would seem to subvert sacramental
thought and practice. Moreover, he notes that in spite of the fact that Pentecostal
churches traditionally have included a Communion table as a basic piece of the
furniture defining the altar space, they have not focused on the sacrament of
Communion,[205] and of the three churches Albrecht studied, only one actually
made use of a Table, and then only for its monthly Eucharistic service.[206]
Similarly, the baptismal font is in most Pentecostal/charismatic churches a
‘minimized center’ and baptism a relatively de-emphasized practice. Even
though all three communities practice adult/believer’s baptism, as well as
‘Eucharistic communion’, Albrecht notes that neither L&L nor VVCF has a
baptistery. In spite of these evidences of de-emphasis or minimization of the
sacraments, Albrecht insists that Pentecostal/charismatic churches are in some
sense sacramental. In his words, in spite of the fact that Pentecostals and
charismatics ‘seldom use the sacramental language, they certainly believe and
experience their God’s gracious acts’.[207] Pentecostal/charismatic
sacramentality is unique, of course. For example, the ‘manifestation of power’ in
divine healing and other ‘sign and wonder’ miracles function with a ‘sacramental
quality’ for Pentecostals.[208]
Adam Ayers
In a Pneuma article published in 2000, Adam Ayers sets Pentecostal glossolalic
phenomena under the lenses of boundary, art, and sacrament, subjecting the
characteristic Pentecostal practice of speaking in tongues to ‘theological light’ in
the hope of exposing persistent problems and ‘to provide a pattern for pastoral
address of the phenomenon of tongues in the day-to-day workings of the
church’.[209] Throughout the article, Ayers leans heavily on Aquinas’
explanation of the meaning and purpose of sacramental signs as given to
accomplish simultaneously the proper worship of God and the gratuitous
sanctification of human participants through a divinely-empowered move ‘to the
unknown by means of the unknown’. He holds that the sacraments recognized
by the Church are, as Thomas says, ‘ordained of God to the production of a
spiritual effect’. However, any ‘body’ that can be moved ‘to produce a spiritual
effect’ can serve as an instrument of grace, that is, it can serve sacramentally,
even if it is not ecclesially recognized as one of the ordained sacraments. As
Ayers understands him, Aquinas claims that a ‘spiritual, sacramental work of
grace is present when a sign ordained by God is employed, “arousing the mind
of man”’, and whenever this arousal ‘involves a reflexive aspect of the human
being's grasp of the sacred significance of his actions’.[210] In the light of this
Thomistic understanding, then, Ayers believes that the Pentecostal experience of
glossolalic speech can rightly be called sacramental, exactly as Macchia has
suggested. In Ayer’s own words,
Applied to tongues, this would mean that tongues becomes an occasion for a
work of grace, arousing the mind of a human being toward God in a certain
relational configuration. Its value would not necessarily involve a linguistic
situation, although it could. Instead, its value would be that it leads its subject
to understanding “from the known to the unknown” by providing for its utterer
an avenue through which to grasp the sacred implications of his or her own
actions.[211]
He also finds it significant that the Eucharist, like glossolalia, is described in 1
Corinthians as a source of both potential blessing and judgment. He concludes
that given the ‘verifying and validating function of tongues’ in both Lukan and
Pauline texts, ‘it would seem that, to the early church and to the author of Acts,
tongues is perhaps even more distinctly ordained of God than even ritual water
baptism’. He wonders: If the (universal) church thinks of baptism as
sacramental, then how much more glossolalic speech?[212]
Amos Yong
Amos Yong, a licensed Assemblies of God minister and now J. Rodman
Williams Professor of Theology at Regent University (Virginia Beach, VA), has
engaged sacramental theology on a variety of fronts. In one of his early works,
Yong implores Pentecostals not to take up the ‘sacramental baggage’ of the
Catholic tradition, such as the doctrine of ex opera operato, even while they
find common ground with Catholics in understanding the Pentecostal experience
of the Spirit as in some sense sacramental.[213] In his monograph on theological
hermeneutics, published a few years later, Yong engages Peirce’s theory of signs
to describe the various ways in which the Lord’s Supper conveys meaning for
Christian celebrants.[214] Acknowledging the diversity of thought and practice
in the various Christian traditions – on the one hand, sacramentalists contend
that the experienced encouragement results directly from eating and drinking the
Eucharistic elements, while on the other hand, non-sacramentalists argue that the
grace received comes only indirectly through the bread and wine via the
community’s ‘remembering, celebrating, and anticipating of Jesus’ life, death,
and parousia’[215] –Yong maintains the conviction that in spite of these real
differences, ‘the result [of sharing in Communion] is encouragement for
Christian life’.[216] This basic agreement should be taken seriously, Yong
believes. He finds that Pentecostal and charismatic experience of the sacraments
is rich with meaning, for Pentecostal ritual is ‘supremely embodied’ and
possessed of its own logic of sacramentality.[217] He insists that a
comprehensive theology of the sacraments must emerge not only from
‘reflection on the scriptural witness’, but also from reflection on the church’s
‘actual experience … throughout history’.[218] What is more, exegesis of
biblical texts is not the only task, even if it is the primary one. As he sees it, an
authentically Pentecostal theology of the Eucharist must derive ‘as much, if not
more, from our ritual experiences of it than from consultation of the biblical
texts’.[219]
More recently (2005), in his Spirit Poured Out On All Flesh, a monograph in
which Yong attempts to develop and articulate a ‘global Pentecostal theology’,
he calls for Pentecostals and charismatics to adopt a view of the rites of water
baptism and Holy Communion that is more in keeping both with the Scripture
and the early church fathers, as well as more properly fitted to an understanding
of the Spirit’s power of presence.[220] He believes that in spite of what one
might expect, Pentecostal/charismatics can appropriate a ‘fully sacramental’
view of both water baptism and the Lord’s Supper, a view that nevertheless
remains ‘fully consistent with Pentecostal intuitions regarding the Spirit’s
presence and activity in the worshipping community’.[221] To be sure, he
maintains that Pentecostals should not regard the sacraments in ‘the classical
sense’, whereby salvation is ‘mediated through the priesthood, through baptism,
or through the (other) sacraments’.[222] Nonetheless, the ‘Spirit’s reality’ can
and should be understood as in fact ‘mediated through the particularly embodied
experiences of the community of saints’. When so understood, one finds a
‘unique sort of pentecostal sacramentality at work’ that operates with an
‘experiential and incarnational logic that acknowledges the Spirit’s being made
present and active through the materiality of personal embodiment and
congregational life’.[223] For example, Yong asserts that the rite of water
baptism is not merely memorialistic or symbolic, but actually ‘enacts our
participation in the death and resurrection of Christ’ and as a ‘concrete act in a
historical point in time’ serves as the ‘means by which we experience the life of
Jesus by the Holy Spirit’.[224] The baptism ritual is, on Yong’s view, an act of
‘obedient participation in the death of Jesus’. He is careful to say that the
sacramentality of the rite resides not in the ‘materiality of consecrated water’ but
in the Holy Spirit’s personal presence and activity.[225] Water baptism, Yong
insists, is not to be regarded as ‘magically washing away sins’, but it can and
should be regarded as regenerative – insofar as it is understood to effect the
Spirit’s work ‘pneumatically and mystically’, and to include the ‘faith response
of believers’.[226]
As with water baptism, so with the Eucharist: the personal and intimate
activity of the Holy Spirit is central and decisive. Only the Spirit’s
perlocutionary and illocutionary power guarantees that the Lord’s Supper is
indeed a genuine ‘remembering’ of the church’s memory of Christ. In the Lord’s
Supper, Christ is present to the celebrants and they are present to Christ, their
‘mutual presence’ possibilized by the Spirit being ‘invited to reign over the
Supper’ in the epiklesis. For only the Spirit’s coming in response to the church’s
invocation ‘mak[es] present the living Christ in the “membered” elements of the
bread and cup and in the “members” of the congregation as the living body of
Christ’.[227] Yong holds that Pentecostals and charismatics have no need for a
doctrine of transubstantiation, for everything depends upon the Spirit-
possibilized ‘inter-subjective mutuality’ between Christ and the believing
community, a mutuality that, by the Spirit’s power, ‘becomes a mysterious
interpersonal encounter wherein Christ and his body are brought into real
relationship’.[228] Given that this is so, the Supper must be regarded as a
‘sacramental rite’ that in fact ‘transforms the worshipping community through
word and Spirit’.[229]
Yong includes a treatment of Eucharist and water baptism also in his Theology
and Down Syndrome, published in 2007. He examines the ways in which the
sacraments serve the disabled and diseased, suggesting that one might say that
those with intellectual disabilities are ‘more attuned to the sacramentality of the
Eucharistic elements at an intuitive and material level’ because they are not
limited by a merely or dominantly cognitivist approach to the sacrament.[230]
To illustrate this point, Yong cites the testimony of a woman named Judy, who
suffers from Down Syndrome: ‘I want to eat Jesus bread … I can’t wait until I
eat Jesus bread and Jesus juice. People who love Jesus are the ones who eat
Jesus bread … I want to eat it and drink with all the other Christians at church
cause I love him so’.[231]
Throughout his work, Yong emphasizes the relation of the Word of God to the
sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. The rite of Communion is, in his words, a
‘physical act wherein the word of God is consumed by the body of Christ
through the working of the Spirit’.[232] Also, in the (faithful) Eucharistic
celebration, the church anticipates the end-of-all-things ‘embodiment of the
word of God’.[233] He agrees with the Eastern Orthodox traditions that claim
the Spirit both ‘recapitulates’ the past and proleptically anticipates the future
Kingdom, ushering both the past and the future into the present experience of the
church gathered at the Table. The Lord’s Supper, then, is rightly regarded as the
sign par excellence of the eschatological kingdom. Further, the Eucharist is a
pharmakon, and insofar as celebrants faithfully ‘internalize the body and blood
of Christ’ they ‘release its healing virtues for broken bodies’.[234] Pentecostals,
given their belief that healing is ‘in the atonement’, should not find it difficult to
accept this proposal. If they can believe that healing power and the gift of the
Holy Spirit can be and are given and received through ‘material means’, such as
handkerchiefs, aprons, the laying on of hands, then why would they refuse to
accept that the Spirit can work through the Eucharistic elements? Why not
accept that ‘the material elements of bread and wine or juice somehow mediate
the presence of Christ by the power of the Spirit’?[235]
Kenneth J. Archer
Ken Archer, a systematician and ordained minister in the Church of God
(Cleveland, TN), believes – with John Christopher Thomas, Frank Macchia,
Steve Land and others – that Pentecostal theology so far has failed to account for
the meaning of the ordinances in actual Pentecostal practice, and sets out to put
an alternative view on the table.[236] In his words, ‘The concept of “ordinances”
must be re-visioned because in Pentecostal worshipping communities these rites
provide sacramental experiences for the faith-filled participants’.[237] For
Archer, Pentecostal spirituality is essentially storied, so that a genuinely
Pentecostal theology of the ‘sacramental ordinances’ must fit within the
framework of the Pentecostal via salutis,[238] a meta-narrative Archer infers
from the ‘Full Gospel’ schema of early Pentecostalism: Jesus is savior, sanctifier,
Spirit baptizer, healer, and soon-coming king. Influenced by Stanley Grenz’s
assertion that Evangelicals must retain the understanding of the rites of water
baptism and the Lord’s Supper as ‘ordinances’ while allowing that they function
as ‘channels’ for the Spirit’s work, Archer suggests that Pentecostals take up the
language of ‘sacramental ordinances’, in the hope that this language will help
Pentecostals to hold together various emphases in a dynamic tension. With
Macchia, he finds it unfortunate that ‘some Pentecostals deny any “real grace”
being “mediated” through the ordinances’.[239] Such a reductionist treatment of
the ordinances, he laments, truncates the ‘mysteries’, diminishing them to ‘mere
memorial rites’ that facilitate nothing more than ‘cognitive reflection devoid of
the Spirit’s presence and power’.[240] He hopes that the Pentecostal
understanding of the ordinances will discern the ‘mystical significance’ that will
transform them into sacraments in and through which believers not only
communicate but also participate in the realities of the Kingdom. These
sacraments are not mere ordinances.[241] But he does not want Pentecostals to
fall into ‘traditional’ sacramentalism, either. To retain the language of
‘ordinance’ helps to underscore the symbolic power of the sacraments, and keeps
attention on the dominical mandate as well.
Archer follows John Christopher Thomas’ identification of the five-fold
gospel as the ‘unifying ground’ for the sacraments. He believes Thomas rightly
identifies five sacramental practices that correspond to the five-fold’s several
tenets, and in a 2004 article he attempts to develop this scheme in detail. First, he
holds that water baptism, which ‘proclaims one’s new identity with Jesus’ and
signals the believer’s entrance into the holy community and the via salutis,
serves as the sacramental sign of the salvation only Jesus accomplishes. Second,
footwashing, a ‘ceremony of cleansing’, is the sacramental activity that
corresponds to the experience of sanctification, which is an experience
subsequent to conversion – another way station, so to speak, along the way in
the journey of salvation.[242] Third, in dialogue with Macchia’s proposals,
Archer finds that Spirit baptism is indeed a sacramental experience, with
glossolalic speech signifying and expressing the ‘mystical experience of union
with and participation in God’s triune being’.[243] Fourth, the imposition of
hands and anointing with oil serve as the sacramental sign of divine healing.
[244] Fifth, and finally, the Lord’s Supper is the sacramental event that directs
believers’ attention to the coming of Christ and his kingdom.[245]
William De Arteaga
In his Forgotten Power, published in 2002, William De Arteaga, a priest
ordained in the Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches, argues for the
centrality of the Lord’s Supper in the history of ‘revival’ in North America and
Western Europe. His argument is both descriptively and prescriptively advanced,
as he gives wide and deep attention to ‘revivals’ in which the sacraments, and in
particular the Eucharist, operated center stage. He insists again and again that the
sacraments can and should remain central to Christian spirituality, and that they
do not hinder but in fact advance the Spirit’s reviving work. He admits that not
all charismatic ‘breakthroughs’ have been sacramental. In fact, many
contemporary revivalists discern no connection between the sacramental
practices and the work of the Spirit, if they give any thought to it at all. As he
sees it, the contemporary mind deems the liturgical and sacramental practices as
at best incidental to revival, and at worst, inimical to it. He identifies the events
of the so-called Second Great Awakening, and the prominent ministries of
evangelists like Charles G. Finney and Dwight L. Moody, as the culprits in the
unmaking of the sacramental dimension of revival. American Wesleyans, who
had been staunchly sacramental, eventually surrendered to the ‘temptation of
respectability’ and quickly the ‘Spirit-empowered sacrament’ was a thing of the
past. To put it briefly, after the revivalism shaped by Finney and Moody, among
others, had taken its toll, ‘the Wesleyan mix of evangelical preaching, small-
group discipleship, sacramental worship, and personal ministry to the poor
unraveled’.[246] After the success of Moody in perfecting Finney’s innovations,
revival was no longer in any way associated with the traditional sacraments.
‘Since then no major evangelist has incorporated the Lord’s Supper as part of the
revival cycle.’[247]
In spite of the successes of non-sacramental revivalists such as Finney and
Moody of the 19th century, and Graham in the 20th century – to say nothing of
the successes of the Pentecostal/Charis-matic movements – De Arteaga avers
that the church should strive for a ‘balance of Word, sacrament, and presence’.
[248] Rather than seeing the ritual observance of Communion with its attending
liturgy as a possible barrier to the dynamic and spontaneous nature of revival, De
Arteaga believes that ‘the covenant presence of God’s graces during sacramental
worship reinforces the Holy Spirit’s special presence and work during the revival
period’.[249] Sacramental worship, he says, ‘enhances, sustains, and strengthens
revivals’, a claim he finds evidence for biblically, the ‘biblical pattern of
revival’, and historically, in the communion cycles of the 17th century Scottish
Reformed Church and the Wesleyan revivals of the 18th and 19th century.
John Ceresoli
In 1999, at the 28th annual meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies,[250]
John Ceresoli, a member of the Church of God of Prophecy, testified of a recent
sacramental experience in his home congregation, a testimony that was
transcripted, and later edited and published in the Journal of Pentecostal
Theology.[251] Ceresoli recounts how despite the fact that the church officials
were at first hesitant, he had convinced them that they should invite a local
Catholic priest, Father Phil Thibodeau, to worship with them. The fact that
Father Phil had experienced the baptism of the Spirit and ‘speaking in tongues’
helped to make the connection for them, so after much deliberation, they invited
him to deliver the Sunday morning sermon. They had hoped to share
Communion with him, given the Catholic emphasis on the Eucharist; however,
Father Phil’s holy orders would not allow this. After some discussion, it was
decided that Father Phil would be invited to join them and the congregations in
an ‘old fashioned footwashing service’[252] as a sacramental observance. Father
Phil expressed some serious concern with replacing the Communion meal with
footwashing, but in the end he gladly accepted the invitation. Ceresoli finds it
remarkable that in spite of the fact that ‘Pentecostals have been criticized for the
infrequency and inadequacy of their Eucharistic observance’ it was precisely
because of this lack, this ‘area of weakness and perhaps ignorance’, that room
was made for something ‘new’. As he says, ‘the Holy Ghost was working to
bring forth something new – an ecumenical experience through sacramental
means. Our Pentecostal ‘weakness’ made room for the freedom of the Spirit to
birth a new thing’. Father Phil was, in a sense, ‘limited by holy rites’. While the
Pentecostal community, ‘with its simplicity and with its deep sense of what it
feels like to be excluded from the mainstream of Christian history and
traditions’, sought for a way to include Father Phil in their worship service. ‘This
one “lost sheep” should not be turned away from full inclusion in the holy
gathering, but a way should be found for him to join in the worship in its
totality.’ When the time came, Father Phil delivered the sermon, sharing his
testimony as well as a few scriptural exhortations. Pastor Black then came to the
front and invited the district overseer to join him, Father Phil, and Ceresoli to
join him. Spontaneously, ‘crying, weeping, praying, and tongues poured forth’,
he says, ‘yielding a broken, repentant spirit that led us to sense the deep need for
reconciliation and forgiveness between these two communities’.[253] During the
footwashing observance, a message in tongues was given.
The entire congregation erupted with groanings and weepings of repentance ...
After a moment of silence, Father Phil wept and hugged Brother Summerall’s
neck (the southern Pentecostal, sacramental sign of hugging). He then asked
the Pentecostal Church to forgive the Catholics for the ridicule, persecution,
and ignorance they have had toward Pentecostals. The entire sanctuary
became a sanctuary of love, peace, repentance, and forgiveness’.[254]
Simon Chan
Simon Chan, a theological historian, liturgist, and Professor of Systematic
Theology at Trinity Theological College in Singapore, argues that Pentecostals
need to re-vision their ecclesiology, and that this can only be done by, among
other things, a reconsideration of the place of the sacraments in the church’s
liturgical and missional life. ‘Only a proper theology of the sacraments and
pneumatology can overcome the tendency to turn church services into what
Gordon Fee calls “a thousand individual experiences of worship.”’[255] Chan is
convinced that Pentecostals have much to learn from the sacramental traditions,
perhaps especially the Eastern Orthodox, whose worship finds its anchor and
axis in the Eucharist.[256]
In the Pentecostal experience of Spirit baptism, Chan discerns a distinct and in
some sense ‘new’ experience of God.[257] For, he believes, ‘[s]ome kind of
doctrine specifying the experiential distinctiveness of Spirit baptism is needed
for the long-term survival of the Pentecostal-charismatic reality’.[258] Also, the
Pentecostal emphasis on ‘subsequence’, even if it is ‘too simplistic a way of
encapsulating the complex realities within the Christian growth process’,[259]
should not be abandoned, even while Pentecostals attempt to refine a clearer and
more theologically sound articulation of its significance. He believes that a
sacramental understanding of Spirit baptism, informed by sources of the
classical Christian tradition, can help in this regard. To this end, Chan proposes
that Pentecostals understand Spirit baptism as the ‘actualization’ of the
sacrament of water baptism’,[260] as a distinct ‘part of the complex of
conversion-initiation’, and not a mere superadditum.[261] To accomplish this,
Chan insists that Pentecostals need to do work on two fronts at once: on the one
side, they need to rethink the doctrine of subsequence, which has to this point
suffered from the fact that the early Pentecostals received uncritically the
Evangelical concept of conversion as a one-off ‘crisis experience’ and
uncritically applied the concept to Spirit baptism so that it was described simply
as another of several crisis experiences;[262] on the other side, as already
mentioned, Pentecostals need for their own sake to engage with the church’s
wider theological and spiritual tradition, finding better language for their
experience.
The driving force of Chan’s project is his concern for ‘traditioning’, for
without this, Pentecostals ‘cannot ensure that what they have experienced will be
faithfully handed down to the next generation’.[263] What is the best way to
guarantee the faithful handing-on of the Pentecostal experience and perspective?
A liturgy that finds its center in the Eucharist, Chan believes, promises to do this
work best, for ‘all the basic elements and dimensions of worship find their
proper place’ in the Eucharistic celebration, and it ‘unites both the charismatic
and the evangelical dimensions of worship into a coherent whole’.[264] Without
a Eucharistic center and ground, the characteristic charismatic and evangelical
forms of worship are ‘impoverished’ and reductionistic. Pentecostals can and
should avoid this error. With this goal in mind, Chan avows that ‘[i]f
Pentecostals would learn to appropriate the “practice” of Eucharistic worship
they will be better equipped to preserve both Spirit and word, praise and
proclamation in their distinctively Pentecostal way of life’.[265] The original
Pentecostal event (narratively described in Acts 2) determined the church as a
charismatic community, he says, and this reality is continually renewed ‘as the
Spirit is called upon in the [Eucharistic] epiclesis’. In this way, he believes, the
charismatic dimensions of worship are made viable. The ‘evangelical
dimension’, which emphasizes proclamation of the kerygma, is preserved, too,
for the Eucharist proclaims this message in its own way – and does more than
this, besides.[266]
In other, more recent works, Chan addresses the wider Evangelical
community, engaging with Pentecostalism indirectly. In his Liturgical Theology,
published in 2006, he argues that Evangelical ecclesiology is diseased, if not
altogether dead, and proposes an alternative view of the church as a missional
community, indeed, as the community privileged with participation in the missio
dei, so that the church’s work is understood to be ‘the extension of the work of
the triune God’.[267] The church fulfills this mission in and through her
worship, so that the liturgy gives shape to and provides the energy for her life
vis-à-vis the world. Again, as he had done in Pentecostal Theology, Chan
affirms the celebration of the Eucharist as the heart of the church’s liturgy.
Especially in the Eucharistic celebrations, believers ‘are entering the life of
Christ’, and through the Sacrament the church is constituted as Christ’s body.
This is why in the church’s tradition the Lord’s Supper is called the ‘sacrament
of sacraments’.[268] Hence, Chan insists it is serious a mistake to consider the
Eucharist optional, as a mere supplement to the preached Word that the church
may take or leave without consequence.[269] In his judgment, the Eucharist is
the ‘most distinctive mark of ecclesial existence between the ascension and the
parousia’.[270]
In keeping with the Eastern Orthodox tradition, Chan regards the Eucharist as
a mediation of the church’s past and future: the kingdom’s ‘already’ and ‘not yet’
merge in the here-and-now moment of the church’s feast. As he says, it is in the
Eucharistic worship of the church, that ‘the Spirit actualizes the past through
remembrance (anamnesis) and anticipates the future (prolepsis) when created
things are transfigured’.[271] In the celebration of Holy Communion, then, the
church both remembers in loving faith Christ and his saving life, death, and
resurrection, appropriating the benefits, and anticipates in loving hope his
parousia, the final and complete establishment of God’s promised kingdom. The
experience of ‘feeding on Christ to life eternal’ in the Eucharistic rite, Chan
believes, is nothing less than ‘a foretaste of the future: the marriage supper of
the Lamb, the healing of a broken creation, reconciliation and face-to-face
communion’.[272] The church is the community who exists to call for ‘the
coming of the Spirit as the arrabon (the foretaste or pledge) of the new
creation’. Evangelicals, regrettably, often lose sight of this reality, a mistake
Pentecostals cannot afford to make.[273]
As a Pentecostal, Chan emphasizes the Spirit’s work in the celebration of the
Supper, specifically, and in the liturgy, generally. In fact, for him the Spirit’s role
in the church’s worship remains always primary and basic. Worshippers never
initiate; that prerogative belongs only to God, and in particular, to the Holy
Spirit. Even the church’s invocation of and response to the Spirit’s initiative is
‘made possible by the indwelling Spirit’.[274] Not only that, but Spirit-inspired
communion is the issue and not the doctrine of ‘Real Presence’, a teaching
which Chan believes encourages individual piety but does nothing to stimulate
the church’s communion.[275]
MayLing Tan-Chow
In her 2007 monograph on Pentecostal theology, which began as a Cambridge
University PhD thesis, MayLing Tan-Chow brings Scripture and early
Pentecostal spirituality to bear in a critique of a Singaporean charismatic
movement. She notes that worship, not preaching or the Eucharist, holds place of
primacy in Pentecostalism – as Albrecht indicates, the altar space, and not the
pulpit or the Communion table, is the place of meeting the divine.[276]
However, she sees Pentecostal worship as emerging from a creative blend of
both sacramental and biblicist traditions.[277] The participative orientation of
Pentecostal worship, the expectation and experience of charismatic ministry in
‘signs and wonders’ are, she says, ‘obviously sacramental’.[278] In fact,
Pentecostal worship in its entirety can be called ‘feasting’, for it is ‘a prelude to
and a rehearsal of the feast of Heaven – the marriage supper of the Lamb, the
messianic feast’.[279] In a sense, then, the Eucharist is a microcosm of the larger
reality of the Pentecostal participation in and experience of God in worship.
Wesley Scott Biddy
Wesley Scott Biddy’s article, ‘Re-envisioning the Pentecostal Understanding of
the Eucharist: An Ecumenical Proposal’, emerged from his work on his Master’s
thesis, submitted to the faculty of Duke Divinity School in 2005. In the Pneuma
article, he begins with a question: Is there in fact anything like a distinctly
Pentecostal theology of the sacraments?[280] He answers in the affirmative,
although he admits that Pentecostal sacramentality is ‘largely undeveloped’ and
acknowledges that Pentecostals remain wary of ‘high church’ liturgies that they
deem ‘frozen by an excessive formality that restricts God’s freedom to encounter
and bless the faithful’.[281] He nonetheless stands convinced that there are
‘resources latent in Pentecostal spirituality’ for developing a ‘conscious
theological appreciation of the sacramental character of worship in general, and
of those ecclesial rituals that have historically been explicitly recognized as
“sacraments” in particular’.[282] Therefore, it is possible, he believes, for a
‘distinctively Pentecostal sacramentology’ to bubble up from Pentecostal
theological reflection on Pentecostal practice and experience,[283] as evidenced
in Frank Macchia’s proposal regarding the sacramental dimensions of glossolalia
and the discussion that has sprung up in response.
Although Biddy is convinced that Pentecostals cannot accept the idea that the
sacraments effect the forgiveness of sins, as is taught in ‘high church’ traditions,
he finds in the characteristic Pentecostal belief in subsequence – i.e. in second
and third ‘blessings’ of sanctification and Spirit baptism – a way to revision the
sacraments along new lines. When this is discerned, it is no longer necessary for
Pentecostals to resist the idea of ‘sacramental grace’. Pentecostal spirituality, at
least as Biddy sees it, is constituted by encounter with the divine reality ‘in,
with, and under signs’.[284] He notes that at least two of the tenets of the five-
fold gospel explicitly involve signs (i.e. Holy Spirit baptism signified by
glossolalia and divine healing signified by anointing and laying on of hands),
and that these signs together point toward the fifth tenet (i.e. Christ as coming
King), and so function as eschatological signs, too. It follows, then, that a
genuinely Pentecostal sacramentology might begin with an account of
sacraments as ‘events of a divine-human encounter that take place through
symbols’.[285]
Biddy allows that in the name of ‘biblical purism’ one may say Christ did not
promise to be present to his church ‘in any special way at the Eucharist’.
Nevertheless, he maintains that the biblicists’ rejection of ‘special Eucharistic
presence’ as nothing more than a Catholic accretion to the pure gospel of the
New Testament church is both theologically and historically mistaken, not least
because it fails to account for the fact that in the ancient world sharing a meal
was understood as a deeply spiritual and even supernatural event. He cites Paul’s
forbiddance of the Corinthians’ participation in the pagan ritual meals (1 Cor.
10.14-22) as an illuminating example. The logic of Paul’s argument there
demonstrates that ‘if a person participates in the expression, he or she
necessarily thereby becomes a participant in the reality, for the reality is both
enabled by supernatural means (whether the agents be God or demons) and
concretely effected by the sign’.[286] Unmistakably, this understanding of the
meal is deep with sacramental significance, and perhaps provides a clue to how
it is that Christian sacramental theology developed.[287]
Kimberly Ervin Alexander
In her award-winning work on Pentecostal models of healing, Kimberly
Alexander, at the time an Associate Professor of Historical Theology at the
Church of God (Cleveland, TN) Pentecostal Theological Seminary, shows that
early Pentecostal spirituality was undergirded by a rich (if non-traditional)
sacramentality. As evidence, she points to certain characteristic Pentecostal
practices such the use of anointed handkerchiefs for healing,[288] and the laying
on of hands, a gesture that she contends signifies the ‘transference of the Spirit
from one believer to the next, or from God through another believer’.[289] More
than rote obedience to an ‘ordinance’, therefore, ‘the action [of laying on of
hands in prayer for the sick] was fraught with anticipation of the inbreaking of
God’s grace and gifts’. Quite simply, these Pentecostals believed healing would
come ‘through human touch’,[290] a conviction that perhaps betrays an
underlying sacramentality.
Alexander shows that the Lord’s Supper was regarded and experienced by
early Pentecostal as a means of healing. The Communion rite served as a
remembrance of ‘two-fold salvation’, that is, spiritual and physical. She cites the
words of William Seymour to make the point: ‘[Christ] gave His blood for the
salvation of our souls and He gave a perfect body for these imperfect bodies of
ours’. She explains that early Pentecostals believed the Lord’s body was to be
eaten[291] not only for healing, but also for health,[292] and she notes that 1
Cor. 11.30 was commonly taken to mean that those who do not take the Lord’s
Supper rightly are in danger of falling ill, or at least of not being healed of their
sicknesses. One early Assemblies of God writer referred to the ‘divine alchemy’
of the Supper, and another said that the way to experience ‘abundance of Life’
was through ‘eating Christ’s flesh and drinking His blood’, for by doing this,
believers ‘partake of a powerful, efficacious stimulant, an elixir from the
Throne’.[293] However, some warned that an overemphasis on healing in the
Supper might detract attention from the Lord, ‘the benefit eclipsing the
benefactor’.[294]
Keith Warrington
In his recently published Pentecostal Theology (2008), the British Pentecostal
theologian Keith Warrington explains that Pentecostals share with the wider
Christian community a belief in the central practices of water baptism and the
Lord’s Supper. He makes it clear, however, that Pentecostals do not understand
these ‘ordinances’ in the same way as do most other Christian traditions. He
believes that Pentecostals fear ritualism and ceremonialism, generally, and
sacramentalism, particularly, because they suspect that it implies a ‘self-inducing
power’.[295] Prescriptively, he identifies water baptism as a ‘normative practice’
that is ‘expected of all believers as a sign of obedience to the command of
Jesus’. In this, Warrington maintains the familiar baptistic, Free Church position:
the washing rite follows conversion, and is nothing more or less than a ‘public
affirmation of a previous integration into the family of God at salvation’,
although it may also provide an experience of affirmation and confirmation for
the believer. He points out that occasionally those being baptized experience
physical healing or Spirit baptism, so that it is possible to suggest that water
baptism functions as a ‘sacramental encounter’ of some kind.[296] So far as he
knows, few Pentecostals practice infant baptism,[297] but he acknowledges that
Pentecostal theology and practice retains a ‘flexibility’ that allows church
members ‘to explore alternative views and to recognize the value of culture in
one’s hermeneutic’.[298]Against Hollenweger’s claim that the Lord’s Supper
served as the ‘central point of Pentecostal worship’, Warrington holds that
Pentecostal reflection on and attention to the Supper is modest, at most. He
finds, following Bicknell, that Pentecostal Eucharistic faith and
practice – inasmuch as it exists all – ‘may be traced to the Reformation theology
and practice of Zwingli and Calvin via Congregationalism and Brethren
traditions’. Pentecostals expect to experience Christ’s presence ‘at any time’, so
they expect no special presence at the Lord’s Table.[299] Further, Pentecostals
staunchly resist the notions of transubstantiation of the elements and the
communication of ‘salvific grace’ via the elements.[300]
In keeping with their rejection of many of the theological and liturgical
trappings of the high-church traditions, Pentecostal observance of the rite of
Communion, or ‘the Breaking of Bread’ as it is sometimes called, is marked by
‘simplicity of form’. Following no written liturgy, the service nonetheless
discloses a ‘demonstrable pattern’,[301] with participants taking time for
‘reflection, thanksgiving and open worship, focusing on the death of Jesus, and
the reading of one of the New Testament passages describing the event’. This
often if not always means a ‘bittersweet experience’ for the communicants, so
that the Communion service differs considerably from the standard form of
Pentecostal worship, as it is ‘often a quiet and even sober occasion’. He finds it
distressing that within much of Western Pentecostalism the observance of Holy
Communion is increasingly ‘marginalized and swamped by singing’[302] so that
it is no longer a central aspect of Pentecostal worship. Almost invariably, the
observance of the Supper proves to be a ‘personal and private event’, even if it
takes place in a congregational setting. Warrington worries that for many if not
most Pentecostals ‘the event has become so personalized that is value for
reminding the participants that they are part of a body … is overlooked or at
least routinized’.[303] Nonetheless, age-old Pentecostal fears of formalism and
ceremonialism stem from genuine concerns that must be kept in mind even while
a ‘fresh appreciation’ and new forms of celebration are considered and
implemented so that the Supper’s ‘vitalizing impact’ is not lost.[304]
Gerald Emery
In a recent contribution to Ecumenism journal, an organ of the Canadian Centre
for Ecumenism, Gerald Emery, a licensed minister in the Pentecostal Assemblies
of Canada, attempts to show that Pentecostals retain a deep appreciation for the
Holy Communion, a fact thick with ecumenical significance.[305] He holds that
from the beginning of the movement the Lord’s Supper has held ‘an important
place in the life of the local church’, primarily because Pentecostals understand
celebration of Holy Communion is first of all an act of obedience to dominical
mandate.[306] Also, he finds that at the heart of Pentecostal Eucharistic practice
is an emphasis on remembering Christ’s passion: in the act of receiving the loaf
and the cup, the believer ‘remembers what makes him a Christian’. Nonetheless,
taking part in Holy Communion is equally ‘an act of faith for the present’, as
evidenced most clearly in the Pentecostal experience of real, spirit-to-spirit
communion with Christ and the expectation of bodily healing in the Supper.
These present-tense benefits are possible, Emery believes, because Christ
remains the ‘I Am’ and although the divided elements are not more than and
remain only bread and juice, the Lord’s Supper leads us to recognize the
privilege of living in the faith, living the words of Jesus when he says, ‘I am
with you always, until the end of the world’.[307]
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen
Invited to contribute a chapter representing the Pentecostal view of the Lord’s
Supper, Pentecostal ecumenist Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Professor of Systematic
Theology at Fuller University, explains that the Pentecostal movement is ‘loaded
with antisacramental sentiment’, [308] with many Pentecostals simply
dismissing the sacramentalism of other traditions as ‘unscriptural’. His study
indicates that Pentecostals do not consider the rite of Communion constitutive of
the church, and they do not deem episcopal administration necessary to
legitimate the sacrament. What is more, they prefer the term ‘ordinance’ to
‘sacrament’ because the latter term is freighted with implied meanings
Pentecostals simply find unacceptable. In his judgment, the theology of the
sacraments accepted by most Pentecostals is a form of the ‘typical
nonsacramental Zwinglian and free-church view’; the Eucharistic wine and
bread, therefore, are understood to have only symbolic reality.[309] Somewhat
surprisingly, however, the Lord’s Supper nevertheless plays an important role in
the churchly life of Pentecostals.[310] At least a few Pentecostals do affirm a
‘spiritual’ dimension to the meal that exceeds the merely symbolic, even while
they reject the classical view of Real Presence.[311] For an example, Kärkkäinen
cites a statement by the Foursquare theologian Nathaniel van Cleave, who first
repudiates the ‘superstition’ of the classical view, but goes on to speak of the
‘real operation of the Spirit’ for strengthening and healing those who partake of
the elements in faith.[312]
Kärkkäinen acknowledges his initial surprise that the editors of the volume
invited Baptist and Pentecostal theologians to offer separate contributions, given
their considerable similarities. In his judgment the idea of a distinctly Baptist or
Pentecostal view of the Lord’s Supper sounds ‘exotic’, given that Pentecostals,
like Baptists, typically reject the sacraments altogether.[313] He finds that
Olsen’s description fits Pentecostals in some ways as well as it does Baptists:
‘What they have usually rejected is any idea that the grace of God is especially
attached to these visible, physical objects or emblems’. Certainly, they did not
believe participants ‘actually eat Christ’s body and drink his blood’. However,
after reading Olsen’s essay, Kärkkäinen finds that the two traditions do differ
significantly,[314] with Pentecostals standing much nearer a sacramental
understanding of the Lord’s Supper and baptism than do Baptists.
Kärkkäinen is troubled that in spite of the fact that Pentecostals do in fact
celebrate the Lord’s Supper and practice baptism (and, in some movements,
footwashing), they have to this point in the movement’s history ‘devoted little
attention to developing any kind of constructive theology of sacraments in
general or the Lord’s Supper in particular’.[315] He celebrates the new
generation of academic theologians endeavoring to work out a Pentecostal
theology of the sacraments, although he suspects that these emerging voices
‘cannot be taken as representative of grassroots Pentecostalism’. It seems clear,
nonetheless, that he appreciates these new turns to the sacraments as beneficial
for the Pentecostal tradition, and expects them to effect short- and long-term
positive changes in and for Pentecostal praxis and theology.
Telford Work
For Telford Work, a Foursquare Pentecostal and ecumenical systematician, the
sacraments are inseparable from the church’s identity and mission. For him, the
ecclesial communion is a ‘land’ whose border is crossed in baptism and whose
culture and politics are signified in Communion.[316] The rite of baptism marks
the end of a former way of life, as Eph. 4.22 suggests,[317] and the sacrament of
the Eucharist reminds believers of their status as brothers and sisters in Christ
and their attending responsibilities to one another. The celebration of the Lord’s
Supper also ‘reminds us that Jesus the firstfruits from the dead has still gone
before us to complete the Father’s mission for his brothers’ and sisters’ sake’.
[318] As a Pentecostal, Work believes that both sacramental and charismatic
signs are significant as reminders of the hope of the Eschaton, because they point
to those things that last, that endure. ‘If baptism and healing anticipate
resurrection and Eucharist and marriage anticipate the wedding banquet, then
ordination and spiritual gifts anticipate something too.’[319]
James K.A. Smith
Largely in conversation with Radical Orthodoxy, Jamie Smith, Professor of
Philosophy at Calvin College, calls for Pentecostals to take seriously the
church’s traditional sacramental thought and practice. He stands convinced, in
fact, that the Christological convictions of the Pentecostal movement make a
recovery of traditional sacramentality both fitting and necessary:
If undergirding a theology of sacramentality is a fundamental affirmation of
the Incarnation (that the Infinite is revealed in and through the finite), and
Pentecostal theology seeks to affirm that in radical ways, then the Pentecostal
community and Pentecostal scholars should seek new roles for ‘sacraments’ in
Pentecostal worship and spirituality.[320]
In Smith’s view, the Eucharist is truly a means of grace through which peace,
joy, and spiritual nourishment come to the worshipping community, but only
insofar as the Supper is experienced as an anticipation of the eschatological
‘marriage supper of the Lamb’ (Rev. 19.9) and the peace and justice of the new
creation. Received in this way, Holy Communion sensitizes participants to the
norms of Christian existence and in this way provides a ‘basis of critique for the
present order’.[321] Consequently, the church’s participation in the Eucharist is
for Smith nothing less than the training ground of a counter-politics. In proper
giving and receiving of the Lord’s Supper, Christians learn what it means to live
together – and with those outside the community – in the righteous peace of God
and so they become together a kind of foretaste of the end of all things, the
‘firstfruits of new creation’. Not that the Eucharist does anything magically.
Smith claims only that ‘liturgical practices of reconciliation and forgiveness
constitute a training ground for making a start – and they demand that we do so’.
[322]
Smith insists that he is not insensitive to the dangers of hyper-sacramentalism.
Central as the practice is, the Eucharist-event is not itself the kingdom, but a
sacrament of the kingdom. Therefore, Communion should be experienced as ‘a
sanctified letdown’, in a sense, because every week that the church celebrates the
Lord’s Supper is ‘another week that the kingdom and its feast have not yet fully
arrived’.[323] Even still, it is a divinely-given ‘model of the eschatological
order’, and for this reason the Eucharist should stand ‘at the heart of Christian
worship’ for all Christians, including Pentecostals.[324]
Wolfgang Vondey
Vondey, an Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Regent University
(Virginia Beach, VA) and founding director of the Center for Renewal Studies,
offers a ‘theology of bread’ that seeks to explicate the ‘significance of bread
beyond its role at the Lord’s Supper’.[325] Nonetheless, he does work with a
robustly sacramental view of the Supper, which he understands as ‘a real and
concrete token of the continuing presence of Christ among the disciples’. In the
light of his reading of the story of Jesus breaking bread with the Emmaus
disciples, Vondey insists that the Eucharistic breaking of bread ‘is the divine
reality breaking into the present companionship’ of the Christian community.
[326] He wants also to hold attention on the absence of Christ, on the ‘empty
space’ left in the wake of Jesus’ ascension, a space that is ‘filled with the broken
bread as a token of his continuing presence’ and a ‘sacred sign’ of the future
realization of the kingdom.[327]
All in all, Vondey’s is an expansive sacramental vision that extends beyond
the rites of baptism and the Eucharist to include the church and indeed all
creation.[328] In critical conversation with the insights of Catholic
sacramentalists like Louis-Marie Chauvet, Vondey takes care to avoid what he
deems an exaggeratedly objectivist account of the sacraments. In finding a way
forward, Vondey makes much of Augustine’s Eucharistic theology.[329]
Throughout his work, Vondey’s driving concerns appears to be the visible unity
of the ecumenical, global church, a unity that he believes the Eucharist calls
Christians to desire, follow, and enact. For this reason, in his response to the
Faith and Order document, The Nature and Mission of the Church, he calls for
Pentecostals to ‘consider more carefully the role of baptism, the Eucharist, and
social justice as part of Christian initiation, vocation, and ministry’.[330]
Mark J. Cartledge
Mark Cartledge, a senior lecturer in Pentecostal and Charismatic theology at
University of Birmingham, while supporting Macchia’s sacramental account of
glossolalia, seeks to reframe the description in Reformed rather than Rahnerian
terms.[331] Cartledge proposes that the sacramental nature of glossolalia is best
understood in light of Calvin’s conception of a sacrament (outlined in his
Institutes Book IV) as any ‘outward sign’ – whether natural (like Noah’s
rainbow) or supernatural (like Gideon’s fleece) – enjoined on God’s people ‘to
render them more certain and confidence of the truth of this promises’, and,
following Calvin, he seeks to prioritize the intercessory work of the Spirit and
the indispensability of the believer’s active faith.[332] Cartledge infers from this
reformulation a number of practical implications for Pentecostal-Charismatic
dialogue about the nature and purpose of ‘tongues’.[333]
 In his Testimony in the Spirit, published in 2010, Cartledge attempts to work
out with an empirical Pentecostal theology an authoritative description of core
Pentecostal beliefs. He focuses his study on a single classic Pentecostal
congregation in the UK, and his central aim is ‘to listen to, record and reflect
upon the “ordinary theology” of congregational members’ on key theological
themes, including the sacraments.[334]
In the course of his studies, Cartledge discerned a basic pattern to the
congregation’s weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper. Either the pastor or a
senior member of the church – on rare occasions a leading woman in the
church – comes forward after a time of singing and response, and reads one or
more scriptural passages in preparation for receiving Communion and then prays
over the ‘emblems’ (bread and grape juice, served in small cups).[335] During
the ceremony, the congregation usually sings a song; occasionally, there is
silence. Afterward, the congregation is instructed to greet one another or to share
a word of encouragement with others. Cartledge found that the dominant text in
use during Communion was Isa. 53.4-6, and that it was read to emphasize the
connection between divine forgiveness, healing, and participation in the Supper.
Other texts, of course, were used as well, and in the end he discerned that Isaiah
53 (and other related texts) were read in light of the interpreters’ experience of
Communion and that they in turn understand their participation in Communion
through the lens of these texts. As he says, ‘Isaiah 53 and the rite of Holy
Communion mutually inform each other’.[336]
Cartledge concludes from his observation of these services that Pentecostals
see the Lord’s Supper as more than a memorial meal; in his own words, ‘The rite
of Holy Communion may function as a memorial of atonement for sin, but it
fundamentally reinforces the idea that Jesus can and does deal with our burdens
just as he has dealt with the cosmological burden of sin’.[337] He is not
oblivious to potential problems with contemporary Pentecostal theologies of
worship and raises several sets of concerns, including tendencies toward
triumphalism and hyper-individualism. Cartledge believes a ‘greater focus on the
sacrament of Holy Communion’ might correct these concerns, especially if
linked to a theology of the cross and an emphasis on divine sovereignty.[338]
Daniel Tomberlin
Dan Tomberlin, a Church of God (Cleveland, TN) ordained bishop and pastor,
argues that Pentecostals can and should recognize the sacraments – by which he
means water baptism, the Lord’s Supper, footwashing, and anointing with
oil – as real and really effective means of grace.[339] In his own words: ‘The
waters of the baptismal pool, the bread and cup of the Eucharist, and the
anointing oil can indeed be sacraments, that is, they are means through which
believers encounter the Spirit of grace’.[340] He is bold to insist that regular,
faithful participation in the sacraments is indispensable[341] to the way of life to
which Pentecostals, as all Christians, are called by the gospel. Drawing
extensively on the work of early Pentecostal pioneers and a kind of
phenomenology of Pentecostal worship and spiritual habitus,[342] Tomberlin
argues that a robust sacramentality is entirely in keeping with Pentecostal being-
in-the-world. He also engages in critical conversation with fellow Pentecostal
scholars, including Kimberly Alexander and Ken Archer.
As the book’s subtitle makes clear, the ‘altar’ serves as a focal image for
Tomberlin,[343] as does Christ’s priestly ministry. He returns again and again to
this image and its complex of themes to make his central point: ‘Through Christ
the High Priest and the Spirit of grace, sacraments are more than mere
reenactments or memorials to God’s redemptive acts; the baptismal water, the
towel and basin, the bread and wine, and the anointing oil become mediatory
gifts’.[344]
Regarding the Eucharist itself, Tomberlin holds that Christ (and the Spirit) are
in fact present in the celebration. And, while he stops short of calling for
Pentecostals to adopt any particular theory of Real Presence, he speculates that
Gregory Palamas’ distinction between the divine energia and ousia provides a
way forward for formulating a description of the reality and immediacy of
Presence at the Table. As Tomberlin sees it, Pentecostals (en masse) cannot
accept the Catholic teaching of transubstantiation that describes the bread and
wine becoming Christ’s body and blood, but can accept the Palamite teaching
that the Spirit comes upon – rests upon, ‘touches’ – the bread and wine of the
Eucharist.[345] Showing his pastoral colors, he is careful to take time to sketch
out in some detail how a local Pentecostal church might integrate regular
Eucharistic celebration into their worship services and way of life together.[346]
Conclusions
What is to be learned from this review of literature? First, there appears to have
been in the last decade what can rightly be called a ‘turn’ to the sacraments
among Pentecostals, with the work of John Christopher Thomas, Frank Macchia,
and Steven Land opening the way for the movement to revision the Evangelical
(anti-) sacramental thought and practice that had become standard after WWII,
and the work of Amos Yong, Ken Archer, Jamie Smith, and Wolfgang Vondey,
among others, advancing the discussion on a number of fronts in conversation
not only with Pentecostals and charismatics, but also with ecumenical partners.
Second, speaking broadly, this turn to the sacraments has moved in one or
another of two directions. Some scholars (e.g. Chan and Biddy) have
emphasized the need for Pentecostals to learn from the sacramental theology of
the wider Christian tradition, while others (e.g. Thomas and Yong) are concerned
primarily with developing a uniquely and authentically Pentecostal account of
the sacraments. There has also been an attempt (by e.g. Thomas, Macchia, and
Archer) to develop this Pentecostal sacramental theology by recovering other
sacramental rites and practices, such as glossolalia and footwashing, alongside
water baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
Third, as the above survey demonstrates, there has been a wide range of
scholarly opinions among Pentecostals regarding the value and meaning of the
sacraments. Some (e.g. Bond, Horton, Slay) have strongly opposed a
sacramental understanding of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, insisting that these
rites must be understood as mere ordinances. With equal force, others (e.g. Chan,
Yong, Biddy, Tomberlin) have put forward a high sacramental view.
Unsurprisingly, a majority of scholars have sought to occupy what might be
called the middle ground – although here, too, one finds a range of opinion, with
some (e.g., Bicknell) coming nearer the non-sacramentalist pole and others (e.g.
Land, Thomas, Macchia) approaching the opposite end of the spectrum.
Fourth, regardless of their disagreements, Pentecostals who have given
attention to sacramental theological concerns have maintained some common
ground. For example, all the reviewed scholars agree in eschewing a ‘magical’
view of the waters of baptism or the bread and wine of Communion. Also, the
vast majority of scholars have been careful to warn against the dangers of
liturgical formalism and clericalism.
Fifth, all the theologians, irrespective of their positions, appeal to Scripture for
support of their positions. Most of them draw on the Christian dogmatic and
exegetical tradition(s) as well, and many of them evince clear ecumenical
concerns. Speaking in general terms, it seems that those scholars who decide
against a sacramental view of the Supper and the Bath do so on (presumed)
biblical and pastoral grounds; that is, they do not find sufficient scriptural
support for the sacramental position, and they wish to avoid the dangers of
ritualism. Conversely, those who advocate a robustly sacramental view do so by
arguing from the church’s history and historical Christian practice – including
those experiences and practices peculiar to the Pentecostal tradition – as well as
from the Scriptures, and they seek to explain the Eucharist’s theological
significance for the church’s life in worship and mission. In short, differences in
theological method seem to determine the differences in opinion among
Pentecostals on the purpose and meaning of the sacraments.
3
(RE)DISCOVERING THE SACRAMENTALITY
OF EARLY PENTECOSTALISM: AN
EXPLORATION OF THE EARLY PERIODICAL
LITERATURE
This chapter consists of a reading of the early Pentecostal periodical literature
for sacramental references, both explicit and implicit, with particular attention to
theological descriptions of the Lord’s Supper. By a close reading of these texts, I
hope to discern the sacramental view(s) these early Pentecostals held, and to
identify the critical implications of these views for contemporary Pentecostal
theology and practice.
Prolegomena
The Normativity of Early Pentecostal Spirituality
Steven Land, following Walter Hollenweger, argues that the first ten years of the
Pentecostal movement serve as its ‘heart’ and not its ‘infancy’, insisting that any
contemporary attempt at constructing an authentically Pentecostal theology must
reckon with the spiritual practice and theological reflection of the earliest
Pentecostals,[347] who by virtue of their discerning openness to the work of the
Spirit provide the norm by which Pentecostalism’s ensuing developments must
be judged.[348] Such an assertion is sure to strike some readers as odd if not
outrageous, so a few clarifications are in order.
First, to agree with Hollenweger and Land is not to disregard later
developments in the movement or to assume that these developments are
necessarily suspect or less important. It is only to affirm that later developments
should not be deviations from the original dynamics of the movement but
faithful continuations of it. In other words, innovations in theology and practice
should arise from and remain true to the spirituality that first generated the
movement. Put still another way, contemporary Pentecostals must think and live
in ways that make one story with the movement’s pioneers, just as they should
seek to live and think in ways that make their story one with the apostles’ story
and the story of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.
Second, to regard early Pentecostalism in this way does not entail using it as
‘an inflexible standard of correctness’.[349] Instead, what Rowan Williams says
of the history of the ecclesia catholica applies, mutatis mutandis, to the history
of Pentecostal churches, as well: Pentecostals remain indebted to the pioneering
generation, and acknowledging this indebtedness is entailed by the conviction
that the Pentecostal movement now is the work of the one, unifying Spirit of
God who was at work then.[350] In attending to the movement’s earliest history,
we discover anew that ‘we are all … living “in the wake” of something prior to
all our thoughts and initiatives … [that] we are not our own authors’.[351]
Third, notwithstanding the movement’s restorationism and the attending
doctrinal and practical distinctives, early Pentecostalism – at least many of the
groups within it – remained grounded in the ethos of the historic Christian faith,
as evidenced by many Pentecostals’ fierce commitment to the doctrine of the
Trinity, a high Christology, the canon of Scripture, and the churchly practices of
footwashing, water baptism, imposition of hands (for ordination and healing),
and the regular celebration of the Eucharist as a means of grace.
 Fourth, and finally, the earliest Pentecostals, in many ways stationed at the
cultural ‘margin’ of modernity, found themselves enfolded in the drama of the
last-day restoration of God’s people, a dramatic placement that afforded them an
unusual perspective on the Scriptures and on their own lives in the world. As
John Howard Yoder put it, they occupied a situation vis-à-vis the world and the
established church that had remained vacant since the Anabaptists of the 16th
century.[352] The marriage – or at least courtship – of Pentecostalism and
Evangelicalism in the years following the second World War, whatever benefits
it afforded, altered this situation dramatically and effectively stripped
Pentecostals of an epistemology and hermeneutic that matched their experience.
[353] From that time, much ostensibly Pentecostal theology (whether in the
pulpit or from the lectern) has proven little more than an (un)imaginative
restatement of ‘evangelical fundamentals with a few extra chapters on Spirit
baptism and gifts’.[354] By attending carefully to primitive Pentecostalism,
Pentecostals can (re)discover categories of thought and modes of practice
suitable to their spirituality, their being-in-the-world. They can put away Saul’s
armor, so to speak.
This question remains, of course: what in fact constitutes ‘early’
Pentecostalism? Land, like Hollenweger, restricts himself to the movement’s
initial decade. Carl Simpson, in his treatment of the primitive German
Pentecostal movement, limits himself to the first seven years.[355] For my part,
I concentrate on the first quarter century of the movement, focusing on the
period from 1906 to 1931.
Assessing Early Pentecostal Sacramentality
In most Christian traditions, the sacraments of water baptism and the Eucharist
are regarded as basic and indispensable to the churchly life, so they receive the
lion’s share of attention in ecumenical discussion. However, many if not all of
the early Pentecostals did not consider themselves beholden to these categories,
so a careful reading of their history cannot limit itself in this way. To be clear,
then, the aim of this chapter is not to determine if or how early Pentecostal
sacramentality compares to, say, Anglican, Lutheran, or Catholic sacramentality.
Instead, the goal is to determine if and how early Pentecostal spirituality
discloses what one might justly identify as a sacramental imagination and praxis.
In light of these considerations, for the purposes of this chapter the following
working definitions are assumed: in the broader sense, a sacrament is any
recurring, embodied gesture or set of actions believed and expected to occasion
or mediate God’s effective presence; in the narrower sense, a sacrament is a
ritual gesture that serves as a ‘sign’ that somehow actually effects what it
signifies, a ‘visible word’ that does what it says or ‘gives what it talks about’, to
borrow a phrase from Robert Jenson.[356]
Wesleyan-Holiness and Finished Work
Pentecostalism(s)
This reading of early Pentecostal periodical literature draws extensively on the
model of Kimberly Alexander, whose research of early Pentecostal theologies of
healing has made clear how widely the Finished Work tradition differs from the
Wesleyan-Holiness, at least on issues of healing. In her monograph on the
healing models of early Pentecostals, she demonstrates how the traditions’
conflicting soteriological presuppositions inevitably required differences in
practice and belief. Imitating her method provides a way of discerning continuity
and discontinuity within and between the classical Pentecostal traditions.
Identifying the Primary Sources
I will engage early Pentecostal spirituality by offering a close reading of the
periodical literature of the time, because, as Alexander has argued, that literature
affords a representative sampling of the habits of thought and practice common
to early Pentecostals in the United States. These periodicals served the early
movement as a means, inter alia, of evangelistic, apologetic, inspirational, and
catechetical proclamation and instruction.[357] Additionally, as Alexander’s
work shows, reading these periodicals provides insight not only into the teaching
of the periodicals’ editors and leading contributors – including, in some cases,
official denominational leaders – but also into the thoughts and feelings of
‘marginal’ voices, and those who were involved in day-to-day ministry efforts, at
home or abroad. In the periodicals, one gets a glimpse of the ‘immediacy of
effect’ because they consist almost entirely of reports of recently-observed or
recently-experienced events and various ad hoc explanations or defenses of
particular doctrines; in short, ‘the reader has the opportunity to look through a
window at the movement as it develops on a weekly basis’.[358] It is difficult to
overstate the importance of these periodicals to early Pentecostalism, and so any
attempt at reconstructing the dynamic of the spirituality can ill afford not to
reckon with this literature. Altogether, nine early Pentecostal periodical
publications will be examined,[359] and for the sake of space and
methodological consistency, any material other than the periodicals (e.g.
sermons, tracts, diaries, official denominational statements) will be appealed to
only rarely.
This chapter will engage the following Wesleyan-Holiness periodicals:
The Apostolic Faith (Los Angeles, CA)
AF served as the official organ of the Apostolic Faith Movement, and was
headed at the time by William Seymour. The four-page paper was published
monthly (except for one issue), beginning in September 1906, and continuing
until 1908. After that, the paper was published by Florence Crawford from
Portland, Oregon.
The Bridegroom’s Messenger (Atlanta, GA)
TBM was a four-page paper that was pioneered by G.B. Cashwell for
Pentecostals in the southern United States. The first issue appeared October 1,
1907, and from December of the same year, continued as a bi-monthly
publication.
The Church of God Evangel (Cleveland, TN)
COGE, published first March 1, 1910, was an institution of the Church of God
(Cleveland, TN) denomination,[360] and was edited by general overseer A.J.
Tomlinson from its beginning until November 1922. After Tomlinson’s
impeachment, F.J. Lee, who was elected as General Overseer, began service as
the paper’s editor.
The Pentecostal Holiness Advocate (Falcon, NC; Franklin Springs, GA)
PHA, edited first by G.F. Taylor, served as an official organ of the Pentecostal
Holiness Church. Taylor was formerly a general superintendent of the
denomination. First published in May, 1917 from Falcon, North Carolina, the
periodical moved to Franklin Springs, Georgia the following year.
Following Alexander’s lead, after I have completed the reading of these
Wesleyan-Holiness Pentecostal periodicals, I will turn next to examine several
periodicals representative of the Finished Work stream of Pentecostalism as
well. These are:
The Latter Rain Evangel (Chicago, IL)
LRE was a publication of the Stone Church, which hosted the General Council
of the Assemblies of God in 1914 and 1919. The church’s pastor, William
Hammer Piper, edited the paper, with the first issue coming off the press in
October 1908. The relatively lengthy publication was published on a monthly
basis. Typically, the paper included sermons and short treatises on issues of
theological import to the movement.
The Pentecost (Indianapolis, IN; Kansas City, MO)
This monthly, eight-page paper, began in 1908 as a joint publication of two
independent congregations, and was published for two years under a team of
editors that included J. Roswell Flower (later an official in the Assemblies of
God) and A.S. Copley, who in 1911 assumed sole editorship, renamed the
periodical (Grace and Glory), and began using it to propagate the doctrine of
the believer’s eternal security.
The Pentecostal Testimony (Chicago, IL)
William H. Durham published PT irregularly, mostly during his time as pastor of
North Avenue Mission in Chicago, and then from Los Angeles, in the final
months of his life. The paper, which he used to further his Finished Work
teaching, ran at various lengths (12 to 16 pages), and included theological essays
by Durham, texts of his sermons, and news about his ministry particularly, the
Pentecostal movement generally.
Word and Witness (Malvern, AR; Findlay, OH; St Louis, MO)
WW, published and edited by former Southern Baptist pastor Eudorus N. Bell,
endured a tumultuous and now largely obscured history. The four-page magazine
was published for the most part on a monthly schedule. It was adopted along
with The Pentecostal Evangel as an official organ of the Assemblies of God at
the Hot Springs meeting in the Spring of 1914.[361]
The Pentecostal Evangel (Springfield, MO)
P E was launched as an independent paper under the name The Christian
Evangel in 1913. J. Roswell Flower and his wife, Alice, served as its founders
and first editors. As already mentioned, the paper was adopted by the
Assemblies of God as one of its official instruments, along with Word and
Witness. Published concurrently for two years, the papers were merged on
January 1, 1916. Except for a few years (1918-1923), when it was published as
an eight-page paper on a bi-weekly basis, the editors published the four-page
magazine weekly.
Having surveyed the Wesleyan-Holiness and Finished Work periodicals, I will
turn to A.A. Boddy’s Confidence magazine, the British Pentecostal periodical
first published from Boddy’s vicarage in Sunderland, England, beginning April
1908. Like most of these periodicals, Confidence consisted of personal
testimonies and prayer requests, news of the movement from around the world,
and brief theological articles on pertinent topics. I include this examination of
Confidence for several reasons. First, it served as a kind of bridging device,
bringing North American Pentecostalism into dialogue with the movement in
Europe; also, Boddy and his wife, Mary, were esteemed by many North
American Pentecostal leaders as important figures, as evidenced in part by the
frequent reprinting in American periodical of articles previously published in
Confidence. For example, Elizabeth Sexton, editor of The Bridegroom’s
Messenger, writes: ‘Confidence is one of our best Pentecostal papers, and its
editor, Rev. A.A. Boddy has been greatly used of God in England and other
countries'.[362] Most important for my purposes, the Boddys lived and taught as
Evangelical Anglicans, as did at least some of the contributors to their
periodical.[363] Therefore, I believe much can be gained by comparing the
sacramentality one finds in Confidence with that that one finds in the North
American periodicals, which issues from a markedly different religious and
cultural provenance.
Reading Strategy
I aim to engage these materials not only critically and scientifically but also in
faith, as a form of spiritual discipline.[364] I will read them in chronological
order, working through one periodical at a time, beginning with the Wesleyan-
Holiness publications. I do so in the hope of allowing the developing views to
emerge, leaving space for the discovery of how if at all the passing of time, the
rapid growth and widespread influence of the movement, and the always on-
going theological dialogue affected the shape of the sacramentality of the
primitive Pentecostal movement(s). Schematically, I will read with an eye for (a)
explicit references to or reflections on the sacraments, including but not
restricted to the Lord’s Supper, water baptism, footwashing, and anointing with
oil and laying on of hands for healing and ordination; (b) testimonies of
observance of the sacraments, and (c) an implied sacramentality embedded in the
movement’s rhetoric or praxis, e.g. in the use of eating/drinking metaphors or
references to the goodness of embodiment and mediation.
Wesleyan-Holiness Periodicals
In the Beginning: The Apostolic Faith
A F, published from 1906 through 1908 by the Azusa St. Apostolic Faith
Mission, served as the first theological articulation of the emerging Pentecostal
movement in the United States. As such, it provides a way into some of the
movement’s earliest and most instructive practices and convictions. As one
might expect, AF focuses on the teachings and events that convinced so many in
that time that the revival was nothing less than the Bible-promised ‘latter rain’,
that is, the end-time restoration of God’s people for Spirit-empowered, world-
wide mission. The lion’s share of writing belongs (1) to the defense of peculiar
Pentecostal doctrines (such as healing in the atonement, entire sanctification,
Spirit baptism, and speaking in tongues); (2) to calls for and reports of Spirit-
empowered world evangelization, and (3) to testimonies of the Spirit’s
supernatural work in healings, exorcisms, conversions, dreams and visions, and
prophecies. These emphases notwithstanding, one finds numerous references to
the sacraments, which suggests that Seymour and his fellow Pentecostals
believed that participation in the sacraments was an indispensable aspect of the
truly Christian life.
All of the Signs of the Full Gospel: Explicit Treatment of the Sacraments
In the September 1907 issue, Seymour offers a comparatively extensive
treatment of what he calls the ‘ordinances’. He identifies three: footwashing, the
Lord’s Supper, and water baptism, and he treats them in that order. He does not
give any attention to the metaphysics of the sacraments; the finer theoretical
points of the discussion evidently do not concern him. He concerns himself
instead with the fact that Jesus commanded his followers to observe these three
practices. If Jesus ordained them then they must be performed – end of
discussion. ‘What right have we to dictate to our blessed Master?’[365] For all
intents and purposes, the dominical mandate is the foundation of Seymour’s
sacramentality.
Footwashing
The footwashing rite, according to Seymour, serves as a ‘type of regeneration’.
He marshals quotations from the Fourth Gospel for support of this claim.
Intriguingly, he distinguishes Jesus’ act from the ritual washings practiced by
Israel’s priests, washings which were a type or symbolic anticipation of the New
Testament ordinance. Washing the feet of his disciples, Jesus was enacting an
ancient liturgical tradition. In this way, he both fulfilled and once-for-all
reconstituted the practice, affording it new meaning and power. Having laid out
the scriptural evidence, Seymour appeals to the Pentecostal experience of
footwashing as support of the validity of the practice: ‘We find that it is a service
much blest of God …’[366] Finally, he concludes the section with a few
practical considerations: one, the service is for believers, not ‘sinners’; two,
women wash only other women’s feet, and men, only other men’s; three, the
time given to the rite is a perfect opportunity for ‘testimony, song and praise’,
and, finally, footwashing should be followed by participation in the Lord’s
Supper.[367]
Laying on of Hands and Anointing with Oil
One finds frequent reference in AF to the practice of laying on of hands, both for
healing[368] and for Spirit baptism.[369] This is unsurprising given that
Seymour and the others at Azusa were concerned to follow Scripture’s directions
for healing. They prayed in Jesus’ name to the Father[370] with the imposition
of hands, because they believed Mk 16.18 mandated these actions.[371]
Similarly, following the prescriptions of Jas 5.14, the sick were to be anointed
with oil. [372] G.B. Cashwell testifies that he was healed of ‘rheumatism and
catarrh’ after he was anointed with oil and prayed for, and a woman recounts
receiving via the mail a handkerchief anointed with oil: upon opening the letter,
she was instantly healed.[373] The AF contributors and editor did not feel bound
to explain what the oil symbolizes or what in fact occurs when the sick person is
anointed. As with footwashing, only simple obedience to the scriptural mandate
mattered.[374] In the final analysis, this much remains undeniable: the early
Pentecostals who find their voice in AF made use of means of
healing – including the anointing with oil and the laying on of hands, as well as
the use of anointed handkerchiefs – and these practices were nothing if not
sacramental, even if they were not explicitly described in this way.[375]
Water Baptism
Seymour understood the rite of water baptism, like Holy Communion and
footwashing, as having been commanded of Christians by Jesus himself, and in a
September 1907 article he repeatedly stresses this feature of the ordinances’
meaning.[376] Like the majority of his Pentecostal brothers and sisters of the
period, Seymour believed that in spite of the fact that the washing rite in and of
itself does not accomplish anything ‘every true believer will practice it’ because
it is expressly mandated by the Lord.[377] He appears to be in the minority even
among his fellow Pentecostals, however, when he maintains that water baptism
should be administered by a ‘disciple who is baptized with the Holy Ghost’.
[378] Besides this piece, one finds no other explicit treatments of water baptism
in AF, a fact that presumably indicates a widespread agreement on the meaning
of the rite. In the ensuing years, however, controversies would arise and
engender differing accounts. In any case, many testimonies of baptismal services
are found, and these have much to say about what early Pentecostals believed
about the rite.
The Lord’s Supper
Seymour begins his exposition of the meaning of the Communion meal by
referencing Jesus’ Last Supper. This meal with his disciples marked the last
Passover, Seymour believes, because Jesus, having fulfilled the promise of the
Passover’s symbolism, ‘shoved that table aside’. As he had done with Israel’s
ritual washings, Jesus brings Israel’s ritual meal to its end. The Passover, that
‘very type of Jesus’, was possessed of a threefold significance: (1) the shed
blood spread on the doorposts speaks of redemption, (2) the lamb’s body eaten
by the pilgrims speaks of both health and healing, and (3) Israel’s watery exodus
speaks of the power of ‘the Blood of Jesus Christ’ to triumph over all the powers
of the enemy.[379] The Lord’s Supper, then, stands as the memorial both of
Jesus’ Last Supper and Israel’s last Passover and as such bears all the symbolic
weight of both meals, as well as all the significance of Jesus’ accomplishments
in his final hours of suffering, dying, and death. This means, among other things,
that if all of Israel went out of Egypt in health because they ate the Passover
meal, then Christians, who are eating the meal that fulfills the Passover, should
not experience anything less. The Supper also points to the future coming of the
Lord, the final Exodus of the children of God. Explaining that the Supper
‘teaches … salvation and sanctification through the Blood’, Seymour appeals to
the experience of the Supper: ‘We find as we partake of this ordinance, it brings
healing to our bodies if we discern the Lord’s body by faith’. He insists that
celebrants are ‘built up’ as they ‘eat His flesh and drink His Blood’.[380] On
Seymour’s reading, Paul’s account of the institution of the sacramental rite (1
Cor. 11.23-26) directs attention both to the future deliverance of the church at
Christ’s Second Coming and to Christ’s past suffering and death on Golgotha.
That is to say, the meal has both prospective and retrospective meanings. It
simultaneously works both proleptically and recapitulatively. The Lord’s Supper
‘points us to His coming to catch us away in the glorious liberty of the children
of God’, while at the same time serving as a ‘memorial of the death of our Lord’.
[381]
Seymour was not alone among early Pentecostals in connecting the meaning
of the Sacrament to the symbolism of Israel’s Passover meal. An earlier AF
article contends that the Passover lamb speaks of the salvation won by Christ’s
sacrificed body so that the events of Passover serve as a ‘real type of the
atonement’, illustrating that Jesus’ blood is given for our souls and his body for
our bodies.[382] Jesus surrendered his ‘perfect body for these imperfect bodies
of ours’, so that now, by the faithful partaking of the Lord’s body in the Supper,
believers may receive healing. This is why Jesus commanded his followers to eat
his body: ‘He said at the Passover supper, just before He was crucified, “Take,
eat, this is my body.” What for? For health’.[383] Readers are admonished to
‘honor the atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ in all its fullness’.[384] This is to
say, they are to expect that healing of their bodies is promised to come through
faithful eating of the bread of the Supper, a healing that is not only prefigured by
the rituals of the Passover meal but also anticipated and exemplified in the
healing that came to all of those who ate the first Passover and were healed (as
scriptural texts such as Psalm 105.37 make clear). Health, as well as healing,
was understood to be received through the faithful reception of the Eucharist.
According to AF, many believers suffer sickness and even death because of their
failure to discern Christ’s body, i.e. their failure to engage believingly in the
Supper. The problem is expounded in unmistakable terms:
You come to the Lord’s table and yet you do not believe in full salvation for
soul and body. You take the cup and eat the bread, and yet deny the body of
the Lord for health and salvation. So you are sick because you do not discern
the body of the Lord Jesus.[385]
At this point in the argument, an appeal is made to the Fourth Gospel’s
account of Jesus’ difficult words: ‘Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and
drink His blood, ye have no life in you’ (Jn 6.53).[386] Coupled with Seymour’s
reference to eating Christ’s body and drinking his blood, this citation shows that
at least a few early Pentecostals understood John 6 in sacramental terms, and
perhaps also evidences how strongly sacramental the early Pentecostal
imagination in fact was. Of course, healing of the body is not the only benefit:
the whole work of salvation and sanctification is at least in part mediated
through the Meal. ‘Let us take the Lamb’s body, through faith in our Lord, for
salvation and healing of these bodies, as we honor His blood for saving and
sanctifying our soul and spirit. Amen.’[387]
As already indicated, Seymour’s theology of the Sacrament as it appears in AF
depends on readings of various biblical passages, especially 1 Cor. 11.23-26 and
Jn 6.53-56. Besides these texts, Seymour also appeals to Jesus’ rebuke of his
tempter: ‘Man shall not live by bread alone’ (Mt. 4.4 and/or Lk. 4.4). This too is
something of a surprising move. Why quote this statement, which speaks of
God’s word as greater than bread, in a treatment on the meaning and purpose of
the Eucharistic bread? Is this simply a case of a poorly-selected proof text? At
one level, Seymour draws attention to the fact that God’s people live ultimately
by God’s word of command, so that the emphasis falls not so much on eating the
bread as on adhering to Christ’s directive.[388] At another level, however,
Seymour’s reading provides a way of rehearing the significance of Jesus’ words.
Seymour reads it as promise. (This in spite of the fact that in the Synoptic
accounts of the temptations, Jesus cites Deut. 8.4 as a warning against failing to
trust God for provision.) By taking Jesus’ claim as a promise, and by invoking it
in a treatment of the Eucharist, Seymour perhaps manages to disrupt the
sometimes too-neat separation of word and sacrament in Protestant sacramental
theology.
The Marriage of Heaven and Earth: Testimonies of Sacramental Experience
Reports of sacramental observances, especially water baptism, appear here and
there throughout AF. Virtually without exception, these reports describe the
baptism services as sacred occasions, and they rarely fail to mention the Spirit’s
(or Christ’s) presence in the event.[389] According to one exemplary account,
‘The Spirit of God was upon the people’ throughout the baptism service.[390] At
another baptism (convened at Terminal Island), 106 received baptism by
immersion in the ocean, with more than 500 celebrating the occasion – a
‘singing, shouting, joyful company’.[391] Under the title ‘Buried with Him in
Baptism’, an article recounts how on September 11th 1906 a large group met
again at Terminal Island: ‘The power of God rested on the baptismal service’,
the report states simply. ‘Heaven and earth certainly came together.’[392] Such a
description suggests that in spite of the scarcity of explicit theological statement,
early Pentecostals experienced water baptism as something more than a merely
memorialist event.
Feasting on Jesus: Embedded Sacramentality
As witnessed in AF, early Pentecostal spirituality was appetitive. That is to say,
Pentecostals knew and characterized themselves as people of intense hunger for
God and God’s blessings. This is evidenced perhaps most tellingly by the
extensive use of eating and drinking metaphors. For instance, the revival
services often are described as a grand banquet; someone testifies that ‘the
Father is furnishing the music and singing, and supplying the wine of the feast.
As the table is spread so freely, they take a small drink of the “new wine”’.[393]
Participants expected to be ‘fed’, so to speak, confident that the more they fed on
God, the more they would be consumed by God.[394]
In their use of feasting metaphors, AF contributors draw extensively on
biblical texts, some of which refer to the Lord’s Supper. For example, those who
have come to the revival at the Azusa St. mission are described as having been
made by the Spirit ‘… one lump, one bread, all one body in Christ Jesus’,[395]
unmistakable allusions to 1 Cor. 5.7 and 10.17. Contributors appeal to other texts
that do not refer explicitly to the sacraments, as well; for example, one finds
references to ‘the living waters’[396] (Jn 4.14 and 7.38)[397] and to drinking
from the fountain that gives life (Rev. 21.6).[398] However, it is the Lamb’s
wedding feast (described in Rev. 19.7-10) that more than any other single
biblical figure determines early Pentecostals’ understandings of the
eating/drinking motif, and to a certain extent, their view of the Eucharist, as
well. Mention of the ‘marriage supper’ appears everywhere. G.B. Cashwell, for
instance, writes from Memphis to encourage the believers in Los Angeles: ‘I
long to see you all in life, but if not I will meet you at the marriage supper of the
Lamb’.[399] Because it is a marriage supper, nuptial language plays a major
part in the discussion, as well.[400] In the words of one writer, ‘So Jesus is
coming back again, and He wants us, His bride, to be watching and waiting with
the garments of righteousness on, ready to enter into the marriage supper’.[401]
An unnamed correspondent adjoins,
We are Christ’s spiritual bride now, but there is to be a real wedding take place
and a real marriage supper. Those that sit down to this supper will be His
queen; the ones that have made their robes white and have the seal of God in
their foreheads. O let us not miss this supper.[402]
The embedded sacramentality of early Pentecostalism reveals itself also in the
many typological readings of Old Testament passages. Pentecostal readers
discerned the beneficia Christi (e.g. justification, sanctification, Spirit baptism)
typified in the architecture and furniture of Moses’ tabernacle. Sanctification,
particularly, finds its figurative expression in the holy place and in the ‘bread of
the presence’ described in Exodus 25.
All that enter wear holy garments, the white linen of the saints. Here we find
the shew bread, which represents feeding upon Christ. When we get a holy
heart, it calls for the Word of God. Now you have a holy feast continually. You
have the Word, Christ Jesus planted in your heart, and you have faith. You
believe every word of God.[403]
Working typologically and allegorically with Old Testament texts, the early
Pentecostal imagination envisioned the Christian life as a journey, a passing
through a series of exits as entries. Believers continually ascend from ‘glory to
glory’, moving from the ‘outward Court’ of justification through the ‘Holy Place’
of sanctification, and into the ‘Holiest’ of Spirit baptism. In the ‘holy
place’ – that is to say, after believers have been sanctified – they ‘feed upon
Christ’, for Jesus is the bread of life, as John 6 promises.[404] This is witnessed
in the words of one of the songs sung at the mission:
Beyond, there lies the Holy Place,
Which all may enter by His Grace,
And there be sanctified.
The Bread of Heaven each need supplies …[405]
In the same vein, the Old Testament feasts also illuminate believers’ present-day
experience in the Spirit. The four feasts (Passover, First Fruits, Pentecost, and
Tabernacles) ‘typify what we get through the cross now’ – that is, a ‘complete
redemption’ – and they illustrate that the believer experiences now a ‘continual
feast’, even while he or she looks to the time ‘when [Christ] shall spread the
tabernacle and feed us’.[406] In sum, the entire Pentecostal experience is a
continual feast, i.e. an unbroken enjoyment of Christ and his benefits. Baptized
in the Spirit, receiving entrance to Christ’s ‘banqueting house’, the believer
enjoys all God’s blessings.[407]
In AF, these Old Testament ‘types and shadows’ are never used to refer to the
Eucharist explicitly. The emphasis remains instead on the believer’s mystical
partaking of Christ. For them, ‘feeding on Christ’ is what matters, not so much
eating the bread and drinking the wine. However, this should not be considered a
rejection or even as a devaluation of the Supper. For, as has been seen, the Lord’s
Supper was believed to work both as a medium of and a signum for mystical or
spiritual feasting on Christ. If the importance of spiritual communion with Christ
exceeds that of participating in the ritual meal, it does not by any means negate
it. In fact, it affirms it. The ultimate sanctifies the penultimate, and grants it its
status.
It should also be pointed out that under the Pentecostal spell, the neat
epistemological distinctions that kept the world modern simply lost their charm.
For this reason, one finds many testimonies of the Spirit’s work in everyday
experiences. A single but singularly brilliant example makes the point:
One morning in the cottage on the Mission grounds, two were healed before
breakfast. Another morning at the family worship two were slain under the
power and one received the baptism with the Holy Ghost. The dining room is
a blessed place. The power comes down so upon the workers that we can
scarcely eat. We sing, speak in tongues and praise God at the table. The food
from heaven is the best part of the meal.[408]
The ‘food from heaven’ comes down on those who are serving and dining at the
table so that they can scarcely eat or serve. The very activity required for the
blessing to occur finds itself disrupted by the blessing that occurs. This incident
in some ways characterizes the tenor of early Pentecostal spirituality, generally,
and their sacramentality, specifically; it even perhaps works as a key to
unlocking the meaning of early Pentecostal sacramental thought and practice.
Conclusions
After this close reading of the sacramentality witnessed to in AF, the following
features stand out.
First, although not bound to traditional categories, early Pentecostal
spirituality as witnessed by AF was unquestionably and at least in some sense
robustly sacramental. Seymour and other contributors forcefully and repeatedly
insist upon the importance of the ordinances of footwashing, water baptism, and
the Lord’s Supper.
Second, notwithstanding the fact that they remained unconcerned with
metaphysical subtleties, the early Pentecostals whose voices are heard in AF
clearly held to the belief that the Lord personally acted upon the participants in
and through their observance of these rites. Even if they did not believe the
baptism rite was regenerative, they clearly did believe baptism was a God-
mandated practice, and their testimonies show that they experienced baptism as
an occasion of the Spirit’s work. Similarly, the laying on of hands and anointing
with oil were common practices and regularly experienced as means by which
the Spirit pours out God’s grace on the church. In AF, the accent always falls on
Christ’s (and/or the Spirit’s) personal presence and the power of the Spirit to
heal, to convict of sin, to draw believers into God’s presence.
Third, at least some of the Pentecostals of this period apparently regarded the
Lord’s Supper as the greatest of the several divinely-ordained means of healing.
They were convinced that if taken in faith the Eucharistic bread and cup
somehow mediated the soteriological power of the body of Jesus broken for the
healing of the saints and his blood shed for their salvation and sanctification.
Although Pentecostal preaching and instruction made much of the Supper’s
symbolism, observance of the meal was never merely symbolic or memorialistic.
Certain scriptures, especially passages from 1 Corinthians and John 6, gave
shape to the theological descriptions of the Eucharist, as did believers’ shared
experience of the Lord’s Supper, as evidenced most clearly in Seymour’s
phrasing: ‘We find that …’ The prevalent use of eating and drinking metaphors
also suggests the early Pentecostal imagination was determined in large part by
sacramental experiences, as well as by the readings of Scripture that illuminated
these experiences.[409] All this to say, the Lord’s Supper was basic, even
central, to the experience of the Pentecostal spirituality witnessed by AF.
Fourth, the sacramentality of the Pentecostal pioneers was not restricted to the
traditional rites of water baptism and Holy Communion. They expected God to
act at the dinner table as well as at the sacramental altar; for them the dining
room was no less sacred than a cathedral.
Fifth, the sacramentality one finds in AF often distorts normal referential
distinctions, so that certain images and phrases work in multiple dimensions at
once, something like Ezekiel’s wheels-within-a-wheel. Often, statements that
appear at first glance to refer to the sacraments in some straightforward sense
turn out at a second glimpse to be allusions to a mystical experience. Because of
this dynamic, it can be difficult at times to determine what reality in fact is being
described – if indeed it is only one reality. This allusiveness/elusiveness remains
one of the critical components of the grammar of early Pentecostal spirituality
and sacramentality.
Azusa South and East: The Bridegroom’s Messenger
G.B. Cashwell, returning to North Carolina after his experience at the Azusa St.
Mission,[410] founded TBM as a vehicle for promoting Pentecostalism in the
south.[411] Over the years, concern with ‘false doctrine’ both without and within
the movement figured with increasing prominence in TBM. In Cashwell’s own
judgment, ‘… the late Pentecostal movement stands alone in the world, and is
now fronting every heresy of hell and earth’.[412] As the movement extended its
boundaries, new controversies arose and older ones persisted and intensified,
with debates about Trinitarian doctrine, the application of Christ’s ‘Finished
Work’ to the believer in the ordo salutis, the meaning and purpose of glossolalia,
and the organizing and establishing of governance for the Pentecostal churches
appearing at every turn. Through all of this, Cashwell’s and Sexton’s paper
speaks both of and to the sacraments, even if most often in indirect or indefinite
ways.
‘Come and Dine’: Explicit Treatment of the Sacraments
Many in the developing Pentecostal movement(s) feared formality and
organization, as did many non-Pentecostal revivalistic and restorationist
movements of that period. Cashwell, formerly a Methodist Episcopal minister,
remained deeply sympathetic with their concerns.[413] Like them, he believed
the churches’ histories proved beyond question that organization undermined
the work of the Spirit, who was quenched by the traditionalism and formalism
that they believed organization entailed.[414] This fear could at times give rise
to a rejection of the notion of church altogether, and even of all things human or
worldly. ‘We have had human, soulish, psychical, natural religion so mixed in
that it is a great task to come up into the worship of God in the pure spirit. It is
the ramification of these human earthly conceptions that hinders the great power
of God among us. Oh! God, deliver us from the earthy.’[415]
Predictably, this repudiation of human and earthly means often entailed a
rejection of the sacraments, too.[416] It is unsurprising that unlike many of the
prominent leaders of the burgeoning Pentecostal movement, Cashwell did not
regard the ordinances as mandatory rites. In point of fact, he feared contentions
about the sacraments would splinter the emerging Pentecostal movement. In a
late 1907 editorial, he addresses concerns arising within the movement. First
among the divisions he lists is the battle over the value and purpose of the
ordinances. [417] Understanding that those peopling this new movement hailed
from various denominations and so held to different schools of thought,
Cashwell called for patience and generosity. These issues, in his estimation, were
at best of penultimate importance, because, as his experience told him, people
were filled with the Spirit apart from these practices: ‘the Holy Ghost takes up
His abode in our being before and after we practise [sic] them’.[418]
Nonetheless, the ordinances can and perhaps should be practiced by believers.
At least, no one who has the Spirit of God rejects others for practicing them.
Cashwell makes his own preferences clear:
I love to take the bread and wine in remembrance of our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ, for I expect to see Him soon, and I love to wash feet with the
Saints of God for I am not only willing, but I will do the humblest act possible
to show my love and fellowship for them for we are all baptized into one body
…[419]
The most direct treatment of the sacraments comes in the third year of
publication. In the headline article, Elizabeth Sexton draws readers’ attention to a
tract entitled ‘The Doctrine of the Pentecostal Movement’, a tract that advances
in ten brief statements the teachings of ‘special prominence’ among Pentecostals.
[420] The eighth is devoted to the ordinances. It is the briefest of the ten
statements, and mentions only the Lord’s Supper and water baptism.[421]
Nonetheless, that the statement warrants a place in such a concise list speaks to
the high value early Pentecostals placed on the sacraments, and the fact that
Sexton afforded this tract special attention in subsequent issues[422] only serves
to underscore the point.
Footwashing
Cashwell and Sexton counted themselves among those Pentecostal who did not
consider footwashing one of the church’s sacraments, although Cashwell did
find the practice meaningful. Other contributors agreed. Hattie Barth, for
example, explains Jesus’ washing of his disciples’ feet both as an ongoing work
of Christ the intercessor and as a once-for-all paradigmatic example of the
attitude required to live as the Lord’s disciple. In her own words, Christ
‘continues to wash in His own precious blood the feet of His disciples from
every taint of sin gathered in this earthly walk’; therefore, imitating him,
believers’ love must demonstrate its authenticity in continuous self-giving
ministry to others,[423] rather than in occasional ritual observance. At least a
few readers of TBM did observe the rite, however, as at least one contributor
makes clear: ‘In accordance with His word (John 13), He definitely had shown
us at the assembly of God at Cambridge, Mass., we should observe the Lord’s
Supper and the washing of feet on April 4th, the time God set for the passover
[sic] to be eaten by the children of Israel’.[424] Obviously, this instance also
points to the widespread practice of observing the Lord’s Supper and
footwashing together, and shows how tightly the connection between the
church’s Eucharist, Christ’s Last Supper, and Israel’s Passover meal was drawn
frequently by early Pentecostals.
Laying on of Hands and Anointing with Oil
Like AF, TBM regards the practice of laying of hands and anointing with oil for
healing as normative for Christian life and ministry.[425] For instance, a Brother
Lehman writes, ‘Two were healed instantly through the laying on of hands and
the prayer of faith and the precious blood of Jesus’.[426] Sometimes, both
healing and Spirit baptism were experienced at once, and, besides the laying on
of hands, anointed handkerchiefs also were used to mediate healing.[427]
Healing often took place at the altar, but in keeping with what one finds in AF,
the means of healing were exercised outside official church gatherings as well,
with some testifying of being healed in their homes.[428] The witness of TBM is
clear: healing often if not always came about through means.[429]
Water Baptism
The editors and contributors to TBM regarded water baptism as a symbolic rite
that does not in its own power effect any real change.[430] Nonetheless, they
held that Christians should appreciate and observe the practice. The call to
follow Christ necessarily leads to the waters of Christian baptism. Scripture is
unmistakably clear on the matter.[431] In the opinion of a few, at least, water
baptism, when observed faithfully, does in some sense actually accomplish ‘the
death and burial of the old man’, and everyone seemingly agreed that the
washing of baptism signifies burial with Christ in his death, as Romans 6 makes
clear.[432]
The lengthiest treatment of baptism’s meaning and purpose comes in the form
of J.H. King’s response to readers’ questions about Paul’s description of the
baptism into Christ’s death (Romans 6), and, more specifically, its relation to the
rite of water baptism and its significance for believers’ experience of entire
sanctification. In King’s opinion, water baptism, as a churchly act, serves as a
public and ceremonial witness to an already-effected experience. ‘In the act of
baptism we publicly declare that we are united to Christ and to His death by
being submerged into the element[433] as deeply as our bodies are in water.’ The
burial into Christ’s death in fact is analogous to – not the effect of – faithful
immersion in water. The term ‘baptism’, King insists, is figurative, and ‘merely
sets forth that deep suffering through which the soul passes in being separated
from sin, whether actual or original’.[434] The crucial experience – the real
baptism, so to speak – is existential and not ceremonial.[435]
The Lord’s Supper
In 1929, TBM published the text of a recently-delivered sermon by Hattie Barth,
then the magazine’s editor. Using 1 Cor. 5.8 as a text, she preached about
‘communion’, and in her sermon covered the sweep of human history from the
‘open face to face communion’ enjoyed by Adam and Eve before the Fall,
through the history of Israel’s election, the victory of God in Christ, and the
ministry of the church, to the final restoration of all things at the ages’ end. On
her telling, between humanity’s first sin and Christ’s becoming sin for us, the
bloody sacrifice served as a means of continued, spiritual communion, to keep
humanity from being ‘wholly cut off’ from God.[436] Even more than the
sacrifice of lambs and rams and doves, however, Israel’s Passover meal was the
principal means of communion.[437] Through the keeping of the Passover and
the faithful offering of sacrifices – Israel remained in communion with God.
Other meals shared in this glory. Barth finds the church’s Eucharist uniquely
foreshadowed in Abraham’s eating with Melchizedek: ‘That bread and wine’,
she writes, ‘we may be sure stood for the same thing that our communion stands
for today, even the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, who was crucified
for us’. She suggests that it was in this way that Abraham ‘foresaw’ Christ.[438]
Given this, the church’s Communion-meal, which ‘replaced’ Israel’s Passover-
feast, is an especially fitting means of grace. It is the greatest by far of all the
instituted means of grace. Barth laments that many believers ‘see nothing but an
empty form in the Lord’s supper’, failing to ‘discern’ the Lord’s body. Those
who do discern Christ’s body, who see ‘back of the emblems the real life of
Christ for our life’, are enabled ‘by faith to feed on Him’ and thereby to receive
healing for their bodies, ‘a foretaste, an earnest of the redemption of the body’,
as well as spiritual nourishment for their spirits.[439]
The Eucharist is blessed, but there remains a promise of far deeper, even
richer blessing:
Beloved, there is a new, a fuller, sweeter, higher communion for us with Jesus
when He comes again and we are reigning with Him in the Kingdom. He has
been revealing Himself to mankind from dispensation to dispensation in ever
increasing fullness, unfolding Himself more and more, and there are depths of
His love and glory yet to be revealed.[440]
In the End, ‘open face to face communion between God and man’ will be
restored, exactly as promised by Isa. 25.6-8. In conclusion, Barth prays to that
end: ‘Oh, our God, hasten the day, for what we thy creatures need, is face to face
communion with our God, the giver of life, that we may have life and that death
may be swallowed up of life’.[441]
T B M ’s references to the Lord’s Supper are often obscure, allusive, and
fragmentary. For example, one article insists that the ‘show bread’ of the
Tabernacle ‘represents the body of our Lord, by which living bread the saints
now live’.[442] It is finally indecipherable whether or not this mention of ‘living
bread’ is a reference to the Eucharist. It seems clear that early Pentecostals felt
no need to make hard-and-fast distinctions in these matters. Many of the songs
printed in TBM seem to prove this same willful inexactness; e.g. one invites:
‘See at His table vacant places still/Oh! waiting guests, draw near!’[443] Perhaps
the popular chorus ‘Come and Dine’ illustrates it best:
Jesus has a table spread
Where the saints of God are fed,
He invites His chosen people, ‘Come and dine’;
With His manna He doth feed
And supplies our every need:
Oh, ’tis sweet to sup with Jesus all the time!
’Come and dine’, the Master calleth, ‘Come and dine’;
You may feast at Jesus’ table all the time;
He Who fed the multitude, turned the water into wine,
To the hungry calleth now, ‘Come and dine’.[444]
Clearly, T B M contributors – like first-generation Pentecostals,
generally – spoke of feasting on (or with) Jesus in ways that exceeded the
observance of Communion. Still, that they did talk so often and so fervently of
eating (with) the Lord betrays an imagination fed, so to speak, by the Supper. It
seems safe to conclude that they understood the biblical language of communion
as principally and most importantly a spiritual or mystical experience in and of
Christ, even while they admitted that sometimes this experience could be
occasioned as well as typified by the community’s sharing in the Lord’s Supper.
[445] For some, at least, the Eucharist served both as a symbol of mystical
‘eating’ and as a way of obeying and imitating Jesus, and just so served as a kind
of God-given means of grace.
‘This is My Table’: Testimonies of Sacramental Experience
One finds in TBM numerous testimonies of sacramental experiences. The
communion service was regarded as an especially sacred time, a sanctity often
evidenced by the ‘hush of heaven’ that fell on the celebrants.[446] The
observance of the Lord’s Supper apparently often opened up space in the
community’s life for the Spirit to work. For instance, one sister testifies to a
message from God given at the close of the Communion meal by means of
tongues and interpretation: ‘I am well pleased with thee tonight, little flock, for
what thou hast done in my name’. Following that word from the Lord,
‘[s]inging, praying and speaking in the new tongue were manifested in a
beautiful way’.[447]
In 1915, TBM published the testimony of E.R. Trussel, whose story had been
previously published in Boddy’s Confidence and Flower’s Weekly Evangel.
Trussel testifies to a dream in which he held a conversation with ‘my Lord
regarding His Supper’.[448] In the dream, Trussel found himself standing near a
small table draped in white. On the table he saw a ‘small white loaf of bread’ and
a little silver cruse, filled with sweet wine. He sensed Jesus was there, although
he could not see him. Three times he heard: ‘This is My Table’. The last time,
the Lord said: ‘This is my medicine for my little children’. Trussel then received
a vision of a crowd of sick and afflicted believers who, he was told, had come to
Christ’s Table ‘carelessly, heedlessly, faithlessly’ and as a result have grown
worse ‘because they have sinned’ by their unworthy participation.[449]
Realizing how often he too had failed in this regard, he received this vision a
second and a third time.
Reflecting on these dreams and visions, Trussel ventures to explain what he
has learned from the experience:
I can see now that if we are sick or afflicted in any way and will partake of the
bread and wine in faith, we must be healed, and will no longer be weakly and
sickly and diseased if we are living in obedience to the will of God in other
ways, and we have no right to eat until we examine ourselves and are clear
before God, and not then if we are sick, unless we can eat in faith and be
healed, for what is not of faith is sin.[450]
Later, Trussel received his healing while partaking of the Supper.[451] On the
strength of his experiences, he asserts that the Lord’s Supper is ‘our Lord’s
medicine to keep his children well and free from disease until He shall come
again and call us to himself’.[452]
‘Beggars at Jesus’ Feast’: Embedded Sacramentality
Early Pentecostal sacramentality was fertilely imprecise, and nothing illustrates
this more clearly than the use of the feasting motif. In TBM, Christ is celebrated
as the ‘milk and honey and fine fruits’ on which believers feast continually.[453]
‘Hunger has passed away, for He satisfies me with His abiding presence.’[454]
The image of the Lord’s Table, drawn at least in part from a reading of Psalm 23,
appears frequently in TBM. A.H. Butler celebrates the God who has ‘spread His
table for us in the presence of our enemies’ and the ‘real feast of fat things from
our Father’s table’.[455] Another brother recounts the joys of a recently-attended
conference: ‘The blessed Holy Ghost had control and quite a number of saints
came from a distance, and how we did feast around our Father's table’.[456]
Hattie Barth, reading the tabernacle’s layout as a model of the Christian’s
journey into Christ-like maturity, identifies the ‘holy place’ with the Wesleyan-
Holiness experience of entire sanctification. In her reading, the bread of the
Presence typifies ‘eating on Christ, putting on the new man’, so that to eat Christ
is to be wholly conformed to Jesus – to be consumed by him.[457] Needless to
say, it remains unclear whether she means this in an exclusively existential and
mystical sense, or if she also refers to participation in the Lord’s Supper.
The Holy Spirit’s work is not restricted to the Communion rite or to any of the
activities of the community’s worship gatherings. For example, even everyday
meals sometimes served as media for God’s transforming presence. A Sister
McIntosh writes from Macao, China to inform the readers of a Christmas dinner
she had prepared for some of her Chinese neighbors. Of all the gifts she received
that Christmas, the greatest, she says, was from God, who directed her to host
this feast for her neighbors. Convinced ‘this was God speaking and wanting me
to make a feast, just as His word held up, for the poor who couldn’t make a feast
for themselves’, McIntosh set to work. She remembers that God ‘ministered to
our souls as we ministered to their bodies’, and found that the feasting
reawakened her desire for the Lamb’s marriage supper. No one can attend that
feast except for ‘beggars’, she insists – ‘those who have begged their way into
the fulness [sic] of God’.[458]
Whatever else it does, her testimony hints of a worldview shaped by belief
that the Eucharist is the foretasting of the feast, the Lamb’s marriage supper,
hosted by the risen, finally triumphant Lord. It is difficult to think that this
message was lost on the readers of TBM.
Conclusions
Some early Pentecostals apparently refused to practice the ordinances. Others,
like Cashwell, stop short of such a position, indicating only that he finds
participating in the sacraments personally rewarding, and insisting that
Pentecostals must not despise those who do practice them. Elizabeth Sexton and
her daughter, Hattie Barth, insist on the binding nature of the sacraments, and
Barth provides a robustly sacramental description of the Eucharist. All in all, the
sacramentality one finds in TBM remains always more than merely memorialist.
At least some of the contributors believed the Lord presented himself in the
Supper and acted through the Supper for bodily healing and spiritual blessing.
Many references to eating Christ or feasting at the Lord’s Table remain vague so
that it is difficult, even impossible, to discern whether they refer only to mystical
communion or also to the sacramental experience of the church. Nonetheless, it
is safe to say that at least for many of those Pentecostals whose voices are heard
in TBM, the Eucharist served as a master-symbol for the Pentecostal experience
of fellowship, not only with God but also with one another.
Church of God (Cleveland, TN): Church of God Evangel
Raised a Quaker and in his early 40’s a convert to Pentecostalism, A.J.
Tomlinson quickly emerged as one of the young movement’s most prominent
and influential leaders.[459] He first published his magazine, The Evening Light
and the Church of God Evangel in March 1910, less than two years after his
Spirit baptism.[460] After having been convinced of the Bible evidence for the
ordinances, and ridding himself of the ‘veil of Quakerism’, A.J. Tomlinson
plunged readily into the practice of the ordinances, regarding the ordinances as
essential to the church’s life.[461]
Practices of the Faithful Church: Explicit Treatment of the Sacraments
In the judgment of Tomlinson and the Church of God, observance of the
ordinances of water baptism, footwashing, and the Lord’s Supper is required of
the Christian.[462] This is the unmistakable and irrevocable direction of Christ
through the Scriptures. Being the Church of God, the (only) true people of God,
meant teaching the ‘whole Bible’, and this required teaching the following
doctrines:
Regeneration, sanctification, baptism with the Holy Ghost with other tongues
as the Bible evidence, divine healing provided for in the atonement, the Lord’s
supper and feet-washing, the full restoration of the gifts to the Church, water
baptism by immersion, and in fact all that Jesus ever taught, including tithes
and offerings.[463]
For his part, Tomlinson puts it bluntly: ‘Read where the Bible says wash one
another’s feet, and do it. Read again where He says, take the Lord’s supper, then
do it. Read where He says pay tithes, then do it’.[464] Jesus’ teaching on
footwashing is so clear that no one has an excuse to misunderstand.[465] All
those who refuse to ‘keep’ the ‘ordinances of God’ cannot hope to prosper.[466]
For this reason, Tomlinson and others set themselves against the anti-ordinance
movements, making every effort to refute their claims. For example, Tomlinson
writes,
There has been a cry against water baptism and washing the saints' feet by
many who have entered the ranks of Pentecost, the truth of water baptism and
washing the saints’ feet is in the Book, and remains as true and unshaken as if
they had never raised their voice against it.[467]
Besides the clear teaching of Scripture, COGE, like AF, often appeals to
believers’ experience of the sacraments as an argument for the binding nature of
the ordinances. ‘I know’, remarks one contributor, ‘certain persons that rejected
ordinances and government, and began to go down spiritually’. As a result of
their stubbornness and refusal to yield to sound teaching, these anti-ordinance,
anti-institutional Pentecostals ‘are wandering off from the fold of God and will
be forever lost except they repent …’[468]
Footwashing
Like Seymour and other A F voices, Tomlinson and the COGE contributors
maintained that footwashing is a church ordinance.[469] Tellingly, the
Pentecostal Holiness church comes under explicit and fierce criticism for the
notion of ‘optional foot-washing’.[470] A Tomlinson editorial contends that
participants ‘rejoice and shout and feel good’ in their footwashing services,
happy to acknowledge that footwashing is one of the ‘orders of our Lord’.[471]
Also, he and the Church of God maintained the closest connection between the
Supper and footwashing.[472] Sometimes, at least, the churches ‘assembled at
the altar for the sacrament’ at the conclusion of the sermon, and, after this, turned
to ‘the good old time love feast of feet washing’.[473]
Concerned with exact and complete obedience to the Scripture’s dictates,[474]
the Church of God’s sacramental discussions sound virtually scholastic, at times.
For example, a questioner asks, ‘In observing the ordinance of feet washing,
should one foot be washed or both feet?’ The answer, as one would expect, is
that both feet should be washed; Jn 13.10-14 is adduced as conclusive evidence
for this position.[475]
Laying on of Hands and Anointing with Oil
The Church of God believed the laying of hands was often if not always
necessary for Spirit baptism,[476] as well as for physical healing, as directed by
James 5 and Mark 16.[477] Some insisted that the laying on of hands is not
required for Spirit baptism, holding that the fact that it sometimes does happen
that way is no proof that it must.[478] Some argued that the imposition of hands
for healing as ordained by Jesus himself fell within the rights of every ‘true
believer’, indicating that at least some within the Church of God believed only
the ordained should exercise this ministry.[479] Others took a different tack,
finding in Scripture three ways to seek healing for the sick: (1) anointing with oil
and prayer, (2) the imposition of hands, and (3) the word of faith. Only the first
of these is available to all believers. The other ways belong only to those who
have the ‘gift of healing’. The Spirit who dispenses the charismata has
determined the different rights of the church’s individual members.[480]
Certainly, it was a widespread practice to anoint the sick with oil and to pray for
them by imposition of hands.[481]
Most in the Church of God agreed that the laying on of hands was necessary
for ordination.[482] In their judgment, Scripture makes it clear that the careful
ordination of ministers (bishops, pastors, deacons) is required of the one faithful
church.[483] Therefore, only ordinations performed by Church of God bishops
counted as legitimate; all other ordinations were invalid.[484]
Anti-ordinance movements claimed the authority of Scripture had been
supplanted by the coming of the Spirit, and considered the New Testament
ordinances as superfluous as circumcision and Sabbath observance to the Spirit-
filled believer; in the same way, they determined ministerial ordination was as
unnecessary as a hereditary priestly order. The Church of God stood against
these innovations at every turn, and COGE editors and contributors warned
against those ‘enemies to the Word of God’ who are
ignoring the holy commandments of the Lord and declaring that holy baptism
was only intended for the Jews, that observing the holy sacrament is not
required of the children of God in these days, that washing the saints feet is
only practiced by the weak-minded and fanatics; and thus fleecing the Lamb
of every visible ordinance that He has left for His true children to remember
His example.[485]
Water Baptism
In spite of some confusion over whether biblical references to baptism referred
to water baptism or Spirit baptism, the early Pentecostals whose voices are
heard in COGE agreed that Scripture mandates even the form: ‘there is only one
mode that rightly be called baptism’, i.e. immersion in water. No other form of
the practice is recognizable as baptism.[486] Sprinkling fails to suffice because
the symbol must express the reality of dying with Christ, as described in
Romans 6. In the same way, the rite also must symbolize rising with Christ: ‘The
breaking forth from the watery grave in baptism represents the resurrection’.
[487] This conviction that the baptismal rite not only fulfilled the biblical
mandate but also served as means of entering into Christ’s life[488] is
demonstrated by the use of the formula ‘… followed the Lord in baptism’, which
appears frequently.[489]
Although they deemed water baptism crucial to the life of obedience, many
Pentecostals nonetheless took time to explain that the rite of washing was
insufficient by itself. F.J. Lee, who followed A.J. Tomlinson as editor of COGE,
explains that the ‘baptism into Christ’ of which Scripture speaks (e.g. Gal. 3.27;
Rom. 6.3) refers to something more than the ritual washing of baptism. It means
being ‘completely immersed in Christ not the water, but absorbed in Him,
swallowed up in Him’.[490] Although the true church does practice water
baptism, along with footwashing and the Lord’s Supper, as a God-given
ordinance, these prove of no use ‘without the power of Jesus Christ’.[491]
The Lord’s Supper
COGE contributors did not believe the Sacrament worked salvation directly.
[492] F.J. Lee fears for those who trust in their regular partaking of the
Eucharist, rather than simple obedience in faith, for, as Scripture warns, not
everyone who claims Christ does so truly.[493] The Supper does not work apart
from the faithful response of the participants, and believers are instructed against
a ‘tread-mill use of the means’ that cannot truly help them ‘advance in grace’.
[494] Believers must resist the ‘temptation to formality’, for in spite of the fact
that the ‘outward ordinances must be attended to’, these will be of no profit ‘if
the inner heart is not in touch with Jesus the source of all life and power’.[495]
The elements of Communion are not really transformed into Christ’s body and
blood, as Catholics teach; instead, they serve as emblems of his death.[496] Like
most Pentecostals of the time, the Church of God held that the Eucharistic bread
symbolized Christ’s broken body.[497] For reasons that are not clear, however,
they apparently did not follow other Pentecostals in believing that the Lord’s
Supper serves as a means of bodily healing – in spite of the fact that the Evangel
speaks often of healing, and of the means of grace.
It would be a mistake, however, to think that the Church of God was anti-
sacramental. To the contrary, there is a robust sacramentality to be found in
COGE. At the core, there is the conviction that the apostolic church necessarily
keeps the full gospel, so that keeping the ordinances laid down by divine decree
is nothing less than decisive for the church’s identity as the true people of God.
[498] If the bread and wine of the Supper could be taken without profit to the
participants, such was not necessarily the case, for ‘the blessed ordinance is so
well established in the minds of all Christian people’ that those who fail for
whatever reason to participate in the Lord’s Supper have ‘missed some of the
most sacred and hallowed moments in the entire Christian Life’; indeed,
‘nothing could take the place of the Lord’s Supper’.[499] Further, Pentecostals
are exhorted to the regular use of the sacraments, including the Lord’s Supper:
‘every available means of grace should be utilized’.[500] These means of grace
serve to bring about the ‘improvement and advancement’ of the children of God.
[501] Tomlinson goes so far as to level a warning at COGE readers: ‘I’d be
afraid to neglect partaking of the Lord’s Supper and the washing of feet
according to His Word’.[502] Believers live confidently in the ‘overcoming
power’ of the Holy Spirit who makes it so that believers can function as
‘acceptable members of the body of Christ’ keeping ‘all the ordinances, forms,
and ways of the religion of Jesus Christ’.[503]
Tomlinson, Lee, and other Church of God leaders attended carefully to the
mechanics of the Eucharistic celebration, a fact that points to the strength of their
sacramentality. Although they allowed each congregation to decide when to have
the Sacrament, they did not leave any question that it should be done. They
understood that Christians from antiquity observed the Sacrament on the Lord’s
Day, and they insisted that only Church of God ordained ministers should
administer Communion.[504] Non-alcoholic wine was to be used for
Communion, never water. As Lee explains, the Scripture in no fewer than three
places clearly states that Jesus said wine was in the cup he shared with his
disciples; and, just as importantly, water simply cannot function as an effective
symbol of Christ’s bloody death – only the fruit of the vine can do that.[505]
‘The Form of the “Fourth”’: Testimonies of Sacramental Experience
One finds in COGE scores of testimonies of sacramental experience. For the
Church of God, there was no doubt about the necessity of observing the
ordinances, which were regarded as ‘sacred and impressive’ rites.[506] Often,
launching a new congregation and ‘setting the church in order’ included the
celebration of the Sacrament.[507] A brother writes from Kingston, Jamaica,
rejoicing that in the receiving of Communion, ‘we had wonderful manifestations
through the Spirit, speaking in tongues and interpretation and shouting’.[508]
One sister became so ‘happy’ during the time of footwashing and Communion
that she ‘danced under the power’ until she fell into an hours-long trance and had
a vision of heaven.[509] A report of revival services in Cleveland, TN explains,
Six dear children of God followed Jesus in baptism, and several engaged in
the Lord's Supper and the washing of the saints [sic] feet. The Spirit fell in this
 service as usual, and those who had never engaged in feet washing, received
special blessing.[510]
These experiences led them to the conviction the Lord’s Supper was ‘the most
wonderful of all’.[511] If some congregations did not hold to such a high view of
the ordinances,[512] they were the exception, not the rule.
Evidently, many of the members of the Church of God expected the
sacramental events to occasion Christ’s presence and the Spirit’s work in
uniquely powerful ways. Participating in washing feet and eating the Supper,
they found themselves ‘greatly blessed with the presence of the Lord’,[513]
receiving the Lord’s power and blessing.[514] If one can testify that ‘God was
there’ in the sacramental service,[515] another can say that ‘the Holy Ghost
manifested Himself’ wonderfully,[516] and another can boast that ‘Jesus himself
was present’.[517] As they obeyed Christ’s command to eat the Supper and wash
the feet of the saints, they were ‘enveloped in the real glories of heaven’.[518]
Often, Sunday evening services were dedicated to observing the Supper and
footwashing.[519] Special services such as revivals, campmeetings, and church
conferences regularly closed in this way, as well.[520] A Sister Barr testifies of
such a service:
Sunday night the Lord’s Supper, and the eleventh chapter of First Corinthians
was preached from. After the sermon was delivered the Lord led me to read
the thirteenth chapter of St. John and explain every verse until I got to the
seventeenth verse, and then we went into the performance of the chapter, and
the Lord Himself was there. Impressions were made the hearts of the people
such as had never been before in any of our services. I must say that the
children of God are happier since they have obeyed the commands as given in
Matt. 28:10 and St. John 13.[521]
Another testimony celebrates a recent July 4th service that was ‘wonderfully
blest of God’. It was ‘one of the most victorious services’ as the saints took the
Sacrament and washed one another’s feet.
As the bread was broken and mention made of the broken body of Jesus, He
seemed to manifest His presence in the midst. As I stood there in the presence
of God and before the audience with the broken bread, a piece in each hand, I
seemed to get a broader view of the Christ and wonderful scheme of
redemption than ever before. The form of the ‘Fourth’ seemed to be there.
The testimony continues, detailing how the people filled the altars and ‘knelt in
companies one after another’ in waves, while music and singing carried on.
Everyone participated reverently. Then, at the proper time, the Lord’s Supper
was served: all was quiet except for the ‘groans and sobs as the deacons passed
the bread and wine’. After everyone had participated, they washed one another’s
feet, the men taking one side of the sanctuary, and women the other side. The
service was punctuated with ‘[t]ears, shouts, praises, embracing, handshaking,
talking in tongues, singing’, and the contributor recalls how the power fell on his
own daughter while she played the organ; ‘she played for several minutes under
the power of the Spirit’. Some sang in tongues, others prophesied, and many
experienced other manifestations of the Spirit as the ‘Power began to fall again’,
with signs and wonders following.
Some began to fall into the altar crying for mercy; some fell back in the
congregation down between the benches. When there was room made at the
altars by deliverance coming to those who were there, others would take their
place, filling up the altar again. The work continued until late at night after a
number were converted, backsliders reclaimed, several sanctified, and
probably ten or twelve swept through to Pentecost.[522]
It is difficult to appreciate the profoundly imaginative and affective
dimensions of these early Pentecostal celebrations of the Supper. In the words of
one COGE contributor, communion is a ‘heart rending time’ in which believers
remember ‘our blessed Christ as he hung on the cruel cross on Calvary’s bloody
brow and his body was broken for us, and his blood shed for you and me’.[523]
The celebration of the Lord’s Supper and footwashing effects ‘a deep feeling of
sacredness and fellowship’. Because Christ is felt to be personally present to the
participants, the congregation enters an atmosphere of solemnity, as ‘[t]he heart
melts completely in contemplation of the death and sufferings of Christ’ and the
‘deepest gratitude and devotion’ arises from reflection on the agony in the
garden.[524] ‘Our sorrow is often too deep for words’, and ‘often we break into
tears’.[525] This affectivity arose from the participants’ imaginative participation
in the events of Christ’s saving death.
As the unleavened bread is broken can we not hear the beat of the hammer
that drove the nails into His hands and His feet? And the spear piercing His
side? And as we behold the wine in the cup, does it not better than anything
else in the world bring thoughts of the shed blood of Christ – the tears in the
Garden that were as great drops of blood? And the blood that trickled down,
and flowed from His hands and His feet, and gushed from His side – and He
bowed His head, and said, ‘It is finished’.[526]
Whatever one makes of the explicit theological statements of the Church of God,
these testimonies demonstrate that the experience of the sacraments could not
rightly be described as merely memorialist.
‘They Who Eat His Word’: Embedded Sacramentality
As with the other Pentecostal periodicals of the time, one finds in COGE
frequent uses of the eating and drinking motif. Several testify that the weekly
COGE installments serve as God’s banquet for them.[527] Worship services,
including observance of the ordinances, sermons,[528] and testimonies,[529]
also served as occasions for everyone to ‘enjoy a feast of fat things and the
outpouring of the Spirit’.[530] Each Pentecostal believed he or she was ‘feasting
with my dear Lord’.[531] Obviously shaped by John 6, members of the Church
of God expected to feast on the Bread of life.[532] ‘[T]rue worshippers are and
let the Holy Spirit have His way because the flesh represents the Word and the
blood the Spirit.’[533] Everyone is invited not only to drink but also to drink
‘freely’.[534] The language of Acts 2 also informed their experience, although
they did not always apply it to the Sacrament of the Table. One brother testifies
of a camp-meeting in which everyone ‘had all things common, eating at one
table’,[535] and reflecting on Acts 2.42-47, another contributor exclaims: ‘The
table of Jesus is spread in the midst of where the poor, the blind, the maimed and
the halt can come and eat and drink a satisfying portion, and can stay there and
feast all the time’.[536]
In keeping with their fellow Pentecostals’ habits of speech, those in the
Church of God spoke often and with deep emotion about the eschatological
feast.[537] The image of the Lord’s Table occurs frequently, as well.[538] And
while many speak of it as an analogy for the benefit of Christian fellowship,
[539] they also could use the title as shorthand for Holy Communion.[540] This
indicates that the shared experience of the Sacrament did much to shape the
understanding of their communion with God and with one another. It appears the
Lord’s Supper provided for them a most important symbol of this mystical
communion, and in some sense helped to effect this communion.
Conclusions
It can hardly be disputed that the Church of God boasted the strongest
ecclesiology of all the early Pentecostal groups, and COGE makes clear that in
its formative years the Church of God believed the Lord had ordained certain
practices for his one, true church, including foot-washing, water baptism, the
laying on of hands and anointing with oil, as well as the Lord’s Supper. While
they fiercely resisted (at least in word, if not practice) temptations to formalism,
they constantly urged believers to give themselves wholeheartedly to these
sacred practices. Emphasis falls again and again on the unmistakable clarity of
Scripture in these matters: if some refuse to observe the sacraments it is due
either to ignorance or to willful neglect. Given that the Lord’s will is so clearly
stated, believers must respond in spirited obedience, following Jesus by
observing these sacraments.
Numerous testimonies indicate that they understood themselves as objects of
God’s personal activity in and through the Lord’s Supper and footwashing, as
well as other ordinances. The vibrant affectivity of their sacramental experiences
witnesses to the sacraments’ significance and potency, as well. No one can read
these testimonies without concluding that Pentecostals in the early Church of
God frequently, even commonly, believed Jesus Christ was really, personally
present to his church in their observance of the Lord’s Supper, and that in these
moments, the Holy Spirit also was at work, accomplishing the will of God in and
among those gathered at the Lord’s Table. Perhaps most interestingly, the Church
of God apparently differed from most Pentecostals of the time by not speaking of
the Lord’s Supper as a means of healing. To be sure, they did not outright reject
the notion, but neither did they make use of it, even while they vigorously
championed the claim that bodily healing was guaranteed by Christ’s atoning
death.
The Pentecostal Holiness Church: The Pentecostal Holiness
Advocate
The 1917 convention of the Pentecostal Holiness Church included the initiation
of a weekly periodical to serve as the official literary organ of the church.[541]
G.F. Taylor was chosen as editor and business manager of the paper, which was
entitled The Pentecostal Holiness Advocate.[542] Taylor published the first
issue of PHA in May 1917.
‘All the Means of Grace’: Explicit Treatment of the Sacraments
One finds frequent use of ‘means of grace’ language in PHA, perhaps owing to
the Wesleyan-Methodist training of the denominational leaders.[543] For
instance, a North Carolina pastor suggests that as with armies in war-time, so in
the life of the believer: some blessings come only at the cost of ‘the greatest self
sacrifice, most heroic faith, and tremendous effort’, which for the Christian
involves prayer, the study of Scripture, and ‘all the means of grace of which our
whole being is capable’.[544] G.F. Taylor, defending the ‘rich heritage’ that
Pentecostals enjoy as Christians,[545] finds it profoundly troubling that most of
his Pentecostal brothers and sisters are not using all the means of grace, unwisely
and unnecessarily limiting themselves to only a few.[546] He concludes the
piece with an admonition to pursue the same holiness the martyrs modeled.
‘What the most perfect Christian has become through grace we may become if
we are as diligent in the use of the means of grace.’[547] Without doubt, Taylor
understands the means of grace as practices handed down by previous
generations of holy men and women and it is inconceivable that he would not
have considered baptism and the Lord’s Supper as two such practices.

Footwashing
Unlike many other Wesleyan-Holiness Pentecostals, Taylor and the PH Church
did not understand footwashing as a binding ordinance. Taylor read Jn 13.1-16
typologically, holding that Jesus’ washing of his disciples’ feet models an
attitude that believers must imitate.[548] Although he will not object to those
who practice the rite, he maintains that it is not required of them. ‘We have no
objection to those who wish to follow this example by washing each other’s feet.
Personally, I do not see this as a church ordinance, but I can not [sic] object to it
among those who wish to practice it.’[549] T.A. Melton held the same position
on these matters.[550] Unquestionably, water baptism and the Supper are
ceremonies of the new covenant, and perhaps footwashing is such a rite, as well.
However, if Scripture intends it to be ‘literally practiced’ as a churchly rite, then
it is ‘strictly ceremonial’, he insists.[551]
Laying on of Hands and Anointing with Oil
A reading of AF and TBM shows that the early Wesleyan-Holiness Pentecostals
held that the imposition of hands was directed not only for healing, but also for
Spirit baptism,[552] and (less often) ordination. The witness of the PHA is the
same. J.O. Lehman writes from Johannesburg to report of several healings
through the laying on of hands, a practice he believes mandated by the
Scriptures.[553] In his contribution, T.L. Robertson finds that the contemporary
church when compared to the earliest Christians, who were ‘really in full
power’, falls short, for the primitive Christians could ‘transmit the baptism of
the Spirit by the laying on of hands, ordaining people in power, healing the sick,
etc.’[554]
Some assume that Christ’s ongoing healing ministry is accomplished via
churchly means; one brother makes this claim, but quickly points out that he
intends only those means explicitly described in the Bible: ‘I believe in the use
of Scriptural means, such as the laying on of hands, the anointing of oil and the
prayer of faith’.[555] G.F. Taylor argues similarly. Citing Mark 16, Taylor
boasts: ‘Here we have the promise direct from Jesus that the sick shall be healed
with the laying on of hands by those that believe’. Taylor then moves to consider
James 5. He takes the reference to the elders to refer primarily to ‘ordained
ministers’, but acknowledges that it may also refer to ‘anyone who has faith in
God for healing, minister or layman’. The sick person is anointed with oil, but
the oil is not rubbed into the skin, for the prayer of faith and not the oil itself
accomplishes the healing. As the Scripture says, this is a time for confession of
sins to one another, as well. These are the ‘Bible instructions’ for healing.[556]
As Taylor’s sees it, the Divine Physician, like any surgeon, retains certain
‘instruments’ and uses them as needed. The ‘complete set of instruments’
includes the prayer of faith, anointing with oil, laying on of hands, the Name of
Jesus, and the Blood of Jesus. The patient, of course, must cooperate, confessing
his faults – exactly as James 5 directs.[557]
Many, in the midst of their theological reflection, make a point to explain that
the laying of hands by itself avails nothing. Taylor, for one, takes up the story of
Naaman’s healing as an example, finding in the prophet’s command to wash in
the Jordan an analogy to Christ’s command to lay on hands and anoint with oil.
As it was with Naaman, these gestures in themselves do not effect the healing,
he asserts, but the healing will not come without them, for healing depends upon
obedience. ‘There is no remedy in the laying on of hands. There is no remedy in
anointing with oil.’[558] Along the same lines, others argue that the imposition
of hands is never the means of God’s activity, at least not in any straightforward
sense.
Human agency has a part in the dissemination of the gospel, but not in the
mysterious power of the Holy Ghost … Laying on of hands has never healed a
sick body, or brought the baptism of the Holy Spirit in its self. We believe
God, we obey God, then His power is put into motion that surpasses human
reason.[559]
Water Baptism
As Seymour and others had done, Taylor distinguishes between the rites and
ceremonies of the Old Testament and the ceremonies of the ‘New Dispensation’.
Water baptism, like the Lord’s Supper, belongs to the new covenant, fulfilling
and reconstituting Israel’s ritual baptisms and the ceremonial Passover meal.
Taylor explains that both the Passover and the Supper, as well as the Jewish
ritual washings and Christian baptism are ‘entirely ceremonial’.[560] He is
careful to draw a distinction: water baptism remains a necessary condition of
pardon of sins, but not the means that effects that forgiveness. In Scripture, the
term ‘baptism’, he insists, refers to far more than water baptism – in his opinion,
it refers sometimes to water baptism, sometimes to Spirit baptism, and
sometimes to suffering[561] – and not every one has to be baptized in water, as
the stories of Cornelius and the thief on the cross illustrate. Taylor insists that
water baptism is nothing more or less than the fitting symbol of the ‘real’
baptism; as a result, the rite of washing is not for the remission of sin.[562] In
his words, repentance is ‘more than a handshake and water baptism’.[563] In
response to a query about the meaning of 1 Pet. 3.21, he writes,
The parenthetical expression refers to water baptism, and this has its place,
and is right and proper, but mere water baptism alone has no saving virtue.
The baptism that counts is the inward work of grace, the regenerating forces
and virtues of the atonement and resurrection of Jesus Christ’.[564]
For Taylor and apparently many others in the Pentecostal Holiness Church, 1
Cor. 12.13, Col. 2.12, and Rom. 6.3-6 do not refer so much to the rite of washing
as to a personal spiritual/existential experience that accomplishes both the
loosing from sin and the flourishing of a great joy and unity among believers. On
this reading, ‘baptism in Jesus’ name’ is the baptism the Lord asked James and
John if they were ready to undergo (Mt. 20.23).[565] All this notwithstanding,
the Pentecostal Holiness Church refused to downplay the need for and meaning
of the rite of water baptism. In fact, Taylor, speaking for the denomination,
maintains that ‘pardon is merited through the blood of Jesus alone, but granted to
us on the condition of works and faith’, so that, for those able to receive it, water
baptism is nothing less than a condition of pardon.[566] It is, he explains, ‘the
door into the church militant, or an entering into membership and fellowship
with the church he joins’.[567]
Of course, not everyone in the Pentecostal Holiness Church held such a high
view of the rite. One contributor, for example, goes out of his way to insist that
water baptism – unlike baptism in the Spirit – is a thoroughly ‘ human act’, even
if it is done in the name of God.
It is often administered to unfit subjects, and almost as often administered by
preachers who are equally unfit to baptize a child of God. But the baptism of
the Holy Spirit is never given to an unfit subject nor by one that is unfit for
His office … Water baptism is an act in which God may not take part. The
baptism of the Holy Ghost is a supernatural act in which God and the recipient
only have part.[568]
In the case of water baptism, virtually all first-generation Pentecostals
considered water baptism a symbolic ritual; it is possible to submit to the ritual
washing without in fact being cleansed by the Spirit. Breaking with the
Augustinian tradition, some also insisted that the purity of the minister was a
matter of concern. Even so, they maintained that the rite was necessary, and
allowed that God could act in it. This view of water baptism needs to be
considered in light of both the history of Pentecostalism’s emergence from the
Wesleyan-Holiness revivals and movements, many of which emphasized the
radical subjectivity of the believer and accepted members with or without water
baptism, and the rising controversies within the movement regarding the
significance of water baptism.[569] The fact that the Pentecostal Holiness
Church required water baptism for membership indicates something of a move
away from these Holiness roots. Further, it should be remembered that the
Pentecostal Holiness churches sanctioned the practice of infant
baptism – although even this was understood as a kind of ‘believer’s baptism’.
[570]
Lord’s Supper
Most often, PHA identifies the Lord’s Supper as ‘the sacrament’. In fact, the
term appears dozens of times, and in various contexts. Frequently, one finds
announcements of upcoming meetings in which ministers are requested to come
early to the conference so the sacrament can be administered.[571]
Announcements and testimonies of celebrations of the Lord’s Supper at quarterly
meetings, Sunday morning worship services, and Sunday night ‘devotional
services’ are also plentiful.[572]
As seen often in AF and TBM, one finds clear reference to the Lord’s Supper
as a means of bodily healing. In response to a submitted question, G.F. Taylor
answers:
Healing for the body goes with the sacrament of the Lord’s supper, as well as
blessing for the soul. Many eat without discerning the Lord’s body, and they
do not get healed, and so they are weak and sickly. Some actually go to sleep
in Jesus; that is, they die, when they could be healed if they discerned the
Lord’s body in the sacrament’.[573]
Taylor also provides some specific directions for receiving the Supper, and offers
a few explicit statements on the official position of the Pentecostal Holiness
Church. First, Communion is acknowledged as the ‘second ordinance’ of the
church, instituted by Christ himself, and, second, all those who partake in the
meal receive the blessings promised in Scripture. Third, in light of these facts, all
Christians should partake of the meal joyfully, ‘not so much because they are
commanded to do so, but because it is their privilege’.[574]
Taylor includes an extended statement on the ‘metaphysics’ of Communion,
which is obviously framed as a rejection of the views of other Christian
traditions, Catholic and Protestant:
We do not believe that the bread is the body of Jesus Christ, nor that the wine
is His blood; we do not believe that the bread represents his body, and the
 wine represents His blood and that when blessed, His body and blood
accompany them. We do not think that our literal bodies feed on His body and
blood, but that as we partake of the bread and wine, our souls feed on the flesh
and blood of Jesus Christ, brought to us through the Holy Ghost.[575]
Clearly, Taylor – and presumably the majority of the readers of and contributors
to PHA – repudiates both the Roman Catholic and Lutheran understandings of
real presence, holding some form of the Calvinist view, instead. This much is
certain: the Sacrament, in his estimation, does not effect grace mechanically.
‘Like everything else in the church, the Lord’s Supper may be taken without
imparting any grace or blessing.’ He also warns against overemphasizing the
importance and power of the Supper. Those who believe that in the taking of the
emblems one receives ‘divine life and grace’ and that water baptism and
continual celebration at the Lord’s Table in themselves win salvation deserve the
charge of ‘extreme formalism’. However, he is equally opposed to those who
have rejected the ordinances altogether. Believers are to avoid both extremes, he
insists, for there remains ‘a spiritual blessing to be derived from taking the
Lord’s Supper when it is taken in the proper spirit’.[576] Among these promised
blessings, one should expect to receive healing, according to 1 Cor. 11.30.[577]
Celebrants can and must come to the Table prepared to receive rightly. In
Taylor’s judgment, several hours of meditation on Jesus’ death are needed to put
one in the proper frame of mind for receiving the Meal. While eating, one should
‘endeavor to see Jesus on the cross’, for in this way the Supper effects blessing
for the participant. Taylor finds it disturbing that many celebrate communion
without drinking from the same cup, using individual cups, instead. Such a
practice distorts the ‘features and purposes of the Supper’. For the real purpose
of Communion is ‘to humiliate us, to teach us the spirit of Jesus, and to unite us
as a church in the spirit of fellowship’.[578] When the congregation uses a single
cup, and all drink from it, then these truths are made plain; however, when
individual cups are used, the symbol of the church’s fellowship is distorted.[579]
Further, participants are to use unfermented juice only, and unleavened bread. As
with the one cup, so with these elements: the sign must in fact signify what it is
intended to signify. Further, the church is to follow Jesus as closely as possible in
these matters, as well as in all others. If Jesus used unleavened bread, then so
should we; it is as simple as that. It is difficult from reading of PHA to determine
when, or how often, PH churches observed the Sacrament; sometimes the
service was held after Sunday school and before the Sunday morning sermon;
[580] at other times, at the close of prayer meeting;[581] a Wednesday night
service at conference;[582] or a Friday night service to open a conference.[583]
Finally, the Table is open for all ‘regenerated people’, without regard to their
‘belief, sect, or degree of grace’. As a rule, unsaved persons should not be
allowed to partake, for even if a few come to the Table to repent, that happens
only infrequently.[584]
J.H. King, like Taylor, laments that some Pentecostals fail to give the
Communion its proper due. For instance, he recalls a recent conference
communion service, a ‘sacred hour’, which too many did not recognize as a
moment of opportunity:
How sad indeed that preachers treat the holy communion with indifference,
yea with contempt. A conference communion service can only be held and
enjoyed once a year, and such should be esteemed a great privilege by all the
members of the same …
As King sees it, those who truly love each other ‘delight to commune with each
other around the sacred table’.[585] Those who do not delight in this time fail in
their loving. Communion is ‘solemnly sweet’ and an ‘exalted privilege’, King
finds, as the saints ‘humbly bow at the Lord’s table, celebrating His suffering
and death, drinking in His love, and touching each other in hallowed fellowship
around one common mercy seat’.[586] It is deeply painful for him that so many
treat the sacramental Meal with ‘cold indifference’.[587] King’s concern for
‘touching each other in hallowed fellowship’ raises a key feature of early
Pentecostal spirituality. In that period, at least, Pentecostalism was not a hyper-
individualist movement. King’s statement suggests that it was the practice of the
sacraments, including the Eucharist, which kept the members of the churches in
touch with one another – literally and otherwise.
‘Crowned with Glory’: Testimonies of Sacramental Experience
As in the other Pentecostal literature of this period, one finds in PHA accounts of
water baptism scattered through the entries,[588] including numerous uses of the
language of ‘following the Lord in baptism’.[589] An evangelist writes of recent
successes in revival services: ‘Sunday evening there were eight baptized in
water. God gave witness to and blessed the same. Praise the Lord for the
sweetness of His sacred presence’.[590] One missionary reports the dramatic
baptism of a native African chief and his wife,[591] and another, J.O. Lehman,
tells of a Good Friday baptism service.[592] Lehman recounts another occasion
when someone received his Spirit baptism as he came out of the water.[593] The
testimonies continually strike a note of joy:
[W]e had had a baptismal service today, Aug. 19th, in which five expressed
their faith in water baptism and went down into the water, as did Jesus, and
 were baptized, coming up straightway out of the water, praise the Lord, the
witness of the Spirit agreeing thereto shown upon their faces.[594]
One finds a wealth of testimonies of experiences at the Table, also. Someone
witnesses to the ‘precious time around the Lord’s Table’[595] and the ‘blessed
feast of the Lord’. [596] Another testifies to a sermon on the sufferings of Christ,
which was followed by observance of the Lord’s Supper and footwashing,
recalling that ‘God smiled upon us as we went through this part of the service.
The saints shouted, danced, and talked in tongues as in days of old’.[597]
Another report celebrates the story of a terminally ill woman who asked the
church to bring the sacrament to her home and while partaking of it received her
healing.[598] A Sunday morning service ‘devoted to the holy Communion’
included a ‘very impressive sermon on the Lord’s Supper, and many were moved
to joy expressed either in shouting or in weeping’.[599] A series of services
closed on Sunday morning with a sermon and the celebration of Communion.
‘During this time’, the brother recalls, ‘it seemed that I was about as near heaven
as I have ever been. The real power of God was present’. After the service,
everyone shared ‘another feast’ on the grounds.[600]
As already mentioned, conferences often began and ended with celebration of
the sacrament. A typical testimony comes from the Georgia conference:
Rev. J.H. King preached a good sermon Sunday morning at eleven o’clock
from the prophecy of Haggai during which time he emphasized several
Hebrew words in regard to God’s dealings with the Jews. At the close of the
sermon the Sacrament was taken by a large audience. This being done the
power of the Lord fell on quite a number of the saints and some shouted,
danced and talked in tongues, while still others laughed and wept. It was
indeed a blessed time for those present.[601]
King himself remembers a special service in which the ‘Sacramental Service
was crowned with Glory’. He recalls the intensity of the worship ascending ‘to
the Lamb on the Throne’, as the congregation ‘remembered His death on the
Cross’. As if to explain why the Sacrament occasioned such a response, King
adds: ‘The cleansing Blood thrills the heart with unspeakable ecstasy as its
efficacy is applied’.[602] It appears that, in King’s judgment, the act of
‘remembering’ Christ’s death in the Sacrament actually effects the application of
the atonement. In the same vein, missionaries recount Rev. Lehman’s final
service with the congregation in South Africa and time of Holy Communion,
which they describe as ‘the most precious part of the service’. During the
celebration, they explain, ‘heaven seemed to have come down’ and everyone
rejoiced to ‘feel the efficacy of the blood of Jesus’.[603] In this last claim, one
hears yet again the conviction that the Lord’s Supper serves more than a merely
memorialist function.
As has already been seen, the Eucharist was expected to occasion nothing less
than Christ’s real presence, although the mode of presence was never clearly
defined. For example, a brother writes from Krugersdorp to report that the
Quarterly Conference closed with ‘the sacrament service’, and that ‘all departed
feeling God had been with us’.[604] A similar testimony comes from
Krugersdorp a few years later: ‘At 3:00 P. M, we had the sacrament, and we can
say the presence of the Lord was so very real and near to us’.[605] In the view of
many PHA contributors, because Christ is present to the celebrants, the Spirit is
always at work, effecting God’s will and applying the benefits of Christ’s death
and resurrection – which means not only healing for the body, but also healing
and rectification for the soul. One brother testifies that while his little girl was
‘on her knees at the altar sacrament’, she received Christ’s blessing. In his
words, ‘just as she drank the wine the Lord sanctified her’.[606]
The Father’s Table: Embedded Sacramentality
As one might expect, PHA, like the other Pentecostal periodicals of the time,
makes frequent use of eating and drinking metaphors. For example, one author
celebrates the fact that anyone can enjoy ‘good feasts at our Father’s table’
because that ‘table’ is ‘spread’ all the time.[607] PHA contributors also put to
use familiar readings of Israel’s first Passover meal, believing that the typology
illustrates, among other things, that no one can truly eat Christ until one is
purged of sin.[608] Sometimes, this was connected to readings of John 6. The
Passover lamb was understood as a prefiguring of Christ – believers must eat
him, as he commanded: ‘Eat my flesh and drink my blood’.[609] PHA
contributors rejoiced in a continual ‘feast’ of God’s presence,[610] the gospel,
[611] the gathering and fellowship of believers,[612] and especially the preached
and explained Scripture.[613] Editor Taylor, in reflections on Proverbs, rejoices
that believers enjoy the blessings of the ‘feast’ spoken of in the 23rd Psalm as
well as in John 6, where Jesus invites his followers to feed on him. ‘It is the
words of Jesus that contain His life, and we may feed on Him by a careful and
prayerful study of His Word.’[614] Preaching was like the killing of the ‘fatted
calf’.[615] A special edition of PHA celebrated N.J. Holmes, founder of Holmes
Bible and Missionary Institute, and someone recalled how Holmes expertly
‘broke the bread of life’ providing ‘feasting’ for ‘hungry souls’.[616]
References to the eschatological banquet abound in PHA, at least as much as
in the other Pentecostal periodicals of the day.[617] For example, a contributor
shares her vision of the Marriage Supper in which she saw the Lord’s Table
spread for all: ‘I cannot describe the beauty and grandeur of the table, it was
most wonderful. The table reached from one end of the heaven even to the other,
as the rainbow, and a bright light shone on the table from the throne above’.[618]
Conclusions
As with the other Pentecostal periodicals, one finds in PHA scores of references
to sacramental thought and practice, many of which bear witness to a relatively
‘high’ sacramentality, although, of course, other witnesses stand in tension with
these views. As seen in other literature of the period, PHA contributors rejected
the notion of baptismal regeneration, emphasizing instead the importance of
obeying the divine mandate and imitating the Lord’s example. Unlike the Church
of God (Cleveland, TN), the Pentecostal Holiness church did not consider foot-
washing a church ordinance, although many within the denomination did
practice it, obviously, and the church never officially forbade it or even
discouraged the practice.
As was common among Pentecostals of the time, PHA editors and
contributors made no careful distinctions between the actual eating of the Supper
and mystical communion with Christ, and while they did not hold to anything
like a developed doctrine of transubstantiation (or its equivalents), they clearly
did expect God to act on them through the Supper, and not merely in the mental
recollection of Christ’s crucifixion. In their view, the Supper occasions Real
Presence – mysteriously, somehow – at least to those who come in faith,
believing. And, like virtually all of the Pentecostals of the period, PHA insisted
on an open table and the communal nature of the sacraments, especially the
Lord’s Supper.
Early Wesleyan-Holiness Sacramentality: Summary and
Conclusions
The early Wesleyan-Holiness Pentecostal periodicals testify in plainest terms to
a full-bodied, richly-textured sacramentality – even if it sometimes voices itself
in untraditional language. In fact, on the strength of the witness of numerous
voices in this literature, it is not too much to speak of a distinctive early
Wesleyan-Holiness Pentecostal sacramental theology and praxis. It is fairly easy
to sketch the basic contours of this sacramentality.
First, although they did not devote any considerable energy to articulating how
it might be so, first-generation Pentecostals unquestionably did believe the Lord
was personally present at his Table. The Lord’s Supper was not primarily – still
less only – a memorialistic rite. Instead, the congregation’s celebration of the
Communion meal was believed to be a means of Christ’s on-going ministry, a
sacred moment in which the risen Lord in all his power gave himself to his
church, nourishing it with his own life. This is evidenced most vividly, perhaps,
in the widespread belief that the Lord’s Supper served as a means of healing and
spiritual nourishment, although, in some cases, the conviction that the bread was
a symbol of Christ’s body broken for the healing of the saints led to a genuinely
sacramental view of the bread and a rather memorialist view of the wine,
regarded as a symbol of Christ’s blood shed for sins.
Second, a trio of basic convictions fired the Pentecostal sacramentality of the
period. One, the Lord had mandated observance of water baptism and the Lord’s
Supper (and, for some in the Wesleyan-Holiness camps, footwashing and the
imposition of hands for healing or ordination, as well). Two, in faithfully
enacting the sacramental rites, participants were imitating Jesus. Three,
inasmuch as they obeyed the Lord’s command and obediently imitated him, they
received assurance of his liberating and salutary presence. The sacraments – and
in particular the Lord’s Supper – were quite explicitly understood by many,
including most of the more prominent figures, as God-ordained means of and
opportunities for both this imitation and this participation.
Third, there are signs that early Pentecostals experienced more in the rite than
their theology accounted for. This is perhaps especially true of water baptism.
Fourth, early Wesleyan-Holiness Pentecostals devoted serious attention to the
mechanics of sacramental administration, which is another unmistakable sign of
a deep sacramentality. Disputes arose about whether multiple immersions were
necessary for the baptism to be acceptable, and whether wine, water, or grape
juice was the most fitting element for the Eucharistic cup. They debated at length
the biblical evidence for and against footwashing and ordination. They argued
about whether everyone had the right to anoint the sick with oil, or if that
remained the privilege of the ordained.
Fifth, first-generation Pentecostals in the Wesleyan-Holiness stream relied
heavily on Scripture for elucidation of their sacramental experience and praxis,
frequently appealing to typological readings of Old Testament passages, and
especially the design of Israel’s Tabernacle. No passage received more attention
than 1 Cor. 11.23-33, especially verses 28-30. The Lukan formula, ‘the breaking
of bread’, was used often as well. Departing from the mainstream Protestant
tradition, many Pentecostals read John 6 as at least in part a reference to the
Eucharist.
Sixth, the Wesleyan-Holiness Pentecostal sacramentality of this period did not
work with clear terminological distinctions, using ‘sacrament’ and ‘ordinance’
interchangeably, and employing a variety of names for the Lord’s Supper,
including ‘Holy Communion’, ‘the Communion’, and ‘the Sacrament’, and
speaking of the presence of Christ and the Spirit at/in the Supper without
drawing a clear or consistent distinction.
Seventh, perhaps because the sacraments remained at the center of the life of
the worshipping community, Pentecostal worship managed to resist devolution
into hyper-individualism, even if it did emphasis personal encounter with Christ
through and with the Spirit. As Alan Lewis explains, ‘sacrament happenings’,
even while ‘full of personal significance’, in fact ‘liberate us from interior,
individualistic preoccupation with ourselves and turn us outward to the world as
visualizations of the gospel’s communal and global range’.[619] Although they
would not have put it in these terms, this describes early Pentecostal
sacramentality well, for it was very much ‘turn[ed] outward to the world’, as
Lewis phrases it.
Of course, Wesleyan-Holiness Pentecostalism was not uniformly sacramental.
Some within the movement were rigidly anti-sacramental, apparently fearful of
the excesses of the ‘high church’ traditions with their so-called ‘dead formalism’.
Some simply concerned themselves with other matters, and gave little or no
attention to the sacraments, either in thought or practice.[620] Nonetheless, it is
safe to conclude that early Wesleyan-Holiness Pentecostalism was
characteristically sacramental, and to say that many early Pentecostals
considered observance of the Lord’s Supper the least dispensable and most
sacred part of the church’s worship.
Finished Work Periodicals
Introduction
For the first decade, Pentecostals were more or less unanimously Wesleyan-
Holiness in teaching a second, definitive work of grace. This consensus began to
erode, however, as waves of converts from non-Holiness groups entered the
movement.[621] Many of these new Pentecostals hailed from baptistic
backgrounds and had not been trained in holiness theology.[622] William H.
Durham, a former Baptist pastor, served as one of the leading spokespersons for
an emerging group of Pentecostals who sought to maintain an emphasis on Spirit
baptism while disavowing the traditional Pentecostal (and holiness) teaching on
sanctification. It would be a mistake to attribute the movement solely to
Durham’s influence; after all, one finds examples of what would come to be
known as Finished Work doctrine prior to Durham’s 1910 sermon at the
Chicago conference, nonetheless, Durham did do much to spread the message
and his open attacks on the accepted view of sanctification effectively opened
the way to a new form of Pentecostal spirituality.[623] Convinced he had
received the revelation directly from God, Durham regarded all his opponents as
in fact enemies of God, and he used his considerable rhetorical skills to further
the movement, insisting those who disagreed with him were not truly Pentecostal
at all.[624] In spite of virulent opposition to the new teaching from prominent
Pentecostals, including Seymour, C.H. Mason, Tomlinson, and King, the
‘Finished Work’ doctrine effected drastic and lasting changes on the movement.
By at least one estimate, no less than 60 per cent of North American Pentecostals
had embraced the new doctrine by 1914.[625]
As was true of the Wesleyan-Holiness stream, the cause of the early Finished
Work movement was advanced by periodicals featuring the work of major
editors and contributors such as E.N. Bell, A.S. Copley, and J. Roswell and Alice
Reynolds Flower. Understanding early Finished Work Pentecostalism requires
engagement with these texts. I will read them chronologically, beginning with
periodicals that predate the Assemblies of God and concluding with the Flowers’
Pentecostal Evangel. As for reading method, I will continue to attend to explicit
references to or treatments of the sacraments first, and then move to testimonies
of sacramental experiences, and conclude with the implied sacramentality
embedded in various phenomena such as the prevalence of the eating and
drinking motifs.
Early Independent Finished Work Periodicals
In this section, I engage four leading Finished Work Pentecostal
periodicals – Word & Witness, Latter Rain Evangel, The Pentecost, and
Pentecostal Testimony – from the early days of the Finished Work movement,
prior to the rise of the Assemblies of God.
‘Our Melchezedik Refreshes Us’: Explicit Treatment of the Sacraments
Like the majority of Wesleyan-Holiness Pentecostals, Finished Work
Pentecostals considered ritual performance of the ordinances of water baptism
and the Lord’s Supper obligatory for believers. For instance, an author in WW
explains that an ordinance is a law, which means that observance of the washing
rite and the Eucharist are ‘binding on all Christians’.[626] The author insists that
those who refuse to practice ‘these two commands’ are in rebellion, ‘walking
disorderly and in disobedience’; as a result, they should and must repent and ‘get
a salvation that will cause them to love the ways of the Lord better than their
own ways’.[627] Readers are warned against claims of self-promoting teachers
who claim the Lord’s Supper and baptism are not to be observed any longer.
[628] Any revelation that contradicts the word of Scripture simply ‘cannot be
from the Holy Spirit’, for it is axiomatic: ‘the Spirit and the Word agree’. As is
clear from Jesus’ great commission and Peter’s Pentecost sermon, baptism is a
scriptural injunction, and so it follows that ‘[t]hese passages forever settle two
points: First, that the baptism in the Holy Spirit does not take the place of
baptism in water. Second, that water baptism was administered by the apostles
after Pentecost’.[629] Similarly, the Lord’s Supper should be done until Christ’s
return, as Scripture directs.
Footwashing
References to footwashing in these periodicals typically deal exclusively with
the ‘spiritual’ significance of the story of Jesus washing his disciples feet (Jn
13.1-17). Elizabeth Sisson’s contribution is illustrative. She offers a typological
reading of the account: ‘What do you mean by washing the feet? An exceeding
tenderness in our hearts, over the failures of our brothers and sisters, that retires
into God, and there, by faith and love, washes them with the blood of Jesus’.
[630]
Footwashing, then, works for Sisson as a kind of symbol of Christ’s
intercessory work, his ongoing application of the sanctification won at his cross.
But more than that, Jesus works through the corporate body of believers,
allowing them to cooperate in this work. So, she asks,
Will we let Jesus through us continue daily the foot-washing of the disciples?
Shall we let Him take off us all superfluous robes of our rights, our dignity,
 our opinions, etc., and gird us with the towel of His humility, and wash
through us the dust of human infirmities off the feet of our faulty brethren?
[631]
She concludes: Jesus’ example serves as a call to take on even the most menial
service.[632]
Another view does make itself known, if only rarely. In Spring 1922, Pastor
Glover delivered a sermon at the Stone church on the relation of holiness to
humility. In it, Glover laments that many Pentecostals have become ‘too high-
toned’ and he imagines that the practice of the foot-washing rite best subverts
this arrogance. ‘Jesus did it, and it would do you good, provided you would go
and sit alongside of someone with whom you cannot get along and wash his feet
and make up with him.’[633] He does not call for routine observance, or speak
of the rite as an ordinance or sacrament; however, his esteem for the rite is
perhaps unparalleled among prominent Finished Work Pentecostals of the time.
Laying on of Hands and Anointing with Oil
Countless testimonies make clear that early Finished Work Pentecostals
practiced the rites of laying on of hands for both divine healing and Spirit
baptism, as did their Wesleyan-Holiness Pentecostal siblings.[634] True, many
of them apparently did not consider imposition of hands necessary for healing to
take place or for one to receive one’s Pentecost; nonetheless, they found that the
Scriptures (e.g. Mk 16.18 and especially the many instances in Acts) plainly do
call for these practices, a fact that settled the issue for them.[635] They attended
carefully to the shape of the biblical mandate. For example, some warn against
laying hands on the demonized because it is not explicitly called for in the
Scriptures: ‘It is not scriptural to lay hands on a demon-possessed person. We are
told to cast out demons, and to lay hands on the sick’.[636] To put it briefly,
Finished Work Pentecostals, like their Wesleyan-Holiness brothers and sisters,
practiced the imposition of hands in submission to what they believed the clear
direction of Scripture.
What is more, in laying hands on the sick and on those who have not received
their Pentecost, believers were believed to be imitating Jesus and the apostles.
So, F.F. Bosworth explains that ‘… when I pray for the sick I have no living faith
until I lay my hands upon them and begin to pray. While I am doing what Jesus
said the believer should do, the faith comes both to me and to the sick one’.[637]
Bosworth believes the embodied act works as a medium for the Spirit’s work; it
is only in the event of imposing hands, in the very act, that the Spirit collaborates
with the faith of the obedient participants.
Even if they agreed on the need for laying on of hands for healing and Spirit
baptism, many early Pentecostals did not consider ordination by imposition of
hands either necessary or beneficial. The evidence is mixed; unlike the
imposition of hands for healing, the early Pentecostals in the United States
apparently did not come to anything like a common opinion on the need for and
meaning of laying on of hands for ordination to ministerial office. For example,
Minnie Abrams recalls ministers in India who rejected the Pentecostal
movement because unordained women were allowed to preach; for them,
ordination was a churchly rite accomplished only by the bishop laying his hands
on the candidates. Abrams’ response to their critique was incisive: ‘I said, “Yes,
you should have received the baptism of the Holy Ghost at that time, but did
you? Is there any fruit in your lives?”’[638] Often, 1 Tim. 4.14 was read as
applying to all believers, rather than strictly to a clerical class.[639] However, a
report of the 1917 General Council of the Assemblies of God indicates that
many discerned the need to correct some excesses: ‘The matter of more
precautions being taken in the ordination of the ministry was emphasized, also
the great necessity of qualifying for such an high and holy calling’. This
document identifies ordination as a ‘sacred rite’.[640]
Water Baptism
Water baptism proved to be a major point of contention in the emerging Finished
Work movement, due largely to the theological innovations of ‘Oneness’
Pentecostals. In 1915, Pastor Fraser writes from the Stone Church to warn
against ‘new light’ that he believes is threatening the integrity of the Pentecostal
movement. Fraser inveighs, first, against the ‘new formula’ for baptism that
insists on baptizing only in Jesus’ name. ‘At one fell swoop’, he says, the
innovating teachers ‘demolish the doctrine of the Trinity’. He continues by
providing a lengthy rebuttal of the Oneness position, contesting in particular
their reading of the Scripture.[641] He finds their practice of re-baptism
absolutely unwarranted and unacceptable.[642] One baptism is sufficient, he
believes, for when we were baptized ‘it was into all the truth the ordinance
contained, whether we understood it or not’.[643] Obviously, such a disavowal
of re-baptism suggests a vigorous sacramentality, one that believes the rite of
washing always accomplishes more than the participants can express or
understand theologically.
In Fraser’s judgment, the teachers of the new doctrines fail on two fronts: they
not only take water baptism to accomplish something it in fact does not, but also
they tie it too closely to baptism in the Spirit.[644] Fraser admits that one might
take 1 Pet. 3.21 to teach baptismal regeneration, but only if one reads
uncarefully. On closer examination, one sees easily enough that water baptism is
for the sake of a ‘good conscience’. Unlike Episcopalians and the Campbellites,
Pentecostals practice water baptism as a sign of an already-accomplished
regeneration, Fraser insists. They deem water baptism necessary, but do not
regard it as salvific. Ritual washing in water is required of the converted, but it
does not accomplish the conversion. As Fraser puts it, water baptism is ‘simply
the outward witness of the inward process, simply the outward profession of that
which has already taken place inside the man, in the very core of his being’. For,
‘if a man has been truly washed from his sins, his next business is to run to the
baptismal waters and go down there, indicating to the world the process that has
taken place inside the man’.[645] Regarding the water rite, Durham sounds a
familiar Pentecostal note: the rite in water does not convert but nonetheless
serves as the divinely ordained sign of an already-accomplished regeneration, so
the rite is nonetheless required. In Durham’s words, conversion ‘makes [the
believer] a candidate for water baptism, which is the only thing required of him
between conversion and the baptism in the Holy Spirit’.[646]
Durham sharply distinguished water baptism and Holy Communion from all
other such practices, including, for example, footwashing: ‘We recognize only
two ordinances in the Gospel – the Lord’s supper and baptism’. He does accept
that other rites, ceremonies, and customs are biblical and so have their ‘proper
places’, but nonetheless maintains: ‘we do not believe anointing with oil or
laying on of hands, or foot-washing to be ordinances’.[647] As Durham sees it,
‘The Gospel is briefly summed up in these few words: the believer in Christ, and
Christ in the believer’. For him, this summation explains the need for two – and
only two – ordinances: one that symbolizes ‘getting into’ Christ, and another that
symbolizes ‘His coming into us’. Through baptism, then, believers are ‘buried
… into his death’, as Paul declares.[648] In the same way, the Supper
symbolizes believers’ receiving Christ into themselves as they ‘commune of the
body and blood of the Lord’.[649]
The Lord’s Supper
One finds in the early Finished Work publications numerous strong assertions
that divine healing comes through faithful participation in the Eucharist. F.F.
Bosworth, for one, explains that the Supper with its ‘two emblems’ serves to
keep before our minds ‘the two great benefits purchased for us by the death of
Jesus’; namely, forgiveness of sins (symbolized by the wine) and the healing of
our bodies (symbolized/effected by the bread). In Bosworth’s judgment, many
Christians come wrongly to the Table – and so fail to receive their
healing – because even in eating the bread they do not really ‘discern’ Christ’s
body; they eat the bread ‘not knowing that it is an emblem of the Lord’s body
broken for their healing’.[650] To illustrate what happens for those who do
rightly discern the body, Bosworth shares the story of a brother who, having
been convinced of the truth of Bosworth’s teachings on the issue, ‘put the bread
in his mouth really appropriating the Lord’s body for the first time in his life’ and
immediately received his healing.[651] If normally the healing waited on the
actual eating of the bread, Bosworth believed that at times one might be healed
even before or entirely apart from taking the bread in one’s mouth – if only one
genuinely believes what the bread symbolizes and so discerns the Lord’s body
truly.[652]
In early 1912, Durham reports on a recent ten-day conference in Los Angeles;
participants shared in the Supper on several occasions, and Durham testifies that
he had never seen ‘more glorious and wonderful communion services than
those’. He invites his readers to imagine more than 500 people gathering at the
Table with the ‘power of the Holy Spirit resting so mightily upon them that they
are speaking in tongues and singing in the Spirit much of the time, with the most
blessed unity existing’. Durham personally oversaw these Communion services,
and he recalls how powerfully the Spirit affected everyone:
After we had partaken of that which by living faith becomes unto us His Body
and Blood, the Spirit seemed to take complete control, and for a long time the
Heavenly Anthem poured forth like a mighty torrent of holy Heavenly
melody, until our very souls were ravished, Glory to God. If we can have such
fellowship and blessing here, what must Heaven be?[653]
Perhaps it would not be fanciful to gather from Durham’s report at least a few
building blocks of his theology of the Sacrament. First, he clearly believes that
the church’s celebration of the Lord’s Supper, at least on this occasion, lifts the
celebrants up into the presence of God, opens them to heaven, so that they enjoy
loving communion with God.[654] Second, he stresses the importance of ‘living
faith’ to make the Supper truly sacramental. Third, he clearly believes that in
order for the blessings of the Eucharist-event to be received, the Spirit must act
on the believers, awakening in them an affective response, a response of joy,
even ecstasy in the divine presence. Fourth, he also claims that those who
receive the bread and wine in ‘living faith’ receive in fact Christ’s ‘body and
blood’ in those elements. With the possible exception of this last claim, Durham
is simply articulating in brief what many, and perhaps most, of his fellow
(Finished Work) Pentecostals believed. Perhaps some of them would not have
agreed with Durham that the bread and wine become by faith Christ’s body and
blood; nonetheless, they did believe that the Supper occasioned, even mediated
intimacy with God. As Fraser insists, the ordinance is ‘intended to be a real
communion of the soul with Christ’.[655]
By forms and ceremonies and resolutions one can never become acquainted
 with God. With penance and persecution one does not come to know God.
Much and systematic giving does not bring us to a knowledge of Him. Regular
church-going and attendance on every means of grace, as a mere form,
acquaints not with Him.[656]
Perhaps the clearest evidence of the fervency and extent of early Pentecostal
sacramentality comes in the exaggerated forms of Eucharistic devotion that
continually emerged and required address. The fact that the early Pentecostals
maintained the centrality of the Supper even at the risk of such extremes
indicates a profound commitment to the Eucharist. To take but one example: in
late 1912, an unnamed member of the LRE staff wrote a ‘candid criticism of
spurious writings’, warning against overvaluing the Sacrament. In larger part due
to the effect of these ‘spurious writings’, some Pentecostals had been convinced
to partake of the Supper daily in their homes. Troublingly, the contributor finds
that some ‘go so as to carry the bread and wine in their pockets or handbags that
they may be able to partake at any season and in any place’. This is an alarming
matter, for it is ‘ultra-Spiritual’ and eventually such imbalance yields disastrous
results. ‘Who knows but what the doctrine of transubstantiation leading to the
Romish worship of the sacrament in the “elevation of the host” had its rise in
some such exaggeration of the value of the Eucharist?’[657]
Often, the discussions of the sacraments in these periodicals remain playfully
elusive and multivalent. For example, a 1910 article in The Pentecost provides a
comparison of Abraham’s encounter with Melchizedek to the believer’s
encounter with Christ:
That bread and wine with which our Melchizedek refreshes us are a memorial
of those sufferings by which alone we are enriched, and one who has tasted
that the Lord is gracious, implies in so doing that he refuses any portion in this
world.[658]
The relation of eating the bread and drinking the wine of Holy Communion to
the spiritual ‘tasting’ of the Lord through the Spirit (e.g. in reading Scripture or
meditating on the Word) remains unclear, and the writer employs memorialist
language; nevertheless, he obviously believes that the Eucharist actually
‘refreshes’ and enriches the celebrants, so that the Supper has more than a
merely memorialistic function. It appears plausible that a strong sacramentality
is at play.
The contributor’s use of Scripture also deserves attention. In his efforts to
express the meaning of the bread and wine, he appeals to texts that at least at one
level do not refer to the Eucharist. First, he takes up the offering of Melchizedek,
‘king of Salem [and] the priest of the most high God’, to Abraham (Gen. 14.18-
19), and he steals a phrase from 1 Pet. 2.3, as well. His reading of these texts
suggests that he understands the Eucharistic bread and wine as gifts of Jesus, the
true priest of God and king of peace. Not only that, but his reading also suggests
that he believes the church participates in Christ’s kingly and priestly ministry in
the observance of the Eucharist, for according to 1 Peter 2 those who have
‘tasted that the Lord is gracious’ are in fact the ‘holy priesthood’ who together
‘offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ’.[659]
Early Pentecostal affectivity takes perhaps its strongest forms of expression in
reflections on the meaning of the Lord’s Supper. For example, in August of
1909, LRE published a sermon from that year’s Homiletic Review. The sermon,
entitled ‘The Empty Seat at the Master’s Table’, anticipates the joys of the future
Marriage Supper of the Lamb, truly the Last Supper, a final, joyous celebration
of the Sacrament with all the redeemed. The saints will ‘… enjoy this sacrament
side by side with Paul and Timothy and Saint Augustine and Luther and Calvin
and David Livingstone and our own promoted kith and kin whom the angel,
black-winged, tore from our embrace. Oh, we shall enjoy!’[660]
Given the nature of things in the sin-wrecked world, not all God’s people can
gather at once to the Table, but Jesus personally ‘has planned one final
communion service’, a festival all the saints shall enjoy in company.
Then Jesus the glorified, Jesus the High Priest, with nail-pierced hands, will
break the bread and say ‘This is my body’, and pour out the cup anew saying
‘This is my blood’, and with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, with the whole
Israel of God, shall we sit down in the kingdom of the Father, rehearsing from
Eden below to Eden above the transporting glory of redemption.
‘The Lord’s Table, Not Ours’: Testimonies of Sacramental Experiences
One finds an abundance of testimonies of life-changing experiences at the Table
and in the baptismal waters. A.A. Boddy writes from Sunderland, recalling the
experience of Christ ‘fully’ converting him: ‘He met me there within the
Communion Rails, suddenly and unexpectedly’.[661] Participants commonly
prepared themselves for these moments of sacramental observance by times of
focused prayer. According to one report, ‘most of our women’ spent the whole of
Good Friday in the church, fasting and praying, ‘preparatory to receiving the
Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper’.[662] That they would prepare themselves for
the Supper strongly suggests that they shared a conviction of the sanctity and
power of the Meal. Whatever they did not say about the Eucharist, actions such
as these indicate a sacramentality of the strongest order.
Evidently, this robust sacramentality was shared by Pentecostals abroad as
well, as numerous missionary reports and testimonies make clear. Mary Caroline
Holmes writes from ‘the Moslem World’, testifying of her encounters with
‘hidden disciples’ of Jesus who seemed at first glance to be devout Muslims. She
details her experience with a certain government official who came weekly to
discuss the Scripture with her. She explains how he was hesitant to identify
himself as a Christian, although he did allow himself to be identified as a ‘Jesus
lover’. He came to the worship services, too, but did not participate in the
Eucharistic celebration. Nonetheless, he revealed his love for Christ in these
moments. Once, during Communion, Holmes noticed his ‘hungry longing look’,
and afterwards he admitted to her he could hardly restrain himself from coming
to the Table: ‘I almost cried out, “Let me come too”’. On another occasion, she
saw him
pick up from the ground a fragment of bread some careless hand had dropped,
carefully wipe from it every trace of soil and then reverently kiss it, saying as
he did so, ‘I never can see bread on the ground to be trodden under foot. Our
Lord said of bread, “This is my body broken for you”. It is sacred to me’.[663]
Obviously, Holmes interpreted and applauded this act as a sign of devotion to
Christ, and this is likely an indication of her estimate of the Supper’s
importance.
Another missionary rejoices that he has been able to baptize more than thirty
‘Hindoos’ and share the Lord’s Supper with them. ‘We had the communion and I
taught them what it meant, and you should have seen how reverently they
partook of that bread and wine.’ At the close of the service, ‘the power of God
came down and seemed to fill the place where we were kneeling’.[664] Marie
Stephany writes from north China, explaining how she and her team celebrate
the Lord’s Supper on the first Sunday of the month and how they are ‘very
careful to instruct the natives not to partake of the Lord’s Supper if there is
anything between them and the Lord, or their fellow men’. They are vigilant, she
says, not to let observance of the Supper descend to mere habit. Once, nearly
five years prior to her writing this report, one of the locals who had been
standing outside observing their Communion service, approached her, weeping,
and asked to receive the bread and wine. ‘I want to take that bread and wine and
I believe it will drive this opium devil out of me’, he said. After explaining to
him that he must believe in Jesus, and praying with him, she ‘gladly gave him
the Lord’s Supper’. Stephany rejoices that not once from that time has he
returned to either opium or morphine.[665] A missionary to Russia remembers a
service in Moscow during which a woman, a local professor’s wife, ‘saw the
Lord Jesus Himself standing by the communion table with outstretched hands
blessing the bread and wine’.[666] Far from the exception, this seems to have
been the rule: early Pentecostals, whether from the Wesleyan-Holiness or
Finished Work stream, expected the Lord to present himself to his people in their
Eucharistic celebration, to preside over the meal, to work with them and upon
them through it.
‘Jesus is the Food’: Embedded Sacramentality
As one would expect in light of the reading of other materials from this period,
there is an implicit sacramentality smoldering in the rhetoric and practices at use
in these early Finished-Work periodicals. First, numerous eating and drinking
metaphors are in play. For instance, one contributor avows that in the as-yet
unrealized Kingdom, ‘Jesus and his gentile wife will be feasting on the good
things of heaven’.[667] And speaking of the believer’s present-day experience,
Copley declares: ‘Jesus is the food, the Holy Ghost the feeder. We are the
instruments or vessels which He uses’.[668] Also, one finds testimonies of the
physical dimension of the encounter with Christ and the Spirit. Ruth Angstead
of Zion City testifies to the anguish she experienced while receiving the
sufferings of Christ in a dream or vision. ‘I went to rest at 12:30, and before me
was the thorn-crowned pierced and bleeding Lamb of God.’ The Spirit directed
her to extend her arms and legs, and doing this she felt the ‘cruel nails’ pierce her
body. She was taken in the Spirit to Gethsemane and there ‘tasted the cup of His
suffering’. She recalls: ‘It seemed my very heart would break and the blood
oozed from the pores of my body’. Visions of heaven and of Christ’s ascension
followed; then, entrance to ‘the abode of damned spirits’; and, finally, a vision of
‘the great final judgment with nations on the right and left’. She resisted the
Devil’s attack and eventually ‘sank out of self’, and ‘many waters’ seemed to
surge through her. After singing four songs in an unknown tongue, she delivered
a message in tongues, ‘each time interpreting, magnifying Father, Son and the
precious blood’.[669]
Finally, the language of desire factors prominently, as well. Many of the
contributors to these early Finished Work periodicals report the experience of
finding themselves possessed with ‘a panting hunger’,[670] a desire for a ‘richer
and closer walk’[671] with Christ as the Spirit ‘bears the soul forward with
desire’.[672] All of this suggests a spirituality that remains open to and hungry
for mediation, for the presence and work of God in and through the sacramental
media gratiae ordained for this purpose.
Conclusions
As evidenced above, the early Finished Work periodicals, like the Wesleyan-
Holiness papers of the same era, point to a richly textured sacramental practice,
and much of what one finds remains consistent with that discovered in the
Wesleyan-Holiness literature, although one can perhaps discern lines of
divergence as well.
First, water baptism is carefully distinguished from Spirit baptism, and
regarded by many as crucial to Christian obedience even though the rite of
washing does not effect regeneration. This is virtually identical to what one finds
in the Wesleyan-Holiness literature of the time.
Second, in contrast to some Wesleyan-Holiness literature (especially AF and
COGE), footwashing receives comparatively little attention in Finished Work
literature, and by and large most contributors do not regard it as an ordinance.
Similarly, laying on of hands and anointing with oil are never explicitly
described as sacraments, although they are unquestionably treated as God-
directed and God–sanctioned means of healing.
Third, many contributors to these early Finished Work periodicals apparently
expected Jesus to be personally present at the Table. Participants testify again
and again of God’s presence and activity mediated through the rite of eating and
drinking. Like many of their fellow Pentecostals in the Wesleyan-Holiness
stream, they also believed that the Lord’s Supper, if received faithfully, is
believed to be a means of healing.
Fourth, the relatively ‘high’ view of the Supper evidenced in these periodicals
often is supported by surprising readings of unexpected biblical texts, including
passages from the Old Testament.
In conclusion, then, it is perhaps not too much to say that at least at a few
points the view of the Eucharist one finds in this early Finished Work literature
is as vigorous as anything one might discover in the larger Protestant tradition,
or indeed the entire catholic Christian tradition, even if it never takes on the
metaphysical subtleties that have dominated much of the discussion through the
centuries. In the final analysis, it is safe to conclude that the Lord’s Supper was a
central locus of early Finished Work Pentecostal spirituality and piety.
The Assemblies of God: The Pentecostal Evangel
J. Roswell Flower and his wife, Alice Reynolds Flower, began publishing PE
July 1913 and the magazine quickly earned wide readership.[673] The Flowers
helped form a loose network of churches into the Assemblies of God, and their
periodical became an official organ of the denomination, along with E.N. Bell’s
Word and Witness. On January 1, 1916, Bell’s W W merged with Flower’s
Weekly Evangel.
‘Jesus Brought Very Near’: Explicit Treatment of the Sacraments
Often, it is assumed that early Pentecostals had no sense of Christian history, no
sense of connection to the wider churchly theological-spiritual tradition. Those
who assume this also often imagine that early Pentecostal spirituality was
not – and indeed could not have been – sacramental. However, closer
examination exposes both of these assumptions as mistaken. For example, the
Flowers’ Evangel published an advertisement for a 10-volume edition of the
Ante-Nicene Fathers with a list of teachings deemed crucial to the Christian
faith, including divine healing, speaking with tongues, prophecy, foot-washing,
water baptism, and Holy communion and the love feast. ‘In short’, the
advertisement boasts, ‘these books constitute a complete history of primitive
Christian doctrines’.[674] To say that the list is complete is obviously an
overstatement, but such a list spells out quite plainly what Pentecostals of the
time considered principal matters for discussion and reflection, and shows that
they knew their practices (especially footwashing, laying on of hands, water
baptism, and Holy Communion) belonged to the ancient Christian tradition. In
the same way, B.F. Lawrence, perhaps the first historian of Pentecostalism, in an
attempt at providing a defense of the ‘apostolic faith restored’, argues that the
Quakers were ‘in many respects, our true fathers in the faith’, for ‘the burden of
their preaching and practice was identical with our own’. Lawrence notes that
they ‘neither baptized nor took the Lord’s Supper’, but maintains that this was
not so much from ‘objection to the sacraments’ as due to a limitation forced on
them by the spiritual dryness and doctrinal compromises of their time.[675] That
Lawrence would not only note the difference but even attempt to explain it
expresses the fact that at the founding of the movement Pentecostals considered
the sacraments central to their spirituality. It is only in this light that one can
rightly read PE’s sacramentality.
Footwashing
One finds in PE many reports of footwashing services, suggesting those in the
Finished Work movement within the Assemblies of God considered footwashing
an important if not essential churchly practice. One also discovers statements
that qualify, more or less severely, the significance of the rite for the Christian
life. In fact, some contributors do not regard it as a rite in any sense; for them,
the story of Jesus washing his disciples feet serves as an example, an enacted
metaphor of sorts for the humble readiness to do even menial service that
characterizes the Christ-like life. For instance, one article, published in 1917,
laments that some Pentecostal congregations do not celebrate the Supper, and
the article’s author, Mary Chapman, judges that these congregations neglect the
Sacrament in large part because they believe it should be observed always with
footwashing, a logistically complicated rite that proves impracticable and so
makes regular Eucharistic celebration difficult if not impossible. Many brothers
and sisters, she insists, are forced to attend other (non-Pentecostal?) churches to
‘get the Communion’ because it is not observed in their home ‘Assembly’.
Obviously, if Pentecostals felt compelled to attend other churches in order to
receive the Eucharist, then they must have believed that it had more than merely
symbolic value; surely, it seems incontrovertible that at least many of them
believed that the Sacrament was indispensable to the fruitful and faithful
Christian life.
Chapman reserves judgment on whether footwashing should be regarded as an
ordinance, but insists that one finds ‘no scriptural grounds for attaching it in any
sense to the communion of the Lord’s Supper’, because ‘in the four places we
have explicit directions for partaking of the bread and wine’ one finds no
mention of foot-washing. ‘The washing of feet’, she concludes, ‘is mentioned in
one place and there is room for a great deal of difference of opinion about what
it means, and one should not judge another in regard to it’. Communion,
conversely, is ‘plainly taught in four places’, and the need for and importance of
it ‘plainly stated and emphasized’.[676] Holy Communion should be observed as
a ritual, nothing more or other than that.[677] Similarly, E.N. Bell disputes the
teaching that footwashing remains binding on all Christians. Jesus did not
command his disciples to wash feet, but he did say it ‘ought’ to be done. ‘All
Christians worthy of the name’, Bell avers, ‘believe in obedience to Christ …
but all do not understand His teaching alike on this point’. This lack of
consensus takes many forms:
Some think He meant to wash one another’s feet in times of sickness or need
and not as a church ordinance, and we leave such free to obey as they
understand. Others believe He meant for all to wash feet as a church
ordinance, and we leave these free to obey as they understand. But strictly
speaking, an ‘ordinance’ is a law, something ‘commanded,’ which will result
in a penalty if not done as commanded; and there is no explicit ‘command’ to
observe such as a church ordinance.[678]
Obviously, these instances, and others like them, intimate a move away from
the regular practice of footwashing and from the understanding of it as an
ordinance, especially as witnessed in AF and COGE. Just as clearly, however,
the fact that Bell has to insist against it indicates that many within the movement
were in fact practising it. Besides, P E includes testimonies of footwashing
services.[679] Alice Wood writes from Argentina testifying of a recent
celebration of the Lord’s Supper and footwashing – ‘a time of rich blessing’, she
recalls.[680] Someone else sends a testimony of a recent service in which three
were baptized in water, after which they received ‘the sacrament’ and washed
one another’s feet; he remembers that ‘The Lord wonderfully blessed’ the
service.[681] Many other testimonies like these prove that both the celebration
of the Supper and the observance of footwashing rite were believed to be
confirmed by the presence and power of the Lord, illustrating that those in the
Assemblies of God in this early period expected God to act on them through
their celebration of the churchly rites.
Laying on of Hands and Anointing with Oil
The evidence shows that Pentecostals in the Assemblies of God regarded laying
on of hands as a way of obeying and imitating Jesus, just as they did
footwashing, baptizing in water, and sharing the Eucharistic cup and the loaf.
Asked the meaning of ‘laying on of hands’ in Heb. 6.2, E.N. Bell explains that
the practice served three purposes in the apostolic churches: ordination (Acts
6.6; 13.3; 1 Tim. 4.14), healing (Mark 16.18; Acts 28.8), and Spirit baptism
(Acts 8.17; 9.17; 19.6).[682] As Scripture directs (Jas 5.14), the laying on of
hands was accompanied often if not always by anointing with oil.[683]
Nonetheless, laying on of hands and anointing with oil are not requisite for
receiving the Spirit, Bell believes, arguing not only from Scripture, but also on
the strength of his experience: ‘But neither Scripture nor present day observation
justifies us in the conclusion that the fulness [sic] comes only by the laying on of
hands’.[684] Nevertheless, the imposition of hands may serve as a ‘means’ for
Spirit baptism.[685] Although every believer has the right to lay hands on the
sick and to pray for healing,[686] at least some early Finished Work Pentecostals
recognized (in the light of 1 Tim. 5.22) the danger of praying for healing rashly,
without proper discernment. The same principle applied to prayers for ordination
and Spirit baptism.[687]As with other Pentecostal periodicals, P E turns again
and again to Scripture and the example of Jesus and his apostles to support their
points. For example, one contributor holds that: ‘… the apostolic way to appoint
one officially was after he was selected by the Church, to lay hands on him
officially, pray over him and thus publicly set him apart to his appointed work.
Of course we should do the same until Jesus returns’.[688]
Water Baptism
As already seen, early Pentecostals found themselves beset with questions about
water baptism and the rite’s meaning and purpose, and the difficulties only
intensified after 1910 and the rise of an identifiable Finished Work movement.
Within the Finished Work ranks, some allowed for re-baptism, and others
regarded the rite entirely unnecessary if one had already received Spirit baptism.
They argued this on the grounds that John’s baptism was rendered superfluous
by Pentecost, for after Christ baptized one in the Spirit what need could there be
for the one to receive baptism in water? In their judgment, all rituals were finally
put away by the inauguration of the New Covenant. Rev. and Mrs. Flower, as
well as E.N. Bell, among others, argued against these positions. J.R. Flower
avers that because baptism in water typifies the death, burial, and resurrection of
Christ, which were once-for-all events, so baptized believers ‘die with him in the
likeness of his resurrection’ only once. ‘This is not to be repeated lest we put
Christ to an open shame’, he insists.[689] Likewise, Bell maintains that in spite
of the fact that Christ did do away with the ordinances of the Old Testament, the
ordinances of the New Testament retain their binding force. In his judgment, any
Christian who claims water baptism is unnecessary is both ignorant of Scripture
and disobedient to the Lord’s clear command.[690] The official position adopted
by general council of the AG in 1916, makes the same basic point:
The Ordinance by a burial with Christ should be observed as commanded in
the Scriptures, by all who have really repented and in their hearts have truly
believed on Christ as Savior and Lord. In so doing, they have their body
washed in pure water as an outward symbol of cleansing, while their heart has
already been sprinkled with the blood of Christ as an inner cleansing. Thus
they declare to the world that they have died with Jesus and that they have
also been raised with Him to walk in newness of life.[691]
PE, like the other Pentecostal periodicals of the time, expounds a theology of
water baptism that carefully discriminates ritual washing from the Spirit’s
renewing work in the ‘heart’ of the believer. Although he insists that water
baptism is necessary, Bell agrees that water baptism and Spirit baptism are
radically different from one another – as virtually every Pentecostal of the time
would have said. This is so because of the different ways Christ acts in these
events. In the latter event, he is actively the Spirit-baptizer. ‘Christ baptizes with
the Spirit, never with water. The preacher baptized with water – never with the
Spirit. In one Christ is the active agent, in the other the preacher is the active
agent. One is in the element of the Spirit, and in the other the element used is
water.’[692]
Such a reading of the ritual washing seems strictly non-sacramental,
apparently allowing no room for the churchly act of baptism to collaborate in the
Spirit’s act of cleansing and initiating the believer into the corpus Christi. Bell’s
reading of Jn 3.5 continues this line of thought. He admits that the church from
the early second century read this as a reference to water baptism,[693] and that
this remained the accepted reading until the Reformation. Calvin, he says, broke
with the tradition. While the Episcopal churches remained adherent to the
‘ancient view’, most Protestants have followed Calvin, and some Baptists have
deserted even this position. As for Pentecostals, Bell finds that they generally
teach water baptism as ‘an external purifying symbol while the real internal birth
is done by the Holy Spirit’.[694] For his part, Bell believes water baptism has
the same relation to regeneration that the ancient rite of circumcision had to
membership in Israel’s covenant.[695] To begin, he establishes a rigid duality
between ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit’, between external rites and the internal work of God.
Citing Titus 2.5, Col. 2.11-12, Heb. 10.22, and Acts 2.38, Bell affirms: ‘Now in
all these passages there is a reference both to water baptism and to work of the
Spirit, a reference to the outward token and to the inward reality’, and he
hurriedly adds: ‘These two lines should not become confused lest we take one
for the other, lest we see the outward token and lose sight of the inward work of
the Spirit’.[696]
As soon as he has drawn this distinction, however, he mitigates it, if only
slightly. He admits that ‘in the mind of God’ the token of baptism and the work
of regeneration are ‘closely related’, as made clear in the lives and teaching of
the apostles. What is more, the regular practice of delaying water baptism for
converts – a practice Bell fears has become more and more frequent – is ‘wholly
unwarranted by Scripture’. We should seek, then, to hold the two in close
relationship without confusing them. The ‘old body’ of sin is ‘put off’ by both
‘outwardly and inwardly’, both by work done by the church, in the ritual of
baptism, and work done by Christ, in the ‘circumcision of the heart’, the ‘raising
up in the newness of life through the power of the Holy Spirit’.[697] In all truth,
Bell’s reflections are somewhat tortured, as he struggles to explain the why and
the what of water baptism. Nonetheless, this remains clear: he, along with the
overwhelming number of early Pentecostals, insists that water baptism is
necessary and that ‘following Jesus in baptism’ is integral to the life of
obedience that leads to salvation. In the final analysis, his view remains
something more than memorialistic, even while much of what he says seems
staunchly non-sacramental.
The Lord’s Supper
According to the Statement of Fundamental Truths adopted by the general
council of the Assemblies of God in October 1916, the Lord’s Supper is far more
than merely a memorial feast:
The Lord’s Supper, consisting of the elements, bread and the fruit of the vine,
is the symbol expressing our sharing the divine nature of our Lord Jesus
Christ, 2 Pet. 1:4; a memorial of his suffering and death, I Cor. 11:26; and a
prophecy of His second coming, I Cor. 11:26; and is enjoined on all believers
‘until He comes.’[698]
This statement alone goes a long way in affirming the robust nature of Finished
Work sacramentality. It is also important to note that nothing in this statement
stands at odds with the claims of the Wesleyan-Holiness Pentecostals of the time.
Of course, the Assemblies of God’s official statement does not stand alone.
There are many explicit treatments of the Lord’s Supper in PE. For example, in
response to a reader’s question about the possible benefits of taking the Supper,
sometime editor and frequent contributor E.N. Bell provides a detailed
explanation of his view of the Sacrament, complete with a brief overview of four
historical positions. Catholics, he says, believe that the bread when it is blessed
by the priest is ‘transmuted into the literal living body of Christ’, so that ‘in
partaking we actually eat the body of Christ and literally drink His blood, and so
get eternal life by partaking of the supper’. Bell rejects this teaching. He rejects
the doctrine of consubstantiation, as well, which he attributes to the
Episcopalians.[699] The third position, proposed by ‘the noted theologian
Zwingle’ [sic], understands Communion as ‘simply a Memorial Feast’, in which
‘the only good received in partaking [is] in bringing vividly to memory the
truths of Christ’s atoning death’.[700] In this view, as Bell understands it, neither
Christ’s body nor his blood are present at the Table, but are only ‘remembered
and appropriated’. Bell acknowledges some truth in this position, but he finally
rejects it, too: ‘It lowers our view of the Lord’s Supper and makes it a thing too
common’. The fourth stance Bell attributes to Calvinists, especially
Presbyterians, who maintain, he says, that the elements remain unchanged, but
Christ is truly, spiritually present to the celebrants. Having provided this
overview, Bell ventures his own view:
… there is a good deal of truth in this spiritual view. In fact there is some truth
in nearly every view of it. But I do not believe the physical Christ is present in
the bread nor in the cup. I believe the loaf is still real bread and the cup still
only the fruit of the vine. I believe it is a memorial, for Jesus said, ‘This do in
MEMORY of me.’ But it is more than a memorial feast. Jesus is there in the
Spirit to bless, quicken, uplift and heal; but what benefit the partaker will
receive depends much on his spiritual discernment; his faith and his
appropriation from the spiritually present living Christ.[701]
In these claims that the Supper is ‘more than a memorial feast’ and that ‘Jesus
is there’, Bell shows himself in league with many if not most Pentecostals of his
time, in both Finished Work and Wesleyan-Holiness camps, and with the wider
Christian tradition as well. While he does not uncritically assume any of these
views, he clearly does come nearer to those traditions that emphasize Real
Presence than those that do not. He insists that celebrants should examine
themselves before partaking of the sacred meal, should prepare themselves for
partaking, and then ‘by faith realize His spiritual presence and power’; they
should ‘appropriate spiritual life, real health, communion and fellowship with
the living risen Christ’.[702] These verbs – ‘realize’ and ‘appropriate’ – raise the
point again: Bell’s view of the Supper seems robustly sacramental.
Of course, Bell is not alone in making these claims; J. Roswell Flower
assumes an almost identical position. For him, as for Seymour and others, the
church’s Meal, as the ‘supper of remembrance’, replaces Israel’s Passover; [703]
it is an ordinance entirely fitted to the New Covenant. Memorialistically, it
‘shows forth the Lord’s death’, serving as the ‘continual reminder of a blood
sacrifice’, but not only that; it also serves as a ‘reminder of the coming of the
Lord’, a ‘perpetual sign-post’ to the Advent. Flower notes that each Gospel
account of the institution of the Supper includes reference to Jesus’ promise to
drink the cup ‘anew in the kingdom of God’ with his disciples.[704] In the final
analysis, the Lord’s Supper ‘embodies so much and typifies such wonderful
truths, that God’s people cannot afford to pass it by as non-essential’.[705] Like
Bell, Flower believes Jesus is ‘brought very near’ as God’s people eat the
Supper, and Christ’s ‘redemptive work’ is ‘attested to’ by the fact that
communicants often receive their healing while they partaking of the bread and
wine.
Similarly, Flower’s wife, Alice Reynolds Flower, holds that the Lord’s ‘last
supper’ marked the ‘passing of the old order’, this new rite fulfilling and
superseding the Passover, which belonged so distinctly to what she calls ‘the old
dispensation’. Pentecostals, she insists, should not lose sight of the vital
importance of the Sacrament both for the individual believer and the corporate
life of the community.[706] Like E.N. Bell and her husband, as well as many
Pentecostals of the time, Sister Flower insists that the Lord’s Supper directs
believers’ attention to the future, as well as to the past, bringing into the present-
day experience of believers a ‘taste’ of the future messianic banquet. In fact, as
she works it out, while the bread promises healing for sick and diseased bodies,
it is specifically the Eucharistic cup that serves as a pledge of the coming
kingdom, a time in which ‘we shall taste in all its purity and sweetness the
“new” cup of his joy’. Also, in keeping with her contemporaries, Flower argues
that the way in which participants receive the Supper determines what the
Supper in fact does for them. Partaking wrongly of the Supper brings sickness
and death, as Scripture warns. Partaking rightly, however, brings ‘life and
health’. Therefore, because of the Supper’s life-giving or death-dealing power,
believers should eat the sacramental Meal expectantly. What is more, if they eat
and drink faithfully, they are sure to ‘feel with renewed blessing the power of
Christ’s sacrifice’, for Christ has conquered death and therefore he is present
now to those who take ‘the bread of life in truth’. Not only is he present to them,
but also he himself is in fact ‘the food that causes our spiritual nature to be
nourished and strengthened’.[707] She concludes her article by quoting a stanza
of a Eucharistic hymn:
See, the feast of love is spread,
Drink the wine, and break the bread;
Sweet memorials, till the Lord
Calls us round His heavenly board;
Some from earth, from glory some
Severed only, ‘Till He come’.[708]
In this early period, Finished Work Pentecostals, just like their contemporaries
in the Wesleyan-Holiness stream, consistently and apparently intentionally
blurred the boundary between the ritual eating of the meal and the mystical
‘feasting’ on Christ. In this, they were proving true to a reading of John 6, and
the tensions of that text. As in the Fourth Gospel, feasting on Christ always
means more than merely receiving the bread and wine:
He gave His flesh and blood for you and for me, and He declares that I have
no life in me unless I eat His flesh and drink His blood. Now this means more
than the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper. It means that you and I must partake
of the living Person of our Lord Jesus Christ through the Holy Ghost. [709]
In her widely-published tract, ‘Our Health, His Wealth’, Elizabeth Sisson
insists that believers’ communion with God is not restricted to the moment of
observing the Lord’s Supper, although it is not entirely independent of it, either.
Ah! Not more truly in that hour, happily called ‘Holy Communion’, in that
service, blessedly named ‘the Lord’s Supper’, are the emblems of the
Saviour’s [sic] broken body and shed blood, passed around, than is the
SUBSTANCE always being passed to us. ‘You may feast at Jesus’ table all the
time.’[710]
She readily admits that it is ‘fitting to have memorial hours for receiving the
emblems’, while insisting it is ‘normal to be feeding on the Substance every
hour’.[711] Some object to her teaching, she knows, accusing her of profaning
the sacred. But she insists that what is needed is ‘Sacramental living; for it
makes continually holy, common things’.[712] Sisson quotes from the Book of
Common Prayer and invites her readers to ‘change the formula into a daily
living reality’. She rejoices that God will ‘transmute the faith-act into very real
spiritual feeding on the body and blood of your Lord’, recalling a young girl who
boasted: ‘morning by morning I eat His flesh and drink His blood before I go to
work’.[713] Sisson avows that ‘our life in its entirety is constantly partaking of
nourishment from the King’s table’. And she appeals (without citation) to Neh.
8.10:
Eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to them for whom nothing is
prepared. Oh, how rich the food! the very flesh of our Lord! Oh, how holily
sweet the drink! the life-blood of our Lord coursing through all our being,
quickening every part with the vitality now on the victory-throne!’
In conclusion, she celebrates believers’ continual communion with God through
the Spirit, and describes in a kind of poetry the rapturous end promised to those
who eat Christ faithfully: ‘As we uninterruptedly feed and drink, through the
“holy communion” we change from grace to grace and from glory to glory, till in
us “He shall fully see His seed’.[714]
Holy and salutary though the rite of the Sacrament is, Sisson maintains that it
remains possible to eat it without benefit. ‘Many today are partaking of the
Lord’s Supper who are going down in death in body and soul’, she says, because
they are failing daily to ‘recognize the body and blood of the Lord Jesus as their
life’, above and beyond the sharing the cup and the loaf. The ritual participation
happens ‘only once a week or once a month’,[715] but believers ‘may and
should partake of it in Spirit [sic] every moment in our daily life’.[716] Even so,
feasting on Christ includes the ‘ordinance of the Lord’s Supper’, although that
rite does not entail all that it means to ‘eat His flesh and drink His blood’.[717]
Sisson’s reading of John 6 – and in particular the claims of vv. 53-56 – is
matched by several other contributors’ readings of this and similar passages. For
example, a Christological reading of Exodus 12 suggests for a Brother
McCafferty the connection between Israel’s eating of the Passover lamb and the
church’s feeding on Jesus, as promised in Jn 6.53: ‘During the “night” we are to
eat the “flesh” of the Lamb. By it we have our strength – yea, our life’.[718]
This language of ‘eating Christ’ appears frequently in PE, as in other Pentecostal
periodicals of the time, often to refer to a spiritual/existential ‘feasting’ on Christ
by faith,[719] a reading in keeping with the Protestant tradition, Lutheran and
Reformed. Sometimes, however, Jn 6.53-56 is taken in a more directly
Eucharistic sense. Carrie Judd Montgomery, for example, uses it in just this way.
As other Pentecostals of the time had done, she connects the passage with divine
healing, insisting that the call to eat Christ’s flesh and drink his blood is difficult
only for those not illumined by the Spirit. In her judgment, ‘In the Lord’s Supper
we receive the bread and wine, and if by faith we receive Him then His life
springs up in us’, just as John’s Gospel promises.[720]
Other Scripture passages also come out in the theological reflection. Acts
2.42-47 and the characteristic Lukan formula, ‘breaking bread’, are put to
frequent use, sometimes in non-sacramental senses (as when it is used to
describe church dinners)[721]. E.N. Bell, for one, uses it to refer to the
Sacrament, and indicates that he reads the Lukan passages as references to the
Eucharist, as well.[722] He also uses the phrase to describe the believer’s
mystical intimacy with Christ, in one instance, appealing to the story of Christ
breaking bread with the Emmaus disciples (Luke 24) to make just this point. ‘If
you talk of Him, He will draw nigh, He will come in, He will break bread with
those tender hands.’[723] One contributor, explaining what it means to ‘discern
Christ’s body’ (1 Cor. 11.29), insists that ‘the body which we discern in the
breaking of bread is not the Church, but the body that bare our sins on Calvary
before Christ rose and was glorified’. Nehemiah 8.10 is also used, because it
provides an illustration of, as well as an invitation to, a renewed sense of the
Sacrament’s power and value for the church. The ‘Old Testament saints’ partook
of the ‘Living Portion’ in their day, and now ‘we can partake of the present meal
ourselves, and then we can send portions, not cooled off, but steaming hot, to
others’.[724]
In a 1931 article, the British Pentecostal Donald Gee responds to the request
of a young American pastor for an account of the way in which the weekly
‘Breaking of Bread’ ceremony is performed in Britain’s Pentecostal churches.
[725] Gee reports that this service, often called a ‘fellowship meeting’,[726] is in
fact an ‘open’ meeting, meaning that the pastor retains his role as leader but is
not obtrusive, tactfully allowing for ‘the sacred liberty of the whole body’.[727]
Gee remarks that he has become convinced that if there is any truth to the claim
that the British Assemblies display a remarkable spiritual depth it is due more
than anything else to these Sunday morning fellowship meetings. He also reports
that the celebration of the Lord’s Supper is the focal point of these weekly
meetings. In his words, the Communion rite is ‘the central feature’ of the service.
The lead-up to the Lord’s Supper – a time of prayer, the reading of Scripture
and/or hymn singing – is the ‘most favorable opportunity for the exercise of
certain of the Gifts of the Spirit, such as Prophecy, or Tongues and
Interpretation’. If all is right, and the participants have expressed themselves in a
‘true spirit of worship’, then ‘the place should be charged with the power and
Presence of The Spirit to such an extent that exercise of His Gifts should be both
easy and edifying’.[728] Requests for prayer may be put forward, and if they are
done ‘tactfully’ such requests are ‘means of grace and blessing to all’. The
celebration of the Sacrament may precede or be preceded by ‘some ministry of
the Word’. Regardless, ‘[t]here need be no rule’.[729] The ‘full spiritual benefit’
would be lost if left for the end of the meeting ‘when everybody is tired and
duties call for a speedy journey home’.[730]
Gee insists that participants of the Supper expect ‘fellowship with Christ
Himself’ in the breaking of the bread. The ‘mere breaking of bread’ must not
‘degenerate into a fetish’; it must ‘never be regarded as the end, but only the
means to an end’. Only a ‘fresh Unction’ can preserve the weekly Communion
celebration from becoming ‘mere custom’. However, when properly observed,
the Lord’s Supper ‘provides real point [sic] and helpfulness to the meeting by
definitely centering the thought upon Christ’.[731]
‘Identified with Christ’: Testimonies of Sacramental Experience
Testimonies disclose something of the richness and complexity of early
Assemblies of God experiences of the sacraments of water baptism and the
Lord’s Supper. Often, testimonies show that these baptisms proved occasions for
the Spirit’s wonders. For example, Bell notes:
A good many are receiving when baptized in water at the time or a few
minutes afterwards as they kneel in prayer and look for Him. Many of these
receive without laying on of hands and many others receive with the laying on
of hands after obeying the Lord in water baptism.[732]
A report from Canalou, Missouri rejoices that ‘eight were buried with Christ in
water baptism’,[733] and another contributor celebrates that three have
‘identified with Christ in water baptism’.[734] Still another testimony announces
that eight ‘obeyed the Lord’, being baptized in water.[735] These formulae
(‘buried with Christ’, ‘identified with Christ’, ‘obeyed the Lord’) indicate plainly
the conviction that in water baptism believers follow the Lord’s direct command
and imitate him and just in this way enjoy fellowship with him.
Testimonies of experiences at the Lord’s Table abound as well. One sister
writes of a special service in her local church devoted to preparing missionaries
for upcoming work in Mexico. After the sermon, the congregants shared the
Holy Communion and found themselves caught up in the Spirit: ‘… the melting,
strengthening power and presence of the Holy Ghost’ was unforgettable, and the
participants found themselves overcome with joy: ‘The song [‘They Were in an
Upper Chamber’] just burst forth from us all’, she recalls; ‘and the Lord gave us
a fresh pledge and assurance that He would go forth with His servants,
confirming the Word with signs following’.[736]
Among the many testimonies, one stands out. The W E report of the 1916
General Council of the Assemblies of God includes a lengthy treatment of the
sermon preached by D.W. Kerr in preparation for the Communion celebration
that closed the meeting.[737] Repeatedly, the article – recounting Kerr’s
remarks – emphasizes the present-tense effectiveness of the Supper.
This meal is intended not only for our spiritual, but for our physical benefit.
Here is good news for the sick. You are invited to a meal for your health. As
you are eating in faith you can receive healing for your body. If you cannot
use the past tense and say ‘By His stripes ye were healed’, turn it into the
present tense and declare, ‘By His stripes I am healed’. You say perhaps ‘I
hope to be healed’. What time in the future will you be healed? God brings the
future down to the present tense.
The Eucharist does work as a memorial, and the emblems do in fact symbolize
Christ’s broken body and shed blood.[738] Also, the feast points both back, to
Christ’s death, and forward, to his return. However, participants’ focus must
remain always on the Supper’s ‘distinct present aspect’, which is paramount:
‘Here is the present tense of Calvary. We have come to a place of freshness, the
result of Calvary. What is it? Life and life more abundant!’[739]
There is nothing old or stale about this memorial feast, the fruit of the vine is
not old, the shed blood is not aged, the bread is not stale, the Lord’s body is
not a mere thing of the past, the way is new and living. The thing most
striking about the character of the feast is its presentness, not its pastness or
its futureness. It has a present aspect, there is a sign of warmth, the blood is
not cold and coagulated but flowing fresh from the wounded side of Jesus,
‘recently killed and yet living’.[740]
These assertions point to a critical fact: even the early Pentecostals’ use of
memorialist and symbolic language does not prohibit sacramental meanings, for
in their theology the Lord of the Supper is risen and through the Spirit makes
himself present to the church, not least in the church’s celebration of the
Sacrament. For many of them, the emphasis lies not so much on what Christ has
done as it does on what Christ is doing, here and now, through the shared Meal.
[741]
Further, according to the W E report of Kerr’s sermon, the Supper remains
ineluctably mysterious, and it is only faith that grasps meanings otherwise
mystifying and inexplicable: ‘Faith enters into a realm far beyond the sphere of
understanding, and can extract the good and joy out of that which soars high
above our reasonings’. As a result, Pentecostals, as they are striving to live by
just this kind of faith, ‘have no need to preach a doctrine of consubstantiation or
transubstantiation’. Instead, they ‘just receive Jesus’ words and act on them’.
[742] In other words, they felt no need to explain how Christ is present in the
Supper, but only to appreciate and enjoy that presence.
Guests at God’s Feast: Embedded Sacramentality
Feasting motifs appear again and again in PE. Many readers regarded the weekly
paper as a kind of feast.[743] ‘Its precious truths are food for my hungry
soul.’[744] An advertisement for a Bible school extends an invitation:
Do you need a refreshing? Do you need a deeper death to the self life that
‘Christ in you’ may be more richly manifest? Is your heart hungry for God?
Come up to this gathering of the saints before the Lord. Let us put His
promises to the test. Let us see what God will do. Let us believe God for a real
feast of fat things. Glory.[745]
As seen in other Pentecostal periodicals of the era, P E refers often to the
marriage supper described in Rev. 17. Indeed, to be converted and Spirit-filled
means nothing less than to ‘set [one’s] face toward the Marriage Supper’.[746]
The joys of this future feast are experienced even now in the present life, if only
partially and anticipatorily. Believers enjoy already the blessings that await
them; they experience ‘God’s feast’ throughout the course of their lives together.
The saints must invite as many as possible to this feast,[747] for God desires ‘a
Love-feast on earth, ere He takes His loved ones with Him to His throne’, and
this feast should not lack for guests.[748] Spirit-baptized believers, then, must
show hospitality, not only in sharing their meals together and in taking food to
the hungry and the invalid but also in inviting others to enjoy the Lord’s spiritual
blessings. Reading Mt. 25.35-36 and Neh. 8.10, Alice Flower makes the point
forcefully: ‘Not only may this [hospitality] apply to a literal feast, but spiritually
interpreted, should move us to seek out and feed the hungry souls instead of
lingering about those who know so well the way of salvation, even at the
sacrifice of our temporal benefits’.[749] Obviously, ‘God’s feast’ names the
entire Christian life, and in the same way, ‘love-feast’ refers to more than the
shared ritual meal, but clearly such descriptions reveal an imagination fired by
experience of Communion and grounded in a regular observance of the rite.
Conclusions
PE provides unmistakable witness to a strong sacramentality, a sacramentality at
least on par with that evidenced in earlier Finished Work periodicals and in the
writings of Wesleyan-Holiness Pentecostals of the era. The view of the meaning
of the ordinances/sacraments (footwashing, water baptism, and laying on of
hands) are very much in keeping with that found in other Pentecostals
periodicals. For example, they agree that the rite of water baptism, while not
regenerative, is both necessary and profitable. The same is true of the reflections
on the Eucharist and testimonies of Eucharistic experience. Contributors reiterate
on numerous occasions how necessary and beneficial the Supper is for the
church’s life in the Spirit.
What are the major features of the view of the Eucharist witnessed to in PE?
Three bear mentioning.
First, Bell, the Flowers, and other contributors to PE clearly felt no obligation
to adhere strictly to the traditional theological categories or provide answers to
the definitive sacramental controversies, Reformed or Catholic, although they
are familiar with them. For example, they speak of the Spirit’s presence in the
Supper as well as Christ’s, and no attempt is made to explain in philosophical
terms how the Lord works through the Meal, although clearly he is expected to
do so.
Second, PE contributors, like other Pentecostals of the time, make extensive
use of Scripture in their reflections on the ordinances, often in surprising ways.
They regularly appeal to texts that at first glance seem unrelated to the
Eucharist – e.g. Neh. 8.10 – but they depended especially on Paul’s instructions
(1 Corinthians 11) and Jesus’ teaching on the Bread of Life (John 6).
Third, there is in PE a consistent emphasis on the present-tenseness of Christ’s
presence in the Eucharist-event; the symbolic virtues of the ordinance are not
overlooked, but certainly do remain secondary. The point of stress is the
immediacy of blessing in the sacramentally-realized Presence.
Early Finished Work Sacramentality: Summary and Conclusions
Speaking broadly, early Finished Work Pentecostalism was no less sacramental
than was early Wesleyan-Holiness Pentecostalism, although certain slight
differences perhaps appear. For sure, the Finished Work movement at this early
stage remained richly textured and diverse, and the sacramentality one discovers
in the periodical literature is far from monochromatic. For all this diversity,
however, a set of core convictions remained more or less established.
First, Finished Work Pentecostals, no less than their Wesleyan-Holiness
brothers and sisters, rejected any notion of baptismal regeneration. Even so, they
acknowledged water baptism as a churchly ordinance, and held that no true
believer would refuse it as a matter of simple obedience. Not only that,
numerous testimonies indicate that the experience of water baptism often belied
their theological articulations of the rite’s meaning.
Second, many Finished Work Pentecostals did not consider footwashing a
churchly ordinance, with some (notably, William Durham) arguing that the
practice must not be classed with water baptism and the Lord’s Supper, even
insisting that it should not be practiced ritually. Many Finished Work
Pentecostals did observe the practice in spite of these protests, and some
prominent leaders, including E.N. Bell, contended for its importance, although
they stopped short of describing it as a sacrament. This marks a difference from
some, but not all, Wesleyan-Holiness Pentecostals.
Third, like their brothers and sisters in the Wesleyan-Holiness stream,
Finished Work Pentecostals resisted the idea that the sacraments worked
magically, and they vigilantly opposed formalism, even while they regarded the
Lord’s Supper as in many ways the crux of Pentecostal worship. Communion
services were for them deeply sacred occasions, times in which the Spirit
worked forcefully. Rejecting Catholic and Lutheran articulations of Real
Presence, they nevertheless adamantly affirmed that Christ was in some sense
present to the celebrants at the Table. Not by any means did they experience the
Supper as merely a memorial feast, even if they did believe that it had been
given as a means of remembering the Lord’s atoning death. The ‘present-
tenseness’ of the Supper remained foremost.
Fourth, like Wesleyan-Holiness Pentecostals, Finished Work Pentecostals
justified their sacramental thought and practice by appealing to biblical texts,
including, most prominently, 1 Cor. 11.23-33. Other passages, such as Jn 6.53-
56, Acts 2.42-47, and Neh. 8.10, were used as well.
Fifth, like most Wesleyan-Holiness Pentecostals, they came to the Lord’s
Table trusting that if they rightly discerned the body of Christ, then they would
receive bodily healing as well as spiritual nourishment.
Sixth, and finally, it is no exaggeration to claim that early Finished Work
Pentecostalism was characteristically sacramental. More or less exactly like
their brothers and sisters in the Wesleyan-Holiness movement, Finished Work
Pentecostals regarded the Lord’s Supper as an essential, even definitive rite of
Christian worship and a source of blessing for the gathered congregation,
including healing for both the body and the soul.
The Boddys and British Pentecostalism: Confidence
Magazine
Introduction
The Anglican vicar A.A. Boddy, widely considered the founder of British
Pentecostalism, established Confidence magazine in 1908, not long after his
congregation, All Saints’ Church in Sunderland, England, found itself swept up
in the storms of Pentecostal revival.[750] He intended the magazine to serve as
nothing less than a ‘means of grace’,[751] and as a ‘Pentecostal paper for Great
Britain and other lands’. He retained his membership in the Anglican
Communion after his Spirit baptism, continuing as vicar of All Saints’ in
Sunderland.
The orientation of Boddy’s theology, as well as that of other regular
Confidence contributors, remains a matter of debate. Cartledge argues contra
Faupel that Boddy’s theology was largely if not essentially Wesleyan, and
faithful to the 5-fold Gospel – in spite of the fact the phrase itself is never used.
[752] Regardless, Boddy’s magazine is included in this chapter primarily
because it helps to cast into relief the depth and breadth of sacramentalism in the
literature of the North American Finished Work and Wesleyan-Holiness camps
of the period.
‘Give Us Thy Real Presence’: Explicit References to the Sacraments
The sacramentality one discovers in Confidence, like that found in the North
American periodicals of the time, is textured and variegated, often exceeding the
boundaries of traditional sacramental thought. For example, there are references
not only to Christ’s presence in the Supper, but also of the presence of the Spirit
and the Father, as well. So, some can speak of Eucharistic participation as
‘partaking of the Holy Spirit’,[753] and can describe themselves at the Table as
‘children in the Father’s presence’.[754] While it is not advisable to make too
much of them, unembellished statements like these, startling in their
suggestiveness, indicate something of the unexplored depth of Pentecostal
sacramental experience and reflection.
Footwashing
A.A. Boddy takes a position on footwashing similar to that held by many in the
Finished Work tradition, and some in the Wesleyan-Holiness movement. He
reads the account as a description of a necessary attitude, a willingness to serve
humbly even in the most menial of ways. Surprisingly, he also assumes that John
13 should be read in conjunction with the Synoptic accounts of Jesus’ ‘last
supper’, as matched puzzle pieces.[755] At least one other Confidence
contributor also understood footwashing as symbolic of Christ’s ongoing work
of sanctifying his people.
Jesus looks after the feet of the saints. What care He takes that your walk and
mine may be clean, that our feet may go into no defilement, that we may walk
nowhere that will not be pleasing to our God, and so we read in that verse that
He poured water into a basin and began to wash their feet. I like these words,
‘and began.’ It was only the beginning, not the end of that washing. It is going
right on to-day [sic]; He is cleansing the feet of His saints. That is the
application of the water of the Word through the power of the Holy Ghost. It
was only the beginning; He is carrying it on to-day, and will only be satisfied
when He lands the Church right up in Heaven, sanctified and cleansed in His
Presence.[756]
Laying on of Hands and Anointing with Oil
Like most of his North American Pentecostal brothers and sisters, A.A. Boddy
read the directives of Jas 5.14 as normative for healing practices. Both men and
women can serve as ‘elders’, as ‘channels of the quickening Spirit’; ‘the Lord
has given these gifts of healing’.[757] The call for prayer must come from the
sick, exactly as the Scripture directs, and confession of sins is ‘very advisable’,
for the prayer is for complete healing of body, soul, and spirit and not the
removal of the sickness only. Boddy held that laying on of hands, as directed by
Mk 16.18, was also an acceptable practice. However, in spite of the fact that it is
scripturally sanctioned and so ‘might be exercised by any Baptised [sic] person,
if [he or she is] clearly led by the Spirit’, some Pentecostals nonetheless insisted
that it should never be done ‘indiscriminately’, as if it were ‘only a form’.[758]
The oil used in anointing does not possess healing powers, but symbolizes the
Holy Spirit and signals the ‘complete consecration to God of the body’.[759]
Testimonies indicate at least many Confidence readers shared Boddy’s
convictions on these matters. J.O. Lehman reports the instantaneous healings of
a blind man and a young, deaf girl through the laying on of hands.[760] One
woman, celebrating her ‘wonderful healing’, recounts how she received ‘laying
on hands for casting out and healing and for the Holy Ghost to come’.[761] A
brother testifies of a service in which all those who desired to ‘have the Word of
God carried out, and be anointed with oil’ were invited forward for prayer.[762]
It suffices to say, then, that Confidence’s teaching on the imposition of hands
harmonizes with the teaching of North American Pentecostal periodicals in
virtually every respect.
Water Baptism
Given the Boddys’ Evangelical Anglican theology, one might expect their view
and the views of the majority of Confidence contributors regarding water
baptism to differ from that of most North American Pentecostals. Most of the
time, however, that turns out not to be the case. For instance, in a lengthy
exposition of Jn 3.2, A.A. Boddy says nothing of water baptism, instead inviting
those who doubt their salvation to act in ‘simple Faith’, to ‘Ask the Holy Spirit
to make your Union with Christ your Head in His Death and Resurrection Life
very real in your experience’.[763]
It is not surprising that Confidence assumes a difference between water
baptism and Spirit baptism, in keeping with the Pentecostal experience, or that it
regards baptism as a form of imitating Jesus.[764] In these ways, the theology of
baptism in Confidence differs not at all from that found in the North American
Pentecostal periodical literature. However, there appears to be a point of
difference in the Boddys’ belief about the relationship of the external rite of
washing and the internal work of the Spirit. Although they could speak of
baptism as the ‘outward act of immersing in water connected with repentance’
and believed that the washing rite serve as ‘the outward sign of cleansing from
sin, death to self, and resurrection to new life in Christ’, they nonetheless
maintained the conviction that the Spirit comes into the believer through – or at
least ‘alongside’ – the service of ritual washing.[765] It would appear that not
many American Pentecostals would have held the same opinion.
The Lord’s Supper
There is in Confidence a deep and richly textured theology of the Lord’s
Supper – and not only in the Boddys’ writings. For example, one contributor
champions the reputation of a Brother Cook, ‘a black saint’, by reporting that
Cook arises from his spending ‘whole nights in prayer’ to partake of the ‘Holy
Sacrament with fear and trembling’.[766] Another writer reports on the work in
Basutoland, remarking on the ‘healthy fear of God’ that characterizes the
congregation there, a ‘healthy fear’ due, in large part, to the death of two men
who ‘dared to eat the Lord’s Supper whilst being in sin’ and were ‘slain by the
Lord’.[767]
This robust theology of the Eucharist is perhaps strongest and clearest in the
Boddys’ contributions, however. In a March 1912 article exploring the ‘closing
scenes in our Lord’s earthly life’, A.A. Boddy explains how just before or just
after Judas had abandoned Jesus, ‘the Omniscient Lord instituted the Holy
Communion in the most solemn way’, surely knowing in that moment this
institution would be observed through the centuries ‘until His great Advent’.
[768] Boddy himself recalls having shared ‘the blessed bread and holy wine’
with ‘Canaanitish Christians in the Syrian Church dedicated to St Paul’. They
recited the prayer of consecration and the words of administration in ‘Syrian
Arabic’, yet he knew ‘that this same Lord Jesus was again with us as of old
when he reclined in that upper chamber in that same Holy City’. He rejoices that
many find Jesus ‘at His Holy Table in a new and unexpected way’.[769]
Concluding his thoughts on the Last Supper, Boddy wonders if it might not be
while the church is gathered at the Table ‘that the brilliance of His glory will
stream upon us’, so that the celebration on earth is once-for-all transposed by
Christ’s parousia into the ‘wondrous and blessed Marriage Supper of the Lamb’.
[770]
Like her husband, Mary Boddy insisted on the centrality of the Eucharist, and
if anything with greater emphasis and sophistication. In one article, apparently
judging that many of her fellow Pentecostals were not properly receiving the
Supper and the ‘wonderful power of His precious Body being given for us’, she
asks, ‘Are we appropriating all that our Lord has obtained for us?’ She abjures
her readers to take the Sacrament with a greater seriousness, to come to the Table
expectantly: ‘As we take part in the blessed Holy Communion, do we fully
realise [sic] that is a real participation in the body of Christ?’ She appeals to a
few biblical passages, including John 6 and 1 Corinthians 10 to support her
claims. ‘If we would “dwell or abide in Him” we must eat His flesh and drink
His blood.’ She insists that nothing less or other than this is ‘the true union with
Christ’.[771] In another place – again reflecting on Jn 6.51-53 – Boddy
pronounces her gratitude for the gift of the Eucharist: ‘We thank God for the
Holy Communion, which is a continual remembrance of this wonderful
salvation’. Having said this, she is not content, but pushes on to insist that the
Eucharist-event is ‘nay, more than a remembrance’ and is in fact nothing less
than a ‘continual feeding upon the Heavenly Manna, the hidden manna which
cometh down from Heaven – even Christ Himself’.[772] In that line, ‘nay, more
than a remembrance, a continual feeding’,[773] she gives voice to a theology of
the Eucharist that, judging from the bulk of the evidence, most North American
Pentecostals of the time would have agreed to. Again and again, she insists that
if properly received Holy Communion effects transformation into Christ:
… if we believe and receive the word of death to our old body of sin, and
receive His word in the Holy Communion as ‘spirit and life’ (‘the flesh
profiteth nothing’), the Holy Spirit will quicken that seed of the Word and it
will become flesh in us. So shall we be of the same substance or seed as His
blessed Body.[774]
The outlines of a robust (Reformed) theology of the Sacrament shine through
these claims. Clearly, Mary Boddy believes that in order for Communion to be
everything it has been promised to be, then the celebrants must ‘believe and
receive’, must put their faith in the promise of God so that the Holy Spirit can
enliven the rite – and the bread and wine? – so that the Word ingested/‘ingested’
in the receiving of the elements can be ‘quickened’ and believers can be
transformed into Christlikeness – made to be ‘of the same substance’ as the
‘blessed Body’ of Christ himself. In other words, when rightly received, the
Eucharist by the Spirit’s power becomes for the believer an ontologically-
transforming event, one in which the celebrant is ‘at-oned’ with Christ, and made
to share in his nature.
Excursus: the Boddys’ Cranmerian Theology of the Eucharist
The Boddys made constant use of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP), an act
thick with implications for this project because of BCP’s unquestionably high
sacramentalism. BCP gives liturgical expression to Thomas Cranmer’s ‘indirect
theology’,[775] which varied by degrees through the years, but remained always
Reformed. Sometimes Zwinglian, at other times Bucerian (especially in the later
versions),[776] Cranmer’s thought about the Eucharistic presence of Christ was
always set over against the traditional Roman Catholic view, and, to a lesser
degree, the Lutheran.[777] Nonetheless, Cranmer did hold to a belief in real
presence, even while he by and large rejected the Thomistic and Lutheran
articulations of it.[778]
For good reasons, it may be assumed that the Boddys retained a view more or
less compatible with Cranmer’s. For example, one article provides the text of a
New Year’s sermon Mary had delivered in which she explains how she came to
understand Christ’s life as ‘proof against all disease for all time’. The body, as
well as the soul, received its redemption in Jesus’ death and resurrection. In
explication, she appeals to a turn of phrase from BCP: ‘My body made clean by
His Body, and my soul washed in His most precious Blood’.[779] Obviously, the
‘Body’ that makes clean is Christ’s Eucharistic Body, and the Blood, the
Communion wine. Mary Boddy excerpts this phrase from the well-known
‘Prayer of Humble Access’, offered by the administering priest while kneeling at
the Lord’s Table.[780] The prayer reads:
We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our
own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy
so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same
Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: Grant us therefore, gracious
Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood,
that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed
 through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and
he in us. Amen.
Following Cranmer, the Boddys believed that the sacraments –and in
particular, Holy Communion – served as means to real, spiritual communion
with Christ through the Spirit. The Boddys’ daughter, Jane, recalls her
confirmation and first Communion, and its effect on her: it ‘filled me with new
spiritual life’.[781] Boddy himself acknowledges also the symbolic value of the
Eucharist, agreeing that ‘The Lord’s Supper was instituted by Christ, and is a
memorial of His death and Passion’. However, this memorialist dimension does
not exhaust the Supper’s reality, for ‘by partaking of it we have communion with
Christ till He comes’.[782] He cites an excerpt from an Andrew Murray sermon,
which climaxes in a prayer: ‘Blessed Lord! how wondrously Thou hast provided
for our growing likeness to Thyself, in giving us Thine own Holy Spirit. Thou
hast told us that it is His work to reveal Thee, to give us Thy Real Presence
within us’.[783]
Perhaps the clearest proof of the Cranmerian character of the Boddys’
theology comes in A.A. Boddy’s interpretation of his Spirit baptism. He recalls
that while administering an early morning Communion Service, September 21st,
1892, ‘the Holy Spirit in infinite love came upon me’ just as he was reading the
text for the day, 2 Cor. 4.6. Boddy appeals to a line from BCP to explain the
event. The moment, he says, overwhelmed him:
I knew He had come, and that I was ‘fulfilled with His grace and heavenly
benediction’. It seemed as if my vocal organs were affected, and that it was
‘Another’ who was reading those precious words through me. When the
service was over I praised Him in the words of the Doxology. The longing of
my heart was satisfied; my constant prayer was answered.[784]
Such use of the BCP almost certainly suggests more than a familiarity with its
language. It implies a deeply held conviction that what the BCP describes as
happening in the Eucharist-event is in fact what the participants are
experiencing.
Jesus in the Midst: Testimonies of Sacramental Experience
Pentecostals from across Europe, as well as from the United States and other
parts of the world, came to the Sunderland church for Pentecostal conferences,
and shared together in Eucharistic celebration. T.B. Barratt’s wife, Margaret,
reports on one of these conferences,[785] recounting how every one attending
the conference, irrespective of denominational affiliation, received an invitation
to the Sunday morning celebration of the ‘Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper’. All
‘gathered together as one family, namely, God’s children’, she boasts.[786] Even
if the service differed ceremonially from what many expected, its significance
for them remained unchanged: ‘the form was different, but the spirit was the
same’.[787] Indeed, she believed that sharing in the Eucharist not only reflected
this unity, but actually effected it. Even if the Boddys belonged to the Church of
England and others hailed from other denominations, they found themselves in
one Spirit because there is ‘one cup of which we drink, and one bread of which
we eat; so we are one body’.[788]
In the same vein, a North American believer reports on another international
conference, hosted at Sunderland:
One morning, very early, a large number of us were assembled at All Saints’
Church, by Mr. Boddy’s invitation, to partake of the Lord’s Supper, and it was
a service of unusual sweetness and solemnity. Many different nationalities
were represented. Some of our German brethren could not speak English, but
one could read the language of their shining faces. Brothers and sisters were
present who knew nothing of the ritual of the Established Church of England,
but as it was read by Rev., Mr. Boddy (assisted by a curate) in tones of deepest
reverence, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, a marvellous [sic] hush fell
upon us, and we realized that though in some cases religious training had been
different, yet we were all blessedly one in Christ, one bread, one body, all
having been made to drink into the one Spirit.[789]
As seen in this example, writers and readers of Confidence employed biblical
images and turns of phrase to explain their sacramental experience. C.H. Hook
writes to admonish those who are wrongly participating in the Supper, appealing
to Jesus’ promise (John 6) and to Paul’s warning (1 Corinthians 11). Many are
sick or have died because of the failure ‘to discern the Lord’s body in the
sacrament, in other words – not feeding on Christ enough to keep [them] alive’.
‘Jesus is the life; then feed on Him.’[790] In a talk that had been delivered in
California before being published in Confidence, Carrie Judd Montgomery
expounded Jesus’ command to eat his flesh and drink his blood as a call to the
‘truth that is too deep and mystical’ for natural understanding. ‘That which is not
comprehensible to the natural man, the spiritual man obeys.’[791]
Again and again, testimonies in Confidence demonstrate that the Communion
rite was understood as a time for Christ to present himself and to act on the
celebrants. A.A. Boddy remembers a prayer meeting that climaxed with
celebration of the Lord’s Supper: ‘Pastor Paul saw Jesus in the midst’,[792] an
experience that took place during the December 1908 conference in Germany.
Before the last meal there was the solemn Breaking of the Bread, when pastor
 Paul acted as our Presbyter, and the Chalice and the large plate of bread were
solemnly passed round after he had reverently used the words of Institution
and Blessing. The Lord Himself was seen by him standing in our midst, as at
the Last Supper. Then the Pastor turned to me and said, ‘Let the Englishmen
sing the song of the Blood’, so we sang, and all joined in their own tongue or
in English:
Oh, the Blood, the precious Blood,
It cleanses me, I praise the Lord;
From sin and guilt it sets me free,
The precious Blood, it cleanses me.[793]
Times of corporate worship devoted to the celebration of Holy Communion
often yielded moments of renewal, as the Spirit began to move some to
prophesy, others to speak in tongues; some were instantly healed, and others
were impelled to ecstatic celebration. Many received their Spirit baptism while
partaking of the Lord’s Supper,[794] and outbreaks of the Spirit in the course of
the Communion celebration were anything but an uncommon experience. One
sister, bedfast for nearly six years and for a long time at the edge of death,
requested the Lord’s Supper brought to her in bed and immediately on receiving
it with the church’s prayers began to improve and eventually revived and
received a complete healing.[795]
European Pentecostals, like their brothers and sisters in the United States, held
the Supper in the highest regard, and attended carefully to the details of the
ritual. They insisted on open communion, for they believed ‘this is the Lord’s
Table, not ours’.[796] Pentecostal churches in Amsterdam, for instance, refused
to allow anyone to partake of ‘the Bread and Wine’ until they had signed a paper
verifying that they were in fact ‘right with God and man and have perfect love
towards all’. One visitor to a service describes how one or two came forward to
‘get right with God’ before Communion; the service was strikingly ‘simple’, and
a ‘most restful, quiet spirit’ pervaded the moment. A missionary writes from
China, explaining how the team taught the converts to engage the sacraments:
‘They even had to be told how to partake of the Lord’s Supper, i.e., how much to
eat and how much to drink, as it was all so strange and new to them’.[797]
‘Too Deep and Mystical’: Embedded Sacramentality
The language of hunger and feasting factors significantly in Confidence, as it did
in the North American Pentecostal literature of the time. One testifies of the
‘pleasure’ and ‘sweetness’ of his experience of Christ, and boasts: ‘no wonder
we say to others “taste and see that the Lord is good” [and] “ His mouth is most
sweet; yea, He is altogether lovely”’.[798] The entire Pentecostal experience is
satisfying, for
It tastes just like the best of Bread, it looks like the purest Bread, it strengthens
us exactly as does Heavenly Bread, and the Father tells us in our hearts that it
is the very Bread He promised. It has upon it all the Hall-Marks of being
Heavenly Food given by our beloved Father.[799]
Every believer should set aside time each day with the Scripture: ‘Devour the
Word, feed upon it’.[800]
When we do, we will get so strengthened and so sustained and so filled that it
is bound to flow over, and the Word, the living Word which came down from
Heaven, shall be revealed to us through the written Word by the Spirit of God,
and thus the true manna shall feed us day by day until we lack no more.[801]
As with the North American periodicals, the dinner table, as well as the
Eucharistic altar, was regarded as a sacred space: ‘After supper we had a
profitable time of prayer and fellowship together. Our brother is hungry for
God’s best, and the Lord enabled me to satisfy him upon some points that had
troubled him’.[802] Also, one finds frequent mention of the marriage supper.
[803]
Conclusions
Because of the Boddys’ Anglicanism, one is not surprised to find frequent
meaningful references to the sacraments. One might be surprised however, to
find that when the sacramentality is compared to that of, say, AF, COGE, or PE,
little difference appears, either in degree or in kind. Boddy’s Confidence differs
from other Pentecostal literature of the time in its treatment of the sacraments
mainly if not only in this regard: it makes use of the Book of Common Prayer.
Because of this, the descriptions of the sacraments in Confidence often adheres
formally to the Reformed (Cranmerian) tradition, but it does not seem to hold a
markedly different notion of the sacraments than that expressed in North
American Pentecostal periodicals. Insofar as Confidence provides a clear
window on the life of early Pentecostals not only in the United States and Britain
but also in Western Europe, it is no exaggeration to say that for at least many
Pentecostals in the Western world the sacraments were vital, even fundamental,
to their spirituality.[804]
Like their Pentecostal brothers and sisters in the U.S., the Boddys and other
principal contributors to Confidence practiced the laying on of hands for healing
and Spirit baptism in submission to the clear direction of Scripture, and although
they never described it in sacramental terms they obviously expected this
practice to occasion the Spirit’s work. For at least a few of the contributors,
including Boddy and his wife, Holy Communion was genuinely a unique means
of grace, effecting the presence of Christ for the celebrants. It was medicine for
the sick and nourishment for the spiritually hungry.
Early Pentecostal Sacramentality: Summary and
Conclusions
What, then, has been learned from this reading of the early periodical literature?
It has come clear that a great many if not the vast majority of early Pentecostals
in the United States engaged in sacramental practice and thought, although a
small, always marginalized minority in and alongside the Pentecostal
movements opposed the sacraments in any form. Pentecostals were not uniform
in their sacramental beliefs and praxis; however, there was widespread
agreement that water baptism and Holy Communion, as well as laying on of
hands – and, to a lesser extent, footwashing – remained critical and even central
to Pentecostal worship. Early Pentecostals celebrated the sacraments not only as
a matter of obedience to the dominical mandate but also in full expectation that
God would act uniquely and powerfully in and through these rites.
It is impossible to appreciate early Pentecostal spirituality generally, or their
sacramentality specifically, unless one discerns that they arose from a form of
imitatio Christi. It was a following of Jesus ‘to fulfill all righteousness’ that
fired their experience of the sacraments. They observed the ordinances of water
baptism, Holy Communion, and footwashing as occasions for encountering and
imitating the risen Jesus and mediation of the grace of divine transformative
presence. These rites were never merely ceremonial or memorialistic, although
their rich symbolism was not lost on the practitioners. The evidence indicates
first generation Wesleyan-Holiness and Finished Work Pentecostals experienced
these rites as ‘sacred occasions’, unique opportunities for the Spirit to work in
the community. For them, these were moments in which heaven met earth and
believers found themselves overwhelmed by God’s real, active presence. Hence,
it is not surprising that one finds at least an incipient theology of the sacraments
embedded in and emerging from early Pentecostal prayer and preaching. Above
and beyond the explicit references to the sacraments, one finds a multifaceted
sacramentality embedded in the rites and practices, as well as the idiom of early
Pentecostals. For instance, the extensive use of eating/drinking metaphors
reveals an appetitiveness, a hunger for God and the work of God; the Supper
served as the sign par excellence of this hunger. As Jamie Smith explains,
Pentecostal spirituality is an ‘extension of the Reformed intuition about the
goodness of creation’, and the characteristic emphasis on physical healing is an
implicit ‘affirmation that God cares about our bodies’, an ‘affirmation of the
goodness of embodiment’.[805] This is borne out again and again in the
sacramentality of early Pentecostals, as well.
To be sure, Pentecostals of the first generation rejected anything that tended
toward formalism, and vigorously refused all descriptions of the sacraments
operating automatically .[806] Further, they did not restrict themselves to
traditional sacramental categories, although they did not avoid use of explicitly
sacramental terminology, as later Pentecostals seem to have done, instead using
many names for the Meal, including Holy Communion, the Sacrament, and the
Lord’s Supper. They did not find themselves compelled to explain the
metaphysics of Christ’s presence in the Supper, even though plainly many of
them did believe that Christ himself was present to the church through, or at
least with, the observance of the Meal. For them, the Lord’s Supper was never
merely a memorial feast. Numerous accounts of dreams or visions about the
Supper illuminate in an inimitable way how formative the Eucharist was for
early Pentecostal spirituality.
Their experience of the Supper and their articulation of its meaning and
purpose also received their shape from reflection on key biblical passages,
including Paul’s account of the institution of the Supper (1 Cor. 11.23-33) and
the so-called Bread of Life discourse in John 6, as well as the ‘breaking bread’
passages in Luke-Acts, Neh. 8.10, and references to the ‘bread of the presence’
in Exodus 25, among other passages. John 6.53-56 received special attention,
both by those who insisted on the importance of obeying Jesus in sharing the
meal and those who claimed Christians were called to ‘feast’ on Jesus mystically,
as a way of life, and not merely ritually. Apparently, most did not regard these as
mutually exclusive alternatives, but as parallel dimensions of the sacred reality.
In this, Pentecostals of the first generation fit nicely with many in the ancient
and medieval Christian tradition. Their ambiguous talk of eating Christ fits
nicely with, for example, Origen: ‘We drink the blood of Christ not only in the
sacramental rite, but also when we receive his words in which are life, as he
himself says: “The words that I have spoken are spirit and life” (Jn 6.63) …’
Origen continues, teasing out further implication of this controlling metaphor:
Just as Christ is the living bread, so is his enemy, death, the dead bread. Every
rational soul is nourished by one or the other of these … Thus, every word
through which we receive spiritual drink, or every story through which we are
nourished, is a vessel of food and drink. We are admonished therefore not to
worry about words and stories which come from the outside but only about
those which come from within so that our heart will be filled with pure,
drinkable and eatable senses, and not with mere words or fancy speeches; for
the ‘kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power’.[807]
 As these readings suggest, the first-generation Pentecostal imagination was
deftly metaphoric, deploying, encoding, and deciphering (biblically-informed)
metaphors in an almost inexhaustible variety of ways. For instance, the bread of
the presence could and did serve as a way of identifying Christ himself, as a way
of explicating the benefits he affords (e.g. salvation, sanctification, healing,
Spirit baptism), and as a way of describing the believers’ intimate fellowship
with Christ through the Spirit. These meanings were rarely if ever neatly
distinguished. To take another example, the Passover meal was taken often as a
signum of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, and both the Passover and the
Exodus were regarded as signa of Christ’s last supper (and the first of the
church’s Suppers) that in turn served (and serves) as a sign of his death on the
cross and the benefits it effects, as well as referring backward to the entire
system of signs that pre-figured it, and forward to the future ‘marriage supper of
the Lamb’ – which itself is a metaphor for believers’ eternal fellowship with God
in Christ. This imaginativeness not only shaped how Pentecostals engaged the
Supper, but emerged from their shared experience of Communion. For them, the
Eucharist served both as a signum and a medium, a way of obeying the Lord’s
commands and bringing to mind the events of his saving death, but also a means
of the Spirit making the participants like the one who ordained the meal. It
seems likely that the Eucharistic rubrics and practice of the larger Christian
tradition helped to shape early Pentecostal spirituality, informing their use of
eating and drinking metaphors, at least at some remove.
These observations and conclusions call into question certain historical
analyses and secondary accounts of early Pentecostalism that overlook or
downplay its sacramentality, inviting new engagement and assessment of the
spirituality that gave rise to the movement. To put it briefly, the sacramental
thought and practice of early Pentecostals has not received the attention it
deserves. Even where it has been addressed, it often has been underappreciated,
if not altogether misunderstood.
4
THE LORD’S SUPPER IN THE CHURCH’S
SCRIPTURE
Introduction
Given that Pentecostals have been from the first and remain a people devoted to
the authority of Scripture, a proposed Pentecostal theology of the Eucharist
should show how it makes sense in light of the ‘whole counsel’ of Scripture.
This is not simply a matter of amassing proof texts, of course, and requires more
than a careful exegesis of key passages: the biblical texts must be engaged in a
way that rings true to the form of life recognizable to Pentecostals as devotion to
the God of the gospel. My objective in this section is to develop an interpretive
model that meets these standards. After developing a Pentecostal hermeneutical
model, I will select three representative texts from the Scripture’s witness to the
meaning and purpose of the Eucharist-event, and then read these texts using the
schema developed in the previous chapter for reading the early Pentecostal
periodicals, drawing first on explicit theological statements about the Eucharist,
then testimonies of Eucharistic experience, and, finally, texts whose sacramental
theology remains embedded and suggestive.
(Re)Imagining a Pentecostal Hermeneutic
Introduction
Over the past twenty-five years or so, Pentecostal scholars have turned their
attention to hermeneutics, asking how readers can and should engage the
Christian Scriptures, attempting to identify and describe in detail what in fact
makes a reading of the Scriptures genuinely Pentecostal. In the course of this
development, it has become increasingly clear that Pentecostal interpretative
strategies stand apart from those of the ‘liberal’ Protestant tradition on the one
hand and those of the Evangelical tradition on the other hand – in spite of the
fact that Pentecostals share with Evangelicals a high view of Scripture.
Influenced to a considerable degree by postmodern literary theory[808] and the
insights of post-critical theology, Pentecostal scholars are forging hermeneutical
models better fitted to the ethos of the movement. Not everyone agrees on every
point, of course. Nonetheless, several themes and emphases have won
widespread acceptance. To be more exact:
1. The work of the Spirit in making faithful interpretation possible, inspiring
the readers to make gospel sense of the texts.
2. The authority and sufficiency of the Scriptures’ final, canonical form.
3. The role of the worshipping community in the process of interpreting the
Scriptures.
4. The need for confessional, theological readings concerned primarily with
how the Scriptures work as God’s address to God’s people here and now.
5. Respect for the irreducible diversity of theological and literary ‘voices’ in
the Scriptures.
6. Regard for the over-arching ‘story’ of the history of salvation as a
hermeneutical key.
7. The priority of narrative, literary readings of a text over against historical-
critical readings.
8. The significance of the history of effects for the contemporary interpretative
process.
Most if not all of these themes have been gathered under a simple and often-
used rubric – Spirit, Word, and community – and perhaps it is no exaggeration to
say a definitive interpretative model is emerging under this heading.[809] In the
following section, I will take up this rubric to explore the developments and
emerging scholarly consensus among Pentecostals. In my conclusion, I will
attempt to show what difference the various assumptions and claims of the
model make for discerning the import of the Scriptures’ manifold witness to the
value and meaning of the Communion rite.
The Inspiring, Interpreting Spirit
Pentecostals believe the Spirit is the Scripture’s definitive interpreter,[810] the
one who makes faithful ‘hearing’ of the Word possible.[811] The Spirit promises
to ‘lead and guide the community in understanding the present meaningfulness
of Scripture’,[812] enabling us to read the Scripture with a ‘new clarity that
could not be possible without his aid’.[813]
Pentecostals typically distinguish between Spirit and Word, so that the
community’s charismatic participation is judged to be fundamentally
indispensable to the work of rightly discerning the will of God in light of the
written Word.[814] Land describes the authority and efficacy of Scripture as
finally dependent on the relation of the Spirit to Christ. This means that Word
and Spirit are ‘married’ so that no thought or action is truly scriptural if it is not
‘communicated out of the fullness of the Spirit’.[815] It is this that makes the
Scriptures authoritatively effective: ‘as the Spirit formed Christ in Mary, so the
Spirit uses Scripture to form Christ in believers and vice-versa’.[816]
Discerning in his reading of Deuteronomy a ‘theology of revelation’ that calls
for ‘two revelatory channels, that of canonical writing and charismatic speech’,
[817] Rick Moore contends that occasional Spirit-impelled speech is divinely
purposed to keep Israel from losing touch with the God who speaks and is
spoken of in the written texts. While he readily acknowledges that a ‘close
linkage’ remains between the scripted Word and the ‘charismatic utterance’,
Moore believes Deuteronomy teaches that ‘each revelational medium would
have its own respective function’.[818]
Deuteronomy here seems to see the essential and distinct contribution of
charismatic revelation in terms of the manifesting of God’s nearness in a way
that counters an idolatrous manufacturing of divine presence, on the one hand,
and a legalistic distancing of divine word, on the other.[819]
Moore draws from this several applications for contemporary Pentecostal life,
the most telling of which is the need to hold in tension Word and Spirit and so
avoid ‘a Spirit-less word (rationalism), on the one hand, and a Word-less Spirit
(subjectivism), on the other’.[820] In other words, Pentecostal hermeneutics
depends in part on the willingness and ability to allow the Spirit’s ‘dynamic
word’ expressed through the charismata to illuminate the ‘enduring word’ of the
biblical texts.[821]
Pentecostals characteristically maintain that the Holy Spirit is no less active in
present-day biblical interpretation than in the ancient composition of these texts.
[822] In fact, Clark Pinnock dismisses altogether the distinction of ‘inspiration’
and ‘illumination’,[823] insisting there are only two modes of the same
inspiration – ‘contemporary’ and ‘original’.[824] In any case, the witness of
countless Pentecostals indicates that the interpretative process is a supernatural
event:
They tell of passages illuminated in new ways, of texts that take on new
meaningfulness, of verses that burn themselves into the memory, of
completely new appreciations of whole books of the Bible, of a positive urge
to read page after page of the text, of exciting new discoveries about God’s
self-revelation in Scripture, and so forth.[825]
In sum, the Spirit’s role is believed by Pentecostals to enliven Scripture so that
it acts on the readers as God’s Word pro nobis. That is, the Spirit makes possible
confessional, spiritual, and theological readings that seek to discover what God
is saying to the churches in the here-and-now of their historical and socio-
cultural situations, and in this way to make God’s will known.[826] Apart from
the Spirit’s help, the faithful and effective reading of Scripture as God’s Word is,
quite simply, impossible.
Pentecostals also characteristically insist that their experience of God in
community is indispensable to the interpretive process.[827] In fact, Pentecostals
see experience as both the means to the right interpretation of Scripture and its
promised effect. They come to the Scriptures in the first place because they
expect God to act on them and for them.[828] The goal of Pentecostal readings
is nothing less than ‘theophany, a divine encounter, a revelation, an experience
with the living God’: through the reading and performance of Scripture,
believers expect to be formed by God via the Spirit into the image of Christ’.
[829] Similarly, the Pentecostal view of Scripture arises from a ‘theology of
biblical experience’ that assumes believers’ lives now are no less available to the
presence and power of God than were the lives of the prophets, apostles, and the
life of Jesus himself.[830] Because of this, the Pentecostal interpreter is ‘more
like a producer or performer on stage’ than a reviewer who criticizes the
performance.[831]
But experience of God is not only an outcome of reading the Scripture rightly.
It is also a necessary hermeneutical key. Drawing on the events of Acts 15,[832]
John Christopher Thomas argues that on the strength of the Scripture alone, the
council had no reason to decide for the inclusion of the gentiles. Instead, Peter’s
testimony of the conversion of gentiles and Paul and Barnabas’ witness to the
‘signs and wonders’ performed among them made possible James’ decision for
and reading of the passage from Amos and the community’s Gospel-faithful
decision that followed. Clearly, ‘the Spirit’s witness heavily influenced the
choice and use of Scripture’, and that in this way the Spirit ‘helped the church
make its way through this hermeneutical maze’.[833] In the final analysis, then,
Pentecostals believe their experience opens up the text, and that the newly-
opened text in turn makes possible truer obedience and fuller blessing,[834]
creating an ascending spiral of transformational readings of Holy Scripture.
The Inspired, Interpreted Word
A growing number of Pentecostals are distancing themselves from traditional
Evangelical descriptions of the nature and authority of Scripture, including the
notion of sola Scriptura.[835] Ken Archer, for example, speaks of the biblical
text as a ‘full-fledged’ and ‘interdependent dialogical participant’,[836] which
means in effect that the text waits on the community’s and the Spirit’s
engagement, and that without these, it simply is not itself. This move is not
intended to undermine the authority of the Scriptures, but to avoid reductionistic
accounts of how that authority works. By playing up the importance of the
Spirit’s and community’s shared roles in interpretation, Pentecostals are seeking
to avoid treating Scripture as an ‘object’ rather than ‘a living Word which
interprets us and through which the Spirit flows in ways that we cannot dictate,
calculate, or program’.[837] The aim is to allow Scripture to be truly God’s
Word.
This school of thought also emphasizes the essential narrativity of divine
revelation, seeking both to read the Scriptures and to imagine the whole of the
Christian life as fundamentally storied.[838] For Pentecostals, Christian thinking
and living is not only about ‘story-telling but also [about] participation in and
performance of the Christian story in new and different contexts’.[839] Hence,
the scriptural Word ‘functions as a meta-narrative and is the foundational story
for belief and practice’,[840] which means that Christian interpreters should read
the Scriptures as cohering as and in a single story, i.e. the drama of salvation-
history. Only in this way can interpreters read rightly or live faithfully.[841]
Obviously, Pentecostals are not alone in championing narrative readings;
nonetheless, Jamie Smith suggests Pentecostal spirituality is perhaps perfectly
attuned to narrative as ‘a fundamental and irreducible mode of understanding’
and so uniquely situated to hear Scripture testify of the ‘overall plot of God’s
rescue of his creation’.[842]
 Finally, there is also an emerging consensus that Pentecostals can and should
concern themselves with the final, canonical form of the text.[843] ‘The final
canonical form of the biblical narrative is what shapes the reader and enables the
reader to develop a praxis-oriented understanding of life.’[844] Pentecostal
readings of the Scripture are ‘synchronic, focusing on the final form of the text,
and theological, allowing the ethos and experience of the tradition to inform the
interpretation’.[845] This confidence in the text’s canonical form is made
unmistakably clear in early Pentecostal readings of Mk 16.9-20, for example.
[846]
The Inspired, Interpreting Community
Increasingly, Pentecostal scholars are insisting on the authoritative role of the
community in the interpretative process.[847] So much so that a consensus
seems to have emerged: interpretation is ultimately a communal undertaking.
[848] For many Pentecostals, the local, worshipping community is the ‘spiritual
cultural context in which interpretation takes place’,[849] and it is necessarily in
the community’s discussion of Scripture that God’s intended meaning is
negotiated.[850] Right interpretation is ‘the result of a creative transaction of
meaning’ in the community’s effort to make sense of the Scriptures’ meaning for
its life and the lives of its members.[851] Along the same lines, it is precisely in
and through the community’s dialogue about the Scripture in light of their shared
experience that the Spirit makes right interpretation possible.[852] That is to say,
the community serves as the vital context for good (i.e. faithful and
transformational) interpretation.[853] Of course, individuals participate in the
discussion.[854] But it is only the (local, catholic, worshipping, Spirit-led)
community that truly authors interpretations.[855]
The importance of the history of effects (Wirkungsgeschichte) to the
interpretive enterprise for Pentecostals follows naturally from this emphasis on
the role of the community,[856] and numerous scholars are teasing out how this
discipline might prove beneficial for contemporary Pentecostal interpretation.
John Christopher Thomas compares studying the history of effects to hearing
and discerning testimonies of others in the community,[857] and he holds that
Pentecostals stand to gain much from the practice of hearing these testimonies.
In other words, the effective history of a text is a surer sign of the Spirit’s work
than are the findings of historical-critical analysis.[858]
This is not all a matter of academic theory. Larry McQueen was the first to
devote a careful and sustained consideration of early Pentecostal readings of
biblical texts,[859] and many others have followed him in this practice. To cite
but two examples, Robby Waddell draws on the witness of Pentecostal readers
before him who had offered scholarly treatments of the Apocalypse[860] and
Lee Roy Martin sets aside a section of his monograph to the pre-critical readings
of the book of Judges.[861] The effective history of 1 Cor. 13.8-12[862] and 3 Jn
2[863] have received extended treatments from Pentecostal scholars, as well.
[864]
With Land[865] and McQueen, John Christopher Thomas maintains the
witness of early Pentecostalism has particular and primary significance for
contemporary Pentecostal hermeneutics. In his article on the role of women in
ministry,[866] Thomas draws on this witness, as well as in his and Alexander’s
argument for the authority of the longer ending of Mark.[867] Ken Archer has
taken perhaps an even stronger stance: ‘The early Pentecostal hermeneutic must
be retrieved and retained in order for the movement to mature as a Christian
theological tradition’.[868] This hermeneutic – which Archer characterizes as a
‘pre-critical commonsense’ approach designed to let the text speak for
itself – enabled first-generation Pentecostals to ‘create new theological mosaics’,
[869] and to recover much of which traditional Christianity had lost sight. For
his part, Thomas does not restrict his vision to early Pentecostalism, even if that
remains his focus. He also wants to listen to the testimony of those from the
wider Christian community, including, for example, the impact of Romans on
Augustine, Luther, Wesley, and Barth and the influence of the Sermon on the
Mount on Wesley, Tolstoy, Bonhoeffer, and King. Waddell, in instructive
dialogue with Thomas and Ulrich Luz, suggests that the testimony of the early
church and ‘premodern’ interpreters deserve special attention.[870]
Perhaps no Pentecostal has put more emphasis on the viability and imitable
quality of patristic and medieval hermeneutics than Telford Work,[871]
especially in his recent commentary on Deuteronomy. He champions and
attempts to appropriate the pre-critical model of reading for the fourfold sense of
Scripture,[872] which Work believes will still serve to guide present-day readers
‘into a more accurate, clearer, and fuller sense of the import of biblical texts
…’[873] In this, Work is (perhaps unknowingly) following in the footsteps of
several early Pentecostals, including prominent figures like William G. Schell,
[874] G.F. Taylor,[875] and J.H. King.[876]
Conclusions
What difference does all of this make for reading those New Testament passages
that speak of the Lord’s Supper? What difference does it make, more generally,
for the work of constructing a theology of the Eucharist? It calls for
literary/theological readings of Scripture in the context of the worshipping and
God-experiencing community, readings that remain sensitive to a text’s
canonical fit and that take seriously the history of effects, always remaining
focused on how the Spirit uses Scripture to transform the community into
Christ’s ecclesia. In the readings that follow, then, I will seek to enact this
model.
Eating the Word: Eucharistic Theology in the New
Testament
Reading Strategy
In this section, I read three representative texts, utilizing the interpretative
method sketched in the previous section. In each case, I begin first with
consideration of the literary context of the passage, then I proceed to read it
literarily and theologically with an ear for canonical resonances and an eye on
the text’s effective history, as well. I conclude each reading by drawing
conclusions that will come into play in the following, constructive chapter. As
with the early Pentecostal periodical materials, I first treat an explicit treatment
of the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 10.14-22), move to a testimony of Eucharistic
celebration (Acts 2.42), and, finally, take up a text whose sacramentality appears
to be embedded (Jn 6.52-59). Taken together, the readings of these
representative texts will (a) offer a model for how Pentecostals can and should
read Eucharistic texts as they appear in the canonical Scriptures and (b) supply
an initial move toward an authentically Pentecostal and robustly biblical
theology of the Lord’s Supper.
The Eucharist as Divine-Human Love Feast: 1 Cor. 10.14-22
14Therefore, my dear friends, flee from the worship of idols. 15I speak as to
sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say.16The cup of blessing that we
bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it
not a sharing in the body of Christ? 17Because there is one bread, we who are
many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. 18Consider the people
of Israel; are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar? 19What do I
imply then? That food sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is
anything? 20No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons
and not to God. I do not want you to be partners with demons. 21You cannot
drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the
table of the Lord and the table of demons. 22Or are we provoking the Lord to
jealousy? Are we stronger than he?
Introduction
1 Corinthians 10.14-22 (and especially vv. 16-17) stands out as one of the most
explicit statements about the theological significance of the Lord’s Supper, not
only in the Pauline corpus[877] but also in the entire biblical canon; for this
reason alone it deserves thorough examination and exposition. Although this
passage – unlike the others I intend to read – did not receive much attention from
early Pentecostal interpreters, I am convinced the passage is critically important
to any attempt to hear what the New Testament has to say about the Lord’s
Supper and the church’s Eucharistic thought and practice.
The Interpretive Context
Paul intends to address several deeply troubling issues brought to his attention
by envoys from Corinth, as the reader learns early in the letter (1.11). Later in
the letter (7.1), the reader discovers that the apostle also has received a letter
from the Corinthian congregation, a letter full of questions that require detailed
and nuanced answers. Among other bad news, Paul is disturbed to hear that
many Corinthian Christians, claiming moral and spiritual superiority,[878] are
engaged in eidolothuton ( i.e. banqueting in the pagan temples, and/or buying
and eating food previously offered to idols),[879] and he devotes a major
section[880] of the epistle to address this outrage.[881] The passage I have
selected to read, 10.14-22, fits in the third and final part (10.1-11.1) of this major
section (8.1-11.1).
Even a hasty reading of 1 Corinthians makes it clear that the Corinthian
Christians regularly participated in the Lord’s Supper,[882] and that they did so
in the context of a larger meal.[883] What is more, as the rhetoric of 10.16-17
makes clear, the Corinthian Christians also already believed[884] that the
Eucharist was in fact a ‘communal participation’[885] in Christ’s body and
blood – no doubt because this was something Paul himself had previously made
clear to them.[886] For whatever reason, however, they had not allowed that
conviction to influence their day-to-day life together. As a result of this failure,
Paul has to show them in the starkest terms that the shared partaking of the
Lord’s Supper makes any dabbling in idolatry not only scandalous and risky, but
also absurd.[887] Because they are one at the Lord’s Table with Christ and his
community, it simply makes no sense for them to partake of the ‘table of
demons’ – it is nonsensical in the way all sin necessarily must be. He hopes to
save them from this nonsense by directing their attention to the definitive
‘countereality’ of Christ encountered in Christian worship, particularly in the
celebration of the Lord’s Supper.[888]
The Eucharistic Tapestry of 1 Corinthians
An incipient theology of the Eucharist threads through and holds together the
whole fabric of 1 Corinthians.[889] This is perhaps due to the fact that the
Eucharist gave Paul a language, so to speak, with which he could both diagnose
the Corinthians’ disease and prescribe its cure. If such claims seem overstated,
one has only to consider how the motifs of 10.16-17 show up in various places
throughout the letter and color the entirety of it. Not only Paul’s response to the
issues of eidolothuton (chs. 8-10), but also his diatribe against carnal
factionalism (chs. 1-4), sexual disorder and immorality (chs. 5-7), as well as his
correctives for the Corinthians’ worship (chs. 11-14) arise from and work back to
the claim that the Corinthians are in fact one body in Christ because of their
sharing in his body and blood at the Eucharistic meal.[890] The failure to discern
and embody this basic reality is in fact at the root of the many sins plaguing the
Corinthians’ community. To put it another way, if the Corinthians had discerned
the Lord’s body, if they had recognized what it means to share in Christ’s body
and blood, they would not – and indeed could not – have split into factions, or
given themselves to promiscuity, or dared to flirt with idols, or despised the
weaker members of the community, or abused the charismata.[891]
A literary reading of 1 Corinthians shows how tightly the threads of Paul’s
arguments are interwoven. Having been told in the letter’s introduction (1.9) that
believers have been called into the ‘fellowship (koinonian) of God’s Son’, the
reader later finds that this (koinonian)[892] comes about, at least in part, through
participation in the church’s sacred meal (10.16-17).[893] Having first heard that
Paul wants only to ‘proclaim’ Christ crucified (1.23), the reader later discovers
that this is the very message the Lord’s Supper itself delivers (11.26),[894]
indicating that for Paul the preaching of the Gospel – which was a necessity
(9.16) – remained connected inextricably to the church’s Eucharistic observance.
Again and again in the letter, Paul appeals to Israel’s Exodus narrative and to
Israel’s tabernacle/Temple cult,[895] frequently with an emphasis on Israel’s
meals: the first Passover, the manna in the wilderness, the sacrifices of the altar.
Two examples demand consideration. First, in 10.1-4, where Paul speaks of the
‘spiritual’ food and drink[896] that sustained Israel in the years of wandering, he
affirms that God is a God of meals, a God who ordains spiritual food and drink
for his people, giving the lie to the Corinthians’ belief that eating and drinking
have nothing to do with bringing us close to or estranging us from God (8.8).
[897] Even if the apostle’s talk of drinking the one Spirit and being baptized into
the one body (12.13) is not explicitly sacramental, the phrasing unquestionably
brings to mind the language of 10.1-4, and resonates with the assertions of
10.16-17. Second, when Paul talks of celebrating ‘the festival’ rightly (5.8),[898]
he is not only drawing on the story of the first Passover, but almost certainly
employing the term as another name for the kuriakon deinpnon (11.20), and
calling for the Corinthians to consider how it is that this Supper is to be
observed. This means not only that Christ deserves the honor that belongs to
YHWH, as Fee acknowledges,[899] but also that the church’s Communion meal
is significant as a covenant-making rite, as well. If the Passover constituted
Israel as God’s people, then so does the Eucharist constitute the church as
renewed Israel.
The formula employed in 6.13 – ‘the body is for the Lord and the Lord for the
body’[900] – draws together the several crucial themes (eating and drinking,
sexual intercourse,[901] and participation with the Lord) that prepare the reader
for the bold assertions of 10.16-17 and 10.21. What is more, it is hardly out of
the question that the second half of the formula, ‘the Lord [is] for the body’,
should be taken sacramentally. It is possible and perhaps even necessary to
understand it to mean that the way in which the Lord is ‘for’ the ecclesial body is
by the offering of his sacramental body and blood to be consumed
Eucharistically, as 10.16-17 implies.
The Eucharist and Israel’s Love Story
Richard Hays has persuasively argued that Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians
works to narrate the Corinthians into Israel’s story, to show them that they
belong to the one people of God and so must live in loving faithfulness to God.
[902] It cannot be insignificant, then, that the (apparently) sacramental claims of
1 Cor. 10.16-17 follow directly from Paul’s recounting of the baptism of ‘our
fathers’ into Moses in the waters of the Exodus and their Eucharistic
experiences in the wilderness (1 Cor. 10.1-3).[903] Seen in this way, the Lord’s
Supper is shown to be nothing less than a continuation of Israel’s feastings, so
that as the Corinthians gather at the Lord’s table they are being Israel-ized, so to
speak. Receiving ‘bread from heaven’ from God just as Israel had received
manna in the wilderness, they, as the true Israel, are celebrating the offering to
God of the Passover Lamb, as 1 Cor. 5.8 makes clear. In the same way, 1 Cor.
11.17-34 narrates the Corinthian Christian community into Jesus’ story: ‘on the
night he was betrayed …’ Israel’s story, tragically, is one of frequent betrayal and
of unrequited love, a story of flirtation and intrigue with strange gods; Jesus,
however, saves that story, and the Corinthians are invited to share in his victory
by sharing in his way of life.
The Eucharist as Romantic Gesture
Clearly, Paul believes the Corinthians are flirting with idols, and that they are
just so in danger of committing adultery against God. In eating this meat offered
to other gods, entertaining themselves in pagan temples, the Corinthians are
arousing YHWH’s jealousy,[904] exactly as their ‘ancestors’ in the wilderness
did.[905] Seeing this connection, one discovers the logic of 10.14-22: eating at
the table of demons is adulterous because coming to the table of the Lord is –
nuptial. It can be argued, then, that for Paul the Eucharist is an intimate, even
romantic, gesture of Christ, the church’s bridegroom. In offering the Corinthians
his body and blood, Christ, the jilted lover, is wooing them back from other
lovers, offering his best gifts in the attempt to recapture his lover’s heart.[906]
As surprising and provocative as such a reading may seem, the reader has
been prepared for it. Besides drawing in the immediate context on Israel’s
history of ‘going after’ idols – which, again, the Old Testament consistently
identifies as adultery – Paul earlier in the letter explicitly links the bodily
oneness enjoyed by and enjoined on husband and wife with the mystical oneness
of Christ and the believer (6.12-20). If by the joining of their bodies husband and
wife are made ‘one flesh’, then in the same way to be ‘united’ (kollomenos) with
Christ[907] is to be made one body with him.[908] Just as the husband and wife
belong to one another, so do Christ and the church.[909] To be sure, this
relationship is not perfectly symmetrical; neither husband nor wife has authority
over the other’s body (7.4), but the Christian has been ‘bought with a price’
(6.20a), and must submit to Christ’s authority and glorify God with his body
(6.20b). Nonetheless, because Christ and the church belong to one another they
can and do hand over their bodies to one another in mutual submission. Christ
does not ‘hand over’ (paradidomi) his body lovelessly (13.3), but gives himself
up in the ‘more excellent way’, laying down the example the church should
follow. In this light, the Lord’s Supper shows itself to be one of the ways in
which Christ’s body is ‘there’ for the church, and we can see that the nuptial
joining of the bodies of Christ and his church is realized Eucharistically, exactly
as 10.16-17 suggests.
Eucharist as Community-Making Meal
Paul’s emphasis in 1 Cor. 10.16-17, as throughout the letter, falls on the
responsibility of the members to the community vis-à-vis God and the watching
world. The promise of sharing in Christ’s body and blood is a promise to the
community qua community. Therefore, Conzelmann is right to conclude that for
Paul, ‘partaking of the Lord’s Supper does not first and foremost serve the
edification of the individual, but unites the individuals to form the body of
Christ’.[910] Perhaps no one has articulated this truth more forcefully or clearly
than the Thomist theologian and philosopher, Herbert McCabe, O.P.:
It is because the Eucharist is the sign of our unity that the Body of Christ is
present there. Christ is present precisely as the sign of our unity and not in any
other way … The Eucharist is first of all about our unity with each other, a
 profound and mysterious unity which is only in the body of Christ.[911]
This is clearly how pre-modern interpreters read 1 Cor. 10.16-17. Tellingly, Cyril
of Alexandria assumes that the Pauline formula originates from these verses.
[912] Similarly, Cyril of Jerusalem argues that it is via participation in the
Eucharist that the church becomes a Christ-bearing community, ‘one body and
one blood with Christ’.[913] This emphasis appears in the liturgical formulae of
Did a c h e 9-10.[914] John Damascene explains how the Eucharist effects
‘participation’ with fellow believers:
Participation is spoken of; for through it we partake of the divinity of Jesus.
Communion, too, is spoken of, and it is an actual communion, because
through it we have communion with Christ and share in His flesh and His
divinity: yea, we have communion and are united with one another through it.
For since we partake of one bread, we all become one body of Christ and one
blood, and members one of another, being of one body with Christ.[915]
Contemporary interpreters also acknowledge that the Eucharist gives
definitive shape to the community’s life. At the Table, the community is not only
reminded of the Lord, his death, and his parousia, but also is ‘reconstituted as
community that lives from his cross and manifests its meaning’.[916] The bread
is by the holy, vivifying Spirit made one with the resurrected body of Christ, and
through the Spirit’s intercession the church is made one with Christ by feasting
on the bread. This is why the bread symbolizes both the crucified Christ and the
one church that belongs to him.[917] Paul himself says that ‘The bread … [is] a
sharing in the body of Christ’. Hence, it is possible to insist that this sharing is
(at least) one of the ways in which the church becomes the soma Christou. As
Conzelmann explains, ‘The sacramental participation in Christ’s body makes …
the body of Christ’.[918] Perhaps it would not be wrong to say that as the church
comes to embody the Eucharist – itself an embodiment of Christ crucified – the
church shares in Christ’s incarnation,[919] becomes his Spirit-formed and Spirit-
baptized body. Needless to say, for the stronger reading to work, the ‘because’ of
v. 17 must bear maximum theological weight.
Some interpreters accept the claim that the Supper is a community-making
meal, but nevertheless reject the idea that it does this work sacramentally. Fee
and Richard Horsley,[920] for example, play up the socio-political dimensions of
the Eucharist, insisting that the meal symbolizes a reality it does not itself
directly create or sustain. Fee takes 1 Cor. 10.16-17, in particular, to mean that
the Lord’s Supper binds individuals together to form a community whose
‘singular existence’ as God’s people is in some sense ‘experienced regularly at
his Table’.[921] For whatever reason, he makes every effort to downplay the
sacramental reality of the Supper, arguing that it merely commemorates the
church’s already-established fellowship.[922] He will not countenance the idea
that 1 Cor. 10.17 means believers ‘become that body through this meal’.[923]
Instead, ‘they affirm what the Spirit has already brought about through the death
and resurrection of Christ’.[924] Such a reading can be made to work, of course;
but, on balance, it fails to do justice to the depth and breadth of Paul’s thought,
to say nothing of the power of the church’s Eucharistic experience, and is
unnecessary in any case. Although Paul does not say h o w believers share in
Christ’s body and blood or in what way the one bread makes the church one
body – he has no metaphysical theories to put forward – , it seems unmistakably
clear that Paul is claiming that these things happen. Certainly, that has been the
influence of the text on many Christian interpreters. Hence a stronger, fully
sacramental reading of 1 Cor. 10.16-17 makes better sense in light of the larger
context of the letter, and its effective history.
The Eucharist as/and Imitation of Christ
The communion meal sacramentally brings about churchly unity, but only as it
includes the purposeful efforts of the church’s members to make and keep the
peace. After all, as Paul reminds the Corinthian hubrists, the people of Israel had
sacraments, yet they died in the wilderness (10.1-13)! In fact, the reality of the
sacramental feast forces on the community the responsibility to live in love, with
creativity, humility, and longsuffering patience. Those who fail to live just so in
the Christian community are ‘answerable for the body and blood of Christ’
(11.27) and suffer the gravest consequences (11.29-30).[925] They stand guilty
of crucifying Christ afresh, because what is done to the ‘least’ is done to him,
what is done to a member of the body, is done to the body and its head.[926]
Insofar as believers
fail to manifest the love by which they have been graced and formed into a
community through Jesus’ life-giving death, they are violating the body of the
Lord himself, who is present in and with the gifts of bread and wine’.[927]
The Eucharist-event, therefore, not only symbolizes and effects believers’
receiving of the beneficia Christi, but also calls for the day-to-day imitation of
Christ. Perhaps this is why Paul is careful to say that to receive the Eucharist
faithfully is to share in Christ’s body and blood,[928] i.e. in his sufferings and
humiliating death,[929] as Thiselton suggests: ‘[c]ommunal participation in the
body and blood of Christ entails manifesting publicly the sacrificial lifestyle of
Christ, as seen in his blood (i.e. his death) and his body (i.e. self-giving public
life)’.[930]
 To take the Supper rightly, then, is to be drawn into a cruciformed life, to be
stamped with the character or ‘mind of Christ’ (à la 1 Cor. 2.16 and Phil. 2.5-8).
It is to receive the Christomorphic ‘vision of life distributed with the bread’.
[931] To partake of Christ’s body and blood is to be made like Christ in his life-
giving death, to be empowered by the same Spirit to live as he lived, pray as he
prayed, believe as he believed, obey as he obeyed until one’s life like his is
taken, blessed, broken, and given out for the world. Those who love him want
nothing more and can accept nothing less.
Toward a Pauline Theology of the Eucharist: Conclusions
Read literarily-theologically, 1 Cor. 10.16-17 shows itself inexhaustibly rich with
implications for Pentecostal theological reflection on the Eucharist.
First, this reading makes indisputable the fact that the Corinthians regularly
celebrated the Lord’s Supper; that they did so in compliance with Paul’s express
direction,[932] and that they took the rite to be a means of communion with
Christ. This has enormous import for contemporary Pentecostal thought and
practice, and coupled with the witness of those early Pentecostals who insisted
on the regular and faithful observance of the Supper, it can be stated boldly that
Pentecostal worship can and should include the Eucharistic celebration.
Second, the literary-theological interpretation of 1 Corinthians points to the
fact that the Eucharist does not work ‘magically’, that a high theology of the
Sacrament does not automatically translate into a way of life true to and
reminiscent of the Lord who presides at the sacramental Meal. At least a
minority of the Corinthian Christians (seemingly) trusted that because they
believed the Supper made them one with the glorious Christ, they could continue
to live with the divisions enforced by the mores of the surrounding ‘world’ in
which they found themselves enmeshed.
Third, in context, the claims of 1 Cor. 10.16-17 suggest that it is helpful to see
the church’s receiving of the Lord’s Supper as a romantic gesture, as a gift
between lovers, a tryst with Christ who is jealous for his bride, and a way in
which Christ, God fleshed, is bodily present to and for his church.
Fourth, these verses indicate that the Lord’s Supper is a community-making
meal. Pentecostals desire ever-deeper intimacy with God and neighbor, and these
verses make clear that the Spirit uses the (faithfully-celebrated) Sacrament to do
this by grounding the reader in the story of God’s redemption of all things, the
story of Israel, the story of Israel’s messiah, the story of the apostles’ and those
who submit to follow them. The ‘body’ the Eucharist makes is the one people of
God.
Fifth, a literary-theological reading of 10.16.17 suggests that the Eucharist
accomplishes this (better: the Spirit accomplishes this through the Eucharistic
celebration) by making possible the community’s shared participation in Christ’s
‘body and blood’, allowing the community not only to receive the benefits of
atonement, but also to receive Christ himself, and his character as the one who
humbled himself even to death on a cross.
The Breaking of Bread, the Making of Community: Acts 2.41-47
41So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about
three thousand persons were added. 42They devoted themselves to the
apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
43Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being
done by the apostles. 44All who believed were together and had all things in
common; 45they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the
proceeds to all, as any had need. 46Day by day, as they spent much time
together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad
and generous hearts, 47praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.
And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
Introduction
The next text to be read is a New Testament testimony of Eucharistic experience,
again following the paradigm that emerged in the historical section (Chapter 3)
of this thesis. Of the possible texts to be read (e.g. Jude 12 or Acts 20.7), I have
chosen Acts 2.41-47, in part because of how frequently early Pentecostals used
the passage.
The Interpretive Context
Acts 2.41-47 stands as the conclusion to the first major section of Acts (after the
prologue of 1.1-5).[933] True to the Lukan style,[934] this summary ties
together separate literary units. Immediately before this summary, the reader is
given Peter’s Pentecost sermon (Acts 2.14–40) and a brief account of the
response to it (Acts 2.41), and immediately after this summary, the narrative
gives us the account of Peter and John healing the lame man (Acts 3.1-11) and
another speech by Peter in the Temple (Acts 3.12-26).[935] Hearing of the
astonishing response to Peter’s sermon, the reader is impressed by the
effectiveness of the apostolic witness. The community did work to maintain
continuity with Jesus’ teachings and the way of life he handed on to his
followers,[936] giving themselves to the matrix of practices described in v. 42:
adherence to the apostles’ teaching,[937] fellowship,[938] prayers,[939] and the
breaking of bread. Luke tells the reader that they ‘devoted themselves’
(proskarterountes)[940] to these practices, emphasizing the believers’ energetic
intentionality and diligence in these activities.[941] Not that this made the
community impervious to trouble. Disputes, scandals, persecutions continued to
arise; nonetheless, the way of living structured by this ‘fourfold embodiment of
the gospel’[942] continually animated their life together in the world.[943] As
the disciples gave themselves to these practices, they found that the Spirit
worked powerfully among them, not only by holding them together in heartfelt
unity and deep joy as they lived and worshipped together (v. 46), but also in
combating sickness[944] and poverty (vv. 43-44). As their numbers swelled,
they found themselves blessed with the favor of ‘all the people’ (v. 47).
‘Blessed is the One Who Breaks Bread’: The Eucharist and Jesus’ Table-
Fellowship in Luke-Acts
Opinion has long been divided on what klasei tou artou in fact means in Acts
2.42, 46.[945] Does it refer to the Eucharist, or merely to ordinary meals shared
in the believers’ homes? In the effort to let Luke-Acts speak for itself, it is best to
ask how the breaking of bread is characterized elsewhere in the two volumes of
Luke’s work.
Eating and Drinking and the Kingdom of God
Luke the Evangelist often pictures Jesus at table,[946] frequently with the poor
to whom the kingdom is said to belong.[947] The Gospel describes Jesus sharing
in ten separate meals, sometimes as host, sometimes as guest. Narratively, these
meals provide critical context for the account of breaking bread with his
disciples at the Last Supper, and prepare the reader for Acts’ description of
Jesus’ post-resurrection meals and church’s post-Pentecost practice of breaking
bread.[948] In fact, Jesus’ table fellowship and its relation to the kingdom of
God[949] works as perhaps the definitive theme in Luke-Acts.[950] Without
question, a link between eating and drinking with the establishment of God’s
reign is made repeatedly, especially in the first of Luke’s volumes.[951] In the
Gospel, Jesus’ mother celebrates the goodness and power of the One who fills
the hungry with good things (Lk. 1.53), and Jesus himself later pronounces a
blessing on ‘those who hunger now’, promising that they shall be filled (Lk.
6.21) as God’s kingdom is established.[952] By the practice of eating bread and
drinking wine, Jesus differentiates himself from John the Baptist and his
disciples (5.33; 7.33-34),[953] and to the surprise of his contemporaries, he
departs in yet another way from John’s example by not requiring his disciples to
follow scrupulously traditional table customs; in one instance, he defends his
disciples’ plucking and eating grain on the Sabbath (6.1-5) by drawing on the
story of David’s eating the bread of the Presence, identifying himself as Lord of
the Sabbath. The disciples are instructed to pray for their ‘daily bread’[954] and
for the kingdom to come – a prayer that, in light of the Third Gospel’s portrayal
of Jesus, strikes the reader as two forms of a single petition: Marana tha.
Jesus’ Hospitality and Menial Service
In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ table fellowship is marked by a radical hospitality[955]
and willingness to serve menially yet lovingly. These themes are brought to
focus in the story of the feeding of the five thousand (Lk. 9.12-17)[956] – an
account bracketed by descriptions of Herod’s perplexity at Jesus’ claims (9.7-9)
and Peter’s confession of Jesus as God’s messiah (9.18-20). Viscerally moved by
concern for the multitude, Jesus insists on feeding them,[957] and his
characteristic radical hospitality leads Jesus to violate the standard dietary rules
and social customs of the time, allowing everyone to share in the meal.[958] For
these reasons, the miracle works as more than an extraordinary demonstration of
his compassion for the hungry and his power to care for them; it serves as
nothing less than a parabolic enactment of his larger mission to bring about the
cosmic Jubilee (4.16-21).[959]
Informed by these recurring themes, careful readers find in Jesus’ parable of
the master returning from a wedding banquet (12.36-37) something more than a
parable: they discern that he is in fact directing his disciples to live in
expectation of his ‘return’, that is, his establishing of the eschatological kingdom
of God. The readers also hear in this parable the promise that when he does in
fact come to them bringing the kingdom, he will not only eat with them, but in
fact serve them the meal, the messianic banquet. Even in the End, Christ’s reign
is one of hospitality, humility, and service-in-love.
The Messianic Banquet
Besides the emphasis on Jesus’ hospitality and service, the Gospel also
frequently points the reader to the promise of the future messianic banquet. For
example, Jesus shows himself to be Israel’s true prophet when he foretells the
gathering of the nations to the great banquet in the kingdom of God (Lk. 13.29),
and an unnamed companion of Jesus – while breaking bread with
him – ecstatically declares the blessing sure to be enjoyed by all who share in
this future messianic feast: ‘Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom
of God!’ (Lk. 14.15).[960] These are yet further signs that Jesus is the one
whose life and death and resurrection bring about God’s promise of a restored
world, a world in which bread is broken and wine poured out in everlasting
justice and peace.
The Last Supper
All of this interweaving of themes in the earlier chapters of Luke’s Gospel
prepares the reader for Luke’s account of the Last Supper. As the Gospel tells it,
on that night, the night of his betrayal, Jesus confesses that he has ‘longed’
(epithumia epethumesa) – in the same way that the prodigal desired to eat the
swine’s food (Lk. 15.16) and Lazarus desired to eat the crumbs that fell from the
table of the wealthy man (Lk. 16.21) – to eat this ‘last’ Passover[961] with his
disciples (Lk. 22.15), and promises not to eat it again ‘until it is fulfilled in the
kingdom of God’ (Lk. 22.16), obviously evoking again the hope of the future
messianic feast. As Jesus shares this meal with the apostles, he confers on them
his Father’s kingdom, assuring them that as heirs of the kingdom they may ‘eat
and drink at [his] table’ (Lk. 22.28-30). He also proclaims that he is ‘one who
serves’ (22.27), and in this way shows the nature of authority in his kingdom.
[962] Christ is kyrios precisely as one who serves. The disciples submit to this
lordship precisely by serving, and in serving like him, they reign with him. The
kingdom is borne by Jesus’ – and the disciples’ Jesus-like – hospitality.
Jesus’ Post-Resurrection Meals and the Church’s Post-Pentecost Fellowship
This table fellowship with his disciples continues even after his resurrection; the
resurrected but not yet ascended Jesus often sits at table with his disciples (Lk.
24.13-35, 36-53; Acts 1.4), revealing not only the nature of his resurrected body,
[963] but also preparing his followers for the new realities they will experience
after his ascension.[964] The Gospel and Acts carefully and repeatedly draw
attention to the basic continuity between Jesus’ pre-resurrection table fellowship,
these post-resurrection meals, and the church’s ongoing Sunday fellowship meal,
revealing that in Luke’s theology the cosmic, heavenly lordship of the
resurrected Christ is as bound up with eating and drinking as was his pre-Easter
messianic ministry.[965]
‘Breaking Bread’
Finally, it should be noted that three times in the Gospel Jesus explicitly is said
to break bread – at the feeding of the five thousand (9.16), at the Last Supper
(22.19), and at Emmaus (24.30) – and that each time the meal in question is
occasioned by specific, ritual-like acts.[966] Obviously, then, these are no
ordinary meals, but miraculous feasts occasioned by the Lord’s specific,
ritualized acts of taking, blessing,[967] breaking, and giving the bread.[968]
Significantly, Jesus’ true identity and vocation are made known in these acts.
[969] As already noted, Peter confesses Jesus as ‘the Messiah of God’ (9.20)
immediately after the feeding of the five thousand, and the eyes of the Emmaus
disciples are opened in the very moment of the breaking of the bread.[970]
The Church’s Eucharist in Context of Lukan Feasting Themes
With all of this in mind, it is difficult to imagine that readers would not take Acts
2.42, 46 to describe the Eucharist, even if also it is judged to fit within or
alongside an ordinary meal. Accordingly, LaVerdiere is right to identify ‘the
breaking of bread’ as a Lukan name for the Eucharist,[971] and to hold that
when the early Christian communities broke bread together (as described in
20.7, as well as 2.42, 46), they were purposefully and self-consciously
reenacting the Last Supper and the post-Easter, pre-Ascension meals, liturgically
and ritually imitating Jesus’ (symbolic) words and gestures with them – both
before and after his passion.[972] It seems plausible to conclude, then, that while
any and every meal they shared – whether with other believers or with the
marginalized and poor ‘outside’ – was in some sense a continuation of the now-
risen Jesus’ table fellowship, the Eucharist was the hub of the community’s life
together, so that the Lukan Pentecostal community understood their sharing of
the rite of the Lord’s Supper not only as an analeptic reminder of Christ’s
covenant-making death and a proleptic anticipation of the future eschatological
banquet, but also a most important means of the Spirit’s enforcing among them
and on their behalf the kingdom and its blessings.[973] For them, the Eucharist
was the first means of ‘sacramentally continuing [Jesus’] hospitality down the
ages’.[974]
To show that the breaking of bread refers to the Eucharistic Meal is not
enough, however. It still needs to be shown what Luke believes happens in this
Meal, and other meals as well. For that, we must turn to Luke’s theology of the
kingdom.
The Mysteries of the Meal(s)
Carefully tracking the narrative of Luke-Acts, the reader begins to sense that all
meals are theologically significant, from Jesus’ fellowship with outcasts and
undesirables, to the Last Supper he shared alone with his apostles. Apparently,
no neat and clean difference is maintained in either the Gospel or Acts between
‘merely breaking bread and the church breaking bread as a sacramental religious
activity’[975] – and the ambiguity surely is intentional.[976] According to Luke-
Acts, then, every meal shared by the primitive Christian community was at least
an echo of the Eucharist,[977] eaten in thanksgiving for Christ and in
anticipation of the final messianic banquet.[978] It can be stated as a rule that at
least in Lukan theology, hard-and-fast distinctions between ‘ordinary’ meals and
the church’s sacramental meal are virtually impossible to make and unnecessary
in any case.
This harmonizes nicely with early Pentecostal thinking and acting, which, like
Luke’s narrative, typically felt no need to separate – in thought or in
practice – the Eucharistic rite from other meals. Numerous testimonies from the
early literature show that Pentecostal fellowship meals were believed to have
extraordinary, supernatural significance – in much the same way as the sacred
Supper itself. To be sure, the regular religious celebration of Communion as a
symbolic meal remained decisively important for them, but this did not
overshadow the fact of their conviction that the Spirit moved no less powerfully
among them in ‘ordinary’ meals as well.[979]
All Things Common: The Economics and Politics of ‘Breaking Bread’
The Eucharist was from the beginning an economic and political force. Jesus’
eating with the poor and the outcast had socio-economic and political
ramifications, so it is unsurprising that the early church’s shared meals – ritual
and otherwise – did as well.[980] As Daniela Augustine shows, the descent of
the Spirit at Pentecost ‘induces an economic model of distributive justice as
witness of Christ’s resurrected life’,[981] so that the Lukan Pentecostal
community gives shape to an exemplary economic model, not least in their habit
of breaking bread together.[982] On her reading, the sharing of material
possessions is in Acts ‘the first sign of this divinely induced reality of healing all
creation’. Because they broke bread together as their Lord had done, because
they believed the risen Christ and his kingdom were present to them at their
meals, they came to see that they could also share their possessions fearlessly
and that ‘worldly’ rank and status were meaningless signifiers.[983] Therefore,
now as then, the common Table must be understood to require ‘some kind of
sharing, advocacy, and partisanship in which the poor are privileged, and in
which considerations of merit and productivity are subjected to the rule of
servanthood’.[984] This economics is the embodiment of Jesus’ proclamation of
the Jubilee (Lk. 4.18-19),[985] and reveals the true significance of the Sabbath,
as Jesus explained it (Lk. 6.1-11).[986] Most of all, it is the embodiment of the
communion received and given at the Lord’s Table. The church ‘experiences the
fullness of the life of the community of the Trinity’ in the Eucharist,[987] learns
to overcome the ‘urge to consume and store for consumption’, and so becomes
able to live as food for the world.[988]
A connection also obtains between the community’s politics and the ‘gladness
of heart’ (2.46) that characterized their sharing in the Lord’s Supper.[989] Like
the household at the return of the prodigal son (Lk. 15.11-23), the disciples ate
their bread with joy[990] because they knew that ‘[a]lready they were dining in
the kingdom of God’.[991] In their lives, ‘the celestial wedding supper had
begun, the kingdom of God was come, blissful communion with the Lord
already existed’.[992] It is perhaps not without significance that this matches
early Pentecostal spirituality, which, as seen in the previous chapter, was
vitalized by the apocalyptic affections engendered in shared Eucharistic
celebrations. Like the Lukan Pentecostal community, primitive Pentecostals in
the U.S. found their political and economic imaginations transformed as their
affections were enflamed. By the witness of both the Scripture and early
Pentecostalism, it seems, then, that ‘the breaking of bread’ gives rise to
eschatological joy, a deep and self-sustaining happiness that sets the believing
community free from the anxieties that dominate the ‘world’, thus allowing them
to live generously, sharing their goods without reserve.
Toward a Lukan Theology of the Eucharist: Conclusions
First, Acts 2.41-47 shows that the earliest Christians, those closest to the
apostles, regularly and joyfully celebrated the Lord’s Supper, a fact replete with
important and far-reaching implications for Pentecostals, given the pride of place
many Pentecostals afford the narratives of Luke-Acts.
Second, read in the light of the Lukan emphasis on the kingdom of God and its
link to eating and drinking, the passage shows that the ‘breaking of bread’ serves
as the sign par excellence that the kingdom has come and is coming, because at
the Eucharist the risen Christ is present as host, even now present by the Spirit to
break the bread and prepare the community to live as bread for the world.
Third, Luke’s vision of the Spirit’s transformative work is not limited to the
church’s liturgical life, although it remains centered and grounded there. This
suggests that even ‘ordinary’ meals are imbued with supernatural significance,
that every meal can and should be sacramental in a way analogous to the meal,
because Christ is in fact kyrios of all things and no rigid distinction between
‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ can be maintained.
Fourth, this reading of Acts 2.41-47 suggests that the Eucharistic celebration
always should be contextualized by apostolic teaching, by fellowship, by
liturgical and spiritual prayer if it is to remain authentic. By itself, the Lord’s
Supper cannot hold the community in Christian fellowship.
Fifth, it seems Jesus’ practices of table fellowship not only prepared the
church to understand the Lord’s Supper, but also provided a paradigm for the
church’s engagement with the poor and marginalized, both within and without
the believing community. This implies that all Christian fellowship – and table
fellowship is and must remain at the heart of this – comes from and leads back to
the Eucharist. Sharing in the Eucharistic ‘breaking of bread’ prepares the
community for fellowship with ‘outsiders’, and vice versa. Further, in the light
of Jesus’ habit of eating with undesirables and using the table as a sign of the
universal kingdom of God, it only makes sense to maintain an ‘open’
Communion.
Eating is/as Believing: John 6.25-59
25When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi,
when did you come here?” 26Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you
are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of
the loaves. 27Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that
endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him
that God the Father has set his seal.” 28Then they said to him, “What must we
do to perform the works of God?” 29Jesus answered them, “This is the work
of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” 30So they said to him,
“What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe
you? What work are you performing? 31Our ancestors ate the manna in the
wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” 32Then
Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the
bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from
heaven. 33For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and
gives life to the world.” 34They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
35Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never
be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. 36But I said to
you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. 37Everything that the
Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never
drive away; 38for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but
the will of him who sent me. 39And this is the will of him who sent me, that I
should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.
40This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in
him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.” 41Then
the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that
came down from heaven.” 42They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of
Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have
come down from heaven’?” 43Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among
yourselves. 44No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent
 me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. 45It is written in the
prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and
learned from the Father comes to me. 46Not that anyone has seen the Father
except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. 47Very truly, I tell
you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48I am the bread of life. 49Your
ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50This is the bread
that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51I am
the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will
live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my
flesh.” 52The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this
man give us his flesh to eat?” 53So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you,
unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no
life in you. 54Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life,
and I will raise them up on the last day; 55for my flesh is true food and my
blood is true drink. 56Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in
me, and I in them. 57Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of
the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. 58This is the bread
that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they
died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” 59He said these things
while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.
Introduction
The final text I have selected to consider is one whose sacramentality is
embedded, rather than explicit. While other texts merit consideration,[993] I
have chosen to read Jn 6.25-59, and I will continue to employ the reading
strategy explained above.
The Interpretive Context
Jesus’ Bread of Life Discourse (6.25-59) is situated in the Fourth Gospel’s book
of signs[994] (1.19-12.50), one of the Gospel’s two major sections, in addition to
its prologue (1.1-18) and epilogue (21.1-25).[995] Early in the so-called book of
signs, Jesus’ ministry is met with all but universal acclaim and affirmative,
believing response;[996] but chapter 5 marks a transition in the narrative,[997]
as the reader discovers a sudden, drastic turn against Jesus and his ministry.
After Jesus heals the man at the pool (5.6-9), ‘the Jews’ question the man and
then condemn the healing as a violation of the Sabbath and Jesus as a lawbreaker
(5.9-18). In response, Jesus offers an extended discourse on his relation to the
Father and the judgment sure to fall on all who refuse to acknowledge him as the
Father’s Son (5.19-47). A similar pattern plays out in chapter 6. Jesus performs a
‘sign’[998] –in this case, the feeding of the five thousand (6.1-13) – that
convinces some to attempt to make him king (6.14). However, discerning their
faithlessness, Jesus eludes the crowds for the evening (6.15), and on the next day
confronts them for their lack of genuine belief in him (6.26-27):
Jesus answered them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not
because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not
work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life,
which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has
set his seal’.
When he insists that they must believe in him, that such belief is the only true
‘work of God’ required of them (6.28-29), they demand a further ‘sign’
(semeion) to validate his claims.[999] In response to this demand, Jesus delivers
another extended discourse, this time emphasizing his identity (‘I am the bread
of life’) and the need for them to believe on him. The passage can be
outlined[1000] in this way:
6.1-4 Narrative introduction
6.5-15 Jesus feeds the five thousand
6.16-21 Jesus walks on the water
6.22-24 Further narrative contextualization
6.25-59 Teaching on bread of life
6.60-71 Crisis among disciples created by Jesus’ teaching[1001]
No doubt, due to the abundance of narrative markers, any pericope in the Gospel
is difficult to outline; it is virtually impossible to determine where exactly any
given passage begins or ends. It seems fairly clear, however, that the discourse
moves toward the (Eucharistic?) claims of the conclusion (vv. 49-58).[1002]
Jesus’ teaching, which the reader learns is delivered in the days before the
Passover feast (6.4),[1003] can be read as a kind of midrash[1004] on the words
of Scripture – ‘he gave them bread from heaven to eat’[1005] – , so that the
entire Discourse is framed, informed, and energized by plays on the language
and imagery from this text.[1006] For example, discerning the crowds’
intentions, Jesus admonishes them to ‘work for … the food that endures for
eternal life’, food only he can give because he himself is ‘the bread of life’, the
‘true bread from heaven’, and ‘the living bread that came down from heaven’.
The reader encounters it as a single piece, but the discourse actually addresses
two audiences in turn – the crowds, first, and then ‘the Jews’. While Jesus is
speaking to the crowds, answering on his own terms their demand for a ‘sign’
like that given to wandering Israel in the wilderness to prove his authority and
power[1007] (vv. 25-40), ‘the Jews’ ‘grumble’ against him,[1008] so he turns his
teaching to them (vv. 41-58).[1009] In effect, then, the reader traces a
development of thought in the discourse. As he teaches and responds to his
interlocutors, Jesus’ claims become increasingly provocative and more and more
difficult for his hearers to understand, resulting finally in the apostasy of many
of his followers. When ‘the Jews’ take offense at his claims, first because they
recognize him as Joseph’s and Mary’s son (vv. 41-42), and then because they
cannot imagine what it might mean to ‘eat’ his ‘flesh’ (v. 52), Jesus intensifies
his claims: only those eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man have
hope of eternal life, and only they ‘abide’ in him (vv. 53-56). His disciples
respond to these claims in shock and disbelief (v. 60), and Jesus, sensing their
‘complaining’, turns and asks if his words have offended them and if they are
prepared to see ‘the Son of Man ascending to where he was before’ (vv. 61-62).
[1010] He reminds them that ‘the flesh profits nothing’, that only the spirit gives
life, insisting that this life and this spirit are bound up with his words (v. 63).
This does not assuage them, however, and ‘many of his disciples turned back
and no longer went about with him’ (v. 66).[1011] The passage ends with Jesus’
prophecy of his betrayal, and the narrator’s identification of Judas as the betrayer
(vv. 69-71).
Eating and Drinking in the Fourth Gospel and the Bread of Life Discourse
Although concentrated in chapter 6, talk of eating and drinking occurs
throughout John’s Gospel. From the wider context of the Gospel, for example,
we see that Jesus’ seven ego eimi claims are bracketed by the first of the sayings,
‘I am the bread of life’ (6.35), which has to do with eating, and the last, ‘I am the
true vine’ (15.1), both of which play on eating/drinking imagery.[1012] Two of
the Gospel’s seven ‘signs’ deal with drinking and eating, as well: the turning of
water to wine (2.1-12) and the multiplication of bread (6.5-13).[1013] The
Passover motif, threaded throughout the Gospel, also plays on these images. For
example, Jesus is identified in the opening chapter (1.29, 36) as ‘God’s lamb’
who carries away the word’s sin, a title the reader later discerns as a reference to
Israel’s Passover lamb, a sacrifice to be eaten, and whose death means life for
Israel and so for the world.[1014] This Passover theme gives way more broadly
to the relation of the death and life to eating and drinking, so that it is while
Jesus is eating supper with his friends in Bethany, ‘six days before the Passover’,
that Mary anoints Jesus for his burial (12.7).[1015] Strikingly, the only time
Jesus himself is said explicitly to eat or drink is at the very moment of his death
(19.28-30)[1016] – the very ‘hour’ in which he is offered as the Passover lamb
for the world. In the same way, the reader should notice that it is precisely at
table that Jesus is betrayed to his destiny (13.18). This complex of life-giving
dying and life- or death-bringing eating is drawn into the bread of life discourse
when Jesus speaks of giving the bread that is his flesh for the life of the world
(6.51). Tellingly, it is in response to this saying of Jesus that many of the
disciples abandon Jesus, and precisely at this moment that Peter makes his
confession of Christ.[1017]
The eating and drinking imagery and its connection to the language of life and
death is strongest and most difficult to follow in the conclusion of the discourse.
We can outline the passage in this way:
6.50 ‘This is the bread … one may eat of it and not die’
6.51a ‘I am the living bread…’
6.51b ‘Whoever eats of this bread will live forever’
6.53 ‘Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood,
you have no life’
6.54 ‘Those who eat … have eternal life’
6.57 ‘… whoever eats me will live because of me’
6.58 ‘This is the bread … who eats this bread will live forever’
Within this structure, the claims of 6.53 stand at the center, showing its critical
importance. For the first time in the discourse, Jesus speaks of both eating and
drinking, as well as of his flesh and his blood. The phrase ‘this is’ frames the
section, forming an inclusio that implies the identification of Jesus and his death
with his body/flesh and his blood that like the Passover lamb are to be consumed
if their benefits are to be received.[1018] Again, this points to the critical and
even decisive significance of eating and drinking not only for the Discourse, but
also more broadly for the Gospel in its entirety.
What, if anything, are contemporary readers to make of all of this talk of
eating and drinking Christ in the Fourth Gospel? Does it have any bearing on
contemporary sacramental thought and practice? More to the point, what, if any,
difference does it make for churchly thinking about and participating in the
Lord’s Supper? Bluntly put, does the bread of life discourse speak to the
Eucharist-event at all, or does it refer exclusively to so-called spiritual
‘feeding’?[1019] Are all of the chapter’s references to Christ as ‘bread’ entirely
figurative,[1020] merely and exclusively ‘vivid metaphors for believing’, as
some have suggested?[1021]
In attempting to answer these questions, it needs to be said that given the
hermeneutic that guides our reading, we do not need to decide whether the
author(s) of the Gospel intended the passage to have sacramental significance;
[1022] still less do we need to figure out if the ‘historical Jesus’ could have or
would have spoken of Communion in this way. We need only to point out that
the text itself, when read narratively and theologically, can be heard to speak to
the sacraments – and we know from the history of interpretation that it has been
read in this way.[1023]
Such readings are shown to be legitimate for (at least) two reasons. First, the
language and structure of the Fourth Gospel is more or less endlessly
ambiguous, complex, and multivalent, so that the text of the Gospel is replete
with a virtually inexhaustible depth of meaning.[1024] What Smith says of the
water imagery in John applies, with necessary distinctions, to the eating and
drinking imagery, as well: ‘It is characteristic of the Fourth Gospel that this
water imagery is never explicitly limited to, or explained as, water baptism. At
the same time, it is hard to imagine that baptism is not somehow in view’.[1025]
So, even if the Lord’s Supper is judged never to be the primary referent of
John’s eating and drinking imagery, it nonetheless seems likely that a Johannine
sacramentality lies embedded in the text at some level of significance. Second,
the convictions and experiences Christian readers bring to the text make it
impossible for them not to hear at least allusions to the Eucharist.[1026]
Consequently, we can reasonably propose that readers of the Fourth Gospel are
warranted in taking the discourse as instruction both about both believing in
Christ (i.e. feeding spiritually on him) and about the meaning of the church’s
sacramental practice and experience.[1027] In short, John 6 can and does speak
about the Eucharist, if only in a secondary and derived sense.[1028]
The interpretative practices of early Pentecostals again prove helpful. As seen
in the previous chapter, their readings of John 6 typically worked with, rather
than against, the unsettledness, ambiguity, and many-sidedness of Johannine
language. Even while a few readers took the words in either a strictly
spiritual/existential or Eucharistic sense, many did not make a distinction at all,
allowing the text’s indistinctness to remain untamed, so to speak. Apparently,
they felt that making a final decision either for or against a sacramental reading
of John 6 was both unnecessary and unhelpful.[1029] In view of their example,
we learn that the decisive hermeneutical question interpreters can and should
bring to bear on John 6 is not ‘Does this refer to the Eucharist?’, but ‘How does
this passage teach us to respond rightly to the Lord of the Eucharist, to
participate faithfully as his people at his Table?’ Once this move has been made,
then the remainder of the discourse is illuminated, and casts new light on
contemporary sacramental thought and practice.
‘How Can This Be?’: (Mis)Understanding Christ
On the heels of Jesus’ claim that he is the artos tes zoes (6.48), his promise that
‘whoever eats this bread will live forever’ (v. 51a),[1030] and, more particularly,
his explanation that ‘the bread’ is his ‘flesh’ (v. 51b),[1031] arguments break out:
‘how can this man …’ (v. 52). The reader is not surprised by this lack of
understanding, because as the Fourth Gospel tells it Jesus’ hearers misunderstand
him at nearly every turn.[1032] To take a few examples, the Samaritan woman
misunderstands his words about ‘living water’ (4.13-15), his disciples
misunderstand his claim to ‘have food to eat that you do not know about’ (4.31-
33), the ‘Jews’ mistake his claim to be ‘before’ Abraham (8.31-39), and the
disciples again misunderstand him when he explains Lazarus has merely ‘fallen
asleep’ (11.11-13). Again and again, a particular question surfaces: how is it
possible for Jesus to perform what he has promised? Nicodemus asks it (3.4, 9),
as do those interrogating the man whom Jesus has healed of blindness (9.10, 15,
26). Jesus does not answer the question, does not explain himself, or offer any
clarification. Instead, he restates and intensifies his claim:[1033]
So Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the
Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my
flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last
day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.[1034]
‘For the Life of the World’: The Scope of Jesus’ Sacrifice
Twice in the discourse, once at the beginning and again at the end, Jesus makes
clear that he has come from the Father for the sake of ‘the world’ .
6.33 For the bread of God … gives life to the world.
6.51 … the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my
flesh.
Needless to say, the entire Gospel resonates with these claims. To take but a few
examples, the Gospel identifies Jesus as ‘the light of the world’, the light that
gives light to all in the world (1.9; 8.12; 9.5; 12.46). He is sent from the Father
because of the Father’s love for the world (3.16); nonetheless, when he comes
from the Father into the world, the world does not recognize him as the source of
its light and life (1.10), but hates him (15.18). Ironically, it is not Jesus ‘own’,
but the Samaritans who first recognize him as ‘the savior of the world’ (4.42).
Jesus is ‘for’ the world (pro mundo) precisely as the one who brings the world
and the world’s ruler to judgment (3.17-19).[1035] In fact, he himself is both
judge and judgment (5.22, 27), and the ‘hour’ to which he is drawn is nothing
less than the ‘now’ of judgment, the time in which world’s ruler is ‘driven out’
(12.31), the moment in which fulfills his purpose to take away the world’s sin
(1.29). Because this judgment is oriented to the world’s salvation, Jesus can
rightly say that he has not come to judge but to save the world (12.47). Jesus,
therefore, is known to be the Father’s missionary Word. In offering his ‘flesh’ on
the cross, Jesus is saving the world, destroying the devil, and carrying away the
world’s sins.
The theme of judgment touches on the eating and drinking motif through the
story of the manna, which God provided not only to sustain Israel in the
wilderness, but also to test their faith and to humble them (Deut. 8.16). In the
same way, Jesus himself is a gift from the Father who comes as something
strange and wonderful (‘What is it?’). This judgment-as-salvation motif also
works from and back to the image of Moses’ brass serpent (Num. 21.4-9), an
image John has already used to explicate Jesus’ death: like the serpent in the
wilderness, the Son of Man must be ‘lifted up’ (Jn 3.14). It is taken up again in
6.40, where the text pairs ‘seeing the Son’ (theorown ton uion) with believing in
him.[1036] In light of this image, the reader sees that eating and drinking
Christ’s flesh and blood is a way of receiving and submitting to Christ’s saving
judgment. Truly to eat Christ is to accept Christ as the Father’s loving
condemnation of sin, to step into the light and allow the darkness to be driven
out of one’s life.
‘Looking to’ Jesus and the Promise of Eternal Loyalty
Four times in the Discourse (vv. 39-40, 44, 54), Jesus promises to ‘raise up’
those who are his. Besides the Son’s eschatological action, the passages
emphasize the Father’s will, and the need for believers’ response to the Son.
6.39-40 – And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing
of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. This is indeed the
will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have
eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.
6.44 – No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent
me; and I will raise that person up on the last day.
6.54-55 – Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I
will raise them up on the last day; 55for my flesh is true food and my blood is
true drink.
These promises seem to fit into two pairs, with the claims of v. 40 and v. 54
belonging together, and those of v. 39 and v. 44 belonging in the other set. Each
pair has a different theological focus; vv. 39 and 44 plainly emphasizing the
Father’s sovereignty and the Son’s faithfulness, but vv. 40 and 54 focus on the
relation of belief in Christ to receiving ‘life’ in and from him.
6.40 – This indeed is the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and
believe in him may have eternal life and I will raise them up on the last day.
6.54 – Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will
raise them up on the last day.
When these verses are read in tandem, and in this way allowed to interpret one
another, the reader sees that eating Christ’s flesh means, at least in part, to ‘see’
him believingly, allowing his crucifixion, his death, to be life-bringing.[1037] In
turn, Christ promises that those who do ‘eat’ him, who look to him believingly
and ‘abide’ in him truly and completely, will never be orphaned (14.18). This
means, in part, that he will be eternally loyal to them,[1038] that he will not only
be with them now but also will raise them up in the End, ‘on the last day’, to an
eternal life of abiding love. It also means that this eternal life is already at work
in them, already energizing and orienting them; even now, short of the eschaton,
they participate in the life that they are promised to receive in the End.
Nourished for the Journey: The Benefits of Eating Christ
According to the Fourth Evangelist, this believing, this ‘eating’ and ‘drinking’ of
Christ’s ‘flesh’ and ‘blood’, produces an excess of blessings. All of these
benefits can be summed up in saying that to eat Christ is to receive nothing less
than – abiding intimacy with Christ himself. ‘Those who eat my flesh and drink
my blood abide in me, and I in them’ (v. 56).[1039] Not only Christ himself, but
the believer also receives in him communion with the Father in and through and
with the Spirit. ‘Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the
Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me’ (v. 57). In John’s Gospel, to
‘abide’ describes both true personal allegiance to Christ and unbreakable
intimacy with him,[1040] an intimacy that expands out from Christ’s intimacy
with the Father to embrace, to take in the believer. The ‘intra-divine life is
mediated to believers through Jesus’.[1041] That is to say, ‘… the believer’s
union with Jesus not only parallels but participates in the union between the
Father and the Son’.[1042] To put it another way, believers take up the same
‘space’ occupied by the Word who is ‘with’ (pros) God (1.1), and ‘close to the
Father’s heart’ (1.18). In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that Christ’s
flesh and blood are that ‘space’, or, at least, a ‘door’ into it.
 To be brought into the divine life in this way is also to have one’s life shaped
into a Christ-like form. Feeding on Christ is to be consumed by him, ‘eaten up’
with zeal for God (2.17), so that God’s will becomes the energy-giving source of
one’s life. As Jesus says, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to
complete his work’ (4.34). Also, partaking of Christ is accepting and embodying
the way of life he pioneers, models, and perfects – the way of self-emptying
service, the way of the cross. ‘To eat Jesus’ flesh is to take his humanity into our
own, identifying with him in lowly service at the cost of life itself’.[1043]
Finally, then, we can turn back to the passage and draw out from the text’s
embedded sacramentality a few implications for a Pentecostal theology of the
Lord’s Supper.
Toward a Johannine Theology of the Eucharist: Conclusions
First, when read in this way, the discourse, specifically, and the Gospel, more
broadly, teach that the Eucharist-event works as one of the definitive signs of the
Christian life, and in just this way also serves as a means of ‘seeing’ and
‘following’ Christ, and ‘abiding’ in him.[1044] The history of interpretation
shows that most readers of John 6 agree that Jesus’ teaching has to do first and
foremost with life-shaping belief in Christ, so that even the metaphors of eating
and drinking are – at the first level, anyway – theological code for spiritually
receiving Christ and his benefits by faith in his life-giving death for the sake of
the world. Nonetheless, because of the church’s sacramental experience and the
nature of the text of John’s Gospel, it is entirely fitting to read these same
references to eating and drinking as descriptions of the Lord’s Supper.
Taken in this way, the discourse teaches that the church’s celebration of the
Supper is one of the God-given signs of Christ’s being ‘lifted up’. The blood
bears witness, as 1 Jn 5.6-8 says. Because the Eucharist is the sign that it is,
believing necessarily entails faithful partaking. Whoever believes (v. 40) also
eats (vv. 47, 54), and to refuse to eat is to be severed from the Vine.[1045] While
it is possible to eat faithlessly – and so without benefit[1046] – it is not possible
to believe and yet refuse to partake of the Eucharist. It is possible to eat the
church’s bread without eating/’eating’ Christ – Judas eats the bread, but still ‘lifts
up his heel’ – but the reverse is not true. In light of this reading of John 6, then,
we discover that we cannot make a hard-and-fast separation between spiritual
‘feeding’ on Christ and sacramental participation, even if some distinctions are
drawn for the sake of study and explanation. Respecting the theology of the
Fourth Gospel requires us to let the spiritual and the sacramental stand in the
closest possible connection, each interpreting the other.
Second, for John, sacramental thought and practice must take care never to
drift away from identification with Christ and his cross, from suffering with
him – or of being his ‘witness’, in the language of the Apocalypse. The eating
and drinking of Communion must draw us into the very life of the Christ who
invites us to imitate him, making it possible us to be conformed to his reality, his
‘image’.
Third, the Gospel declares that Jesus gives himself ‘for the sake of the world’,
so that the Eucharist is never solely about the church but always also about ‘the
world’, that is, about all of the creation. It follows, then, that Jesus Christ is the
Father’s missionary Word, and that Communion is by definition a missionary
meal. To be sure, the Eucharist is for the world a saving sign, a life-giving
(visible) word (verba visibilia), but this necessarily entails a word of judgment,
too. This judgment is enacted on the world, at least in part, through the
mysterious nature of the Eucharist, specifically, and of Jesus’ teaching, in
general; both give occasion for offense. It is not for no reason that for John the
Eucharist is prefigured by the manna, given not only to sustain Israel, but also to
humble her, and to prove the integrity of her faith.
The Eucharist, like Christ himself, both reveals and conceals, judges and
saves; like Jesus’ teaching, it is an intelligible word and at the same time an
inscrutable word, a word that retains its mystery even in its lucidity; it is as deep
as it is clear. Insofar as we do grasp the meal’s meaning, we find ourselves
confronted with the glories of Christ’s saving death; he is ‘lifted up’ before our
very eyes, and we see him crucified for us and for the whole world (Gal. 3.1).
Insofar as the meaning of the meal exceeds our grasp, we find ourselves
humbled, drawn up short by our own inadequacies; seeing nothing, we know that
it is our vision that is flawed. In these ways the ‘visible word’ of the Lord’s
Supper is for us a judging and so a saving word.
Fifth, because the Gospel teaches us that what happens to us in our
(sacramental) encounter with Christ is beyond human understanding, that it is
always beyond our capacity to answer how it is possible, it also reminds us that
the willingness to remain in Eucharistic communion with Christ even in the face
of confusion marks the decisive difference between those who believe in him
and those who do not. The mysteriousness of the meal makes possible the
articulation of our abiding faith. The narrative of John 6 makes clear that
misapprehension of and distaste for Jesus’ teaching is decisive for the making of
the believing community. That is to say, those who take offense at his words
abandon him, and those who remain in Jesus’ company do so not because they
grasp his teaching completely, or even because they understand it better than
those who deserted him, but simply because they continue to cling to their
confidence in him in spite of their lack of clarity. Believers need not overcome
their perplexity about what it is that happens in Communion, but simply and
only continue to lean on Christ as the one who has ‘the words of life’; belief in
Christ does not elide the questions altogether, but puts them in their
(penultimate) place. Besides, believers remain confident that all the
understanding they need is sure to come to them as they simply obey. Like the
servants who bring the wine to the steward of the wedding feast, the faithful
ones come to know what Christ has done (2.9).
Sixth, Johannine sacramentality will not allow a divorcing of Christ from his
gifts, the bread that he is from the (Eucharistic and spiritual) bread that he gives.
[1047] As a result, we must not think of the Lord’s Supper in mechanical, non-
personal terms, but always as personal encounter with Christ himself, who in
himself brings to us all the gifts entrusted to him by his Father.
Seventh, the Eucharist is life-giving for those who truly turn to Christ
believingly, but ineffectual or destructive for those who eat faithlessly. For John
the Eucharist works no more or no less than did Moses’ serpent: instituted by
God, it requires a certain kind of human participation – there must be a ‘looking
to’ Christ, without which nothing graceful happens. This ‘looking to’ must be, at
its heart, a believing in Jesus’ words, which, as he says, are ‘spirit and life’.
[1048] By themselves, the bread and wine ‘profit nothing’, but when they are
received in faith, they become life-giving[1049] because they are instruments of
the saving words of Jesus, who himself is the Father’s saving Word.
Conclusions: Toward a New Testament Theology of the Eucharist
In this chapter, I have attempted to explore what the New Testament has to say
about the Lord’s Supper by reading a trio of what I judged to be relevant texts.
Now we have to assess our findings. What harmonies emerge when we let the
voices of John, Paul, and Luke sing together as a single chorus?[1050] What
implications have we discovered that might inform theological reflection on
contemporary Pentecostal Eucharistic thought and practice?
First, the testimony of these three witnesses indicates that a variety of early
Christian communities regularly celebrated the Lord’s Supper, and that this
liturgical event was believed by them to have deep significance for the life of the
believer and the believing community. It seems clear that Paul, Luke, and
John – as well as the communities for whom they spoke – understood the
church’s celebration of Christ’s Supper as in some sense a continuation of Jesus’
ministry, re-enacting his life of sweeping, boundary-violating hospitality and his
atoning death for the life of the world, while pre-enacting the future messianic
feast as well.
Second, we learn that in the Eucharist we come to have fellowship with
Christ. In Paul’s language, in the sacramental cup and loaf we have
‘participation’ with Christ, and, in John’s language, ‘abide’ in him, to receive
‘eternal life’ here and now, and to share in his intimacy with the Father in the
Spirit, as well as in the benefits of his victory. Of course, truly to ‘abide’ in him
is to share not only in the benefits but also in his sufferings, to be ‘lifted up’ with
him, to be broken and poured out, just as he was. In fact, this sharing in his
suffering is necessary because we live in the already-not yet eschatological
tension. Nonetheless, we stand assured that because we abide in him, at the end
of all things he will raise us up into the eternal and all-encompassing reign of
God. The church’s communing always is carried out in light of what God has
already accomplished in Christ and what God has promised to do at Christ’s
parousia and in the establishing of the eschatological kingdom, so that the
Eucharist is always both a remembering of God’s faithfulness in the past and an
anticipation of God’s faithfulness in the final future.
Third, we hear from this chorus of texts a symphony of promises for those
who commune faithfully, in particular the promise of deep and (ever)lasting
communion with Christ and with his church, the people of God. Although
expressed in various ways and with different emphases, these apostolic witnesses
agree that in our celebration of the Lord’s Supper we are brought up together to
participate in the Trinitarian life, a life of always-overflowing love and mutual
delight. In Christ, who presents himself to us in this sacrament, we truly receive
God and one another.
We also hear warnings of judgment. Both John’s and Paul’s sacramental
theologies make clear that eating and drinking Christ can bring either judgment
or salvation, depending on whether or not we ‘look to’ Christ faithfully and
rightly discern his body.
Fourth, we hear from the witness of these texts the call to follow Christ. This
imitatio is, in one sense, a liturgical following of Christ’s example. That is to
say, in the celebration of the Eucharist, celebrants ritually repeat Jesus’ and the
apostles’ actions and words as host and guests of the last Passover and first
Lord’s Supper, liturgically re-enacting the taking, blessing, breaking, sharing,
and receiving of the bread and the blessing, sharing, and drinking of the cup. In
this very imitation, however, celebrants open themselves to the Spirit whose
work is continually to transform them into Christ’s body. Therefore, because of
the Spirit’s activity, this imitation always already spills over from the liturgical
event into everyday, worldly life, so that through the community’s shared
Eucharistic experience the truth comes clear: our lives are secured at every turn
only by God’s hospitality. We live by the Word of God alone and the bread he
provides. For Luke, it is in the community’s sharing in Communion that
believers receive a share in this divine plentitude and generosity that gives shape
and energy to their political imagination and economic practices.[1051] Because
the Spirit makes us one at the Table, we find ourselves compelled to live lives of
radical hospitality – feeding the hungry, protecting the widow and the orphan,
inviting the weak, poor, and diseased to share with us in the life God gives.
Fifth, we hear the story of cosmic salvation, and know ourselves as narrated
into that story – the one story of creation and redemption and consummation, the
story of Israel and the church and the world for which they are called as God’s
ambassadors and collaborators. At each celebration, the Eucharist (re)situates us
in this narrative. This means, in part, that the Lord’s Supper for us is the ‘present
tense of Calvary’, and in some sense is also the present tense of all the feasts of
God’s people, past and future, including of course the eternal messianic banquet.
It also means that our sharing in the cup and the loaf is a covenant-making affair
exactly as the Passover has been for Israel. In sharing this wine and this bread,
we not only receive Christ and his benefits, but also again and again bind
ourselves to one another and devote ourselves anew to God, refusing all other
(idolatrous) allegiances. In short, in offering the bread and wine as gifts of our
thanksgiving, we echo back to God our promise of covenant faithfulness.
Seventh, these texts teach us that the sharing of a common loaf and cup is
truly the Lord’s Supper for us only as we faithfully respond to the Word of God
that comes to us alongside, through, and as the sacred meal. Israel ate the manna
in the wilderness and died – both John and Paul are careful to underscore this
fact. They, with Luke, make it a point to show that life comes from communing
faithfully, taking the cup and the loaf while looking to Christ, by breaking bread
with a desire to see the kingdom come and a readiness to take on Christ’s
sufferings and humiliations for the sake of God and the world God loves so
riotously.
Finally, we learn that the Lord’s Supper is to be understood as the church’s
meal – but only and always for the sake of the world. The Eucharist is for the
church an intimate, even romantic encounter with her betrothed, and just in this
way remains necessarily ‘closed’ to those who are not baptized into intimacy
with Christ. At the same time, the Eucharist is for the world – that is, all created
reality, seen and unseen, heavenly and earthly – a kind of enacted prolepsis of
the feast which God intends for all to share in, and so must necessarily be kept
‘open’ to them. What, then, is the implication for contemporary sacramental
thought and practice? The Eucharist must always be experienced and explained
as in some sense a missionary meal that precisely in its strangeness draws all
people to Christ, and precisely in its mysteriousness reveals God truly.
5
TOWARD A PENTECOSTAL THEOLOGY OF
THE LORD’S SUPPER: DISCERNMENT AND
CONSTRUCTION
Introduction
To this point in the tradition’s theological history, there have been few attempts
to articulate a distinctly Pentecostal theology of the sacraments. Those attempts
that have been made are often brief, engaging many of the more difficult and
perhaps most important issues only in passing, if at all. What is more, many if
not most of these attempts have been carried out in exclusively baptistic terms,
with all of the emphasis falling on the memorialist dimensions of the Supper. It
is unsurprising, then, that many contemporary Pentecostals[1052] – perhaps
even the great majority – consider the sacraments mere ordinances,[1053]
holding participation in the Eucharist-event as nothing more than ‘an outward
response to an inward grace that has already been received’.[1054] This is,
however, all out of sorts with the views and practices of early Pentecostals, as
shown in the exploration of early Pentecostal sacramentality (Chapter 3).[1055]
And more and more Pentecostals have begun taking up the task of
developing[1056] an authentically Pentecostal sacramentality, one shaped by
specifically Pentecostal concerns and resources.[1057] My own construction is a
species of this kind, and it is characterized by three distinguishing marks. First,
my approach takes the fathers and mothers of the Pentecostal movement as
major conversation partners, allowing their peculiar emphases and characteristic
insights to inform both the profile and the substance of my construction. Second,
the hermeneutical model laid out in the first section of Chapter 4 (and
exemplified in the bulk of the rest of the chapter) affords me the ability to ‘hear’
a wide range of Scriptural texts, which in turn provides me with a rich treasure
from which to fund my theological construction. Third, my construction is
shaped and sourced by my experience in the local Pentecostal community where
I have served as a lead pastor, a community where participation each week in the
Lord’s Supper is a central and centering act of our worship. Energized and
oriented by these resources, this chapter is intended to put forward a constructive
and revisionary proposal for a theology of the Lord’s Supper that engages
discerningly in dialogue with partners inside and outside the Pentecostal
tradition while remaining consistent and continuous with Pentecostal spirituality.
[1058] Informed by the work already done, it is evident that my account must
necessarily be a vibrant and full-bodied one if it hopes to remain true to the
biblical witness and the Pentecostal tradition.
Finally, I need to offer a couple of clarifying remarks about the methodology I
am putting to use in this chapter. First, in the process of working out my account
of the Supper’s meaning, I engage in critical conversation with dialogue partners
selected from the length and breadth of the wider Christian tradition – Protestant,
Orthodox, and Catholic, historical and contemporary. In the conversation, I
attempt to take seriously their insights, carefully discerning how their work
instructs and/or confirms a genuinely Pentecostal theology of the Sacrament.
Second, I move through my construction in three primary stages, slowly moving
into ever-deeper waters (as in Ezekiel 47), dealing, first, with the fact of the
Eucharist’s mandated place in the Christian life coram deo; second, with the
ways in which God has promised to act salvifically in and upon us through the
sacrament of Communion, and, third, with discerning reflections on how it is
that God fulfills these promises of transformation.
Prescription: What Is Required of Us?
‘Do This’: The Lord’s Supper as Divine Lex
We begin where most early Pentecostal accounts of the Lord’s Supper
began – with Jesus’ command: ‘Do this …’[1059] We begin here because as
Pentecostals we recognize that response to divine command is fundamental to
our way of life, to our very being, in fact.[1060] This, then, has to be for us the
first word: the Eucharist is a mandated rite. Christian communities from the first
have observed this meal in keeping with Jesus’ words and acts at the Last
Supper.[1061] In keeping with this tradition, early Pentecostals – at least very
many of them – observed the Eucharist regularly and with great expectation.
[1062] For us, then, both as Pentecostals and as Pentecostal Christians, the way
is unmistakably clear and straight: the celebration of Holy Communion belongs
at the center[1063] of our life with one another before God in the world.[1064] If
we refuse to eat and drink the bread and wine, then we have no right to claim
that we believe in him, as John 6 makes clear. We can no more shirk Holy
Communion than Israel could have refused Sabbath observance or the
celebration of the festivals without in this very refusal betraying her vocation
and identity.[1065] As A.J. Tomlinson said, those who refuse the ordinances
cannot hope to receive God’s blessing.[1066]
Of course, this command, like all God’s commands, is to be heard by us as
invitation.[1067] As people baptized into Christ, we have been filled with the
Spirit who himself is the New Law ‘written in our hearts’, so that we naturally
delight in the law of the Lord (Psalm 1). God’s lex is never for us burdensome or
taxing, but is always received as graceful direction toward the richer, ever more
joyful life promised to and purposed for us.[1068] Besides, in submitting to the
mandate we are not merely obeying, but are also imitating Christ, following his
example, and in the mimetic process are being made like him. In Ken Archer’s
words, partaking of the Sacrament is a ‘redemptive experience’, uniquely
providing worshippers with the occasion for the ‘ongoing spiritual formation of
being conformed to the image of Christ by encountering the Spirit of Christ
through the participatory enactment[1069] of the story of Jesus’.[1070]
This is so, first, liturgically. As the bread is taken and God’s blessing is
invoked over it, as the bread is broken for us and as we partake of it, we are re-
enacting the Last Supper and the agonizing events of Christ’s last days.[1071] At
the same time, in the very same movements, we also are pre-enacting the
marriage feast that is the joy of the eschatological kingdom of God. This
liturgical practice reminds us that all of our life is meant to be lived imitatio
Christi: ‘As he is so are we in this world’ (1 Jn 4.17). Therefore, although it
begins liturgically, it can never be limited to that. All of our lived lives in their
complex and often prosaic entirety are to be offered up to God. Like Christ, we
are always, everywhere sacrificing ourselves—for God, one another, and the
world.
‘Do This’: The Lord’s Supper as Great Thanksgiving
Clearly, then, we are bound to observe the Lord’s Supper. It remains less clear,
however, what exactly we are to do in this observance. What is the ‘this’ that has
been mandated? In a word, it is a ritual,[1072]communal meal of thanksgiving
and koinonia.[1073] Believers are required by Christ’s mandate ‘to share bread
and drink together from one cup, as fellowship in the praise of God’.[1074]
When we do this – and only then – ‘an event occurs to which eschatological
promises “come”, to create a sacrament’.[1075] As Pannenberg has it, the church
gathered at the Table, offering a shared, communal thanksgiving, finds itself
there ‘at-oned’ with Christ: ‘Precisely by the celebrating of the Lord’s Supper as
Eucharist, in the form of thanksgiving, the church thus follows what Jesus
himself did and shares in the relation of Jesus to the Father articulated therein’.
[1076]
But how are we to give thanks? As a community in one heart and mind, with
words and with the bread and the wine[1077] offered and received in conformity
with the rubric laid down by Scripture.[1078] In this regard, two points need
emphasizing. First, our thanksgiving falls to the ground if we are not making
every effort to live together as one body, as a genuine covenant-community. Of
course, this is not to say that only the already-perfected community can rightly
celebrate the Supper, for the Eucharist is meant to make us one, to incubate and
nurture and perfect our unity, as 1 Cor. 10.16-17 makes clear. However, it is to
say that we cannot hope to discern faithfully the Lord’s body in the bread and
wine if we are not striving to live at peace with one another both before we come
to the Table and after we leave it.[1079] Second, in spite of the fact that
thanksgiving comes ‘naturally’ to us as Pentecostals, it should be maintained that
our praise should remain always anchored to and in harmony with the
Communion rite. And this means, in turn, that liturgical exactness is
required – not in a legalistic way, of course, but because, as Jenson rightly sees,
‘Scripture’s sacramental promises are about acts we are bidden to do; if we do
not do them, there is nothing for the promises to be about’.[1080] More
specifically, because of what is at stake (really and symbolically), we, like our
early Pentecostal mothers and fathers, can and should insist that a single loaf and
a single cup are used and that the congregation are given both broken bread to
eat and wine to drink.[1081] Contrary to the thought of much popular piety – a
piety that afflicted some sectors of early Pentecostalism and continues to trouble
the contemporary movement at various points – it is necessary to go through the
ritual motions of giving and receiving the loaf and cup, following a liturgical
rubric. The actual eating and drinking are not superfluous activities, and talk of
eating Christ’s flesh and drinking his blood must never be cut off from the rite of
receiving the cup and the loaf. ‘The eating and drinking are the heart of the
Supper as sacrament.’[1082] Sharing in the meal, celebrants are ‘completing the
significance of the signs’.[1083] If they do not go through the motions of
enjoying the meal, then they do not in fact believe God’s promises, for ‘the act
of faith and the act of taking, chewing, and swallowing are one act’.[1084] As a
result, the attempt of some Pentecostals to separate the believing in the benefits
of Christ’s passion from the actual receiving of the loaf and the cup must be
judged as a serious error.[1085]
Now, it perhaps should almost go without saying that healing may come
through other means than participation in the Lord’s Supper, and that healing
may occur in the context of the Eucharist-event apart from the actual eating and
drinking. The point remains, however, that believing in the healer – not the
healing! – symbolized in the broken bread cannot be sharply separated from the
act of actually eating the bread. It is unacceptable that some Pentecostals talk as
if the receiving of the loaf and the cup were entirely superfluous, as if their value
is entirely symbolic. Those who have faith to receive healing (or whatever grace
comes from God) are those who obey. Those who believe, eat.
Of course, liturgy must be S/spirited. The liturgical giving and receiving must
remain in every way consonant with the Spirit-fired truth the Eucharist itself
signifies and accomplishes, for without doubt apart from the Spirit’s intercession
all our liturgical efforts, however exact and seemingly inspired, are in the final
analysis futile and inane. As Moltmann says, the meal ‘becomes a feast when
this gratitude is expressed not only in official liturgies but in the free utterance of
those who meet at the table and their spontaneous joy’.[1086] Donald Gee said it
well: only a ‘fresh Unction’ can preserve the weekly Communion celebration
from becoming ‘mere custom’.[1087] Still, spiritual fervor cannot make up for
theological or ethical misrepresentation of the gospel embodied in the Eucharist-
event. For priests to offer ‘strange fire’ in God’s presence (Lev. 10.1-3) is deadly,
now no less than then.[1088]
In spite of what many Pentecostals fear,[1089] this insistence on liturgical
exactness does not necessarily hamper, much less extinguish, spontaneous,
Spirit-impelled activity. Against those Pentecostals who believe liturgical order
unnecessary and dangerous,[1090] we should insist that the proper use of liturgy
rightly orients Pentecostal worship and so powerfully invigorates it. Against
those who believe the service needs to be designed to ‘bring the symbols to life’,
[1091] we should maintain that the sacraments live already by virtue of God’s
word of promise and the Spirit who brings those promises to reality. Given the
history of Christian practice, it would appear that without predetermined rites
and practices shaped to focus attention on the God of the once-delivered faith,
celebrants run the risk of losing themselves in their own world,[1092] effectively
alienating themselves from the gospel’s concreteness and specificity. In fact, as
Simon Chan[1093] and Jamie Smith have argued,[1094] a proper ritual
grounding promises to safeguard and reenergize the improvisational quality of
Pentecostal spirituality.[1095] So long as our praise remains grounded and
centered in the mandated ritual words and actions, we are free to ‘improvise’, to
express in any number of ways our thanks to God for God’s good works toward
us.
Turning, then, to another basic question: What are we giving thanks for? In a
word, for God’s ‘mighty acts’.[1096] We come to the Table, gathered by the call
of Christ and the gospel of the kingdom, and in our sharing of the wine and
bread say our thanks in the Spirit to God for Christ – and in Christ for all things
in this age and the age to come.[1097] These mighty acts for which we praise
God include all that God has done both in creating and sustaining creation and in
saving it from sin and death and bringing it into its perfection. In this connection,
it bears pointing out what may seem to some brutally obvious: the bread and
wine are gifts of creation, both natural and cultural, and by virtue of Christ’s and
the church’s words[1098] they come to signify God’s atoning act in Christ.
Moltmann says it well: ‘the feast of Christ’s fellowship is the great thanksgiving
to the Father for everything he has made in creation and has achieved in the
reconciliation of the world, and has promised to accomplish in its redemption’.
[1099]
Although praise and thanksgiving come easily to Pentecostals, as has been
said, the Orthodox tradition has much to teach us about the ontological depth of
our praise. As Schmemann insists, the Eucharistic thanksgiving is nothing less
than ‘the experience of paradise’,[1100] for in the offering of thanksgiving, we
find what we were made for – true knowledge of the God for whom we were
made and in whom we ‘have our being’. Receiving the bread and the wine
thankfully, we rise to heaven, entering the divine presence.[1101]
Thanksgiving is the ‘sign’, or better still, the presence, joy, fullness, of
knowledge of God, i.e. knowledge as meeting, knowledge as communion,
 knowledge as unity. Just as it is impossible to know God and not give him
thanks, so it is impossible to give him thanks without knowing him. Knowing
God transforms our life into thanksgiving, and thanksgiving transforms
eternity into life everlasting.[1102]
It is for this reason that, in the words of Scripture, we enter God’s gates with
thanksgiving.
Anamnesis: the Eucharist as Locus of Memory-in-Hope
The Lord’s Supper is a meal of remembrance. In giving thanks with our bodies
and the bodies of the bread and wine, we are in some sense re-calling Christ.
This is the import of speaking of the Supper as anamnesis. But what does it
mean to ‘remember’ Christ thankfully?
In the first, most obvious sense, we are remembering Christ as he was.[1103]
At one level of significance, the Eucharist simply directs our attention to the
historical realities of the life of one Jesus of Nazareth, to his subversive table-
fellowship and his Last Supper,[1104] and to the event of what the church
understands as his once-for-all agonizing death for us and for the world.[1105]
Briefly said, in celebrating the Communion rite we are reminded of those
decisive past events experienced by Jesus in Nazareth and Galilee, in
Jerusalem’s streets, the upper room and outside the city’s walls. In the present-
day liturgical breaking of the bread and offering of the cup, we ‘see’ Christ
crucified before our very eyes (Gal. 3.1) and ‘hear’ his death proclaimed (1 Cor.
11.26).[1106] As early Pentecostal theologian Myer Pearlman put it, the Supper
is ‘the most impressive means for continually presenting before our minds and
hearts the central fact of His life’.[1107] In this way, believers-in-community are
narrated into the grand story of creation’s salvation, a story whose central
characters are the Triune God, Israel, and the Church. As Rowan Williams points
out, the practice of Holy Communion ‘presupposes a connectedness with the
history of the covenant people’ and for many reasons it is especially at the Lord’s
Table that that connectedness makes itself real and (sometimes at least) felt as
such.[1108]
At another level, this anamnesis[1109] is never merely memorialistic because
we are also remembering Christ as he is: the once-dead, now-risen-and-
enthroned one.[1110] In the words of D.W. Kerr, the early Assemblies of God
evangelist, while the Sacrament is rightly understood as a memorial, a
proclamation, and an expression of our hope in Christ’s parousia, it is above all
a way of Christ’s immediate presence to the church. ‘Here is the present tense of
Calvary.’[1111] To ‘remember’ rightly, then, is to receive the meal in such a way
that Christ is present to us and the benefits of his victorious death are made
effective in our lives.[1112] It does this by drawing the believing community
into authentic and transformative encounter with the Spirit-mediated presence of
the living Christ – the one who is by God’s free decision never without the
church and creation. In the Eucharistic encounter, believers are bound together
not only with Christ, but also with one another and with the whole of created
reality, for Christ is kephale of the church as his body (Eph. 1.22; Col. 1.18) and
the arche of the new creation for the church’s sake (Eph. 1.21; Col. 1.18).
As just mentioned, for some people (at least some of the time) participation in
the Eucharist-event involves the awakening and intensification of sacred
affections, the ‘passion for the kingdom’ in Land’s memorable phrase. Holy
Communion – the whole event of churchly participation in the meal, as well as
the bread and wine in and of themselves – is a ‘visible word’ (verba visibilia)
that brings the gospel of Christ’s victory forcefully to bear on the minds and
hearts of the participants,[1113] awakening in the participants the (re)new(ed)
conviction that Jesus is cosmic kyrios, head of the church,[1114] and archetype
of new creation, stirring up in them a (re)new(ed) desire and determination to
conform their lives to the reality the gospel reveals.[1115]
At still another level, we ‘remember’ Christ as he shall be. ‘The anamnesis
looks more to the future than to the past, it is an eschatological
formula.’[1116]As early Pentecostals often pointed out, the church’s celebration
of the Lord’s Supper is always carried out in the light of the eschatological
messianic banquet, the promised and expected ‘marriage supper of the Lamb’.
We remember Christ as the one who in the Eschaton is everything to everyone,
the plhvroma who gives life – his life – to all creation. Pannenberg, then, is right
to insist that the Lord who is present at the Table is ‘the one who died on the
cross’,[1117] but he is wrong to say that Christ is present ‘only by means of
recollection of the historical Lord who went to his death’.[1118] What happens
in the Eucharist-event is not only ‘recollection of the earthly story of Jesus and
his passion’, but also is in some real sense the ‘descent’ of the enthroned Lord,
the coming of Christ to the church in and with the bread and wine given and
received in thanksgiving for the one was, is, and is to come.
At his Last Supper, Jesus promised not to eat the meal again ‘until it is
fulfilled in the kingdom of God’ (Lk. 22.16-18). According to the Fourth Gospel,
he promised his disciples he would raise up at the last day those who eat his
flesh and drink his blood (Jn 6.39-40). In the words of the apostle Paul, when the
church celebrates Holy Communion faithfully, she proclaims Christ’s death ‘till
he comes’ (1 Cor. 11.26). It comes clear, then, that the Eucharist is uniquely the
event in which Christ’s past, the church’s present, and creation’s future come
together – if only mysteriously and hiddenly.[1119] In the very act of
remembering in our words and actions the unspeakable horrors of Good Friday,
we proclaim the unspeakable good news of the reign of the one whom God ‘gave
up’ for us and for all creation so that through him sin might be finally put away
and death utterly destroyed in the End. In remembering this way, we orient
ourselves to the promised future. As Jenson says, the Eucharist is not only a
restaging of the table fellowship of Christ’s pre-Easter ministry, but also an
‘acted-out promise of the last fellowship’.[1120] When the church enacts the
liturgy ‘in the right spirit’ she enters into ‘play with the Trinity’, and just so
anticipates ‘life in the Fulfillment’.[1121] Simon Chan agrees: ‘In the eucharistic
worship of the church, the Spirit actualizes the past through remembrance
(anamnesis) and anticipates the future (prolepsis) when created things are
transfigured …’[1122] In the liturgical event, heaven and earth touch,[1123] the
‘now’ of our history opens up to the ‘then’ of holy week and the Eschaton.[1124]
What is more, given that this is true – that this ‘opening up’ of earth to heaven in
the Eucharistic moment indeed takes place – then it seems most fitting to say
that the bread and wine themselves are also taken up in this event and are made
replete with new creation reality, as are the (faithful) participants. They too are
baptized in the glory of new creation[1125] – hiddenly to be sure, but really and
transformatively.[1126] How can we consistently affirm that new creation comes
to the celebrants in the Eucharist while denying that it comes to the other
creatures they have brought to bear in their thanksgiving?
Even if his account of the Supper is lacking in some respects,[1127] what
Moltmann says of the relation of the Eucharistic anamnesis to the future hope of
creation remains instructive. In his view, the Eucharist ultimately takes its shape
not from a historical-critical reconstruction of the institution of the Supper at
Jesus’ last meal with his disciples or even from a theological account of the
relationship of the Eucharist to the events of Good Friday, but from the church’s
hope in the coming kingdom of God and the eschatological banquet – a hope that
Christ’s resurrection alone engenders and undergirds.[1128] ‘It is not the
historical remembrance as such which provides the foundation for the Lord’s
supper, but the presence of the crucified one in the Spirit of the
resurrection.’[1129] The Lord’s Supper is first and foremost ‘the sign of
remembered hope’,[1130] and the ‘eschatological sign of the coming kingdom in
history’.[1131] In other words, the Supper is the celebration of the hope the
kingdom and new creation Jesus promised to bring.[1132] To be sure, Moltmann
believes that it is right to remember the salvific events on Golgotha, but in spite
of the fact that the Supper ‘points expressly to the one who was crucified’,
Luther insists that the one who actually is present to the church in Communion is
the risen Lord of creation’s future.[1133]
 … the manifestation of the crucified Jesus in the fellowship of his body and
his blood takes place in no other way than through himself, the exalted one …
The fellowship of the table with the one who was crucified for us once and for
all, takes place in the presence of the one who is to come; and it is therefore,
as fellowship with the crucified Jesus, the anticipation of the coming kingdom.
In the one who is to come the one who died for us is present in our midst.
[1134]
Each Eucharistic celebration, then, is a foretaste of the new creation – God’s
mercies are new each time (Lam. 3.23). In this light, it is easy to see why
Moltmann believes the church’s meal should be eaten with joy and ‘gladness of
heart’ – striking a harmony with the Lukan theology of the Eucharist outlined in
the previous chapter. ‘The feast is a bond with the kingdom’,[1135] and precisely
for this reason, is the feast of gratitude and joy.[1136] ‘[T]his meal is a messianic
party “in” the kingdom, in which Jesus joins anew.’[1137] As Pentecostals, how
could we not join in such a party? The Pentecostal habit of explosive praise is
nothing if not an anticipation of the glories of the Eschaton.
At the end, all creation’s voices will praise God in chorus, the created
historical powers among them. Insofar as we now at the Supper anticipate the
end, we anticipate that chorus. But we can do this only as we let go of our
praises, only as we sing and let our song rule what we say, only as we speak a
little bit ‘in tongues’.[1138]
And yet – is this view not woefully one-sided? Is the Supper not at least
sometimes a moment for solemnity, for sorrow even, and contrition?[1139] If a
Lukan theology of the Eucharist emphasizes the ecstatic nature of Christian table
fellowship, perhaps a predominantly Pauline-informed theology of the Eucharist
puts the focus elsewhere, encouraging introspection and careful ‘discerning of
the Lord’s body’? If so, how do we decide between the two views? J. Rodman
Williams suggests that one simply follows the other:
… we initially come to the Lord’s Supper with solemn, and indeed penitent,
hearts. To be sure, there is the ensuing joy of fellowship with Christ and
anticipation of His coming again, but this joy can occur only against the
solemn background of knowing that both the broken bread and the cup of
wine represent the awesome and terrifying death of Jesus Christ our Savior.
We must first share with Christ in His death, partaking of the symbols of that
death in order to rejoice in his life.[1140]
This strikes me as not quite right, for at least two reasons. First, I would want
to say that there need not always be a progression from contrition to joy, from
solemnity to elation. Instead, there may be times in which the entire Eucharistic-
event is an occasion for deep sorrowing and contrite self-critique, and, at other
times, the entire event may be in fact a time of joyous, even raucous celebration.
[1141] Second, I would insist that the hope-inspired joy of intimacy with God in
the future at-one-ment of all things is never merely foregrounded against the
sufferings of Christ. If anything, the very opposite is true. The sufferings of
Christ are what they are only when seen in the light of the news of Christ’s
resurrection. Good Friday is good only because Easter follows and redefines it,
and the church’s message is good news only if the Eschaton vindicates our
witness.
If Pentecostals are to receive the Supper rightly, to let it be all that God intends
that shared thanksgiving to be, then we must give ourselves to Spirit-led
discernment. In and throughout each Eucharist-event, the congregation must
carefully follow the Spirit’s leading, discerning together what it is Christ intends
to do in and for them in that moment. Without doubt, the Eucharist can and
should be experienced at times as a feast of joy and at other times as a sobering
and even sorrowful event, one that moves celebrants to new dimensions of
compassion with God and one another. In truth, however, there is no way to
predetermine what the event might mean for a particular congregation at a
particular moment. God’s ways are not our ways and God’s work is always more
than we can grasp. It follows, then, that some participants may feel nothing at
the Table while others may be overwhelmed with feeling. Neither experience can
be established as the norm. Those who feel only the absence of God’s presence
have not necessarily received the bread and wine in vain, and those who have
been deeply moved by the experience of God’s presence nonetheless cannot
comprehend the breadth and depth of God’s work in them in that moment.[1142]
Yes, ‘To love God is to be shaped by that love so as to share its affections and
passions’,[1143] but the love with which we love and are loved is divine, so our
affections and passions are ultimately powerless to grasp what it is that has taken
us and now holds us fast.
A final word in this regard: insofar as our Eucharist is a faithful thanksgiving,
then the event is nothing less than a rite of covenant renewal.[1144] As we give
thanks for God’s covenant-making acts, offering up and receiving these gifts of
bread and wine – gifts carried along by and embodying the sacrifice of our
praise – we are also promising that we will continually offer ourselves to God,
as living sacrifices (Rom. 12.2). At the Table, ‘in the presence of God with our
sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving for the Sacrifice of Calvary’,[1145] we are
dialoguing with God, saying our Amen to his promise, our Yes to his graceful
command.
Promise: What Does God Do For Us?
‘I Am with You’: The Lord’s Supper and the Church’s
Communion with God
As witnessed by scores of testimonies,[1146] early Pentecostals came to the
Lord’s Table not only impelled by the desire to obey but also drawn by the hope
of blessing[1147] in the ‘sweetness of the sacred presence’,[1148] confident that
the divine mandate is at its depth always energized by divine promise.[1149]
They gathered in joyfully expectant worship to ‘put His promises to the test’.
[1150]
But has God in fact promised anything to those who celebrate Communion?
[1151] Yes: God has promised Christ and the Spirit.[1152] To push the question
further, we might ask if is there anything unique and irreplaceable in the Supper?
Again, yes. Nearly half a century ago, A.D. Beacham Sr., then an official in the
PH church, put the point clearly and precisely:
The communion that a person enjoys in the proper observance of this worship
is necessary to victorious Christian living. As one considers the death of the
Lord and becomes a partaker of that death, there is experienced a consecration
and submission to God that cannot be found in any other experience.[1153]
Of course, communion with Jesus exceeds the encounter of the Eucharist-event,
[1154] but it is never wholly separate from it. Partaking of the Sacrament is
indispensable to the life of ‘feeding on Christ’ because it makes possible a
partaking in Jesus’ death and his life not realizable otherwise.[1155]
So, the Eucharist-event occasions, first, the communion of God and Human.
At the Table, there is experienced a moment of genuine divine-human encounter,
an intimate exchange between the Triune God and the ecclesia gathered in his
name.[1156] In the words of E.N. Bell, the Lord’s Supper is always more than a
memorial because ‘Jesus is there in the Spirit to bless, quicken, uplift and heal’
the gathered saints. Seen in this light, it comes clear that Jesus’ words spoken
over the bread of his Last Supper – ‘This is my body’ – reveal how he keeps his
final pre-Ascension promise, ‘I am with you always, till the end of the age’ (Mt.
28.20), a promise that depends upon Pentecost and the Father’s and Son’s
sending of the Spirit, the a[llon paravklhton . In the Eucharist-event, the church
encounters the risen and enthroned Christ who is present by the agency of the
Spirit.[1157] At the Table, believers come face-to-face with ‘the spiritually
present living Christ’.[1158]
If at first this seems overstated, remember that Holy Communion, as a ‘visible
word’ spoken to God from the church and to the church from God serves as
genuine conversation between God and God’s people, a divine-human dialogue
of heaven and earth. In their celebration, believers speak to God[1159] a ‘visible
word’ embodied in the offering and receiving of the bread and wine. As Paul
says, in rightly celebrating the Supper the church ‘proclaims’ Christ crucified.
Moreover, God speaks to the church in and by the same bread-and wine-
embodied ‘word’, and in this way re-minds the ecclesia of Christ’s victorious
sacrifice.
The decisive question, then, is this: What is this ‘word’ spoken and heard,
given and received? At one level, it is merely the semiotic import of the
elements themselves. In other words, the ‘word’ is what the meal means for the
participants. At another level, however, this word is – Christ himself![1160] He
is the meal’s meaning, the significance of the signifier.[1161] As he said, ‘This is
my body … my blood’.[1162]
To keep the focus on this communio with and in God realized through the
church’s celebration of the Lord’s Supper, one must be careful to speak of Jesus’
personal presence in the Eucharist-event.[1163] It cannot be overstated: Christ is
present – and not merely ‘grace’ as abstracted, impersonal ‘essence’.[1164] In
the words of Nicholas Cabasilas, ‘That of which we partake is not something of
His, but Himself’.[1165] ‘The gift is the giver; the giver is the gift.’[1166] Also,
because Jesus Christ is eternally the one whom God raised from the dead, he is
bodily present[1167] – he could not be present otherwise and remain himself.
[1168] Bonhoeffer, drawing on the resources of his Lutheran sacramental
tradition, presses this very point home, insisting that Jesus Christ is ‘completely
present in the Sacrament, neither his Godhead alone, nor only his humanity’.
[1169] For Bonhoeffer, the critical question is not how but who, and there can be
no doubt of Christ’s identity: ‘The complete person of the God-Man is present,
in his exaltation and humiliation’.[1170]
At the Table, therefore, believers personally and corporeally encounter the
once-dead, now bodily-risen, wounded-but-glorified eternal Word ‘so very real
and near’.[1171] Leaving aside (for now) questions of how Christ is so present
and what this presence means for the bread and the wine in themselves, we can
confidently affirm with early Pentecostals that Christ is really and effectively
present in and at the Supper[1172] to commune with us – to touch us, and to be
touched by us.[1173] As Amos Yong has argued, the event of Communion
brings into focus the ‘inter-subjective mutuality’ Christ shares with his church,
so that through the agency of the Spirit the Eucharist ‘becomes a mysterious
interpersonal encounter wherein Christ and his body are brought into real
relationship’ with each other.[1174] We can and should affirm, then, that by the
power of the Holy Spirit the church’s sacramental participation is nothing less
than ‘the gate of heaven’ (Ps. 118.20)[1175] through which believers enter
boldly into Christ’s presence and Christ enters humbly into theirs.
But because the Supper is Christ’s, it occasions not only believers’
communion with God but also believers’ communion with one another. Indeed,
this is one communion in Christ, for, as David Coffey rightly sees,
… the sending of the Holy Spirit upon the Church by Christ, begun at
Pentecost and continued over the centuries through the Church’s ministry of
word and sacrament, is nothing other than Jesus’ love for his brethren, an
essential dimension of his love of the Father.[1176]
It is that love, that very Spirit, whom celebrants receive, are again and again
newly filled with, as they faithfully receive the gifts of the Altar. This is the very
reason Paul found the Corinthians’ failure to live in just harmony with one
another so troubling: their schisms were an egregious violation of the very
reality the Supper embodies and effects.
‘Sharing in the Body and Blood’: The Lord’s Supper and Our
Salvation
To be in Christ’s presence is to be transformed, for he is always present in
transformative power.[1177] Accordingly, the church’s celebration of the Supper
occasions nothing less than an atoning, taboric communion with Christ who in
himself by the Spirit is both redeemer and redemption, sanctifier and
sanctification itself. In the Eucharist-event, the presence of Christ affects us at
the depths of our humanity[1178] so that we in fact become partakers of the
divine nature (2 Pet. 1.4).[1179] Through Holy Communion,[1180] we are
assimilated to the divine life.[1181]By the duvnami" of the Spirit, Christ’s grace
‘penetrates our very being, unites us to one another and transforms us into him’.
[1182] That is to say, Christ both humanizes us and deifies us.[1183] So we can
ask: What is the Eucharist for? And answer: To make us holy with Christ’s own
divinely human holiness.[1184]
Of course, having made such a claim we are then left to ask how exactly
participation in the Eucharist-event accomplishes the Christification of the
church and its members. First, it does so by enflaming believers’ passions for
God and the kingdom. By awakening this desire for full and immediate
communion with God, the Spirit begins to conform believers to the imago dei.
[1185] On this score, Bonaventure provides a key insight. He identifies the
Eucharist as ‘the sacrament of communion and love’ that ‘enkindles us toward
mutual love’ of God and one another.[1186] In his explanation, the saving
transformation that takes place in and among us is nothing less or other than the
outcome of the ‘burning love’[1187] that Christ imparts to us in Communion.
The bread and wine are like the burning coal put to the prophet’s lips (Isaiah 6)
[1188] or the lover’s kiss (Song 1.1) that draws the believer into the embracing
bliss of intimacy with God.[1189] Obviously, this resonates nicely with the tenor
of Pentecostal spirituality, which is characterized by this very passion for God’s
presence and by the fervent love for neighbor and enemy engendered by the
genuine encounter with God.
Somewhat paradoxically, however, this sanctifying work also happens by the
quenching of the ‘fleshly’ appetite for God’s presence and blessings. In this way,
the Eucharist is for Christian pilgrims what the manna was for the wilderness-
bound Israelites. Although real and effective, Christ’s presence in Communion is
and remains hidden – in a sense, unexperiencable. Not from any lack of divine
power or due to anything like divine capriciousness, but just so that we may act
in faith, and in so acting, develop the character of Christ.[1190] Christ’s
hiddenness is a gift that opens up for us the possibility of transformative,
deifying faith-acts. As John 6 teaches, Christ’s Eucharistic promise is
purposefully scandalous, and to accept his words as true, believers must humble
themselves, throw off everything except trust in and fidelity to Jesus as the
Word. Glorious as it may be, the Eucharist is a form of Jesus’ ongoing
humiliation in this time before the e[scaton .[1191] In Bonhoeffer’s words, Christ
humbles himself as creature in the Sacrament and in so doing makes it so that
only those who humble themselves in response may receive him and his life.
[1192] This comes right to the heart of what the Eucharist is for. As G.F. Taylor
puts it, the Communion rite is designed ‘to humiliate us, to teach us the spirit of
Jesus, and to unite us as a church in the spirit of fellowship’.[1193] The second
and third of these transformations simply cannot happen without the first.
How can it be that God transforms us both by enflaming our passions and by
simultaneously humbling us? How can both be true at the same time? Because
the Jesus who is present in humiliation is none other than the Christ of new
creation,[1194] and the Spirit who makes Jesus’ presence possible and effective
is none other than the eschatological Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus’ resurrection and
the restitution of all things.[1195] The Eucharist itself, then, is a new creation
event, a sign and foretaste of the Eschaton, and to take the loaf and cup in faith is
to receive an ontologically-transforming proleptic share in the metaphysics of
the life everlasting.[1196] ‘God brings the future down to the present
tense’[1197] and in this way eschatologizes us, just as he does the bread and the
wine.[1198] We partake of a ‘sacramental oneness’ that speaks of the not-yet
realized ‘unity of heaven and earth and all humanity in Christ as the omega of all
existence (Rev. 1.8)’.[1199] At the Lord’s Table, we share in the Spirit and just
in this way taste the heavenly gift and the powers of the world to come (Heb.
6.4-5).[1200] For this reason, the church can avow with Irenaeus that in
partaking of the Eucharistic ‘bread of heaven’, believers’ bodies are already
being transformed by the sacramental reality and readied for the Resurrection, at
the end of all things.[1201]
We must be careful, however, not to adopt a hypertrophic theologia gloriae
that causes us to forget that the triumphant Christ who comes from the new
creation in the Spirit to us at the table is even yet the crucified one, and that
partaking faithfully of the Eucharist, believers therefore are filled again and
again with the Spirit of the Crucified and become more and more gifted and
empowered to think, feel, and live sub specie crucis.[1202] As the worshipping
community begins to live cruciform lives, it ‘puts on’ its identity as a missionary
people, as the soma Christou: the body broken and the oblation poured out for
the world’s salvation. Participants come to share in Christ’s glory (now and in
the End) precisely as they take up their cross and allow the Spirit to lead them
where they do not want to go (cf. Jn 21.18-19). Disciples come to learn that
precisely in humbling themselves, they are availing themselves of the glorifying
mercies of God.[1203]
Christ the Coming King
Talking in this way of our salvation makes possible a revisioning of the 5-fold
gospel as traditionally understood. First, it makes possible a reimagining of
Christ’s parousia as not only a singular event that lies in our future – i.e. the
‘second coming’ that brings human history to its climax – but also as Christ’s
continual coming to the church in the charismata, in the preaching of the Word,
and in the giving/receiving of the sacraments. As already described, the Christ
who is present at the Table is the whole Christ, identical with the man Christ
Jesus whom the Scriptures and creeds together identify as God’s eternal Son,
head of the church, and judging savior of the creation. This Christ, by the Spirit,
comes to us over the eschatological horizon, bringing in his train all the gifts of
the Day of justice and peace that are promised to us in the final establishment of
the divine kingdom. In other words, Jesus is ‘coming king’ in the church’s
sacramental experience, just as he was in the incarnation and shall be in the
parousia – with this difference only: in the End, his kingdom shall be finally and
fully established beyond dispute. Hence, in the Eucharist-event believers are
given a foretaste of the kingdom owing to the fact that they are being filled with
the Spirit, the arrabon of the restitution of all things.[1204]
Christ the Savior-Sanctifier
This eschatological and sacramental reimagining of the 5-fold gospel also
suggests that to speak of Jesus as Savior is to say he is the one who saves by
sanctifying through the deifying power of the church’s sacramental life in God.
In other words, sanctification names the way in which God justifies us,[1205] for
salvation comes not at the beginning but as the end of the process of being
drawn into ontically-transformative communion with Christ. Believers are not
saved (in full) until the End, when in coming face-to-face with Christ, they are
made like him, finally fully conformed to his divine-human image and likeness.
Now, they are being saved as they are being Christified, a process that comes
only through the healing presence of the risen, ascended Jesus, the Spirit-
baptized and Spirit-baptizing one. This, then, is the heart of Pentecostal
convictions about the Lord’s Supper: ‘Jesus is present through the Holy Spirit
during the Eucharistic meal to commune with believers, to transform them
toward greater love and holiness, and to heal them in body and mind’.[1206]
As Pentecostals, we have always emphasized Christ’s saving work. But a
renewed emphasis on the Eucharist can help us remember, in the first place, that
God’s salvation is not merely juridical or ‘positional’ but truly transformational
and, in the second place, that this transformation necessarily comes in and
through the body of Christ.[1207] In the words of an AF contributor:
If His flesh had seen corruption, then we could not have healing for the body
nor look for another immortal body from heaven. So, dear beloved, we get
healing for our body, soul, and spirit and an immortal body from heaven at His
coming, through the perfect body of Jesus. Praise God![1208]
Recognizing that Christ’s ‘perfect body’ is ‘the Bread of Life’, the contributor
declares that only by eating and drinking Christ can believers receive a share in
eternal life (Jn 6.51). Thus, the believers’ prayer becomes: ‘May we drink His
Blood daily and eat His flesh, through faith in His word, for salvation, health,
and healing’.[1209]
To say God saves us through the body of Christ is to acknowledge not only the
centrality of the rite of the Sacrament but also that salvation is primarily and
ultimately ecclesial.[1210] The pneumatiochristic pro me radiates out from the
pro nobis, and not the other way around. Personal salvation comes always in and
through community, through participation in the churchly, sacramental, and
missional life.[1211] Apart from the church, there is no salvation.[1212] After
all, communion draws worshippers into fellowship not only with the Triune God
but also with the church, and never one without the other. Jenson suggests
‘churchly and Eucharistic communion are one, in that both are communion in
the body of Christ’.[1213] In this connection, he quotes John Damascene:
 [The Eucharist] is called ‘communion’ and truly it is. For through it we both
commune with Christ, and share in his body as well as in his deity, and
commune and are united with one another. For as we all eat of one loaf we
become one body and one blood of Christ and members of one another. Thus
we may be called co-embodiments of Christ.[1214]
Christ the Healer and Spirit-Baptizer
If we think of sanctification (theosis) as the aim of all Christ’s new-creation
ministry to us, and of the Supper as mediating this sanctifying work, then we
position ourselves also to revision the doctrines of divine healing[1215] and
Spirit baptism along soteriological and sacramental lines. Briefly put, we see that
Jesus – the one who has come, shall come, and is coming[1216] – is Savior as
the one who sanctifies us by healing us and baptizing us in the Spirit in and
through the Eucharist-event.[1217]
To say that God saves via the church’s Eucharistic participation is also to say
that the Sacrament is rightly understood as pharmakon. Ignatius famously – and
aptly – identified the Eucharistic grace as the ‘medicine of immortality’ (Eph.
20.2), and for good reason early Pentecostals insisted on the convergence
between the celebration of the Supper, the work of salvation/sanctification, and
the healing of the sick and diseased:[1218] ‘Let us take the Lamb’s body,
through faith in our Lord, for salvation and healing of these bodies, as we honor
His blood for saving and sanctifying our soul and spirit. Amen’.[1219] Of
course, short of the kingdom healing remains incomplete; but it is really, already
begun. Already, believers enjoy in fragmentary but real ways the restoration,
newness, and wholeness promised in the Eschaton.[1220] Holy Communion is
one of several ‘theophanic signs of glory’ and as such is an ‘eschatological
foretaste of [the] healing and unity in the heavenly banquet’.[1221]
Healing of the body is one manifestation of this coming fullness of life, and in
this way divine healing serves uniquely as a proleptic signum of the
Christification[1222] already at work in the believer and yet to come with the
full arrival of the eschatological kingdom.[1223] Noel Brooks describes it in this
way:
When Jesus healed the sick He was giving to them a ‘firstfruits’ of ‘the
redemption of the body’ which He was to make possible by His death. So with
the healing ministry of the Apostles and their helpers: it was an ‘earnest’ and
‘firstfruits’ of final physical salvation. Every miracle of healing that the risen
Lord has given through His Church on earth is a deposit and pledge of that
‘redemption of the body’ which He has purchased by His death upon the
Cross.[1224]
 As seen throughout the early Pentecostal periodical literature, this healing was
believed to have come through participation in the Supper. It almost goes
without saying that this does not imply all those who eat in faith will be healed,
and obviously Pentecostals should vigilantly guard against formulaic doctrines
of the Supper that guarantee healing as a predictable, always-repeatable effect
triggered by some mechanistic control. After all, it is Christ the healer – not
healing itself – who is present in the Eucharist-event, and he is of course there in
the fullness of his freedom, wisdom, and compassion.[1225] This is not only a
word of caution, but also a word of reassurance and promise. Celebrants can and
should come to the Table confident that the one present to them is the one who
comes in the power of the Spirit to heal the sick and to deliver the oppressed.
[1226] Indeed, if they receive Christ’s body and blood in faith, they can be sure
that healing is taking place at the ontic depths of their being. Taking seriously
the witness of Scripture and the testimony of early Pentecostal sacramental
experience means believing also that this healing will sometimes ‘break out’ in
the miraculous restoration of the ailing and diseased. In the theology of the
Lord’s Supper here envisioned, Pentecostal communities can and should
anticipate these kinds of healings in and through the Sacrament, as well as in the
broader context of the celebration.[1227]
The sanctifying Christ who is present to heal is also present to baptize in the
Spirit;[1228] that is, to fill beyond measure the ecclesial community and its
members with the inexhaustible goodness of the divine nature.[1229] In Holy
Communion, as believers encounter the sanctifying Christ, eating and drinking
his body and blood, they partake of the divine Spirit[1230] and are baptized into
the divine love[1231] that God the Holy Spirit personally is.[1232] It is no
exaggeration to claim that all of Christ’s ministries are summed up in his work as
Spirit baptizer, for all that Christ does for us, he does by providing a share in the
divine energia and in this way deifying and humanizing us.[1233] Like healing,
Spirit baptism names the entire complex of Christ’s sanctifying ministries.[1234]
And because he is present in the bread and wine, so are all of his works. The
Eucharist-event is the locus of all that Christ and the Spirit are and do for us.
What do these proposals mean for the distinct(ive) experience of Spirit
baptism as traditionally understood by Pentecostals? They contextualize that
experience in the larger work of Christ in the church[1235] and in the cosmos,
identifying the experience of Spirit baptism as an epiphanic manifestation of the
reality of the promised kingdom and so as an eschatological sign. In the same
way as those who receive bodily healing, believers who are filled with the Spirit
are taken up as signa of the divine future in which all of creation will be
enlivened by the very life of God’s own Spirit.[1236] The upshot is this: Spirit
baptism should be understood not only as one experience alongside others – one
event of the Pentecostal via salutis – but also as a reality that always already
‘spills out’ to encompass all other ‘charismatic and missionary experiences that
relate us to others in the church and to people in the world’.[1237] On this view,
Pentecostals can and should expect the Spirit to ‘fall’ on the worshiping
community, freeing particular members to exercise the charismata exactly as 1
Corinthians 11 indicates. But these phenomena should be understood as
witnessing to a reality that is not yet arrived in its fullness but is already at work
powerfully in other, hidden ways in the lives of the ecclesia.[1238]
Claims as bold as the ones in this and the preceding sections require some
attempted articulation of how this might be so. The next section provides just
such an attempt.
Presence: How Does God Do What God Does?
Orientation
For now, Christ is in heaven, at the Father’s ‘right hand’, as Scripture and the
creeds proclaim. What sense does it make, then, to say he is bodily present in the
Eucharist-event? This question lies at the heart of the controversies that long
have troubled Christian thinking about the Eucharist.[1239] How can it be true
that Christ can be present in such a way in the Supper? Attempting to answer
this takes one into deep, deep water; but it is a dive one can and should make.
Before offering any constructive proposals, however, a few qualifications need
to be made. First, in the words of Herbert McCabe, ‘anything that takes the
mystery or scandal out of the Eucharist must be wrong’,[1240] because the
mystery and the scandal are properly basic to the Eucharist’s meaning and
purpose.[1241] Second, the how question, while important, is never as important
as the question of who is present.[1242] Even if one cannot find a satisfactory
explanation[1243] for the way in which the Spirit makes Christ present in
Communion pro nobis, one must be able to say that the Christ who is present is
the ‘whole Christ’, the bodily-risen Christ who is present in his divine-human
fullness as the kyrios of all things, the first-born of new creation, and the head of
the church. Third, we must be careful not to suppose that there is an already-
existing metaphysical system that can be used to once-for-all explain Christ’s
Eucharistic presence. If what is claimed in this chapter about the Real Presence
in the church’s Eucharist is true, then it is fundamentally true; and it follows,
then, that ‘our grasp of the Son’s real body and blood is the criterion of all our
other attempts to grasp something real’.[1244] Fourth, and finally, the truth of
the fact that Christ is present is not threatened by the shortcomings of our
attempts to explain how such a thing might be true. In the end, believers simply
have to step back from their books, stand or fall in believing awe – then rise and
eat![1245] In the wisdom of John Damascene, while we can and should affirm
that the bread and wine really are ‘changed into God’s body and blood’, we can
not discover some fully-satisfying explanation of this change.
But if you inquire how this happens, it is enough for you to learn that it was
through the Holy Spirit, just as the Lord took on Himself flesh that subsisted
in Him and was born of the holy Mother of God through the Spirit. And we
know nothing further save that the Word of God is true and energizes and is
omnipotent, but the manner of this cannot be searched out.[1246]
With these caveats in mind, the following construction, then, is not an attempt
to ‘search out’ the nature of Eucharistic presence in such a way as to dispel the
mystery or take the edge off the scandal. Instead, it is an attempt to gesture
toward the Beauty-Holiness[1247] embodied in the Supper, to provoke believing
awe in those who know themselves called to the Table.
Toward a Metaphysics of Communion
This is the heart of the matter: Christ is really, personally, and bodily present in
Communion because the Father wills it and the Spirit makes it so for the
sanctification of the church on mission in the world.[1248] In the Eucharist-
event, the Spirit ‘broods over’ the cosmically-enthroned Christ, the celebrating
congregation, and the elements on the Table,[1249] opening the celebrants to the
presence of the risen Jesus who the Spirit makes in that moment bodily present
for them with, in, and through the thereby-transfigured bread and wine.
Christ is capable of this kind of presence because of the power of the
eschatological Spirit and the nature of Christ’s own new-creation body, which is
both like and unlike our bodies.[1250] Whatever some have imagined
resurrection to mean, it is not just that Jesus’ once-dead body was revivedon
Easter. He received from the Father through the Spirit an entirely new form of
embodiment, a sw'ma pneumatikovn that perfectly befits him in his identity as
Pantokrator.[1251] Therefore, in the End his body shall include all things, and
in the beatific vision Christ shall be seen not only as one object among others but
also as the object through which all other objects – and the Father and the
Spirit – are somehow truly revealed. Then it shall be clear that
the  '' simply is the body of the ‘whole
Christ’.[1252] But for now, his embodiment is heavenly, sacramental, and
ecclesial;[1253] that is to say, his embodiment at the Father’s right hand[1254]
includes the Eucharistic bread and wine, the preached Gospel, and the
sanctorum communio,[1255] and these last serve as sacraments – effective signs
in the present of the future eschatological state of things.
But how can this be? One of the oldest problems in sacramental thought
concerns the nature of Christ’s post-resurrection embodiment. Jenson puts the
question with characteristic dash:
What does the body of the risen Christ look like? For if it ‘really’ is a body, it
must look like something. Is there extant somewhere a human organism which
looks like a first-century Galilean Jew, and which is somehow identifiable as
the one named Jesus? Or what?[1256]
It seems possible to answer along these lines: Yes, there is with God a ‘human
organism’ that bears even now in itself the marks of slaughter and that in the
beatific vision shall be seen and touched. However, the resurrected and
enthroned Christ, who is the beginning and end of the novum ultimum, is
uniquely embodied, so that his body is capable of being ‘here’ without failing to
be ‘there’. This ‘miracle’ is not generated by or dependent upon the priestly
consecratory acts, but belongs to the nature of Christ’s eschatological
embodiment and to the divine relations of Father to Son in their Spirit.
In the light of these assumptions, then, it would perhaps not be going too far to
suggest that the bread and wine are miraculously transfigured so they become for
us not merely figures of Christ and his sufferings but in fact the form of ‘the
deified body of the Lord’.[1257] As already said, Christ’s presence is never
limited to the elements as if he were somehow imprisoned in the bread and wine;
he is always present also alongside them as well as in and through them.[1258]
Nevertheless, if, as the biblical texts and witness of Christian tradition suggest,
the elements are in some special way Christ’s body and blood for us, then in
playing this role they must partake of the ontology of the Eschaton – which they
can do without ceasing to be the natural objects they are.[1259] In eating the
sacramental bread, then, are we not in fact tasting ‘the future bread which
is ejpiouvsion, that is, necessary for existence’?[1260] As McCabe explains, the
bread, by the miraculous power of the Creator, does not need to become a new
kind of thing in this world;[1261] it becomes only what it already is in the new
world, the world of the Eschaton.[1262]
As far as this world is concerned, nothing seems to have happened, but in fact
what we have is not part of this world, it is the Kingdom impinging on our
history and showing itself not by appearing in the world but by signs speaking
to this world.[1263]
Contra McCabe, however, I am holding that the bread and wine are natural
objects and eschatological objects, both-at-once. Or, put another way, they
remain natural objects that have been eschatologized. As Bulgakov says,
Eucharistic presence comes not by a physical but a metaphysical event.[1264]
The wine and bread are transfigured not by virtue of some change in the
chemical make-up of the elements, but by a creation ex nihilo that takes up the
bread and wine and imbues them with an ousia that perfects them with the
perfection all natural objects shall enjoy in the End.[1265] Therefore, inasmuch
as each Eucharist-event is new creation writ small, when the church gathers to
the Lord’s Supper it is confronted by a sign of the novum ultimum and just in
this way experiences the grace of the soon to-be-established reign of God in the
mystery of Christ’s sacramental presence, a presence that comes in and with and
by the transfigured elements, as well as the (proleptically, anticipatorily)
transformed hearts and minds and bodies of the worshippers.
Before moving on, a couple other clarifying remarks are in order. One, the
reality of Christ’s and the Spirit’s shared presence in the Supper does not wait on
our believing (in) it. Christ is there by the Spirit, whether we believe it or not.
[1266] Still, the Eucharist-event is divinely designed to speak the gospel to our
faith, to provoke us to believe wholeheartedly and whole-bodily. Two, this
reality does not wait on the power of some consecratory priestly-liturgical act.
To be sure, the liturgy is there by God’s purpose to draw celebrants’ attention to
the Christ who directed the church to ‘do this’ and to a relation to him that exists
in any case. The acting out of liturgical rubrics remains necessary because that is
the divinely-given way to show us the Lord who is really present just at that
moment. Nonetheless, the Lord is not under sway of liturgical rubrics.[1267]
Pentecostal Sacramentality and the (Im)Mediacy of Divine
Presence
It is universally agreed that Pentecostals expect to experience God directly,
immediately, ‘face-to-face’. Indeed, it is regarded by many scholars as one of the
defining characteristics of Pentecostal spirituality.[1268] Furthermore, nearly
everyone seemingly agrees that there exists a kind of ‘fundamental tension’ or
‘basic antinomy’ between the ‘immediacy of direct religious experience’ and the
forces of institutional media and liturgical structures, which effect encounter
with God only indirectly.[1269] Does this not ipso facto abolish the very
possibility of a strong Pentecostal sacramentality before the attempt to construct
one has even begun? No, but a reimagined metaphysics is needed, a new
understanding of reality that is informed by what Graham Ward names as an
‘analogical world-view’[1270] and grounded in trinitarian/christological
presuppositions that in turn enable us to think the nature of divine and human
being in ways that make Eucharistic – and so gospel – sense.
To that end, we have to address, first, a widely held but nonetheless mistaken
notion about human relationality. Because of the nature of our unique
embodiment and the peculiar form of our rationality, all human
experiences – whether of God or of our fellow creatures – are always already
necessarily mediated. All knowing is for human beings a knowing-through and
knowing-with. We do not know as God knows or as the angels know. Therefore,
if we are to see God, we must see God in, say, the burning bush or the mutilated
flesh of Jesus Christ.
Second, we have to continue to sharpen and strengthen our understanding of
the nature of God’s way with God and with creation. In my opinion, this then
should be(come) axiomatic for us: because Christ and the Spirit are who they are
to and for one another as sharers in one ousia, separate but not distinct
hypostases and because creation in its heavenly and earthly realities is peculiarly
apt for God (since made by this God for this end), then God’s immediacy does
not obviate the means of grace or render them redundant.[1271] In fact, God’s
immediacy in Christ by the Spirit is the very reality that makes room for the
means of grace and holds them in being, as it does all created things. Because
Christ is the Spirit-bearing, Spirit-baptizing one and the Spirit is the one who
‘testifies’ of Christ and just so makes Christ available to the Father and to us,
God’s nearness does not edge out but includes, takes up, the various ‘media’ that
bear the divine presence to us.[1272] Think, for instance, of the Shekinah
dwelling upon the Ark and the vizierial ministry of the Angel of the Lord. Think
of Scripture and preaching. Think, most of all, of Christ’s Spirit-baptized, human
nature.
Third, we have to make clearer that God’s revelation and our salvation are
inseparably bound up with the God-given and God-giving mediation – via Jesus
Christ, the church, the angels, the Scriptures, and the sacraments – that brings
this revelation to bear on us in such a way that in time all creation is redeemed
and we are renewed in the image and likeness of God.[1273]
That done, it becomes clear enough that sacramental means do not interfere or
come between God and the worshipper but exists as the very stuff (ousia), the
raw material of the direct encounter. Plainly put, the church’s Eucharist-event is
an experience of Christ’s personal presence, by the power of the Spirit
immediately mediated and mediately immediate.[1274] The Eucharist is not a
replacement for the words and works of an absent, far-removed Christ. No,
through sacramental bread and wine ‘the sign transmits the signified’ so that
Jesus is thereby and therein transformatively present. ‘What takes place in the
sacraments is the immediate encounter in mutual availability between the living
Kyrios and ourselves. The sacraments are this encounter.’[1275] A.B. Simpson
had it exactly right: the Lord’s Supper is ‘a direct personal touch of God’.[1276]
In sum, then: to speak of ‘immediate’ encounter is not necessarily to refer to
unmediated experience.[1277] All human experiences, whether of God or of our
fellow creatures, are always already necessarily mediated sensibly, affectively,
and/or conceptually – through logos, pathos, or soma of one kind or
another – because of the very structure of our nature, the character of human
being-in-the-world. It follows, then, that sacramental ‘means of grace’ do not
interfere or come between God and the worshipper, but are themselves the very
stuff, the raw material of the direct encounter. Plainly put, if what is claimed in
this work about the sacrament of Communion is true, then the Eucharist-event
simply is an experience of Christ’s personal presence, immediately mediated and
mediately immediate.[1278] The eating and drinking of the Eucharistic bread
and wine, the giving of thanks, the remembering of the paschal mystery are not
means-to-an-end, but, like lovers’ kisses, belong ineluctably to the thing itself.
This is the form that human, ecclesial encounter with God necessarily takes.
[1279]
The Trinity and the Sacrament
Pentecostal spirituality is nothing if not a personal engagement with Christ and
the Spirit.[1280] To this point, however, the experience of God’s ‘personal
presence’ has not been satisfactorily worked out in theological terms. In spite of
the fact that they have ‘a deep familiarity with the persons of Jesus and the
Spirit’,[1281] Pentecostals have yet to articulate an adequately clear explanation
of how Christ’s presence and work in the Sacrament is related to the Spirit’s
work and presence,[1282] and how their personal contributions relate to the will
and purposes of ‘our Father in heaven’.[1283] This is so, at least in part,
because the desire for personal relationship leads believers to focus on the
unitary presence of God.[1284] Tellingly, one finds a functional
interchangeability of the names ‘God’, ‘Jesus’, ‘heaven’, and ‘Spirit’ in early
Pentecostal testimonies of sacramental experience.[1285]
Contra Simon Chan, who finds early Pentecostals guilty of a misappropriating
the doctrine of divine personhood and of holding to a ‘crude conception of the
Trinity bordering on tritheism’,[1286] it could be argued on the strength of the
early periodical material provided in Chapter 3 that Pentecostals were attempting
to discern their way forward in an effort to construct a theology that justly
described both the reality of personal encounter with God and the distinctiveness
of the Spirit’s and the Son’s ministries. As Macchia explains, ‘By bearing
witness to both Christ and the reality of the Spirit’s presence imparted through
him, [early] Pentecostals were able to emphasize pneumatology as much as
Christology’.[1287] That work needs to be carried on.
Of course, the Spirit’s work is never separate from the Son’s, but the Spirit’s
work remains always distinct from Christ’s.[1288] The Spirit’s unique work is to
effect the Father’s promises that are embodied, revealed, and accomplished in
Christ.[1289] Christ is God’s objectivity in a unique sense: the Son alone of the
divine Three is embodied. The Spirit is the one who makes possible real and
transformative communion with Christ – as soma theou – and so with God and
God’s creation. According to Zizioulas, ‘The contribution of the Holy Spirit is
therefore to allow each agent to act as a person, unconstrained by all limits and
pressures’. Just as Christ through the Spirit ‘is able to surmount the bounds of
biology and history, and act in freedom,’[1290] so, in communion with Christ,
believers enjoy this same freedom and bear this same anointing. The Spirit is
able to do this because he is the Freedom[1291] who liberates Christ, the church,
and their shared ministry from the contingencies of history – and so allows them
to be participants in that history in a new-creation way.[1292]
In terms of the Sacrament, the Spirit is the ‘remembrancer divine’, the one
who brings the historical realities of Christ’s life and the eschatological realities
of the not yet realized kingdom to bear on the celebrants and their shared meal.
He is the subject of our receiving Christ in the Meal. However, because Christ is
the Spirit baptizer, the Spirit is in a sense also an object of our sacramental
experience. Of course, as was just said, the Holy Spirit is not incarnate and so he
cannot be experienced in the same way that Christ can. Nonetheless, the Spirit is
personal and personally present, in and with Christ. ‘Both Jesus and the Spirit
occupy the center but in different ways.’[1293] We can, therefore, talk of being
moved and touched by the Spirit as something distinct from what Christ does to
and for us in the Supper.[1294] We can even say, as Paul does, that we ‘drink the
Spirit’ (1 Cor. 12.13).[1295] This is because the Spirit is personally present as
the agency who makes possible Christ’s transformative presence to us,
sacramentally and otherwise. Of course, the Spirit’s is not a second, discrete
presence alongside Christ’s but the very vitality and effectiveness of Christ’s
own presence.[1296] ‘The hypostatic life of the Holy Spirit therefore consists in
manifesting Christ, Christ’s power, Christ’s life.’[1297] Perichoretically, the
Holy Spirit gives Christ to us and, as we are receiving him, Christ gives us the
Holy Spirit. At the Table,[1298] believers personally and corporately encounter
Christ-in-the-Spirit and the Spirit-through-Christ.[1299]
Perhaps no one has said this better than T.F. Torrance. In his description, the
Spirit comes as ‘the other Paraclete answering to the Paraclete above’. And in
this way, ‘when the Holy Spirit comes to us as the Agent of our renewal he
comes not only as the Holy Spirit of the one eternal God but as the Spirit
mediated through Christ Jesus and charged with his divine-human holiness’.
[1300]
… the Holy Spirit so unites earth to heaven and heaven to earth that in his
coming Christ himself returns to take up his dwelling in the Church, and he it
is who intercedes in its midst, who stands among us as our prayer and worship
and praise, offering and presenting himself in our place to the Father, so that is
in him and through and by him, in his name alone, that we appear before the
Face of God with the one offering of his beloved Son in whom he is well
pleased.[1301]
What does this mean for the church’s Communion? Simply this: the Eucharist-
event is possible only by virtue of and as an extension of the eternally ongoing
Pentecost-event.[1302] If Pentecost is possible only because of the incarnate
work of Christ, so the post-ascension ministry of Christ – including his
sacramental ministry – is possible only because of Pentecost. Christ
cannot[1303] act in the Eucharist apart from the Spirit and believers cannot
partake of Christ in the Eucharist without receiving the Spirit. So Ephraem the
Syrian hymns:
In your Bread there is hidden the Spirit who is not consumed,
In your Wine there dwells the Fire that is not drunk;
the Spirit is in your Bread, the Fire in your Wine –
a manifest wonder, that our lips have received.[1304]
Praxis: What Does This Mean for Pentecostal
Thought and Practice?
Introduction
If Christ indeed is sacramentally present by and with the Spirit in the Eucharist-
event to effect transformation into his divine-human likeness, then what does
this reality mean for Pentecostal spiritual life, ministry, and worship now and in
the future? In this section, I will sketch the broad contours of some constructive
proposals for Pentecostal theology and practice in the light of the constructive
work of the previous chapter, allowing some the major notes struck there to
resolve. Attention will focus on three interrelated and mutually-instructive
dimensions of Pentecostal praxis: hermeneutics and theological method,
mission, and worship.
Hermeneutics and Theological Method
Hermeneutics
As seen in Chapter 4, a firm consensus is forming among Pentecostals: theology
must arise from a deep, authentic spirituality and be done in, with, and for the
worshipping community.[1305] While in agreement with that consensus, I want
to suggest additionally that the church’s observance of the Lord’s Supper and
reflection on the theological significance of this event belongs at the center of
this proposed theological method. Land’s call for a people ‘formed in the Spirit
by the whole counsel of God’[1306] cannot be answered apart from the
community’s unique experience of God in the Eucharist and the theological
reflection to which this experience gives rise.
Interpreters are transformed in and through the encounter with Christ in the
Eucharist-event, a conversion that sensitizes interpreters to the mysterious depth,
vitality, and infinite intricacy of reality-in-Christ – and thereby fundamentally
alters the hermeneutical vision.[1307] Through faithful participation in the
Sacrament, the imagination is sanctified, healed, and baptized in the Spirit, an
event that is parabolically unfolded in the account of the Emmaus disciples’
dramatic encounter with the risen, strangely present and suddenly invisible
Christ (Lk. 24.13-35).[1308]
For those whose imaginations have been altered in these ways, Scripture takes
on a distinct, illuminated character.[1309] Their own Spirit-impelled
transformation into Christ makes possible a vision of the Christological depth
and breadth of the biblical witness. Minds renewed, they discern that Holy
Scripture’s ‘treasures are deep and lie hidden except to the mind of the Spirit
who reveals them …’[1310] As a result, Scripture’s references to the rite of
Communion, whether explicit (e.g. 1 Cor. 10.16-17; Acts 2.42) or implicit (e.g.
Gal. 3.1; Jn 6.25-59), as well as many other echoes of or allusions to the
Eucharist (e.g. Heb. 6.4-5; 1 Jn 5.8) take on a much richer texture and deeper
significance than would have been possible otherwise. What is more, many texts
that at least at the primary level have no reference whatsoever to the Supper
nevertheless are heard – if only in whispers – to speak to its meaning. For
example, the account in Exodus 24 of Moses and Israel’s rulers coming up the
mountain into the divine presence is clearly not a passage that speaks of the
Eucharist in any direct sense; however, it just as clearly can and does speak to
the church’s Eucharistic thought and practice.[1311] Hence, from this Scripture
interpreters come to understand that at the Table where Christ is present by the
Spirit both as host and meal, priest and sacrifice, believers are ‘coming up’ into
the presence of a God who is ‘coming down’ to meet them. They recognize the
truth that in the Eucharist-event, they – like (and of course in some ways also
unlike) Moses and Aaron – ‘see the God of Israel’; they, (again, like and unlike)
the ancients, eat and drink in God’s presence. But not only in God’s
presence – they in fact eat and drink Christ and so receive into their very being
the Spirit of God and in this way partake of the divine nature. A genuinely
Pentecostal Eucharistic theology, at least insofar as it intends to remain true to
the Pentecostal tradition’s practices, comes to the Scriptural texts – Old
Testament[1312] as well as New Testament – in these ways.[1313]
If it is true that the Scripture and the Eucharist are bound together divinely in a
mutually-informing relation, then numerous implications follow for Pentecostal
engagements with Scripture. It implies, first and foremost, that the liturgical
reading and performance of Scripture in the context of the community’s
Eucharist worship – where the biblical text and the rite of the Sacrament are
allowed ‘mutually [to] inform each other’[1314] as the Spirit sovereignly guides
the community’s interpretation through the ecclesial offices and the exercise of
the charismata – serves as the paradigmatic use of Scripture. Put differently, the
charismatic and Eucharistic community as it communes in the Spirit with the
totus Christus is the authoritative interpreter of Scripture. As a result, it is in the
context of the community’s Spirit-baptized and Spirit-led Eucharistic worship
that believers learn best what Scripture is and is for, and over time learns the
habits necessary for reading faithfully, with an ever-deepening appreciation for
Scripture’s ‘fuller sense’.[1315] All the many other faithful uses of Scripture,
whether scholarly or devotional, pastoral or evangelistic, should be judged in
this light.
Theological Method
If Scripture and the Lord’s Supper indeed are bound together in mutuality, then
the Supper – with and like Holy Scripture – would appear to be a norming norm
for theological reflection and formulation. In the words of Anglican canon
theologian Ralph McMichael, ‘The nature and method of theology is derived
from the Eucharist’, and this means that theology is ‘called to be ultimately and
accountably Eucharistic’.[1316] Methodist liturgist and systematician Geoffrey
Wainwright makes a similar claim, holding that ‘[d]octrinal appeal can be made
to the eucharist because in the eucharist the faith comes to focal expression’.
[1317] He offers two examples: Ignatius of Antioch, who made use of the
churches’ Eucharistic experience in his attempts to expose the absurdities of the
docetists’ teachings,[1318] and Irenaeus of Lyons, who did the same in his
refutation of the emerging gnostic theologies. Irenaeus’ famous statement, then,
serves as a kind of lex credendi: ‘Our teaching is in harmony with the Eucharist,
and the Eucharist confirms our teaching’.[1319] Put negatively, what does not
square with the Eucharist does not square with the gospel and therefore
invalidates itself.[1320]
But can Pentecostals – as Pentecostals – accept the methodological basicality
of the Eucharist? If so, what differences would follow from it for Pentecostal
theology and practice? The answer to the first question is a brief and decisive
Yes.[1321] The groundwork has already been laid by Pentecostals like
Christopher Stephenson, who suggests that Pentecostals’ experience of the
Lord’s Supper should serve as a key facet of theological method,[1322] Frank
Macchia, who calls for a ‘polycentric’ worship and theological method[1323] in
which preaching, spiritual gifts, and the sacraments share priority,[1324] and
Simon Chan, who asserts even more directly that Pentecostals[1325] must
recover the Reformers’ pairing of Word and Sacrament, even if they continue to
follow Calvin in finally subjecting the sacraments to the Word.[1326] In Chan’s
own view, ‘Not only is the sacrament more than the visible form of the Word,
but each is indispensable to the other’. As he sees it, ‘Sacrament brings the
proclaimed Word to its fulfillment’, so that ’Word without sacrament remains
incomplete, and sacrament without Word becomes an empty sign’.[1327] It
follows, then, that Pentecostal theologoumena would need to be tested not only
against the canonical Scriptures and in the context of the worshipping
community, but also in the light of the Eucharistic doctrine and experience.
[1328] In fact, Wolfgang Vondey goes so far as to suggest that apart from the
Eucharist-event, valid discernment simply cannot take place,[1329] either in the
local church or in the academy. Wainwright holds a similar position; in his
words, the ‘Eucharistic paradigm’
points us in the right direction: it sets the vector within which the difficult
concrete decisions and actions of everyday life have to be taken and
performed if they are to be authentically Christian; it excludes the choices
which would fall out of the range indicated by the values of the kingdom there
expressed in symbolic form.[1330]
On balance of what has been said in this and the previous chapter, Pentecostal
theology would appear not to be complete or whole without this ‘Eucharistic
paradigm’ and the ‘Eucharistic discernment’ it makes possible. As Schmemann
says, ‘[e]verything pertaining to the eucharist pertains to the Church, and
everything pertaining to the Church pertains to the eucharist and is tested by this
interdependence’.[1331]
Finally, in order to make clear the methodological implications of this
proposed methodology, a comparison with other Pentecostal methodologies may
prove helpful. To that end, I will take up two such models that not only have
been developed and articulated by leading Pentecostal thinkers, but also have
been tested and put to use by other Pentecostal scholars in various contexts. The
two models I engage – Ken Archer’s narrativistic methodology and Amos
Yong’s ‘foundational pneumatology’ – differ significantly both from one another
and from mine, and the many differences should help to cast my own view into
relief. Therefore, having first sketched the outline of their respective theological
models, I will bring them into dialogue with my proposed method, identifying
key similarities and differences, and finally gesturing toward what these
differences might mean for the future of the Pentecostal theological and spiritual
tradition.
Archer is concerned above all with faithfulness to the Pentecostal tradition.
[1332] For him, ‘Pentecostal’ is not only an adjective (as if for example one
could only be a Pentecostal Evangelical or a Pentecostal Catholic) but also a
noun (so that to identify oneself as a Pentecostal is to claim membership in a
‘distinctly identifiable community embodying its own Christian spirituality’).
[1333] On his view, the emergence of Pentecostalism is nothing less than ‘the
creation of a distinctly new and yet still authentically Christian mold’ of
spirituality.[1334] Hence, he calls for and attempts to articulate a theological
methodology that does justice to the Pentecostal tradition(s) as he understands
it/them. Such a methodology, Archer believes, must be integrative and holistic,
bringing ortho-praxis and ortho-pistis into dialogical contact with ortho-pathos,
[1335] which effects the integration of doing and knowing in a perfectly mutual
relationship. Archer insists that this integrative methodology must also be
narrativistic, by which he means (a) that all theological reflection and
discussion must come back to Jesus,[1336] who personally is the ‘heart of the
story’ of salvation;[1337] (b) that all theological claims should be cast in
narrativistic terms. For obvious reasons, then, Archer holds the 5-fold gospel as
a distillation of the ‘central narrative convictions’ of Pentecostalism; it functions
for him – and he believes for the whole of the movement – as the decisive
feature of an authentically Pentecostal theological methodology. In his words,
Pentecostal theology should be ‘structured around the Five-fold Gospel and
centered upon Jesus Christ’, and he provides an image that captures the essence
of his proposed model: ‘The theological center is the person Jesus Christ, and
protruding out of the center are the five spokes which serve to explain the
significance of the story of Jesus Christ for the community and the world’.[1338]
He qualifies these claims by saying that the articulation of the 5-fold gospel must
be done so that the ‘necessary role and missional activity’ of the Holy Spirit is
neither eclipsed by nor subsumed in Christ; in effect, this means that all talk of
Jesus must work ‘out’ through recognition of the Spirit to the ‘missional story of
the Social Trinity’ and then back again to Jesus and his story.[1339]
As Archer sees it, theology emerges for Pentecostals from ‘redemptive
encounter with the living Word, Jesus Christ’ who is present ‘through the
powerful presence of the Holy Spirit’ in a worshipping community in which the
distinctive Pentecostal oral/aural and affective spirituality finds expression in,
among other things, ‘testimonies, songs, trances, inspired preaching and dance’.
[1340] Hence, on Archer’s view, an authentically Pentecostal theological
methodology arises from and in the context of Pentecostal worship and
privileges the experiences and testimonies of those who are moved by the Spirit
and the Word. In these ways, theology becomes a ‘personal confessional
extension of one’s intimate yet communal relationship with the living God’.
[1341] The ‘doxological testimonies’ embedded in the claims of the 5-fold
gospel are nothing other than ‘affectionate affirmations’ of the transformative
work of God and provide the Pentecostal community with the meta-narrative
necessary for making sense of its identity.[1342] When such a methodology is
put into action, Archer believes it will bear fruit in the development of a ‘critical
theology’ that serves present-day communities while remaining ‘in continuity
with the manner of the earliest Christians and early Pentecostals’.[1343] In spite
of Frank Macchia’s claims to the contrary, Archer believes that the post-critical
narrativistic model he proposes can address ‘traditional theological loci’,
although of course it will do so in non-traditional ways. His final word is a word
of humility: convinced as he is that the methodology he proposes is a legitimate
and viable one, he does not believe that it is ‘necessarily the definitive
contribution’, for ‘surely the Spirit has more to say and ways to say it!’[1344]
Amos Yong develops his theological method in conversation with the history
of Christian theology. Pentecostalism – which for Yong is not limited to classical
Pentecostalism – does not map neatly on any of the post-Reformation models for
doing theology,[1345] in spite of the fact that most Pentecostals[1346] would
profess to hold to some version of sola scriptura.[1347] Accordingly, he is
much less confident than Archer that first-generation Pentecostalism can provide
an objective standard, a plumb-line, for Pentecostal theology.[1348] There is, he
insists, ‘no one Pentecostal story’,[1349] and he points out that there is ‘no
monolithic ecumenical tradition with which to engage’ owing to fact that ‘the
Oneness [Pentecostal] position raises questions even about Nicene orthodoxy’.
[1350] Asserting his commitment to engage the Christian theological tradition as
a Pentecostal theologian, Yong nonetheless remains determined not to let the
tradition ‘dictate the conversation’.[1351] Therefore, as an alternative to the
hope of a Pentecostal theology fitted to the larger Christian tradition, he proposes
that Pentecostals accept the pluralism of experience and begin the theological
task with the assumption that the Spirit is ‘present and active today’. In his
judgment, theology is a ‘second-order activity of reflecting on experience’ of and
in the Spirit.[1352] What is more, given the incredible variety of Christian
experience, it is inescapably, absolutely pluralistic.[1353] Informed by his
reading of Acts 2 and 1 Corinthians 12, Yong contends that this plurality of
experience – and so of theology – is warranted, not only on the individual but
also on the corporate level. And as with personal and corporate experience, so
with Scripture: the Spirit guarantees that both the biblical texts themselves and
the interpretation of these texts are multiple and pluriform.[1354] All this to say,
no ecclesial or dogmatic meta-narrative can credibly be accepted, and ‘no
monolithic ecumenical tradition [exists] with which to engage’.[1355]
Committed as he is to ecumenical discussion, Yong is ‘wary’ about allowing the
theological traditions of the church to dictate the discussion or set the parameters
by imposing from outside and above a ‘categorical framework’.[1356] He is
quick to admit, however, that despite the fact that Pentecostals are ‘comfortable
with the cacophony of many tongues’ it is not enough merely to assert pluralism
as a work of the Spirit or to accept the differences that mark the separate
traditions as normative. Instead, an apology is required; ‘some indication of how
there can be coherence amidst the many’.[1357] Pentecostals must be able to
discern the truth of the Holy Spirit from the falsity of other spirits? Like Archer,
Yong has come to believe that the 5-fold gospel provides the best structure for
doing this work.[1358]
How do Yong’s and Archer’s models compare/contrast with the methodology
proposed in this chapter and the previous one? Clearly, the three methods
overlap in many areas, especially in their attempt to do justice to the distinctives
of the Pentecostal tradition(s), and without question much of my own work
remains indebted to theirs. Real differences remain, however, mostly having to
do with diverging (if not conflicting) assumptions about ecclesiology. Although
they express themselves differently and have unique points of emphasis, both
Archer and Yong stress the importance of community for theological method;
nevertheless, their convictions about the nature of the church seemingly differ
widely from those that underlie the view I have proposed. In the final analysis,
the heart of the issue apparently lies in the question of the relation of Christ and
the Spirit to the church as Christ’s body and the temple of the Spirit. The method
I have in view sees the Spirit baptized and Spirit baptizing totus Christus – and
not Jesus alone or the Social Trinity alone – as the central character in the drama
of the Triune God’s romance with creation. Also, I assume that one cannot
faithfully tell the story of the God of Scripture without also telling the story of
the ecclesia theou, which means that the church’s story must have the same
unity as does Christ’s, for they share one history.
It would seem that Archer and Yong would not accept this last claim as
true – at least not without major qualifications. In a certain sense, they stand not
‘under’ but ‘beside’ the church’s liturgico-dogmatic tradition, although each
stands at a different distance from that tradition than the other. Given the
strength of their claims about the Trinity, about the full divinity and humanity of
Christ, and about the deity of the Spirit, this distance from the tradition is
puzzling, especially in Yong’s case, given that he is suspicious of even the
Nicene tradition. Archer is not so wary of the church’s dogma; in fact, he claims
that Pentecostalism is a genuinely Christian movement, and for all that he says
about the adequacy of the ‘Bible Reading Method’ he nonetheless acknowledges
that the Pentecostal hermeneutical movement must ‘extend past the canon to the
Church’s understanding of Scripture through time’. In fact, he goes so far as to
claim that the interpreting community ‘must take into consideration the wider
church body and the history of doctrinal development’.[1359] Still, he leaves
unexplored how this might be done. So, while I affirm his and Yong’s relatively
strong sacramentality, their high pneumatic christologies, their robust
trinitarianism, and their emphasis on the authority of the community, it is
difficult for me to see how their respective methodologies in and of themselves
provide the necessary grounding for such claims. In a sense, then, my proposals
can be understood as an attempt to provide just such a grounding. Insofar as I am
successful, I am showing how it might be possible to develop an authentically
Pentecostal theological method that remains at every point in discerning
conversation with ‘the wider church body and the history of doctrinal
development’, exactly as Archer suggests needs to be done.[1360]
This of course forces the question: is it possible for Pentecostals as
Pentecostals to establish such a ground for their theological claims? Whatever
answer one might give, it is indisputable that throughout the history of the
Pentecostal movement at least a vocal minority have recognized the authority of
the church’s ‘living tradition’ and attempted to explicate Pentecostal experience
in the light of it. Although they were not alone,[1361] members of the PH church
seem to have taken the lead on this front. G.F. Taylor, for one, held that the early
conciliar dogmatic tradition developed under the Spirit’s guidance so that
throughout subsequent centuries these creeds might serve as divinely-given
‘signboards to point to the proper interpretation of Scripture’.[1362] Similarly,
the trinitarian dogma of the Nicene tradition determined the shape of J.H. King’s
hermeneutic and theological method.[1363] On the strength of the evidence of
the early periodical literature, it is possible to say that the ambition to show how
Pentecostal theology and spirituality fit within the larger narrative of Christian
doctrine was engrained in the culture of the PH church.[1364] For instance, in
his introduction to G.F. Taylor’s The Spirit and the Bride, King offers a
progressive view of Christian doctrine that suggests he understands Taylor’s
innovations as an ‘unfoldment’ that even in their newness remain essentially at
one with the depositum fidei.[1365] Decades later, Noel Brooks worked to
reimagine the doctrine of ‘healing as in the atonement’[1366] by drawing on the
history of Christian belief, as well as by extensive Scriptural exegesis and
analysis.[1367] In much the same way, he asserted in another context the
church’s role in authoritative interpretation, maintaining that the individual’s
interpretation of Scripture is neither infallible nor ‘the last word’; in fact, even
the Spirit-led interpretation must be subject ‘to the authority of the Holy Spirit in
the Holy Scripture and guided by wisdom of the Holy Spirit in the church
today’.[1368] In the same spirit, William Bittler, a PH pastor from Harrisonburg,
VA, reminds PHA readers of the ‘divine gifts’ of the Church, the Scripture, the
ordained ministry, and the sacraments.[1369] R.O. Corvin, then dean of the
Graduate School at Oral Roberts University, insisted that the claims of the
ecumenical creeds (by which he meant Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian) grew
from the ‘seed’ of Peter’s confession (Mt. 16.16), and even while the Apostles’
Creed is not divinely inspired in the way that Scripture is, it nonetheless is in
‘full harmony with the spirit and letter of the New Testament’.[1370]
Whatever else they might be taken to mean, these testimonies suggest that it is
possible to imagine an authentically Pentecostal theological method that takes
seriously the larger Christian tradition. Perhaps a robust sacramentality is the
best means for pointing the way forward along these lines, for as the ecumenist
Robert Jenson says the sacraments, conciliar dogma, and theological
hermeneutics make ‘one interlocked complex’.[1371] If Pentecostals are to
develop a theological methodology that grounds Pentecostal thought and
practice in the Nicene tradition as suggested by J.H. King, G.F. Taylor, and other
early Pentecostals then it would be helpful if not in fact necessary to develop a
sacramentality in keeping with that of the churches that gave rise to that
tradition, which is inextricably liturgical as well as dogmatic.[1372] Insofar as it
achieves my aims, the view of the Eucharist laid out in this thesis is a
contribution to that end.
Mission
How does the Eucharist-event and the praxis it entails relate to Pentecostal
mission? Clearly, on the view proposed in this and the previous chapter, the
Lord’s Supper is central to Pentecostal spirituality. In fact, it belongs to every
domain of Pentecostal thought and practice. Therefore, a genuinely Pentecostal
account of mission needs to be rooted in the realities the Supper embodies and
mediates. It remains to be seen, however, what it would mean to work this out in
detail.
First, it needs to be clear that the Lord’s Supper is – and so must be recognized
and enacted as – a missionary meal, a meal for the world. Some are sure to think
it passing strange to speak of Communion as a meal for the world given that it is
so plainly a meal for the church and the church’s order and unity, as seen for
example in the letters of Ignatius, bishop of Antioch.[1373] Nevertheless, after
some reflection it becomes clear that the Eucharist must be missional principally
because the Christ whom the Eucharist gives and praises is himself the
embodiment of the missio dei, and also because the church that receives and
celebrates the Eucharist is made by the Spirit of God to be ‘an ongoing
Pentecost’,[1374] a prolongation of Christ’s incarnational ministry pro mundo.
[1375] In other words, the Lord’s Supper brings into focus the community’s
vocation as the missional soma Christou; the call to be one with Christ as his
body[1376] is both signified and effected in the church’s giving and receiving of
Christ’s sacramental body and blood.[1377] Bruce Marshall puts it precisely:
‘Eucharistic fellowship is thus essential to the reality of the church, and, more
than any other public practice, it gives the church that specific character by
which the world comes to faith in the gospel, namely that of a visibly united
body’.[1378] In the Eucharist-event
all the facets of the Missio Dei find expression: God’s continuing love for the
world that He created; His self-identification with the fallen world by the
 incarnation; His redemption of the world through Christ’s death and
resurrection; His gift of new life in the Holy Spirit; His promise of the new
creation at the end of time. Thus the Eucharist shows forth and anticipates that
unity of God with all creation, which is the goal of the mission of God.[1379]
In one sense, the Eucharist is a gift to the world precisely in its structure as a
meal for the church. If this seems absurd, it has only to be remembered that the
church’s mission to and for the world depends on the integrity of the gospel-
message, an integrity that must be maintained.[1380] Therefore, mission always
already necessarily entails the upholding of the purity of the church’s theology
(dogma) and gospel-proclamation (kerygma) to God and God’s creation and the
striving for and – insofar as it is achieved – the maintenance of the church’s
visible unity[1381] both locally and universally. Only in this way can the work
of mission – including churchly discipline, evangelism, diaconal care for widows
and orphans, discipleship, pastoral care, and catechesis – be done faithfully. All
this notwithstanding, as Pentecostals have always known, there is another sense
in which mission requires a turning out to ‘the world’, to those who do not
believe in Christ, who do not know the Triune God. Synaxis finds its life in
missio – ‘mission is the mother of the church’[1382] – and vice versa. As a
result, there is a kind of rhythm to the rightly-ordered churchly life, a Mobius
strip-like continuity of going out in mission and coming in, in worship. Or, to
change the metaphor once again, the healthy church not only ‘inhales’, but also
must ‘exhale’.[1383]
This dynamic interchange of worship and mission reveals itself beautifully in
the Lukan narrative, especially at the end of the Third Gospel and the opening of
Acts. At the conclusion of the Emmaus road story, immediately after the
disciples have had their eyes suddenly opened to the reality of the resurrected
Christ, they return to Jerusalem to share their story with the eleven apostles and
the other disciples (Lk. 24.31-35). Christ meets them there, shows them his
wounds and again eats with them, ‘opening’ their minds to understand the
Scripture. Then, he leads them out of the city, blesses them, and ‘ascends’. They
return overjoyed to Jerusalem to the Temple in worship (Lk. 24.36-53) where
they remain until the Spirit falls upon them and propels them, once again, into
mission (Acts 1 and 2). In these stories, a basic pattern shows itself: worship
fires the disciples into mission, and as they engage in mission, in the telling of
the good news, they encounter Christ by the Spirit and worship ensues.
Because early Pentecostalism understood itself as in some sense re-living the
story of the Lukan Pentecostal community, it is unsurprising that the tight
interplay of worship and mission was a vital aspect of the movement’s ethos.
This distinguished the Pentecostal movement from most of the Protestant
movements and denominations of the time. At the turn of the 20th century,
missionary activity for many Protestant denominations in Europe and the United
States was not conceived as constitutive of churchly identity; instead, ‘volunteer
parachurch agencies bore the main missionary responsibility within Protestant
denominations’.[1384] The Pentecostals would have agreed with – and by force
of their missionary efforts, arguably contributed to – what is now an ecumenical
consensus: ‘mission is the raison d'être of the church’s existence and function in
the world’.[1385]
For first-generation Pentecostals, the interplay of worship and mission was so
tight that at certain points the two became virtually indistinguishable. This is
nowhere clearer than in their fellowship meals. What one Pentecostal Evangel
contributor says of the early Christian habit of ‘breaking bread’ (as in Acts 2),
applies to the experience of early Pentecostals well:
Do these words describe an ordinary meal or the Communion? Perhaps both.
This is what may have occurred: at first the disciples may have taken their
meals in common; as they surrounded the tables to ask the divine blessing
upon the bread and wine, the memory of their Lord’s last meal would come to
their minds, and the blessing upon the food would spontaneously enlarge itself
into a service of worship, so that in many cases it would have been difficult to
determine whether they were having a common meal or partaking of the
Sacrament. So real was God's presence to these early disciples that life and
worship were blended; for them to live was to worship, and to worship was to
live.[1386]
These times of intimate fellowship at a common table – an adaptation of
Wesleyan ‘love feasts’ and the agape meals of the ancient church[1387] – served
as a unique and uniquely effective vehicle for bearing the reality encountered in
worship into ‘real life’.
This capacity for flowing in and out of worship, for integrating ‘real life’ with
the doxological realities of corporate communion, is in many ways the most
basic skill required in the Christian life. As the Methodist theologian Wainwright
says,
… what is there [i.e. in worship] received and enjoyed in reality-filled
symbols has to be discerned and enacted in everyday life, both among
Christian believers and, so far as they are able, in the affairs of society at
large. Christians come from the world, bearing (as it were) the raw materials
for the eucharist, which is then celebrated in the assembled church. From the
 liturgical gathering they return to recognize and translate the eschatological
reality – there experienced under signs – in quite mundane decisions and
deeds which are part of the history of a human race that is an object of God’s
loving purpose.[1388]
The call for discernment/recognition and enactment/translation strikes distinctly
Pentecostal notes, for Pentecostals are people who believe that the Christian life
depends at every moment on the Spirit’s ‘leading’, on the Spirit’s sovereignly
wise and infinitely creative guidance through life. As the Spirit enables believers
to ‘translate’[1389] the sacramentally-given realities of the kingdom concretely
through the ‘mundane decisions and deeds’ of normal, everyday life, believers
are sacramentalized, so to speak, so that for them ‘all occasions of human
contact … become the medium of that communion with God and among human
beings which is marked by justice, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit, and in
which the kingdom of God consists’.[1390] Now, as then, the Eucharistic reality
has to be inscribed in the being of the celebrants so that they come to embody
the Word of the Sacrament. Or, to say the same thing another way, the celebrants
must become Christified. This is what it would mean for ‘all occasions of human
contact to become the medium of that communion with God’. The Spirit has his
‘perfect work’ (Jas 1.4) in believers’ lives as they take a Eucharistic shape; as
they, like Christ and the meal that he identifies himself with, are taken, blessed,
broken, and given for the hungry.[1391]
Deep moral formation can and should take place in and through the
celebration of the Lord’s Supper,[1392] for to take the bread and the cup is
willingly, even delightedly, to receive the obligation to live out the reality
signified in the Supper. So much so that the Eucharist simply is not complete, is
not truly itself, until it reaches fulfillment in the lived faithfulness of the
community and its members. [1393] At the Table, Christians offer themselves
and their corporate worship in full confidence that precisely in giving to God
they are themselves transformed into Christ who himself is both the divinely-
pleasing gift and giver. Precisely because the Eucharist-event is donum, a
sacrifice of thanksgiving and adoration to the God of Jesus Christ, it is an
effective sign of transformation. The love for God that the church professes in its
Eucharistic celebration has at its depth the transforming love o f God that the
Spirit is and effects in the community.
This formation of a Christ-like ‘second nature’ in the celebrants – that is, the
attainment of true holiness – comes as believers find themselves being narrated
into the story of creation’s redemption in Christ, the beloved Son.[1394] The
sacraments, and particularly the Eucharist, convey this story with unique power
and so make possible a character-forming narration of the community’s life as a
life of co-participation in Christ’s storied existence as eternally-beloved Son and
‘firstborn of all creation’ (Col. 1.15). Hauerwas provides a dictum that
underscores the point: ‘In the sacraments we enact the story of Jesus and in so
doing form a community in his image’.[1395] As has been previously argued,
this enactment of Jesus’ story has both recapitulative and proleptic dimensions.
The church’s celebration of Christ’s meal is both a re-enactment of Jesus’ history
and a pre-enactment of the eternal messianic banquet that is the beatific vision,
the endless event that makes all angels ‘angels of the face’, all humans lively
members of Christ’s mystical body, and all things effective signs of his
victorious passion. As a matter of practice, then, celebrants should have
impressed on their minds and hearts the full sweep of the gospel narrative in
preparation for the giving and receiving of the sacramental loaf and the cup; in
this way, as they experience Lord’s Supper in the taboric light of the
eschatological feast and in the shadows of the agonistic events of Christ’s last
week, believers are positioned to be led by the Spirit into the form of life
symbolized and signified in the sacred meal.
For good reason, the Christian imagination holds in closest possible
connection the Eucharist and martyrdom on one hand and martyrdom and
mission on the other hand.[1396] This is because mission, like both the Eucharist
and martyrdom, is the offering up of the body in and as sacrifice.[1397] In
giving their bodies to be burned or consumed by wild beasts, the martyrs were in
fact imitating Christ in his immolation, and were just in this way becoming
embodied, effective signs not only of the kingdom that Christ is, but also of the
church as the worshipping missionary people of God. Accordingly, this is what it
means to be a witness to Jesus Christ ( martuvrwn ∆Ihsou') :[1398] to give
oneself in love to God and neighbor and enemy in a life of ‘protracted
martyrdom’[1399] that is perfectly signified in the Eucharist.[1400] ‘In the
Eucharistic celebration, therefore, we announce not only the death of Christ, but
also our own death.’[1401] Those who consume the bread of Christ’s body are
themselves apt to be broken and devoured, ground in the teeth of God’s enemies,
as Ignatius desired to be and was. Those who drink the one, inebriating Spirit
(Ps. 23.5; 1 Cor. 11.13)[1402] know themselves as the people who bless the cup
of blessing (1 Cor. 10.16) and therefore as the people prepared also to drink the
cup of Christ’s suffering (Mt. 20.23) for the sake of the world.
In his Baptized in the Spirit, Macchia plays on Christoph Blumhardt’s
description of the Christian life as involving two conversions – ‘from the world
to God and from God to the world’. Macchia asks his readers to think of Spirit
baptism as both ‘a prophetic call that draws one close to the heart of God in
praise and prophetic empathy for the world’, but to allow the accent to fall on
the ‘second conversion’, so that Spirit baptism is understood as the needed
empowerment for ‘witness in the world’.[1403] He believes this ‘second
conversion’, this reorientation to the world, comes as the Spirit ‘fills us with the
love of God so that we transcend ourselves and cross boundaries’.[1404] In
conversation with Macchia, I would propose two modifications. First, one need
never convert ‘from God’ (or from the church), since God is God always in and
for the world as well as in and for the church. In fact, God makes the church to
be for the world and the world to be for the church. As Ephesians teaches, God
has made Christ head over all things ‘for the church’ (Eph. 1.22) so that
‘through the church’ God might make the ‘mystery’ known (Eph. 3.1-10).[1405]
Second, it might be helpful to think not of a ‘second’ but of a series of
conversions, so that the believing community and its members are always
‘caught’ between church and the world, ‘hard pressed between the two’ (Phil.
1.23). Perhaps that tension is the very dynamic of a genuinely cruciform life.
Worship
At this juncture in the movement’s history, the Communion rite does not hold a
pre-eminent place in most Pentecostal worship services. Contemporary
Pentecostal congregations typically[1406] celebrate the Supper infrequently (at
most on a monthly or quarterly basis), so that the vast majority of Pentecostal
worship services are centered in singing, prayer, and preaching, rather than in the
Eucharist.[1407] It will come as no surprise for those who have read this chapter
and the previous one that I find this troubling and problematic; for, as I have
argued, I believe the Lord’s Supper belongs at the heart of the Christian life and
so at the center of Pentecostal worship. To put it prescriptively, the Eucharist-
event should be recognized as the hub of the worship service.[1408] Or, to use
another image, it should be seen as the hearth around which all the other
liturgical furniture is arranged.[1409] In the event of the church’s corporate
worship the whole of the Christian life comes to liturgical focus,[1410] and this
focus is sharpest in the (rightly spirited and faithful) Eucharistic celebration.
[1411] At the Lord’s Table, the Spirit reminds worshippers that the whole of
created life centers in the story of Jesus Christ, who has brought, shall bring, and
is bringing all reality into communion with God.[1412]
I am not unsympathetic with those who worry that frequent Communion
would produce an overemphasis on the Sacrament, drawing attention away from
the personal, ‘immediate’ encounter with God, edging out those practices that
have long characterized Pentecostal worship and spirituality, and ultimately
collapsing in a ‘dead ritualism’[1413] that stifles the freedom of the charismatic
Spirit. History makes clear that it is possible for the very (Eucharistic) altars that
are meant to ‘expiate sin’ to become ‘altars for sinning’ (Hos. 8.11). The bread
and wine can be given and shared without the Lord’s Supper taking place (1 Cor.
11.20), for when the rite of Communion is observed in ways that quench the
very Spirit who makes the meal to be the sacrament of the coming victory of
God and the church’s unity ejn cristw/' ∆Ihsou' , then it is a sacrifice that defiles
rather than sanctifies (Hos. 9.4). All these reservations and concerns
notwithstanding, I remain convinced that it is possible to revision and reform
Pentecostal worship around the Eucharist-event in such a way that the believing
community becomes more and more apt for Christ’s transformative presence in
the Spirit – so long as the revisioning and reformation are done discerningly.
[1414] To that end, it is crucial that the Eucharist-event be framed and
undergirded by characteristic Pentecostal practices, such as the altar call,
‘tarrying’,[1415] prayers for healing,[1416] testimonies,[1417] and footwashing.
[1418] This is necessary for many reasons. First, these practices keep attention
on the God who is present to and for the community so that the church’s
celebration of the Lord’s Supper is understood and experienced as an act of
worship, an eruption of ‘loving adoration’[1419] for the God revealed in the
narrative of Jesus Christ, and in precisely in that way as a salutary means of
blessing. For good reason, from very early in the Christian liturgical tradition the
Lord’s Supper has been recognized as ‘the pre-eminent sacrifice of praise’.
[1420] In the faithful act of eating and drinking the sacramental body and blood,
believers understand themselves as obediently offering up thanksgiving to the
triune God who makes them who they are and the event what it is. In this way,
celebrants avoid instrumentalizing the Eucharist, resisting the temptation to
make of the Supper a mechanical ‘means of grace’.[1421] Second, these
practices help to underscore the communal reality of Communion.[1422] After
all, this is at the heart of the matter: the liturgy of the Eucharist-event should (in
fact and not merely in word) occasion ‘the work of the people’ ( leitourgiva ).
[1423] Third, these practices make room for the Spirit to act through the
charismatically-endowed members of the community for the ‘upbuilding of the
body’ (1 Cor. 14.12). On the one hand, this guarantees that the charismata are
intimately related to the gospel-story as it is sacramentally enacted,[1424] with
preaching and other ministries always ‘point[ing] to and confirm[ing]’ the reality
embodied in the sacred meal at the center of the church’s liturgical life and in
this way opening up the believing celebrants to the pneumatic and eschatological
realities of ecclesial life and the cosmic scope of salvation in Christ.[1425] On
the other hand, it serves to guard against the flattening and hardening of the
sacramental celebration into mere ritual.[1426]
 Some corners of the early Pentecostal movement – and especially the leaders
of the Pentecostal Holiness Church – went so far as to develop or at least make
use of already existing liturgical rubrics in the attempt to give a faithful shape to
the celebration of Communion, rubrics that because they exist as testimonies to
the sacramentality that characterized early Pentecostalism may well open the
way for contemporary Pentecostal liturgical reforms.[1427] In the process of
developing these liturgies, a few basic guidelines must be kept it mind. First, it
would seem necessary that the Supper be celebrated in such a way that before,
during, and after the receiving of the cup and the loaf ‘inspired spontaneity’ and
‘skilled improvisation’[1428] remain possible.[1429] Similarly, it seems
appropriate that space should be given in the service for discerning reflection in
preparation for receiving the meal; celebrants should ‘examine themselves’ (1
Cor. 11.28) to see if they are living rightly in relation to other members of the
community. Also, while the mysteriousness of the event should not be
compromised by sentimentality or over-neat explanation,[1430]
participants – even the young and newly baptized – should have an appropriate
grasp of the meaning and purpose of the Supper. To ensure this, it is essential
that the minister who presides at the Table take time to explain spiritedly and in
instructive detail why it is that the church gathers for this meal and how it is that
the meal may be received in good faith. Second, following the example of the
early Pentecostal communities,[1431] the rite of Communion should require
sharing in a single cup and loaf,[1432] for the Spirit’s work through the meal is
inseparable from – although not constrained by – the meal’s signature, its
symbolic power of meaning. Third, contemporary Pentecostals should maintain
the traditional Pentecostal (and Wesleyan) practice of keeping an ‘open’ Table,
so that all believers who remain in good standing with their communities,
including believing children,[1433] are allowed to participate, receiving of
course both the loaf and the cup. Some are sure to be uncomfortable with talk of
communing children, but so long as the community accepts a child as its own,
then the child has every right to receive the Supper.[1434] The same applies for
those with mental challenges, and for the same reasons.[1435] Pentecostals agree
with the sentiments of the ecumenical theologian Robert Jenson, who puts the
point forcefully: ‘Christ’s presence as the bread and cup is not separable from
the unity it creates of those who share the meal’. Consequently, in spite of the
many proposed rationalizations to the contrary, the case for an open table is
simple and straightforward:
if I and my group celebrate the Supper, and do not admit you, this is
excommunication; and if we indeed belong to the body of Christ, as we claim
 merely by our celebration, it is excommunication from the body of Christ …
There is no middle ground. If you acknowledge that I belong to the church,
you must admit me to your Supper. If you will not admit me to your Supper,
you should not then talk about my nevertheless being your ‘fellow in Christ’.
[1436]
In this practice of the open Table, Pentecostals bear witness to the generous
oneness of the church and the radical hospitality of the church’s Lord.
When all has been said, however, a basic and deeply troubling problem
remains. If the Eucharist is what it is claimed to be, then how can the church be
divided? Anglican priest and theological historian Ephraim Radner raises just
this concern, suggesting that most theories of the Eucharist in fact abstract
Eucharistic doctrine from the concreteness of the church’s brokenness so that the
‘whole question of how in fact the Eucharist “tastes” in a contemporaneously
divided church can be avoided in this framework, since its
savor – “foretaste” – derives from something whose substance lies beyond the
“bitter root” of the present’.[1437] Radner concludes that ‘the Eucharist in this
way has been bequeathed to an ahistorical Spirit, whose life, whose sensibilities,
are granted immunity from the prophecies that touch the Church’s form’.
Churchly decisions have in fact dismembered the body of Christ so that the
church now exists in ‘pneumatic abandonment’, in the absence of the Spirit. As a
result, the character of the church’s sacraments is compromised. ‘Until unity is
reestablished, the character of any sacrament is emptied of any practical divine
effect, and turns into an instrument of increased defilement and
alienation.’[1438]
Radner is surely right to call attention to the dividedness of the church, and to
call into question claims about the Eucharist that for all their intellectual
coherence do not touch the realities of churchly life. He wisely raises concerns
about whether talking of the Eucharist as a sign of the kingdom does not in fact
cut off the Spirit from the church’s immediate state. Nonetheless, he misses an
all-important point.[1439] The Eucharist is not only an effective sign of the
heavenly banquet, but it is also the grammar of the kingdom’s language, a
‘visible word’ that can be ‘translated’ into churchly life on mission in the
world – if communities and their heads are willing to do that hard work. In this
connection, it seems significant that the fellowship meals of primitive
Pentecostal communities often turned out to be moments of intra-communal
koinonia, of a shared experience of the peace of the kingdom of God. For
example, in the words of one testimony, ‘We had a precious old-fashioned “love-
feast” during the meeting which brought together Christians of all
denominations, and as we broke bread together all differences of opinion were
forgotten’.[1440] Perhaps Pentecostals’ willingness to ‘break bread’ together
alongside the Eucharist points a way toward the fullness of the Eucharistic
promise. These meals should not replace (in the sense of eliminate) the
celebration of the sacrament of Communion, but they can help re-place it, in the
sense of helping the church rediscover what the sacred meal-of-meals is and is
for. It would seem, then, that Pentecostal communities should give themselves to
the practice of eating and drinking together beyond the bounds of Eucharistic
worship, for if communities hope to develop the skills of discerning/recognizing
and translating/enacting kingdom realities into everyday life, there must be
means of grace to train them for this work, practically inculcating these skills in
them. The fellowship meal – when faithfully observed – does this as well if not
better than anything else.[1441]
Conclusions
Interpreters and theologians agree that all attempts at revisioning and reforming
Pentecostal sacramental thought and practice are doomed to fall to the ground if
the Holy Spirit does not in fact intercede and make them alive with God’s own
life. The Eucharist-event must be a liturgy of the Spirit. If it is to be all it is
meant to be, the Communion rite must be baptized in and filled with the Spirit.
To avoid misunderstanding, it must be remembered that the Spirit is present to
make Christ known, which means that the Spirit is already at work in the present
by working in believers an anticipation of what is not yet. As the author of
Hebrews says, while believers do not presently see ‘everything in subjection’ to
the church as promised in Psalm 8, they do ‘see Jesus …’ (Heb. 2.8-9). To be
clear, transformation does take place here-and-now.[1442] As Christ comes to
the church through the Spirit in the Eucharist-event, the celebrants’ eyes are
opened to see the one who has gone before us into the Eschaton, a vision that
alters the very structure of their being, both communally and personally. But this
transformation is more than anything the awakening of desire for the beatific
vision, a hunger for the glory of the Day of the Lord and eschatological marriage
of heaven and earth. As Jenson puts it, ‘Our liturgy is liturgy of the Spirit insofar
as the sequence and rhythm of what we do is an eschatological tension’.[1443]
Without this ‘eschatological tension’, this sense of both the already-here-ness
and the still-to-come-ness of the kingdom, the worship service is dead – or,
worse, alive with something other than the Spirit’s presence. Hence it is
necessary that the Eucharist-event be celebrated in such a way[1444] that
celebrants are movedto praise, to petition, and to witness by the reality of God’s
promise of a future in which all things are put right and God is ‘all in all’ (1 Cor.
15.24-28). That means the Lord’s Supper must be given and received ei[ ti"
koinwniva pneuvmato" (Phil. 2.1). For, when rightly celebrated, as the Holy
Spirit is at work, then the church’s celebration of the Lord’s Supper provides a
glimpse – ‘through a glass, darkly’ (1 Cor. 13.12) – of the glories of the End. By
the Spirit’s intimately effective presence, the simple acts of eating Christ’s bread
and drinking his cup become by faith and in hope an anticipatory share in the
delights of the beatific vision, a foretaste of the eschatological banquet.
6
CONTRIBUTIONS & SUGGESTIONS FOR
FURTHER RESEARCH
Contributions
This study has produced a number of contributions to academic Pentecostal
scholarship, generally, and to the theology of the sacraments, more particularly. I
will spell out these contributions in the order that they have emerged in the
study.
First, Chapter 2 offers the first comprehensive survey of contemporary
scholarly Pentecostal contributions to and engagements with sacramental
theology and practice. This survey not only shows that there has been a recent
upsurge of theological reflection on the sacraments among Pentecostals, but that
in many ways this is a recovery of a lost vision.
Second, perhaps one of the more important contributions of this study is the
inductive reading of the early Pentecostal periodical literature provided in
Chapter 3, where the sacramentality of the first generation Pentecostal
movement(s) is unearthed and carefully analyzed. Building on the work of
Kimberly Alexander, I developed for that reading an interpretive strategy that
allowed specifically Pentecostal categories and concerns to give direction and
order to the reading. This strategy was used in order to allow the unique and
many-faceted sacramentality so evident in the literature of the movement in its
earliest days to reveal itself. Also, this interpretive model helped to excavate the
unstated and inchoate convictions about the sacraments that undergirded first-
generation Pentecostals’ sacramental theology and praxis. It did so by attending
not only to their overt statements but also to their testimonies of sacramental
experiences and to the implied sacramentality embedded in their habits of speech
and action. In the course of this reading, it was discovered that contra much of
what has been reported in the secondary literature, early Pentecostals were not
averse to sacramental language and they did not uniformly hold to a weakly
memorialist view of the Lord’s Supper. In fact, many signs of a robust
sacramentality – especially as it relates to the Eucharist – were found. Therefore,
in the light of these and other similar discoveries it seems clear that the story of
early Pentecostalism needs to be rewritten to show that the sacraments, and
especially the Communion rite, were central to the spirituality of the emerging
movement.
Third, Chapter 4 first proposes an interpretive strategy for reading Scripture
faithfully. This strategy is built upon and informed by an emerging Pentecostal
hermeneutic, the distinguishing marks of which are identified, analyzed, and
evaluated. A few improvements to this emerging methodology also are
suggested. Then, the chapter puts this hermeneutical model into use, providing a
sustained and intentionally Pentecostal reading of key New Testament
Eucharistic texts. Informed by the interpretive strategy developed for and used in
Chapter 3, this reading attends not only to those texts that explicitly refer to the
Lord’s Supper, but also to texts in which the sacramentality is merely implied or
suggested. In this way, the foundation is laid for a full-bodied biblical theology
of the Lord’s Supper.
Fourth, drawing on the work of the previous sections, Chapter 5 provides a
sustained, coherent, and robustly sacramental account of the Lord’s Supper that
arises from the distinct concerns of the Pentecostal theological and spiritual
tradition while remaining in touch at every point with the wider Christian
tradition as well. Consequently, this proposal is distinguished not only by being
the most fully developed Pentecostal account of the Lord’s Supper, but also by
virtue of its conversance with the theology and experience of other Christian
traditions.
Fifth, because it is both Pentecostal and catholic, this proposal opens up a
number of possibilities for engagement in ecumenical conversation. This study
shows that Pentecostals have positive contributions to make to the ecumenical
process of discerning what the Supper means for and requires of the church, and
it demonstrates that Pentecostals can deliver an account of the Eucharist that is
not determined by either an outright rejection or an uncritical acceptance of the
claims of the sacramental traditions.
Sixth, the results of this study suggest that the account of the Eucharist
described in Chapter 5 squares with the biblical witness, the witness of early
Pentecostals, and the testimony of the wider Christian tradition, and given that
this is true it would appear not merely possible but even necessary for
Pentecostals to revision the tradition in such a way that the sacrament of the
Lord’s Supper is central to the tradition’s theology and praxis.
Seventh, this study offers one model for the Pentecostal theological
constructive task. While deeply indebted to other Pentecostal theological
models, this model is nonetheless unique in certain key respects. Like other
Pentecostal theological works, it draws heavily on the witness of early
Pentecostalism and on readings of Scripture, engaging extensively in dialogue
with the Great Tradition. However, it goes beyond other works of its kind in that
it self-consciously attempts to allow each of these factors both to determine and
be determined by interaction with the other features, so that this study is biblical,
Pentecostal, and catholic all-at-once. In this way, this study provides a paradigm
for constructive Pentecostal theological work.
Implications and Suggestions for Further Study
In the light of the contributions of this study, the following present themselves as
points of entry into areas for further research.
First, my reading of the early Pentecostal periodical literature reveals that
while early Pentecostals as a whole held a rather ‘high’ view of the Eucharist
they at the same time held a relatively ‘low’ view of water baptism, at least at the
explicit level of discourse. Why was this so? What were the historical and
theological causes that gave rise to these contrasting views? In fact, given that
not only the Eucharist but also water baptism, footwashing, and the laying on of
hands by anointing with oil were characteristic early Pentecostal practices, it
would perhaps be rewarding to develop a Pentecostal theology of these
practices/rites following the model used in this study.
Second, Kimberly Alexander’s monograph on Pentecostal theologies of
healing and Larry McQueen’s work on the eschatological views of early
Pentecostals have demonstrated that the basic soteriological convictions of
Wesleyan-Holiness Pentecostals differed significantly from those of Finished
Work Pentecostals, basic differences that gave rise to far-reaching effects in the
thought and practice of these movements. However, my reading of early
Pentecostal periodical literature has shown that no significant differences of
sacramentality emerged to divide Wesleyan-Holiness from Finished Work
Pentecostals, at least not in the early days of the movements. Further study is
needed to determine why this was so and whether real differences eventually did
reveal themselves at some point in the movements’ histories.
Third, further research is needed to explicate early Pentecostals’ understanding
of the movement’s relation to the ecclesia catholica. Some early Pentecostals
understood the movement as the ‘unfoldment’ of a new chapter in the one story
of the church while others understood it as a restoration of a lost identity. What
historical factors gave rise to these differences? What were the long-term
theological and practical outcomes of these different views? More specifically,
what is the relationship of restorationism to sacramentality?
Fourth, Pentecostal scholarship has given comparatively little attention to the
biblical witness to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, focusing for the most part
on readings of 1 Corinthians 11 and the narratives of institution. However, the
hermeneutic laid out in Chapter 4 shows that many other scriptures – including
Old Testament texts – can and should be allowed to inform a Pentecostal
theology of the sacraments. How to encourage other scholars to read a variety of
other texts relative to the Eucharist? What would a Pentecostal reading of the
Eucharistic texts in the Gospel of Mark or reflection on meals in the divine
presence in the Old Testament reveal?
Fifth, in this study, I have proposed certain ways in which Pentecostal
theology works out in the life of the church in the hope of moving toward the
development of a self-consciously Pentecostal praxis that is genuinely catholic
without being a slavish reproduction of other Christians’ patterns of worship.
What liturgical reforms are in order in the light of the view of the Supper put
forward in this study? More specifically, what role should early Pentecostal
liturgical rubrics play in developing contemporary liturgies that make room for
regular and frequent celebration of Communion as a central act of worship?
Sixth, it would be beneficial to bring the findings of this work into
conversation with reflections on the sacramental thought and practice of
Pentecostals in the majority world. For example, it would be instructive to know
how Latin-American Pentecostals read the Eucharistic texts engaged in this
study. Also, what would Pentecostals of Eastern Europe make of the view of the
Lord’s Supper proposed in this study?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Early Pentecostal Periodicals
The Apostolic Faith (Azusa Street Mission, Los Angeles, CA).
The Bridegroom’s Messenger (The Pentecostal Mission, Atlanta, GA).
The Christian Evangel (Assemblies of God, Plainfield, IN; Findley, OH).
The Church of God Book of Doctrines (Cleveland, TN; 1922).
The Church of God Evangel (Church of God, Cleveland, TN).
The Pentecost (J. Roswell Flower, Indianapolis, IN).
The Pentecostal Evangel (Assemblies of God, Springfield, MO).
The Pentecostal Holiness Advocate (The Pentecostal Holiness Church, Falcon,
NC; Franklin Spring, GA).
Pentecostal Testimony (William H. Durham, Chicago, IL; Los Angeles, CA).
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—‘Pentecostal Spirituality: Ecumenical Potential and Challenge’, Cyberjournal
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—Rites in the Spirit: A Ritual Approach to Pentecostal/Charismatic
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(JPTSup 29; Blandford Forum: Deo Publishing, 2006).
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[1986], pp. 143-57.
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—Spirit of the Last Days: Pentecostal Eschatology in Conversation with
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—Nourishment for our Journey: The Pentecostal Via Salutis and Sacramental
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—‘The Fivefold Gospel and the Mission of the Church: Ecclesiastical
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Ayers, A., ‘Can the Behavior of Tongues Utterance Still Function as Ecclesial
Boundary? The Significance of Art and Sacrament’, Pneuma 22.2 (Fall 2000),
pp. 271-301.
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 [1] Steven J. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom
(JPTSup 1; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), p. 7.
[2] This has been clear in much of the secondary literature, as well as in
ecumenical conversations. For example, the document Lutherans and
Pentecostals in Dialogue ([Strasbourg: Institute for Ecumenical Research,
2010], p. 15) acknowledges that ‘Pentecostal sacramental theology continues to
develop’.
[3] Alasdair C. McIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theology (2nd ed.;
Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1984), p. 222.
[4] Walter J. Hollenweger, The Pentecostals (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson,
1988), p. 551.
[5] Among Pentecostals, Terry Cross has helped to lead the way in making
this point. See Terry L. Cross, ‘The Rich Feast of Theology: Can Pentecostals
Bring the Main Course or Only the Relish?’ JPT 16 (Apr 2000), pp. 27-47; Terry
L. Cross, ‘The Divine-Human Encounter: Towards a Pentecostal Theology of
Experience’, Pneuma 31.1 (2009), pp. 3-34. Cross has engaged the theological
methodologies of contemporary Evangelicalism as well; see Terry L. Cross, ‘A
Proposal to Break the Ice: What Can Pentecostal Theology Offer Evangelical
Theology’, JPT 10.2 (Apr 2002), pp. 44-73.
[6] This is, seemingly, a theological habitus that has remained largely
unchanged throughout the history of the Pentecostal movement(s), and no doubt
has deep roots in the Wesleyan and Holiness movements out of which
Pentecostalism arose.
[7] Simon Chan, Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition
(JPTSup 21; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), pp. 37-38, 107-08.
[8] Kimberly E. Alexander, Pentecostal Healing: Models in Theology and
Practice (JPTSup 29; Blandford Forum, Dorset, UK: Deo Publishing, 2006).
[9] Throughout this study I am using ‘Pentecostal’ to refer specifically to
classical Pentecostalism in its various forms, as distinct from the broader
charismatic movement. I am aware that such a distinction is in some cases
impossible to maintain, given the cross-pollination that has taken place over the
years. I will engage some scholars who speak from and to both Pentecostal and
charismatic contexts, but for the most part I will focus on the work of those who
self-identify as Pentecostals and who belong to classical Pentecostal churches
and/or work in Pentecostal educational institutions.
[10] PE 1077 (Dec 8, 1934), p. 9.
[11] PE 1077 (Dec 8, 1934), p. 9.
[12] PE 1077 (Dec 8, 1934), p. 9.
[13] PE 1077 (Dec 8, 1934), p. 9.
[14] PE 1077 (Dec 8, 1934), p. 9.
[15] PE 1077 (Dec 8, 1934), p. 9.
[16] PE 1479 (Sept 12, 1942), pp. 2-3 (2).
[17] Pearlman, ‘The Bread and Blood Covenant’, p. 2.
[18] Pearlman, ‘The Bread and Blood Covenant’, p. 3.
[19] Pearlman, ‘The Bread and Blood Covenant’, p. 3.
[20] Ernest Swing Williams, Systematic Theology (3 vols.; Springfield, MO:
Gospel Publishing House, 1953), III, p. 149.
[21] Emphasis added.
[22] Williams, Systematic Theology, III, p. 153. It is not clear at this point if
these supporters of paedobaptism Williams criticizes stand within or without the
Pentecostal movement.
[23] Williams, Systematic Theology, III, p. 154.
[24] Williams, Systematic Theology, III, p. 154.
[25] Williams, Systematic Theology, III, p. 154.
[26] C.E. Bowen, The Lord’s Supper and Footwashing (Cleveland, TN:
Church of God Publications, 1955). In the book’s forward, Charles Conn, then
the editor-in-chief of Church of God publication ministries, remarks that
Bowen’s study – which he characterizes as ‘beneficial and thorough … adequate
and stimulating … vigorous and studious’ – is a piece of a larger movement of
‘increased attention to these ordinances’, a resurgence Conn believes is ‘largely
due to the upsurge of holiness and Pentecostal belief’. In typical restorationist
idiom, Conn laments the loss of the ‘pristine simplicity’ of the ordinances in the
abuses of the post-apostolic church and its non-biblical traditions, and he
celebrates Bowen’s contribution to the renaissance of appreciation for the
ordinances in all of their original simplicity and meaningfulness.
[27] A recurring theme throughout the book, but see especially Bowen, The
Lord’s Supper and Footwashing, pp. 108-109.
[28] Bowen, The Lord’s Supper and Footwashing, pp. 18-19.
[29] Bowen, The Lord’s Supper and Footwashing, p. 93.
 [30] Bowen, The Lord’s Supper and Footwashing, p. 81.
[31] Bowen, The Lord’s Supper and Footwashing, p. 19. He parenthetically
cites Isa. 53.5-7 as support of this claim. Throughout, Bowen’s reflections are
guided for the most part by his readings of John 6 and 1 Corinthians 11.
[32] Bowen, The Lord’s Supper and Footwashing, p. 87.
[33] Bowen, The Lord’s Supper and Footwashing, p. 97.
[34] Bowen, The Lord’s Supper and Footwashing, pp. 100-101.
[35] M.A. Tomlinson, Basic Bible Beliefs (Cleveland, TN: White Wing
Publishing, 1961), p. 54.
[36] Tomlinson, Basic Bible Beliefs, p. 54.
[37] Tomlinson, Basic Bible Beliefs, p. 56.
[38] Tomlinson, Basic Bible Beliefs, p. 58.
[39] James L. Slay, This We Believe (Cleveland, TN: Pathway Press, 1963), p.
98.
[40] Slay, This We Believe, p. 98.
[41] Slay, This We Believe, p. 101.
[42] Slay, This We Believe, p. 103.
[43] Slay, This We Believe, p. 106.
[44] Slay, This We Believe, p. 106.
[45] Slay, This We Believe, p. 110.
[46] Slay, This We Believe, p. 110. Emphasis added.
[47] Slay, This We Believe, p. 110. Emphasis added.
[48] Slay, This We Believe, p. 107.
[49] Slay, This We Believe, p. 110.
[50] Slay, This We Believe, p. 107.
[51] Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, p. 385.
[52] Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, p. 385. Emphasis original.
[53] Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, p. 386.
[54] Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, p. 387.
[55] Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, p. 389.
[56] Raymond M. Pruitt, Fundamentals of the Faith (Cleveland, TN: White
Wing Publishing, 1981), pp. 361-71.
[57] Pruitt, Fundamentals of the Faith, p. 365.
[58] Pruitt, Fundamentals of the Faith, p. 365. Emphasis added.
[59] Pruitt, Fundamentals of the Faith, p. 366. Emphasis added.
[60] Pruitt, Fundamentals of the Faith, p. 367.
[61] Pruitt, Fundamentals of the Faith, pp. 367-68.
 [62] Pruitt, Fundamentals of the Faith, p. 366.
[63] Pruitt, Fundamentals of the Faith, p. 367.
[64] Pruitt, Fundamentals of the Faith, p. 369.
[65] Pruitt, Fundamentals of the Faith, p. 369.
[66] Guy P. Duffield and Nathaniel M. Van Cleave, Foundations of
Pentecostal Theology (San Dimas, CA: L.I.F.E. Bible College, 1983), pp. 437-
38.
[67] Duffield and Van Cleave, Foundations of Pentecostal Theology, p. 435.
[68] Interestingly, Duffield and Van Cleave devote 20 pages to their treatment
of the ‘baptism with the Holy Spirit’ (pp. 304-25), but less than one full page to
water baptism (p. 436). They do briefly refer to water baptism in two other
instances (pp. 230, 313).
[69] Duffield and Van Cleave, Foundations of Pentecostal Theology, p. 436.
[70] Duffield and Van Cleave, Foundations of Pentecostal Theology, p. 437.
[71] Duffield and Van Cleave, Foundations of Pentecostal Theology, p. 437.
[72] Duffield and Van Cleave, Foundations of Pentecostal Theology, p. 438.
[73] John Bond, ‘What is Distinctive about Pentecostal Theology’, in M.S.
Clark and H.I. Lederle (eds.) What is Distinctive about Pentecostal Theology
(Pretoria: University of South Africa, 1989), pp. 133-42.
[74] Bond, ‘What is Distinctive about Pentecostal Theology’, p. 139.
[75] Bond, ‘What is Distinctive about Pentecostal Theology’, p. 135.
[76] Bond, ‘What is Distinctive about Pentecostal Theology’, p. 140. Insofar
as Bond’s estimation of Pentecostal practice is accurate, it seems that many
Pentecostal churches – at least in Bond’s context – held at least a quasi-
sacramental view of the Lord’s Supper.
[77] Bond, ‘What is Distinctive about Pentecostal Theology’, p. 141.
[78] Bond, ‘What is Distinctive about Pentecostal Theology’, p. 141.
[79] William W. Menzies and Stanley M. Horton, Bible Doctrines: A
Pentecostal Perspective (Springfield, MO: Logion Press, 1993), p. 111.
[80] Menzies and Horton, Bible Doctrines, p. 113.
[81] Menzies and Horton, Bible Doctrines, p. 113.
[82] Menzies and Horton, Bible Doctrines, p. 116.
[83] Menzies and Horton, Bible Doctrines, p. 119.
[84] Menzies and Horton, Bible Doctrines, p. 119.
[85] Michael Dusing, ‘The New Testament Church’, in Stanley Horton (ed.)
Systematic Theology (rev. ed.; Springfield, MO: Logion Press, 1998), pp. 525-
66.
 [86] Dusing, ‘The New Testament Church’, p. 558.
[87] Stanley Horton, Into all Truth: A Survey of the Course and Content of
Divine Revelation (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1955), p. 135.
[88] Horton, Into All Truth, p. 141.
[89] Horton, Into All Truth, p. 143.
[90] Horton, Into All Truth, p. 144.
[91] John Christopher Thomas, Footwashing in John 13 and the Johannine
Community (JSNTS 61; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991).
[92] This is the only canonical account of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet.
[93] Thomas, Footwashing in John 13, p. 17.
[94] Thomas, Footwashing in John 13, p. 172.
[95] Thomas, Footwashing in John 13, p. 183.
[96] Thomas, Footwashing in John 13, p. 183.
[97] Thomas, Footwashing in John 13, p. 183.
[98] John Christopher Thomas, The Devil, Disease, and Deliverance:
Origins of Illness in New Testament Thought (JPTSup 13; Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1998), pp. 43, 49.
[99] Thomas, The Devil, Disease, and Deliverance, p. 50.
[100] John Christopher Thomas, ‘Pentecostal Theology in the Twenty-First
Century’, Pneuma 20.1 (Spring 1998), pp. 3-19.
[101] Thomas, ‘Pentecostal Theology in the Twenty-First Century’, p. 17.
[102] Thomas, ‘Pentecostal Theology in the Twenty-First Century’, p. 6.
[103] Thomas, ‘Pentecostal Theology in the Twenty-First Century’, p. 6.
[104] Thomas, ‘Pentecostal Theology in the Twenty-First Century’, p. 17.
[105] J. Rodman Williams, Renewal Theology (3 vols.; Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 1988-96), I, p. 309.
[106] Williams, Renewal Theology, III, p. 223.
[107] Williams, Renewal Theology, III, p. 221.
[108] Williams, Renewal Theology, III, pp. 246-47.
[109] Williams, Renewal Theology, III, pp. 248-49.
[110] Williams, Renewal Theology, III, p. 249.
[111] Williams, Renewal Theology, III, pp. 249-50.
[112] Arrington indicates that his own Church of God (Cleveland, TN), the
Church of God of Prophecy, and the Pentecostal Apostolic Church of God of
Romania regard footwashing as an ordinance, in addition to water baptism and
the Lord’s Supper, which other Pentecostals recognize as ordinances.
[113] French L. Arrington, Christian Doctrine: a Pentecostal Perspective (3
vols., Cleveland, TN: Pathway, 1994), III, p. 208.
[114] Arrington, Christian Doctrine, III, p. 212.
[115] Arrington, Christian Doctrine, III, p. 213.
[116] Arrington, Christian Doctrine, III, p. 214.
[117] Arrington, Christian Doctrine, III, p. 213. Emphasis added.
[118] Arrington, Christian Doctrine, III, p. 213.
[119] Arrington, Christian Doctrine, III, p. 212.
[120] Arrington, Christian Doctrine, III, p. 212. Emphasis added.
[121] Arrington, Christian Doctrine, III, p. 214.
[122] Arrington, Christian Doctrine, III, p. 214.
[123] Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry, Faith and Order Paper 111 (Geneva:
World Council of Churches, 1982).
[124] Harold D. Hunter, ‘Reflections by a Pentecostalist on Aspects of BEM’,
Journal of Ecumenical Studies 29.3-4 (Summer-Fall 1992), pp. 317-45 (345).
[125] Hunter, ‘Reflections by a Pentecostalist’, p. 323.
[126] Hunter, ‘Reflections by a Pentecostalist’, p. 331.
[127] Hunter, ‘Reflections by a Pentecostalist’, p. 329.
[128] The Pentecostal Holiness Church officially endorsed infant baptism, at
least in the beginning. It has never officially repudiated this position.
[129] Hunter approvingly cites Thomas’ work on footwashing as an
alternative to rebaptism.
[130] Hunter, ‘Reflections by a Pentecostalist’, p. 337.
[131] Hunter, ‘Reflections by a Pentecostalist’, p. 340.
[132] Hunter, ‘Reflections by a Pentecostalist’, p. 338.
[133] Hunter, ‘Reflections by a Pentecostalist’, p. 337.
[134] See Harold D. Hunter, ‘Ordinances, Pentecostal’ in Stanley M. Burgess
and Eduard M. van der Maas (eds.), NIDPCM (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
2002), pp. 947-49.
[135] Hunter finds Pentecostals in countries dominated by Greek Orthodox
traditions do concern themselves with these matters, at least to a greater degree
than do Pentecostals in the West.
[136] Hunter, ‘Ordinances, Pentecostal’, p. 948.
[137] Land notes that these included, for most Pentecostals, baptism and the
Lord’s Supper. Other groups, such as the Church of God (Cleveland, TN), also
considered footwashing an ordinance. Usually, they practiced footwashing in
conjunction with the taking of Communion, often – but not only – during the
traditional ‘watch-night service’, in which the church gathered on the evening of
December 31st to usher in the new year.
[138] Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, p. 114.
[139] Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, p. 115.
[140] Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, p. 140.
[141] Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, p. 75.
[142] Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, p. 115.
[143] Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, p. 115.
[144] Instead, they performed ‘baby dedications’, a ceremony in which the
parents pledge their child to God before the gathered community. The pastor
charges the parents and the congregation with their responsibility to the family
and to the child, and typically, the pastor closes the ceremony by blessing the
child, often anointing the child with oil. For further explanation, see Thomas F.
Best, Baptism Today: Understanding, Practice, Ecumenical Implications
(Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2008), pp. 161-62.
[145] Land notes that only the Elim Pentecostal churches of Great Britain
celebrate the Lord’s Supper weekly.
[146] Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, p. 115.
[147] Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, p. 117.
[148] Emphasis added.
[149] Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, p. 39.
[150] Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, p. 204.
[151] Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, p. 177.
[152] Peter Hocken, ‘The Holy Spirit Makes the Church More
Eschatological’, in William K. Kay and Anne E. Dyer, Pentecostal and
Charismatic Studies: A Reader (London: SCM Press, 2004), pp. 43-46 (43).
[153] Hocken, ‘The Holy Spirit Makes the Church More Eschatological’, p.
44.
[154] Hocken, ‘The Holy Spirit Makes the Church More Eschatological’, p.
44.
[155] Hocken, ‘The Holy Spirit Makes the Church More Eschatological’, p.
45.
[156] Hocken, ‘The Holy Spirit Makes the Church More Eschatological’, p.
46.
[157] Frank D. Macchia, ‘Tongues as a Sign: Towards a Sacramental
Understanding of Pentecostal Experience’, Pneuma 15.1 (Spring 1993), pp. 61-
76 (75). He takes his lead from Simon Tugwell’s observation that Pentecostal
speaking in tongues functions as a sacrament, and argues that that is indeed what
glossolalia is and does.
[158] Macchia, ‘Tongues as a Sign’, p. 61.
[159] Macchia’s sacramental understanding is shaped to a great degree by the
works of Paul Tillich and Karl Rahner. Macchia believes Rahner and Tillich
have managed to emphasize the objectivity of the sacraments without restricting
divine freedom because they conceive it primarily in personalistic and not
metaphysical terms.
[160] Frank D. Macchia, ‘Eucharist: Pentecostal’ in Paul F. Bradshaw (ed.),
The New Westminster Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship (Louisville: WJKP,
2002), pp. 189-90 (190).
[161] Macchia, ‘Is Footwashing the Neglected Sacrament?’, p. 241.
[162] Macchia, ‘Tongues as a Sign’, p. 63.
[163] Macchia, ‘Tongues as a Sign’, p. 63.
[164] Macchia, ‘Tongues as a Sign’, p. 64.
[165] Macchia, ‘Tongues as a Sign’, p. 73.
[166] Macchia, ‘Tongues as a Sign’, p. 75. See also Macchia, ‘Eucharist:
Pentecostal’, p. 189.
[167] Macchia, ‘Tongues as a Sign’, p. 75.
[168] Frank D. Macchia, ‘The Church of the Latter Rain: The Church and
Eschatology in Pentecostal Perspective’ in J.C. Thomas (ed.), Toward a
Pentecostal Ecclesiology (Cleveland, TN: CPT Press, 2010), p. 258.
[169] Macchia, ‘Eucharist: Pentecostal’, p. 190.
[170] Frank D. Macchia, ‘Is Footwashing the Neglected Sacrament? A
Theological Response to John Christopher Thomas’, Pneuma 19.2 (Fall 1997),
pp. 239-49.
[171] Macchia, ‘Is Footwashing the Neglected Sacrament?’, p. 241.
[172] Macchia, ‘Is Footwashing the Neglected Sacrament?’, p. 246.
[173] Macchia, ‘Is Footwashing the Neglected Sacrament?’, p. 247.
[174] Macchia, ‘Is Footwashing the Neglected Sacrament?’, p. 248.
[175] As Macchia (Macchia, ‘Is Footwashing the Neglected Sacrament?’, p.
247) notes, ‘This transitory nature of religious experience means that biblical
teachings on the crucified and risen Lord not only determine the theological
meanings of the sacraments, but sacramental experience will serve to further
illuminate the meaning of the crucified and risen Lord for our lives’.
[176] Richard Bicknell, ‘The Ordinances: The Marginalised Aspects of
Pentecostalism’ in Keith Warrington (ed.), Pentecostal Perspectives (Carlisle:
Paternoster, 1998), p. 207.
 [177] Bicknell, ‘The Ordinances’, p. 211.
[178] Bicknell, ‘The Ordinances’, p. 208.
[179] Bicknell, ‘The Ordinances’, pp. 208-209.
[180] Bicknell, ‘The Ordinances’, p. 210.
[181] Bicknell, ‘The Ordinances’, p. 207.
[182] Bicknell, ‘The Ordinances’, p. 209.
[183] Richard Bicknell, ‘In Memory of Christ’s Sacrifice: Roots and Shoots of
Elim’s Eucharistic Expression’, JEPTA 27 (1997), pp. 59-89.
[184] Bicknell, ‘In Memory of Christ’s Sacrifice’, p. 59. Bicknell (‘In
Memory of Christ’s Sacrifice’, p. 64) finds that the sacramental theology of Elim
founder George Jeffreys took its shape under the influence of the
Congregationalism he encountered in his upbringing and a brief time spent at the
Pentecostal Missionary Union Bible School under the tutelage of Thomas
Myerscough, who was associated with the Plymouth Brethren. The Elim
tradition of weekly Sunday-morning Communion apparently also derives from
the practice of the Brethren, and seems to have come to Elim through Jeffreys
under Myerscough’s influence.
[185] Bicknell, ‘In Memory of Christ’s Sacrifice’, p. 81. Bicknell believes this
is mainly because Elim Pentecostals have little to no sense of the church as
Christ’s body, a well-developed tenet in Calvin’s thought.
[186] Bicknell, ‘In Memory of Christ’s Sacrifice’, p. 67. Bicknell finds that his
extreme emphasis on the memorial aspect of the Eucharist shows up in Elim
Pentecostals’ ‘purely symbolic’ view of the Eucharistic elements.
[187] Bicknell, ‘In Memory of Christ’s Sacrifice’, p. 67.
[188] Bicknell, ‘In Memory of Christ’s Sacrifice’, p. 76.
[189] Bicknell, ‘In Memory of Christ’s Sacrifice’, p. 76.
[190] Bicknell, ‘In Memory of Christ’s Sacrifice’, p. 68.
[191] Bicknell, ‘In Memory of Christ’s Sacrifice’, p. 70.
[192] Bicknell, ‘In Memory of Christ’s Sacrifice’, p. 71.
[193] Bicknell, ‘In Memory of Christ’s Sacrifice’, p. 71.
[194] Bicknell, ‘In Memory of Christ’s Sacrifice’, p. 82.
[195] Emphasis added.
[196] Bicknell, ‘In Memory of Christ’s Sacrifice’, p. 82.
[197] Simon G. H. Tan, ‘Reassessing Believer’s Baptism in Pentecostal
Theology and Practice’, AJPS 6.2 (2003), pp. 219-34. Emphasis added.
[198] Tan, ‘Reassessing Believer’s Baptism’, p. 219.
[199] Tan, ‘Reassessing Believer’s Baptism’, p. 233. Emphasis added.
 [200] Tan, ‘Reassessing Believer’s Baptism’, p. 234.
[201] Daniel E. Albrecht, Rites in the Spirit: a Ritual Approach to
Pentecostal/Charismatic Spirituality (JPTSup 17; Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1999).
[202] Albrecht claims that although charismatics and classical Pentecostals
share a basic experience of the Spirit, charismatics are more likely than classical
Pentecostals to desire and formulate a sacramental theology, because the former
often come from traditions that practice the sacraments regularly. In fact, this is
one of the key distinctives of the charismatic movement.
[203] All of these ‘faith communities’ were located in Sea City, California:
Coastal Christian Center (CCC), a classical Pentecostal church of the Assembly
of God denomination; Light and Life Fellowship (L&L), a ‘non-traditional’ and
‘creative’ community of the Foursquare denomination; and Valley Vineyard
Christian Fellowship (VVCF), a charismatic church and a member of the
Vineyard Christian fellowship.
[204] Daniel E. Albrecht, ‘Pentecostal Spirituality: Looking Through the Lens
of Ritual’, Pneuma 14.2 (1996), p. 21.
[205] Albrecht, Rites in the Spirit, p. 132.
[206] Albrecht, Rites in the Spirit, p. 132.
[207] Albrecht, Rites in the Spirit, p. 132.
[208] Daniel E. Albrecht, ‘Pentecostal Spirituality: Ecumenical Potential and
Challenge’, Cyberjournal for Pentecostal-Charismatic Research 2 (July 1997).
Available online: http://www.pctii.org/cyberj/cyberj2/albrecht.html. Accessed
January 5, 2011.
[209] Adam Ayers, ‘Can the Behavior of Tongues Utterance Still Function as
Ecclesial Boundary? The Significance of Art and Sacrament’, Pneuma 22.2 (Fall
2000), pp. 271-301 (273).
[210] Ayers, ‘Can the Behavior of Tongues Utterance Still Function as
Ecclesial Boundary’, pp. 293-94.
[211] Ayers, ‘Can the Behavior of Tongues Utterance Still Function as
Ecclesial Boundary’, p. 294.
[212] Ayers, ‘Can the Behavior of Tongues Utterance Still Function as
Ecclesial Boundary’, p. 294.
[213] Amos Yong, Discerning the Spirit(s): A Pentecostal-Charismatic
Contribution to Christian Theology of Religions (JPTSup 20; Sheffield:
Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), p. 166.
[214] Amos Yong, Spirit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in
Trinitarian Perspective (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2002), pp. 202-203.
[215] Yong, Spirit-Word-Community, p. 250.
[216] Yong, Spirit-Word-Community, p. 249-50. Emphasis added.
[217] Yong, Spirit-Word-Community, p. 250.
[218] Emphasis added.
[219] Yong, Spirit-Word-Community, p. 250.
[220] Amos Yong, The Spirit Poured Out On All Flesh: Pentecostalism and
the Possibility of Global Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), p. 162.
[221] Yong, The Spirit Poured Out On All Flesh, p. 160.
[222] Yong, The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh, p. 136. Emphasis added.
[223] Yong, The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh, p. 136.
[224] Yong, The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh, p. 159.
[225] Yong, The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh, p. 158.
[226] Yong, The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh, p. 158.
[227] Yong, The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh, pp. 162-63.
[228] Yong, The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh, p. 164.
[229] Yong, The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh, p. 163.
[230] Amos Yong, Theology and Down Syndrome: Reimagining Disability
in Late Modernity (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007), p. 211.
[231] Yong, Theology and Down Syndrome, p. 193.
[232] Yong, The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh, p. 163.
[233] Yong, The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh, p. 165.
[234] Yong, The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh, p. 163.
[235] Yong, The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh, p. 163.
[236] Kenneth J. Archer, ‘Nourishment for our Journey: The Pentecostal Via
Salutis and Sacramental Ordinances’, JPT 13.1 (2004), pp. 79-96.
[237] Archer, ‘Nourishment for our Journey’, p. 85.
[238] Archer, ‘Nourishment for our Journey’, p. 81.
[239] Archer, ‘Nourishment for our Journey’, p. 84.
[240] Archer, ‘Nourishment for our Journey’, p. 84.
[241] Archer, ‘Nourishment for our Journey’, p. 96.
[242] Archer, ‘Nourishment for our Journey’, p. 92.
[243] Archer, ‘Nourishment for our Journey’, p. 93.
[244] Archer, ‘Nourishment for our Journey’, p. 93.
[245] Archer, ‘Nourishment for our Journey’, p. 95.
[246] William De Arteaga, Forgotten Power: The Significance of the Lord’s
Supper in Revival (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), p. 209.
 [247] De Arteaga, Forgotten Power, p. 213.
[248] De Arteaga, Forgotten Power, p. 13.
[249] De Arteaga, Forgotten Power, p. 13.
[250] Held that year in Springfield, MO.
[251] John Ceresoli, ‘Critical Mass: “We Had Church” in a Holy Catholic
Way’, JPT 17 (October 2000), pp. 7-11.
[252] Ceresoli explains that this decision was made after a lengthy discussion
of John Christopher Thomas’ work on footwashing and Frank Macchia’s
response to that work.
[253] Ceresoli, ‘Critical Mass’, p. 10.
[254] Ceresoli, ‘Critical Mass’, p. 11.
[255] Chan, Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition, p.
15.
[256] Chan, Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition, pp.
37-38, 107-108.
[257] Chan, Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition, p.
90.
[258] Chan, Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition, p.
92.
[259] Chan, Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition, p.
93.
[260] Chan, Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition, p.
71.
[261] Chan, Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition, p.
71.
[262] Chan, Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition, p.
87.
[263] Chan, Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition, p.
20.
[264] Chan, Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition, p.
38.
[265] Chan, Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition, p.
38.
[266] Chan, Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition, p.
38.
[267] Simon Chan, Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshipping
Community (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2006), p. 72.
 [268] Chan, Liturgical Theology, p. 71.
[269] Chan, Liturgical Theology, p. 65.
[270] Chan, Liturgical Theology, p. 37.
[271] Chan, Liturgical Theology, p. 37.
[272] Chan, Liturgical Theology, p. 37.
[273] Chan, Liturgical Theology, p. 37.
[274] Chan, Liturgical Theology, p. 74.
[275] Chan, Liturgical Theology, p. 71.
[276] Albrecht, Rites in the Spirit, p. 132.
[277] MayLing Tan-Chow, Pentecostal Theology for the Twenty-First
Century: Engaging with Multi-Faith Singapore (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate,
2007), p. 143.
[278] Tan-Chow, Pentecostal Theology for the Twenty-First Century, p. 143.
[279] Tan-Chow, Pentecostal Theology for the Twenty-First Century, pp.
153-54.
[280] Wesley Scott Biddy, ‘Re-envisioning the Pentecostal Understanding of
the Eucharist: An Ecumenical Proposal’, Pneuma 28.2 (Fall 2006), pp. 228-51
(228). Biddy’s concern is largely ecumenical. He is seeking a way in which a
distinctly Pentecostal view of the Eucharist might ‘aid doctrinal rapprochement’
with other Christian traditions.
[281] Biddy, ‘Re-envisioning the Pentecostal Understanding of the Eucharist’,
p. 230.
[282] Biddy, ‘Re-envisioning the Pentecostal Understanding of the Eucharist’,
p. 228.
[283] Biddy, ‘Re-envisioning the Pentecostal Understanding of the Eucharist’,
p. 228.
[284] In making this difference, Biddy is dependent on Tillich’s distinction of
sign (as something which does not bear any ‘necessary relation’ to that to which
it points) from symbol (as something which does ‘participate in the reality for
which it stands’).
[285] Biddy, ‘Re-envisioning the Pentecostal Understanding of the Eucharist’,
p. 231. Emphasis added.
[286] Biddy, ‘Re-envisioning the Pentecostal Understanding of the Eucharist’,
p. 233.
[287] Biddy, ‘Re-envisioning the Pentecostal Understanding of the Eucharist’,
p. 233. Biddy also points out that in spite of the fact that Paul has exposed many
of the Corinthians’ sins, it is only the sin regarding the perversion of the
Eucharist that leads to this warning about sickness and death.
[288] Alexander, Pentecostal Healing, p. 206. According to Alexander, the
early Pentecostals also used the Bible in a similar way, and some readers used
even periodicals as an ‘anointing medium’ for healing.
[289] Alexander, Pentecostal Healing, p. 206.
[290] Alexander, Pentecostal Healing, p. 207. Emphasis added.
[291] It is important to note that Pentecostals use this idiom of ‘eating the
Lord’s body’ both as a straightforward way of referring to eating the Eucharistic
bread and in a more spiritual, mystical way, as well, often in the same context.
[292] Alexander, Pentecostal Healing, p. 77.
[293] Alexander, Pentecostal Healing, p. 169.
[294] Alexander, Pentecostal Healing, p. 169.
[295] Keith Warrington, Pentecostal Theology: A Theology of Encounter
(London: T&T Clark, 2008), p. 161.
[296] Warrington, Pentecostal Theology, p. 163.
[297] Warrington cites only the Methodist Pentecostal Church of Chile.
[298] Warrington, Pentecostal Theology, p. 164.
[299] Warrington, Pentecostal Theology, pp. 166-67.
[300] Warrington, Pentecostal Theology, p. 168.
[301] Warrington, Pentecostal Theology, p. 165.
[302] Warrington, Pentecostal Theology, p. 169.
[303] Warrington, Pentecostal Theology, p. 169.
[304] Warrington, Pentecostal Theology, p. 169.
[305] Gerald Emery, ‘Holy Cene (Lord’s Supper): Practice and Significance in
the Pentecostal Tradition’, Ecumenism 170 (Summer 2008), pp. 25-27.
[306] Emery, ‘Holy Cene’, p. 25.
[307] Emery, ‘Holy Cene’, p. 26
[308] Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, ‘The Pentecostal View’ in Gordon T. Smith
(ed.), The Lord’s Supper: Five Views (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2008), p. 118.
[309] Kärkkäinen, ‘The Pentecostal View’, p. 123.
[310] Kärkkäinen, ‘The Pentecostal View’, p. 130.
[311] Kärkkäinen, ‘The Pentecostal View’, p. 123.
[312] Kärkkäinen, ‘The Pentecostal View’, p. 119.
[313] Theologians from four other traditions offer responses to Kärkkäinen’s
essay. The Baptist theologian Roger Olsen – who was himself raised a
Pentecostal – remarks that the ‘only change in my belief about and practice of
the Lord’s Supper was with regard to the ordinance’s efficacy for healing’.
Seeing very little difference between Pentecostal and Baptist views of the
Eucharist, Olsen admits that both traditions can, at most, accept
‘semisacramental interpretations’ in which ‘Christ is believed to be personally
present in a special way as the church celebrates the ordinance’. He urges
Pentecostals not to lose this commitment, for it would not be ‘true to its roots if
it leaned too far toward sacramentalism’, which Olsen understands as regarding
‘Christ as bodily present and eaten together with the bread and wine (juice)’.
Instead, Pentecostals, like Baptists, should hold to their traditions, regarding the
Supper as ‘symbolic without reducing it to “mere symbolism”’.
[314] Kärkkäinen, ‘A Pentecostal Response’, p. 115.
[315] Kärkkäinen, ‘The Pentecostal View’, p. 117.
[316] Telford Work, Deuteronomy (BTC; Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2009), p. 55.
[317] Work, Deuteronomy, p. 143.
[318] Work, Deuteronomy, p. 142.
[319] Telford Work, Ain’t Too Proud to Beg: Living Through the Lord’s
Prayer (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), p. 74.
[320] James K.A. Smith, ‘What Hath Cambridge To Do with Azusa Street?:
Radical Orthodoxy and Pentecostal Theology in Conversation’, Pneuma 25.1
(March 2003), p. 113.
[321] James K.A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and
Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), p. 203.
[322] Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, p. 200.
[323] Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, p. 200.
[324] Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, p. 202.
[325] Wolfgang Vondey, People of Bread: Rediscovering Ecclesiology
(Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2008), p. 3.
[326] Vondey, People of Bread, p. 173.
[327] Vondey, People of Bread, pp. 172-73. Emphasis added.
[328] See Vondey, People of Bread, pp. 247-48.
[329] See Vondey, People of Bread, pp. 232-33.
[330] Wolfgang Vondey, ‘Pentecostal Contributions to The Nature and
Mission of the Church’ in Wolfgang Vondey (ed.), Pentecostalism and
Christian Unity: Ecumenical Documents and Critical Assessments (Eugene,
OR: Pickwick, 2010), pp. 256-68 (259).
[331] Mark J. Cartledge, Charismatic Glossolalia: An Empirical-
Theological Study (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 195-97.
[332] Cartledge, Charismatic Glossolalia, pp. 195-96.
 [333] Cartledge, Charismatic Glossolalia, pp. 196-97. Including, inter alia, a
redefinition contra Macchia of tongue-speech as xenolalic.
[334] Mark J. Cartledge, Testimony in the Spirit: Rescripting Ordinary
Pentecostal Theology (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2010), p. 10.
[335] Cartledge, Testimony in the Spirit, p. 31.
[336] Cartledge, Testimony in the Spirit, p. 51.
[337] Cartledge, Testimony in the Spirit, p. 51.
[338] Cartledge, Testimony in the Spirit, p. 46.
[339] Tomberlin (Pentecostal Sacraments, p. 82) defines a sacrament in this
way: ‘a sacred act of worship blessed by Christ the High Priest through which
the worshiper encounters the Spirit of grace’.
[340] Daniel Tomberlin, Pentecostal Sacraments: Encountering God at the
Altar (Cleveland, TN: Center for Pentecostal Leadership and Care, 2010), p. 86.
Although I had met Dan, I had not read his book until after the principal work of
my own thesis had already been completed. After having read his book, I
decided I needed to include it in this review of literature. Therefore, any
similarities of arguments and sources in his work and mine are in fact accidental
and unconnected.
[341] For his treatment of this issue, see Tomberlin, Pentecostal Sacraments,
pp. 91-93.
[342] Tomberlin (Pentecostal Sacraments, p. 87) insists that this is so because
‘Pentecostal is a physical spirituality’.
[343] He describes sacramental spirituality as ‘an ongoing altar call’.
[344] He contends for a ‘stronger’ view than that offered in the Reformed
tradition, a view Tomberlin believes most early Pentecostals held.
[345] He contends for a ‘stronger’ view than that offered in the Reformed
tradition, a view Tomberlin believes most early Pentecostals held.
[346] He does the same with the other sacraments, as well.
[347] In spite of widespread agreement on certain teachings, practices, and
experiences deemed centrally important, early Pentecostalism was not
monolithic, so it perhaps is best to talk of early Pentecostalisms. See Douglas G.
Jacobson, A Reader in Pentecostal Theology: Voices from the First Generation
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), p. 13.
[348] Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, p. 551. Cited in Land, Pentecostal
Spirituality, p. 47.
[349] Rowan Williams, Why Study the Past: The Quest for the Historical
Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), p. 110.
 [350] As well as through Israel’s, the church’s, and creation’s history.
[351] Williams, Why Study the Past, p. 111.
[352] Quoted in Martin W. Mitteldstadt, ‘My Life as a Mennocostal: A
Personal and Theological Narrative’, Theodidaktos 3.2 (Sept 2008), p. 11.
[353] See Howard M. Ervin, ‘Hermeneutics: A Pentecostal Option’, Pneuma
3.2 (1981), pp. 11–25.
[354] Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, p. 24.
[355] Carl Simpson, ‘Jonathan Paul and the German Pentecostal
Movement – the First Seven Years, 1907-1914’, JEPTA 28.2 (2008), pp. 169-82.
[356] Robert W. Jenson, Canon and Creed (Louisville: WJKP, 2010), p. 75.
[357] Alexander, Pentecostal Healing, p. 71.
[358] Alexander, Pentecostal Healing, p. 67.
[359] See Alexander, Pentecostal Healing, pp. 67-72.
[360] For a brief account of the history and ethos of the early days of the
Church of God, see Alexander, Pentecostal Healing, pp. 95-101.
[361] See Edith W. Blumhofer, Restoring the Faith: the Assemblies of God,
Pentecostalism, and American Culture (Champagne, IL: University of Illinois
Press, 1993), pp. 116-19.
[362] TBM 4.82 (Mar 15, 1911), p. 2.
[363] For an authoritative account of the Boddys’ lives and theological
commitments, see Gavin Wakefield, Alexander Boddy: Pentecostal Anglican
Pioneer (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2007).
[364] See Williams, Why Study the Past, p. 110.
[365] AF 1.10 (Sept 1907), p. 2.
[366] Emphasis added.
[367] Emphasis added.
[368] For example, see AF 1.6 (Feb-Mar 1907), p. 6.
[369] For example, see AF 1.5 (Jan 1907), p. 4; AF 1.2 (Oct 1906), p. 3; AF
1.3 (Nov 1906), p. 2; AF 1.7 (Apr 1907), p. 4.
[370] For example, see AF 1.12 (Jan 1908), p. 3.
[371] For example, see AF 1.2 (Oct 1906), p. 3.
[372] AF 1.4 (Dec 1906), p. 2.
[373] AF 1.4 (Dec 1906), pp. 1, 4.
[374] Alexander, Pentecostal Healing, p. 82.
[375] See Alexander, Pentecostal Healing, p. 84.
[376] Seymour cites Mt. 3.16, 28.19-20; Mk 16.16; Acts 2.28, 8.38-39; Rom.
6.3-5; Gal 3.27; 1Pet. 3.21.
 [377] AF 1.10 (Sept 1907), p. 2.
[378] AF 1.10 (Sept 1907), p. 2. Seymour’s 1915 Doctrines and Disciplines
indicated the ways in which his opinions had changed, and the concerns he had
for the movement he had helped to found. His view of the ordinances, however,
does not seem to have changed in the least.
[379] AF 1.10 (Sept 1907), p. 2.
[380] AF 1.10 (Sept 1907), p. 2. Seymour obviously has Jn 6.53, 56 in mind.
[381] AF 1.4 (Dec 1906), p. 2.
[382] AF 1.4 (Dec 1906), p. 2. It seem reasonable, given the appeal to the
language of John 6, that by using the modifier ‘real’ the writer means to suggest
the Supper is not merely symbolic or typological, but genuinely a ‘means of
grace’.
[383] AF 1.4 (Dec 1906), p. 2.
[384] Emphasis added.
[385] AF 1.4 (Dec 1906), p. 2.
[386] This is a startling reading, for by and large Protestants – including
Luther, Calvin, and Wesley – have not read this passage as a treatment of the
Supper. See Robert W. Jenson, Visible Words (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1978), p. 85.
[387] AF 1.4 (Dec 1906), p. 2.
[388] As proof of this, Seymour cites this statement again in his summation,
where he reminds his readers that the ‘full Gospel’ requires believers to obey
every command of Christ.
[389] AF 1.9 (June-Sept 1907), p. 1.
[390] AF 1.4 (Dec 1906), p. 1.
[391] AF 1.1 (Sept 1906), p. 4.
[392] AF 1.2 (Oct 1906), p. 4.
[393] AF 1.4 (Dec 1906), p. 1.
[394] For example, one brother, who remembers how intensely he had desired
his Pentecost, testifies that he now finds himself possessed of a new longing: ‘I
feel a burning desire to see others possess the same blessing’. See AF 1.5 (Jan
1907), p. 4.
[395] AF 1.4 (Dec 1906), p. 1.
[396] AF 1.8 (May 1907), p. 2.
[397] This image of ‘living waters’ is not exclusively Johannine, of course.
See also Song of Songs 4.15; Jer. 2.13, 17.13; Zech. 14.8.
[398] AF 1.8 (May 1907), p. 3.
 [399] AF 1.8 (May 1907), p. 1.
[400] This nuptial language, whether addressed to the marriage of heaven and
earth or Christ and his bride, speaks the same as the feasting language. In both
metaphors, the same realities are at play: desire and satisfaction, emptiness and
fulfillment, otherness and identity (one-ness).
[401] AF 1.3 (Nov 1906), p. 2.
[402] AF 1.6 (Feb-Mar 1907), p. 1.
[403] AF 1.10 (Sept 1907), p. 3.
[404] AF 1.4 (Dec 1906), p. 2.
[405] AF 1.12 (Jan 1908), p. 2.
[406] AF 1.9 (June-Sept 1907), p. 2.
[407] AF 1.3 (Nov 1906), p. 1.
[408] AF 1.8 (May 1907), p. 2.
[409] Significantly, Pentecostal readings of John 6 diverge from the
mainstream Protestant reading, which historically does not regard the discourse
as a reference to the sacrament of the altar, in reaction to anti-sacramentalists’
use of the saying, ‘the flesh profits nothing’.
[410] See Doug Beacham, Azusa East: The Life and Times of G.B. Cashwell
(Franklin Springs, GA: LifeSprings Resources, 2006), pp. 35-58, and Vinson
Synan, ‘Gaston Barnabas Cashwell’, DPCM (rev. ed.), pp. 457-58.
[411] Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition, pp. 117-18. For a detailed
examination of Cashwell’s reasons for founding the periodical, see Beacham,
Azusa East, pp. 129-31.
[412] TBM 2.33 (Mar 1, 1909), p. 2.
[413] TBM 2.33 (Mar 1, 1909), p. 2. See also TBM 2.29 (Jan 1, 1909), p. 4.
[414] See, for example, TBM 2.30 (Jan 15, 1909), p. 2. ‘There is not a council
of men on earth today that is able to set down rules and write out a discipline
that will be able to govern the church of God. Men have tried to do that but they
have failed.’
[415] TBM 1.22 (Sept 15, 1908), p. 2.
[416] See for example TBM 2.42 (July 15, 1909), p. 4.
[417] TBM 1.4 (Dec 15, 1907), p. 1.
[418] Emphasis added.
[419] TBM 1.4 (Dec 15, 1907), p. 1.
[420] TBM 2.37 (May 1, 1909), p. 1. Besides traditional Protestant doctrines
such as the doctrine of the Trinity, vicarious atonement, the verbal inspiration of
Scripture, justification by faith, and the eternal rewards for the faithful and
faithless, the tract also affirms teachings peculiar to Pentecostals: the ‘baptism of
the Holy Ghost and fire subsequent to cleansing’, speaking in tongues as ‘the
distinguishing evidence’ of Spirit baptism, and the restoration of ‘all the gifts of
the Spirit’ to the end-time church. Additionally, the tract avows the teaching of
divine healing ‘provided for all in the atonement’ and the pre-millennial return of
Christ preceded by the ‘catching away of the Bride’, doctrines shared by other
revivalist and holiness groups who could not accept one or all of the distinctly
Pentecostal doctrines.
[421] Tellingly, the statement on justification by faith is relatively abbreviated,
too. The statements on glossolalia and divine healing are relatively extensive.
[422] TBM 3.60 (Apr 15, 1910), and TBM 5.109 (May 1, 1912), p. 1.
[423] TBM 1.2 (Nov 1, 1907), p. 1.
[424] TBM 2.38 (May 15, 1909), p. 2.
[425] See for example TBM 1.1 (Oct. 1, 1907), pp. 3-4; TBM 1.2 (Nov 1,
1907), p. 3; TBM 1.6 (Jan 15, 1908), p. 1; TBM 4.77 (Jan 1, 1911), p. 3.
[426] TBM 5.114 (July 15, 1912), p. 2.
[427] TBM 2.31 (Feb 1, 1909), p. 3. See also, for example, TBM 3.56 (Feb 15,
1910), p. 4. ‘… as Brother Schoonmaker anointed Winnie with oil, he told her to
expect Him to fill her with His Spirit as well as to heal her.’
[428] TBM 1.7 (Feb 1, 1908), p. 4; TBM 1.23 (Oct 1, 1908), p. 2.
[429] See for example TBM 1.1 (Oct 1, 1907), p. 4.
[430] See, for example, TBM 3.51 (Dec 1, 1909), p. 4.
[431] TBM 6.134 (June 1, 1913), p. 3.
[432] TBM 8.171 (June 1, 1915), p. 1; TBM 6.136 (July 1, 1913), p. 3.
[433] Apparently, King means by ‘element’ the spiritual reality of Christ’s
death.
[434] TBM 1.4 (Dec 15, 1907), p. 2. Emphasis added.
[435] One must be careful not to pigeonhole King’s view of water baptism as
strictly non-sacramental, however. In the course of his argument, King appeals to
Wesley’s notes on Romans, and it is highly unlikely he did not know Wesley’s
(sacramental) understanding of water baptism. If he disagrees with Wesley, he
does not indicate it. Further, even after describing ‘baptism into Christ’s death’
as the ‘gradual process of self-annihilation’, he goes on to claim that the
experience of water baptism actually plays a part in the believer becoming ‘more
intimately united to Christ’. Obviously, then, King’s view admits of various
interpretations and cannot be described simply as non-sacramental. Of course,
Wesley’s view was itself complex – perhaps even inconsistent – and cannot be
neatly categorized. For an account of Wesley’s view, see Brian C. Brewer,
‘Evangelical Anglicanism: John Wesley’s Dialectical Theology of Baptism’,
Evangelical Quarterly 83.2 (Apr 2011), pp. 107-32. Paul W. Chilcote
(Recapturing the Wesleys’ Vision: An Introduction to the Faith of John and
Charles Wesley [Downer’s Grove, IL: IVP, 2004], p. 96) insists that for John
Wesley, baptism was not merely a symbolic act, and that it was the ordinary
means of salvation in the Christian community. See also Thomas C. Oden, John
Wesley’s Scriptural Christianity: A Plain Exposition of His Teaching on
Christian Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), pp. 301-309.
[436]Because it was a prefiguration of Christ’s atoning death.
[437] On Barth’s view, it was the ‘more perfect form of communion’ because
it was a ‘more complete type of Christ’.
[438] TBM 22.279 (Jan-Mar 1929), p. 1.
[439] In keeping with the view of Hattie Barth and many other Pentecostals of
the time, many if not all contributors to TBM regarded the Supper as in some
sense a sacrament of healing.
[440] TBM 22.271 (Jan-Mar 1929), p. 9.
[441] TBM 22.271 (Jan-Mar 1929), p. 9.
[442] TBM 6.127 (Feb 15, 1913), p. 1.
[443] TBM 5.114 (July 15, 1912), p. 1.
[444] A second verse of the song promise that Jesus ‘satisfies the hungry
every time’ when they obey the Lord’s command to come and eat. The final
verse looks to the eschatological wedding feast: ‘Soon the Lamb will take His
bride /To be ever at His side/All the host of heaven will assembled be/Oh, ’twill
be a glorious sight/All the saints in spotless white/And with Jesus they will feast
eternally’.
[445] TBM 4.86 (May 15, 1911), p. 3.
[446] TBM 3.51 (Dec 1, 1909), p. 4.
[447] TBM 2.38 (May 15, 1909), p. 2.
[448] TBM 9.177 (Dec 1, 1915), p. 4. Previously published in Confidence 8.4
(April 1915), pp. 70-71, and WE 104 (Aug 21, 1915), p. 3.
[449] TBM 9.177 (Dec 1, 1915), p. 4.
[450] TBM 9.177 (Dec 1, 1915), p. 4.
[451] He tells another story of a woman who, on hearing his testimony,
declared she too would ‘eat in faith’ and immediately received her healing from
headaches, after years of suffering.
[452] TBM 9.177 (Dec 1, 1915), p. 4. Emphasis added.
 [453] TBM 1.6 (Jan 15, 1908), p. 1.
[454] TBM 1.6 (Jan 15, 1908), p. 3.
[455] TBM 1.2 (Nov 1, 1907), p. 2; TBM 2.23 (Oct 1, 1908), p. 2; see also
TBM 1.8 (Feb 15, 1908), p. 3; TBM 6.134 (June 1, 1913), p. 2. The phrase, ‘a
feast of fat things’, comes from Isa. 25.6 (KJV): ‘And in this mountain shall the
LORD of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the
lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined’. The phrase
appears frequently in early Pentecostal periodical literature.
[456] TBM 1.12 (Apr 15, 1908), p. 4.
[457] TBM 1.6 (Jan 15, 1908), p. 2. Another contributor appeals to the same
image (p. 4).
[458] TBM 1.8 (Feb 15, 1908), p. 1.
[459] For Tomlinson’s account of the history of the Church of God, see his
The Last Great Conflict (Cleveland, TN: Walter E. Rodgers Press, 1913), pp.
184-98.
[460] He provided an explanation for the paper’s name: ‘The dark and cloudy
day has passed. We are now in the evening of this wonderful gospel age’. See
COGE 1.1 (Mar 1, 1910) p. 1.
[461] COGE 8.39 (Oct 6, 1917), p. 1.
[462] A.J. Tomlinson plainly prefers this term, although ‘the sacrament’ also is
used.
[463] COGE 11.22 (June 29, 1920), p. 1.
[464] COGE 8.39 (Oct 6, 1917), p. 1.
[465] COGE 1.5 (May 1, 1910), p. 4.
[466] COGE 11.30 (July 24, 1920), p. 3.
[467] COGE 1.9 (July 1, 1910), p. 1. For other examples, see COGE 5.4 (Jan
24, 1914), p. 8; COGE 9.16 (Apr 20, 1918), p. 4.
[468] For example, see COGE 12.3 (Jan 15, 1921), p. 3.
[469] Tomlinson (COGE 6.15 [Apr 10, 1915], p. 1) insists that footwashing is
unmistakably plainly taught in Scripture, as are baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
[470] COGE 6.5 (Jan 30, 1915), p. 4. Emphasis added.
[471] COGE 6.1 (Jan 2, 1915), p. 1.
[472] There were exceptions, however rare. See, for example, COGE 1.18
(Nov 15, 1910), p. 1.
[473] COGE 12.34 (Aug 20, 1921), p. 2.
[474] One contributor, for example, can say that to fail to observe the
ordinances is to ‘be guilty of all’ wrongdoing. See COGE 14.35 (Sept 1, 1923),
p. 3.
[475] Minutes of the General Assembly (Jan 9-14, 1912), p. 22. Actually, the
text reads ‘John 3:10-14’, but this is obviously a typographical error.
[476] COGE 5.23 (June 6, 1914), p. 5.
[477] See COGE 5.24 (June 13, 1914), p. 6, and COGE 6.11 (Mar 13, 1915),
p. 2.
[478] COGE 12.41 (Oct 8, 1921), p. 3.
[479] COGE 8.5 (Feb 3, 1917), p. 3.
[480] COGE 12.28 (July 9, 1921), p. 2.
[481] See e.g. COGE 5.14 (Apr 4, 1914), pp. 1- 2.
[482] For an account of an ordination service, see COGE 12.26 (June 25,
1921), p. 2. Some accepted this position only reluctantly. One brother writes to
explain his own conversion: ‘Formerly, I did not believe in the laying on of
hands and being ordained to preach the gospel. I always said that God baptized
me with the Holy Ghost and called me to preach the gospel and I didn’t need to
be set apart by the laying on of hands. I prayed to God very earnestly about this
and searched the Scriptures and I found where Jesus ordained his apostles and
that Paul was set apart by the laying on of hands, and Paul said to follow him as
he followed Christ’. COGE 8.4 (Jan 27, 1917), p. 3.
[483] COGE 5.21 (May 23, 1914), p. 8.
[484] COGE 7.20 (May 13, 1916), p. 1.
[485] COGE 9.16 (Apr 20, 1918), p. 4.
[486] COGE 7.17 (Apr 22, 1916), p. 1. See also COGE 14.2 (Jan 13, 1923), p.
3.
[487] COGE 14.13 (Mar 31, 1923), p. 3.
[488] COGE 12.36 (Sept 3, 1921), p. 2; COGE 13.36 (Sept 9, 1922), p. 2;
COGE 13.38 (Sept 23, 1922), p. 3.
[489] See for example, COGE 1.7 (June 1, 1910), p. 7; COGE 1.10 (July 15,
1910), p. 6; COGE 1.16 (Oct 15, 1910), p. 7.
[490] COGE 14.2 (Jan 13, 1923), p. 3.
[491] COGE 5.31 (Aug 1, 1914), p. 6.
[492] For example, see COGE 5.11 (Mar 14, 1914), p. 7.
[493] COGE 5.11 (Mar 14, 1914), p. 7.
[494] COGE 12.38 (Sept 17, 1921), p. 1.
[495] COGE 6.7 (Feb 13, 1915), p. 3.
[496] COGE 12.25 (June 18, 1921), p. 4.
[497] COGE 12.25 (June 18, 1921), p. 4.
 [498] COGE 7.48 (Nov 25, 1916), p. 3.
[499] Book of Doctrines, pp. 68-69.
[500] COGE 7.31 (July 29, 1916), p. 1. Clearly, the fact that such language
enjoyed widespread currency among early Pentecostals suggests that the
Pentecostal imagination received its shape in part at least from the influence of
traditional Wesleyan sacramentality, even if Pentecostals (following their
Holiness predecessors) used the language in ways that exceeded and/or
transgressed traditional classifications, at least at points.
[501] COGE 1.12 (Aug 15, 1910), p. 2. See also COGE 6.9 (Feb 27, 1915), p.
4.
[502] COGE 6.4 (Jan 23, 1915), p. 1.
[503] COGE 7.2 (Jan 8, 1916), p. 4.
[504] COGE 5.28 (July 11, 1914), p. 7; COGE 9.15 (Apr 13, 1918), p. 2;
COGE 12.25 (June 18, 1921), p. 4. Lee appeals to Pliny’s letter to Trajan,
Ignatius’ letters, and the Apostolic Constitutions for evidence that early
Christians met on Sunday for worship.
[505] COGE 12.25 (June 18, 1921), p. 4.
[506] COGE 8.19 (May 19, 1917), p. 2. Relating the successes of an
evangelistic endeavor, one contributor remarks: ‘Of course we had the Lord’s
supper and washed each others [sic] feet as Jesus said we ought to do’. See
COGE 5.41 (Oct 10, 1914), p. 3. Emphasis added.
[507] COGE 8.27 (July 14, 1917), p. 3.
[508] COGE 12.31 (July 30, 1921), p. 3.
[509] COGE 5.42 (Oct 17, 1914), p. 7. For similar stories, see COGE 6.3 (Jan
16, 1915), p. 2, and COGE 6.3 (Jan 16, 1915), p. 3.
[510] COGE 1.16 (Oct 15, 1910), p. 4. Emphasis added.
[511] COGE 6.43 (Oct 23, 1915), p. 3.
[512] See, for example, COGE 1.19 (Dec 1, 1910), p. 6.
[513] COGE 1.19 (Dec 1, 1910), p. 6. There is a wealth of similar references;
for example, see: COGE 5.32 (Aug 8, 1914), p. 8; COGE 5.51 (Dec 26, 1914),
p. 3; COGE 6.33 (Aug 14, 1915), p. 3; COGE 7.30 (July 22, 1916), p. 3; COGE
7.47 (Nov 18, 1916), p. 3; COGE 7.53 (Dec 30, 1916), p. 2; COGE 8.2 (Jan 13,
1917), p. 3; COGE 8.23 (June 16, 1917), p. 4; COGE 9.11 (Mar 16, 1918), p. 3;
COGE 10.30 (July 26, 1919), p. 3; COGE 12.20 (May 14, 1921), p. 3; COGE
14.37 (Sept 8, 1923), p. 1.
[514] COGE 1.3 (Apr 1, 1910), p. 7.
[515] COGE 5.7 (Feb 14, 1914), p. 4.
 [516] COGE 1.7 (June 1, 1910), p. 7.
[517] COGE 1.12 (Aug 15, 1910), p. 7.
[518] COGE 14.31 (Aug 4, 1923), p. 2.
[519] See, for example COGE 1.12 (Aug 15, 1910), p. 7; COGE 5.21 (May
23, 1912), p. 8; COGE 5.25 (June 20, 1914), p. 3; COGE 5.27 (July 4, 1914), p.
8; COGE 8.29 (July 28, 1917), p. 4; COGE 8.46 (Nov 24, 1917), p. 3; COGE
12.4 (Jan 22, 1921), p. 2; COGE 14.30 (July 28, 1923), p. 4.
[520] For other examples, see COGE 1.14 (Sept 15, 1910), p. 1; COGE 12.34
(Aug 20, 1921), p. 2; COGE 12.37 (Sept 10, 1921), p. 2; COGE 14.31 (Aug 4,
1923), p. 2.
[521] COGE 1.7 (June 1, 1910), p. 7. Emphasis added.
[522] COGE 1.10 (July 15, 1910), pp. 1-2. For a similar example, see COGE
1.20 (Dec 15, 1910), p. 6.
[523] COGE 5.8 (Feb 21, 1914), p. 8.
[524] COGE 1.18 (Nov 15, 1910), p. 1.
[525] Book of Doctrines, p. 69.
[526] Book of Doctrines, p. 69.
[527] COGE 3.14 (Sept 15, 1912), p. 1.
[528] COGE 1.18 (Nov 15, 1910), p. 8.
[529] COGE 5.1 (Jan 3, 1914), p. 8.
[530] COGE 1.3 (Apr 1, 1910), p. 8; COGE 5.23 (June 5, 1914), p. 2.
[531] COGE 1.17 (Nov 1, 1910), p. 8.
[532] COGE 5.13 (Mar 28, 1914), p. 6.
[533] COGE 1.14 (Sept 15, 1910), p. 6.
[534] COGE 5.23 (June 6, 1914), p. 4.
[535] COGE 1.14 (Sept 15, 1910), p. 6.
[536] COGE 11.47 (Nov 27, 1920), p. 4. See also COGE 1.10 (July 15, 1910),
p. 1; also, COGE 5.19 (May 9, 1914), p. 5.
[537] See, for example, COGE 6.17 (Apr 25, 1915), p. 3; COGE 6.20 (May
15, 1915), p. 2; COGE 9.8 (Feb 23, 1918), p. 3; COGE 14.30 (July 28, 1923), p.
4; COGE 14.34 (Aug 25, 1923), p. 2.
[538] COGE 1.5 (May 1, 1910), p. 6.
[539] For example, see COGE 11.38 (Sept 8, 1920), p. 4; COGE 14.31 (Aug
4, 1923), p. 3.
[540] For example, see COGE 14.17 (Apr 28, 1923), p. 2; COGE 11.2 (Jan
10, 1920), p. 1.
[541] Vinson Synan, Old Time Power (Franklin Springs, GA: Life Springs,
1998), pp. 152-53.
[542] Joseph E. Campbell, The Pentecostal Holiness Church 1898-1948
(Franklin Springs, GA: Publishing House of Pentecostal Holiness Church, 1951),
pp. 536-37.
[543] For example, PHA 1.10 (July 5, 1917), p. 1; PHA 3.19-20 (Sept 4, 11
1919), p. 3.
[544] PHA 1.33 (Dec 13, 1917), p. 3.
[545] In his words, ‘every doctrine of our holy religion has been baptized with
the blood of millions of martyrs’, and Pentecostals, like all Christians, have only
what ‘the martyred saints bequeathed to us’.
[546] PHA 9.27 (Nov 5, 1925), p. 1. Emphasis added.
[547] PHA 9.27 (Nov 5, 1925), p. 1. It is not entirely clear what Taylor means
by this designation, although he obviously thinks of the devotional reading of
Scripture as belonging to it. Presumably, however, he means by it what the
Wesleyan tradition means by it: Taylor came to Pentecostalism from a Methodist
Episcopal background through the Holiness movement.
[548] He also held that John 13 is not an alternate account of Jesus’ Last
Supper; in his own words, ‘the supper at which the feet were washed was not the
passover [sic] supper, nor the time when the Lord's supper was given’. See PHA
1.39 (Jan 24 1918), p. 2. F.M. Britton (PHA 9.51 [Apr 29, 1926], p. 2) offers an
explanation of what he identifies as the four suppers of Passion Week, with the
footwashing happening on the second, and the Lord’s Supper, the third.
[549] PHA 3.30 (Nov 20, 1919), p. 2. Clearly, this shows that at some in the
Pentecostal Holiness Church did practice it.
[550] PHA 6.45 (Mar 8, 1923), p. 5.
[551] PHA 1.16 (Aug 16, 1917), p. 8.
[552] PHA 1.23 (Oct 4, 1917), p. 3.
[553] PHA 1.20 (Sept 13, 1917), p. 5; PHA 11.27 (Nov 3, 1927), p. 13.
[554] PHA 14.13 (July 24, 1930), p. 3. Emphasis added.
[555] PHA 3.149 (Apr 1, 1920), p. 3.
[556] PHA 1.42 (Feb 14, 1918), p. 4.
[557] PHA 3.30 (Nov 20, 1919), p. 7.
[558] PHA 4.11 (July 15, 1920), p. 10.
[559] PHA 11.3 (May 19, 1927), p. 3. It is necessary to ask why early
Pentecostals felt compelled to deliver these assertions, to make clear their
conviction that the sacraments did not work apart from faith and that the
sacramental signs themselves (e.g. water, bread and wine, oil) did not function
on their own power. Evidence suggests that perhaps early Pentecostal
experiences of the sacraments were so potent and lively that their leaders found
themselves required to warn against misunderstandings and overestimations of
the sacraments.
[560] P H A 1.18 (Aug 30, 1917), p. 4. Taylor uses this phrase, ‘entirely
ceremonial’, three times in the one-page article.
[561] PHA 2.17 (Aug 22, 1918), p. 8.
[562] PHA 1.35 (Dec 27, 1917), p. 16.
[563] PHA 5.51 (Apr 20, 1922), p. 2.
[564] PHA 5.5 (June 2, 1921), p. 10.
[565] PHA 1.7 (June 15, 1917), p. 3.
[566] PHA 1.29 (Nov 15, 1917), p. 5. He offers the thief on the cross as an
example of one whose circumstances would not allow baptism.
[567] PHA 4.30 (Nov 25, 1920), p. 2. Emphasis added.
[568] PHA 11.3 (May 19, 1927), p. 3.
[569] PHA 4.47 (Mar 24, 1921), p. 9.
[570] See P H A 1.31 (Nov 29, 1917), p. 5. Taylor claims that infants are
regenerated in the same way confessing adults are regenerated, although when
God chooses to regenerate no one can tell. In this light, he concludes that there is
no reason for Christian parents not to baptize their infants.
[571] For example, see PHA 2.15 (Aug 8, 1918), p. 13; PHA 2.28-29 (Nov 7,
14, 1918), p. 5; PHA 3.21 (Sept 18, 1919), p. 1.
[572] For example, see PHA 4.15 (Aug 12, 1920), p. 11; PHA 4.16 (Aug 19,
1920), p. 5.
[573] PHA 5.5 (July 2, 1921), p. 10.
[574] PHA 3.11 (July 10, 1919), p. 2.
[575] PHA 3.11 (July 10, 1919), p. 2.
[576] PHA 3.11 (July 10, 1919), p. 2.
[577] PHA 5.5 (June 2, 1921), p. 10.
[578] PHA 3.11 (July 10, 1919), p. 2.
[579] PHA 3.11 (July 10, 1919), p. 2.
[580] PHA 6.40 (Feb 1, 1923), p. 5; PHA 6.46 (Mar 15, 1923), p. 4.
[581] PHA 6.42 (Feb 15, 1923), p. 3.
[582] PHA 7.15 (Aug 9, 1923), p. 6.
[583] PHA 7.23 (Oct 4, 1923), p. 3.
[584] PHA 3.11 (July 10, 1919), p. 2.
[585] Emphasis added.
 [586] PHA 2.33-34 (Dec 19-26, 1918), p. 6.
[587] PHA 2.33-34 (Dec 19-26, 1918), p. 6.
[588] PHA 1.9 (June 28, 1917), p. 6.
[589] For example, PHA 1.4 (May 24, 1917), p. 13; PHA 1.51 (Apr 18, 1918),
p. 6.
[590] PHA 2.16 (Aug 15, 1918), p. 7.
[591] PHA 2.19 (Sept 5, 1918), p. 4
[592] PHA 2.12 (July 18, 1918), p. 10.
[593] PHA 2.12 (July 18, 1918), p. 10.
[594] PHA 1.22 (Sept 27, 1917), p. 5.
[595] PHA 1.29 (Nov 15, 1917), p. 13.
[596] PHA 2.27 (Oct 31, 1918), p. 13. See also PHA 1.37 (Jan 10, 1918), p. 6.
[597] PHA 1.45 (Mar 7, 1918), p. 14. For similar accounts, see PHA 2.7 (June
18, 1918), p. 2; PHA 2.18 (Aug 29), p. 11; PHA 4.11 (July 15, 1920), p. 4.
[598] PHA 4.5 (June 3, 1920), p. 5.
[599] PHA 8.30 (Nov 20, 1924), p. 5.
[600] PHA 1.45 (Mar 7, 1918), p. 16.
[601] PHA 5.30 (Nov 23, 1921), p. 4.
[602] PHA 2.49 (Apr 3, 1919), p. 6. Emphasis added.
[603] PHA 2.27 (Oct 31, 1918), p. 12.
[604] PHA 4.18 (Sept 2, 1920), p. 12.
[605] PHA 7.31 (Nov 29, 1923), p. 7.
[606] PHA 2.14 (Aug 1, 1918), p. 7.
[607] PHA 4.6 (June 10, 1920), p. 16. See also, PHA 2.36-37 (Jan 2-9, 1919),
p. 14.
[608] PHA 2.38 (Jan 16, 1919), p. 2.
[609] PHA 3.38 (Jan 15, 1920), p. 5.
[610] PHA 2.24 (Oct 10, 1918), p. 8.
[611] So one contributor (PHA 5.39 [Jan 25, 1923], p. 5) explains, ‘The truth
of the gospel is the bread upon which the servants or ministers must feed the
members of the household of God’. See also PHA 7.1 (May 3, 1923), p. 5.
[612] PHA 6.43 (Feb 22, 1923), p. 10. See also PHA 1.38 (Jan 17, 1918), p. 2;
PHA 6.40 (Feb 1, 1923), p. 7.
[613] PHA 9.40 (Feb 11, 1926), p. 2. See also PHA 7.24 (Oct 11, 1923), p. 6.
[614] PHA 4.18 (Sept 2, 1920), pp. 8-9. At least one other contributor took a
similar tack. See PHA 4.10 (July 8, 1920), p. 3.
[615] PHA 5.36 (Jan 4, 1923), p. 12.
 [616] PHA 3.39 (Jan 22, 1920), p. 9.
[617] PHA 6.51 (Apr 19, 1923), p. 4; PHA 7.4 (June 24, 1923), p. 3.
[618] PHA 6.48 (Mar 29, 1923), p. 6.
[619] Alan E. Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy
Saturday (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), p. 394.
[620] Among Wesleyan-Holiness periodicals, Cashwell’s Bridegroom’s
Messenger stands out in this regard.
[621] Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition, p. 149.
[622] Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition, p. 149.
[623] Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition, p. 150.
[624] Jacobsen, A Reader in Pentecostal Theology, p. 12.
[625] Allan Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global
Charismatic Christianity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004),
p. 47.
[626] WW 9.6 (June 20, 1913), p. 2.
[627] WW 9.6 (June 20, 1913), p. 2.
[628] WW 10.6 (May 20, 1914), p. 3.
[629] WW 10.6 (May 20, 1914), p. 3.
[630] LRE 9.11 (Aug 1917), p. 15.
[631] LRE 9.11 (Aug 1917), p. 15.
[632] LRE 13.6 (Mar 1921), p. 19.
[633] LRE 15.10 (July 1922), p. 17.
[634] See for example LRE 1.5 (Feb 1909), pp. 10, 19.
[635] LRE 5.9 (June 1913), pp. 20-21; TP 1.12 (Nov 1, 1909), p. 2.
[636] LRE 2.8 (May 1910), p. 18.
[637] LRE 5.9 (June 1913), p. 10. Emphasis added.
[638] LRE 1.12 (Sept 1909), p. 5.
[639] LRE 2.8 (May 1910), p. 10.
[640] LRE 10.10 (Oct 1917), p. 10.
[641] LRE 11.8 (May 1915), p. 3.
[642] Not everyone in the Finished Work movement agreed with Fraser. For a
counter-example, see LRE 11.8 (May 1915), p. 3.
[643] LRE 11.8 (May 1915), p. 6.
[644] LRE 11.8 (May 1915), p. 5.
[645] In this, Fraser sounds like Zwingli, who held that Communion’s
meaning and purpose was first to unite Christians to one another and thereby to
express this unity to the watching world. See Gregory J. Miller, ‘Huldrych
Zwingli’ in Carter Lindberg (ed.) The Reformation Theologians: An
Introduction to Theology in the Early Modern Period (Malden, MA:
Blackwell, 2002), p. 163.
[646] PT 1.8 (1911), p. 5.
[647] PT 1.5 (July 1, 1910), p. 15.
[648] PT 1.5 (July 1, 1910), p. 15.
[649] PT 1.5 (July 1, 1910), p. 15.
[650] LRE 6.9 (June 1914), p. 3.
[651] LRE 6.9 (June 1914), p. 3.
[652] LRE 6.9 (June 1914), p. 3.
[653] PT 2.1 (Jan 1912), p. 13. Emphasis added.
[654] His use of ‘ravished’ is particularly striking. Perhaps it derives from
Song of Songs 4.9, a text that was used in relation to the Eucharistic celebration
by American revivalists, including Gilbert Tennent during the so-called First
Great Awakening. See Kimberly Bracken Long, The Eucharistic Theology of
the American Holy Fairs (Louisville: WJKP, 2011), pp. 94-104.
[655] LRE 11.9 (June 1915), p. 8. Emphasis added.
[656] LRE 1.5 (Feb 1909), p. 20.
[657] LRE 5.3 (Dec 1912), p. 19.
[658] TP 2.11-12 (Nov-Dec, 1910), pp. 2-3.
[659] TP 2.11-12 (Nov-Dec, 1910), pp. 2-3.
[660] LRE 1.11 (Aug 1909), p. 20. Although not written by a Pentecostal, the
fact that LRE published the sermon remains instructive. It is not unthinkable that
some Pentecostal pastors and evangelists took this sermon, or at least parts of it,
to their pulpits.
[661] LRE 1.5 (Feb 1909), p. 9.
[662] LRE 9.2 (Oct 1916), p. 23.
[663] LRE 17.11 (Oct 1924), p. 7.
[664] LRE 18.1 (Nov 1924), p. 22.
[665] LRE 19.5 (Feb 1926), p. 19.
[666] LRE 8.8 (May 1915), p. 21.
[667] TP 1.2 (Sept, 1908), p. 6.
[668] TP 1.2 (Sept, 1908), p. 7.
[669] TP 1.2 (Sept, 1908), p. 1-2.
[670] TP 1.2 (Sept, 1908), p. 1.
[671] TP 1.6 (Apr-May, 1909), p. 11.
[672] TP 1.2 (Sept, 1908), p. 7.
 [673] This magazine has operated under several names in the course of its
(ongoing) history. First, it was known as The Christian Evangel (July 19, 1913-
March 6, 1915), then the Weekly Evangel (March 13, 1915-May 18, 1918), the
Christian Evangel (June 1, 1918-October 4, 1919), the Pentecostal Evangel (Oct
18, 1919-June 9, 2002), Today’s Pentecostal Evangel (June 16, 2002-July 19,
2009), and, finally, Pentecostal Evangel (June 26, 2009 – present).
[674] WE 129 (Mar 4, 1916), p. 9.
[675] WE 123 (Jan 15, 1916), p. 5.
[676] CE 61 (Oct 3, 1914), p. 3.
[677] CE 61 (Oct 3, 1914), p. 3.
[678] PE 474-475 (Dec 9, 1922), p. 8.
[679] See, for example, WE 123 (Jan 15, 1916), p. 15; WE 128 (Feb 26, 1916),
p. 4; CE 270-271 (Jan 11, 1919), p. 1.
[680] WE 214 (Nov 10, 1917), p. 13.
[681] CE 290-291 (May 31, 1919), p. 9.
[682] WE 128 (Feb 26, 1916), p. 8.
[683] PE 316-317 (Nov 29, 1919), p. 8.
[684] WE 122 (Jan 8, 1916), p. 7.
[685] WE 187 (Apr 28, 1917), p. 9.
[686] WE 138 (May 6, 1916), p. 8.
[687] WE 127 (Feb 19, 1916), p. 10.
[688] CE 246-247 (June 29, 1918), p. 9. Emphasis added.
[689] WE 100 (July 24, 1915), p. 1.
[690] PE 312-313 (Nov 1, 1919), p. 5.
[691] WE 170 (Dec 16, 1916), p. 8.
[692] PE 326-327 (Feb 7, 1920), p. 5.
[693] Bell briefly outlines two other views of this passage; first, that Jesus
refers to natural birth (‘of water’), and then to spiritual birth (‘and the Spirit’);
second, that Jesus alludes to what Paul elsewhere names ‘the washing of the
water by the Word’ (Eph. 5.26).
[694] WE 121 (Jan 1, 1916), p. 8. Bell’s choice of words is striking; perhaps
he only means to say that ritual washing is a symbol of the purifying
accomplished by the Spirit; however, he in fact says that the symbol itself
purifies.
[695] This position has an ancient pedigree.
[696] WE 118 (Dec 4, 1915), p. 4.
[697] WE 118 (Dec 4, 1915), p. 4.
 [698] WE 170 (Dec 23, 1916), p. 8.
[699] He notes that the Lutherans hold this view as well.
[700] Emphasis added.
[701] WE 146 (July 1, 1916), p. 8.
[702] WE 146 (July 1, 1916), p. 8.
[703] Bell agrees. Christ’s last supper was the final Passover meal; Christ
himself is the Passover for Christians. See WE 129 (Mar 4, 1916), p. 8.
[704] WE 100 (July 24 1915), p. 1.
[705] WE 100 (July 24 1915), p. 1.
[706] CE 61 (Oct 3 1914), p. 2.
[707] Clearly, her theology of the Eucharist is informed here by a reading of
John 6 and the so-called ‘Bread of Life discourse’.
[708] Although Flower provides no documentation, presumably because her
readers would readily have recognized it, this is the last stanza of Edward H.
Bickersteth, Jr.’s ‘Till He Come’, first published in 1862.
[709] CE 274-275 (Feb 8, 1919), p. 3.
[710] Emphasis in original.
[711] Emphasis added.
[712] Emphasis added.
[713] PE 582 (Jan 31, 1925), p. 6. First published in Confidence 9.10 (Oct
1916), p. 166.
[714] PE 582 (Jan 31, 1925), p. 6. It would be a mistake to take her reference
to ‘the very flesh of our Lord’ as a metaphysical claim. Nonetheless, it also
would be a mistake of equal degree not to take her claim seriously, for whatever
it does not signify, it clearly does suggest a deep and richly textured theology of
the Sacrament, underscored by the conviction that the risen crucified Christ is
personally present to and in the church’s sharing in the sacred meal.
[715] This is one of the best clues we have to the frequency with which early
Pentecostals observed the Supper.
[716] CE 274-275 (Feb 8, 1919), p. 3.
[717] CE 274-275 (Feb 8, 1919), p. 3.
[718] WE 214 (Nov 10, 1917), p. 3
[719] See CE 254 (Sept 7, 1918), p. 5; PE 350-351 (July 24, 1920), p. 4; PE
414-415 (Oct 15, 1921), p. 4; PE 582 (Jan 31, 1925), p. 7 (this is reprint of
Sisson’s article, ‘Our Health, His Wealth’).
[720] PE 715 (Sept 17, 1927), p. 4.
[721] For example, see CE 256-257 (Oct 5, 1918), p. 14.
[722] See PE 316-317 (Nov 29, 1919), p. 5.
[723] PE 334-335 (Apr 3, 1920), p. 5. See also PE 547 (May 17, 1924), p. 11.
[724] WE 162 (Oct 28, 1916), pp. 4
[725] PE 894 (April 18, 1931), pp. 2-3 (2).
[726] PE 894 (April 18, 1931), p. 2.
 [727] PE 894 (April 18, 1931), p. 2.
[728] PE 894 (April 18, 1931), p. 2.
[729] PE 894 (April 18, 1931), p. 2.
[730] Emphasis original.
[731] PE 894 (April 18, 1931), p. 2.
[732] WE 122 (Jan 8, 1916), p. 8.
[733] WE 141 (May 27, 1916), p. 14.
[734] WE 139 (May 13, 1916), p. 11.
[735] WE 218 (Dec 8, 1917), p. 3.
[736] WE 181 (Mar 31, 1917), p. 13.
[737] WE 162 (Oct 28, 1916), pp. 4.
[738] Emphasis added.
[739] WE 162 (Oct 28, 1916), pp. 4-5.
[740] WE 162 (Oct 28, 1916), p. 5. Emphasis added.
[741] That this position is expounded in a Finished Work periodical makes it
all the more striking.
[742] WE 162 (Oct 28, 1916), pp. 4. This claim makes clear, first, that
Pentecostals did not feel beholden to traditional categories, and, second,
reiterates the heart of Pentecostal spirituality as imitation of and precisely in this
way participation in the life of Jesus Christ.
[743] WE 126 (Feb 12, 1916), p. 7.
[744] WE 127 (Feb 19, 1916), p. 11.
[745] WE 131 (Mar 18, 1916), p. 13.
[746] WE 129 (Mar 4, 1916), p. 3.
[747] CE 2.13 (Mar 28, 1914), p. 8.
[748] CE 2.13 (Mar 28, 1914), p. 7.
[749] CE 2.13 (Mar 28, 1914), p. 7.
[750] See Gavin Wakefield, ‘The Human Face of Pentecostalism: Why the
British Pentecostal Moment Began in the Sunderland Parish of the Church of
England Vicar Alexander Boddy’, JEPTA 28.2 (2008), pp. 158-68.
[751] Confidence 1.1 (Apr 1908), p. 3.
[752] Mark J. Cartledge, ‘The Early Pentecostal Theology of Confidence
Magazine (1908-1926): A Version of the Five-Fold Gospel?’ JEPTA 28.2 (2008),
pp. 117-30.
[753] Confidence 10.2 (Mar-Apr, 1917), p. 17.
[754] Confidence 3.1 (Jan, 1910), p. 20.
 [755] Confidence 4.3 (March 1912), pp. 56-57.
[756] Confidence 7.10 (Oct 1914), p. 193.
[757] Confidence 3.8 (Aug 1910), p. 178.
[758] Confidence 2.8 (Aug 1909), p. 174.
[759] Confidence 1.3 (June 30, 1908), p. 18.
[760] Confidence 2.5 (May 1909), p. 121.
[761] Confidence 5.1 (Jan 1912), p. 9.
[762] Confidence 4.7 (July 1911), p. 165.
[763] Confidence 2.4 (Apr 1909), p. 96.
[764] Confidence 5.6 (May 1913), p. 90; See also Confidence 1.1 (Apr 1908),
p. 11. They, too, speak of ‘following the Lord in baptism’.
[765] See Confidence 1.5 (Aug 15, 1908), p. 4; Confidence 8.12 (Dec 1915),
p. 230.
[766] Confidence 10.1 (Jan-Feb 1917), p. 9.
[767] Confidence 8.12 (December 1915), p. 237.
[768] Confidence 5.3 (March 1912), pp. 56-59.
[769] Confidence 5.3 (March 1912), pp. 56-59.
[770] Confidence 5.3 (March 1912), p. 58. In saying this, Boddy brilliantly
displays the continuity Pentecostals perceive between the church’s celebration of
Holy Communion and the ‘marriage supper of the Lamb’.
[771] Confidence 7.8 (Aug 1914), p. 150.
[772] Confidence 7.12 (Dec 1914), p. 232.
[773] Emphasis added.
[774] Here, she references Heb. 2.14.
[775] For the most part, Cranmer gives liturgical expression to the theology of
the reformers, including Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and Martin Bucer, a personal
friend. There is controversy as to which reformer Cranmer remained most
faithful. See Roger E. Olsen, The Story of Christian Theology (Downers Grove,
IL: IVP, 1999), p. 436. As Olsen notes, Cranmer’s friendship with Bucer was not
the only intimate source for his theology; Cranmer’s wife was Lutheran, and she
was the niece of the (somewhat inconsistent) Lutheran theologian, Andreas
Osiander.
[776] Willem Nijenhuis, Ecclesia Reformata: Studies on the Reformation
(Leiden: Brill, 1972), argues for three phases in Cranmer’s view of the Eucharist:
first a Catholic view, then a Lutheran, and finally a view akin to the Swiss
Reformers.
[777] Byron D. Stuhlman, A Good and Joyful Thing: the Evolution of the
Eucharistic Prayer (New York: Church Publishing Inc., 2000), pp. 114-21.
[778] Certainly, the first version of BCP (1549) – published on Pentecost
Sunday – was considered too ‘Catholic’ by most reformers, especially in its
doctrine of the Eucharist; the succeeding version (1552) vindicated itself as a
more properly ‘Protestant’ book. See R.C.D. Jasper and G.J. Cuming, Prayers of
the Eucharist: Early and Reformed (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990),
pp. 232-49.
[779] Confidence 7.1 (Jan, 1914), p. 11.
[780] It is not clear whether Mary intends to draw attention to the Eucharist,
although there is no reason to assume otherwise. Many Pentecostals, then and
now, consider the Lord’s Table a place of healing.
[781] Confidence 1.2 (May 1908), p. 8.
[782] Confidence 9.4 (Apr 1916), p. 74.
[783] Confidence 129 (Apr-June, 1922), p. 26.
[784] Confidence 7.2 (Feb 1914), p. 24.
[785] Her article was published originally in T.B. Barratt’s magazine,
Christiania; Boddy reprints it for his readers.
[786] Confidence 1.4 (July 15, 1908), p. 5.
[787] Confidence 1.4 (July 15, 1908), p. 5.
[788] Confidence 10.5 (Sept-Oct 1917), p. 67.
[789] Confidence 2.8 (Aug 1909), p. 177. Emphasis added.
[790] Confidence 1.7 (Oct 15, 1908), p. 11.
[791] Confidence 7.7 (Sep 1914), p. 175.
[792] Supplement to Confidence 1.9 (Dec 15, 1908), p. 4.
[793] Confidence 2.1 (Jan 1909), p. 4. Emphasis added.
[794] Confidence 4.8 (Aug, 1911), p. 177.
[795] Confidence 6.6 (June, 1913), p. 112.
[796] Confidence 1.5 (Aug 15, 1908), p. 10.
[797] Confidence 9.7 (July 1916), p. 122.
[798] Confidence 7.12 (Dec 1914), p. 227.
[799] Confidence 2.8 (Aug 1909), p. 182.
[800] Confidence 2.7 (July 1909), p. 150.
[801] Confidence 2.3 (Mar 1909), p. 69.
[802] Confidence 3.8 (Aug 1910), p. 181.
[803] See, for example, Confidence 2.5 (May 1909), p. 120; Confidence 3.12
(Dec 1910), pp. 288-89; Confidence 4.1 (Jan 1911), p. 8; Confidence 128 (Jan-
Mar 1922), p. 4.
 [804] At the least, it is safe to say that Boddy himself, as the magazine’s
editor, selected and disseminated articles that leave this impression.
[805] James K.A. Smith, The Devil Reads Derrida (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2009), p. 30.
[806] They would agree with Wesley’s stance, as expounded in his sermon on
the ‘Means of Grace’: ‘… all outward means whatever, if separate from the
Spirit of God, cannot profit at all, cannot conduce, in any degree, either to the
knowledge or love of God. Without controversy, the help that is done upon earth,
He doeth it himself. It is He alone who, by his own almighty power, worketh in
us what is pleasing in his sight; and all outward things, unless He work in them
and by them, are mere weak and beggarly elements. Whosoever, therefore,
imagines there is any intrinsic power in any means whatsoever, does greatly err,
not knowing the Scriptures, neither the power of God. We know that there is no
inherent power in the words that are spoken in prayer, in the letter of Scripture
read, the sound thereof heard, or the bread and wine received in the Lord's
Supper; but that it is God alone who is the Giver of every good gift, the Author
of all grace’.

[807] Quoted in Hans Urs von Balthasar (ed.), Origen, Spirit and Fire: A
Thematic Anthology of His Writing (Washington DC: Catholic University of
America Press, 1984), p. 264.
[808] See Hannah K. Harrington and Rebecca Patten, ‘Pentecostal
Hermeneutics and Postmodern Literary Theory’, Pneuma 16.1 (Spring 1994),
pp. 109-14.
[809] Many have used this rubric, including Rick D. Moore, ‘Canon and
Criticism in the Book of Deuteronomy’, JPT 1 (Oct 1992), pp. 75-92; Land,
Pentecostal Spirituality, pp. 39-40; John Christopher Thomas, ‘Women,
Pentecostals, and the Bible: An Experiment in Pentecostal Hermeneutics’, JPT 5
(1994), pp. 41-56; Amos Yong, Spirit-Word-Community: Theological
Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2002),
and Kenneth J. Archer, A Pentecostal Hermeneutic: Spirit, Scripture and
Community (Cleveland, TN: CPT Press, 2009), pp. 213-15 (originally published
as A Pentecostal Hermeneutic for the Twenty-First Century [New York: T&T
Clark, 2004]).
[810] It is one thing to insist that the Spirit is active in the interpretative
process, but quite another to explain how. The more difficult question is, then, by
what means does God influence and direct the interpretation of Scripture? What
is needed to answer this question is a hermeneutic that ‘seeks to articulate what
the Spirit’s role is and how the Spirit works specifically’, as Thomas (‘Women,
Pentecostals, and the Bible’, pp. 41-42) says.
[811] In this, Pentecostals are not distancing themselves from the ecclesia
catholica, but attempting to put into practice a conviction shared by all
Christians. For the ecumenical confession of Pentecostals and Roman Catholics
on this issue, see Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, ‘Authority, Revelation, and
Interpretation in the Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue’, Pneuma 21.1
(Spring 1999), pp. 89-114.
[812] Archer, A Pentecostal Hermeneutic, p. 248.
[813] John McKay, ‘When the Veil is Taken Away: The Impact of Prophetic
Experience on Biblical Interpretation’, JPT 5 (1994), p. 21.
[814] So Archer (A Pentecostal Hermeneutic, p. 248) drawing principally on
the work of Rick Moore, John Christopher Thomas, and Stephen Fowl, argues
that ‘the Spirit does speak and has more to say than just Scripture. This requires
the community to discern the Spirit in the process of negotiating the meaning of
the biblical texts’.
[815] Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, p. 100.
[816] Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, p. 100.
[817] Moore, ‘Canon and Charisma in the Book of Deuteronomy’, p. 79.
[818] Moore, ‘Canon and Charisma in the Book of Deuteronomy’, p. 80.
[819] Moore, ‘Canon and Charisma in the Book of Deuteronomy’, p. 89.
[820] Moore, ‘Canon and Charisma in the Book of Deuteronomy’, p. 91. For
example, Yong (Spirit-Word-Community, p. 257) can speak of a ‘necessarily
healthy tension between Spirit and Word’.
[821] Emphasis added.
[822] Wesleyan New Testament scholar Robert Wall (‘A Response to
Thomas/Alexander, “And the Signs Are Following” [Mk 6.9-20]’, JPT 11.2
[2003], pp. 176-77) argues that 2 Tim. 3.15-17 suggests that ‘God inspires the
performance rather than the production of Scripture’. As he reads it, Paul
teaches that the biblical texts are always ‘presently inspired by God’.
[823] This is a familiar distinction utilized by many Pentecostals. See for
example Roger Stronstad, ‘Pentecostal Experience and Hermeneutics’,
Paraclete 26.1 (1992), p. 18.
[824] Clark H. Pinnock, ‘The Work of the Holy Spirit in Hermeneutics’, JPT
2 (1993), p. 5.
[825] McKay, ‘When the Veil is Taken Away’, p. 21.
 [826] This is not far removed from what Ellen F. Davis (‘Teaching the Bible
Confessionally in the Church’ in Richard B. Hays and Ellen F. Davis [eds.], The
Art of Reading Scripture [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003], p. 11) describes as
readings that ‘tell us about the nature and will of God, to instruct us in the
manifold and often hidden ways in which God is present and active in our
world’.
[827] N.T. Wright (The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars [San Francisco:
HarperCollins, 2005], p. 101) criticizes the uses of the so-called ‘Wesleyan
quadrilateral’ that regard experience as ‘a separate source of authority to be
played off against scripture itself’. If some Pentecostals do speak of their
experience in this way, that is certainly not what Thomas, Archer, Moore, and
Waddell, et al., intend. Instead, experience in the Spirit leads to the Scripture,
making the Scripture ‘hearable’, so to speak. Experience is not another ‘source
of authority’, but the necessary condition for receiving the Scripture’s authority
rightly.
[828] Pinnock (‘The Work of the Holy Spirit in Hermeneutics’, p. 16) insists,
‘The Spirit … actualizes the word of God by helping us to restate the message in
contemporary terminology and apply it to fresh situations. The result is that
salvation history continues to take effect in us’.
[829] Robby Waddell, The Spirit of the Book of Revelation (JPTSup 30;
Blandford Forum: Deo Publishing, 2006), pp. 111, 118. In agreement with
Cheryl Bridges Johns and Steven Land, et. al., he argues that ‘participation in the
Spirit’ is indispensable to the process of meaning-making, summing up his
position in a motto: ‘Unless we believe, we shall not understand’.
[830] McKay, ‘When the Veil is Taken Away’, p. 26.
[831] McKay, ‘When the Veil is Taken Away’, p. 19.
[832] As we have seen, Acts 15 has often been used by Pentecostals (e.g.
Thomas and Archer) as a paradigm for faithful interpretation. Perhaps the time
has come to build on the strength of this model by bringing this story into
dialogue with other similar stories in the Lukan corpus, including Jesus’ reading
of Isaiah (Lk. 4.16-21), the eye-opening experience of the Emmaus disciples
(Lk. 24.13-35), and the story of Philip and the Ethiopian (Acts 8.26-40),
allowing these different accounts to help give further shape and definition to a
genuinely Pentecostal hermeneutical model. By allowing these other accounts in
Luke-Acts of early Christian interpretation to inform the discussion, Pentecostals
perhaps will find ways of augmenting the strengths of the interpretive model
they have put forward in light of Acts 15.
 [833] Thomas, ‘Women, Pentecostals, and the Bible’, p. 50.
[834] E.g. Larry R. McQueen (Joel and the Spirit: The Cry of a Prophetic
Hermeneutic [Cleveland, TN: CPT Press, 2009], p. 5; [first published by
Sheffield Academic Press as JPTSup 8, 1995]) prefaces his reading of Joel with
this methodological explanation: ‘On the one hand, my Pentecostal pre-
understandings will illuminate aspects of the text of Joel left undiscovered by
other interpreters. On the other hand, a fresh critical reading of Joel will facilitate
a clearer articulation of Pentecostal eschatology and ecclesiology. The dialogical
role of experience opens up the text of Joel for questions otherwise left
unaddressed’.
[835] Arguably, this arises from a fundamental misunderstanding of what this
slogan does and does not mean. Popularly, it means something like, ‘The Bible is
the only authority’, but in fact it means (at least, it meant in the Reformers’
formulations) something more like, ‘The Bible is the sole, primary authority’.
[836] Archer, A Pentecostal Hermeneutic, p. 218.
[837] Rick D. Moore, ‘A Pentecostal Approach to Scripture’, Seminary
Viewpoint 8.1 (1987), p. 4.
[838] Land (Pentecostal Spirituality, p. 71) talks of ‘Pentecostal narratives’,
of ‘participating in the story of God’, of the ‘Biblical drama’, of the ‘salvation-
history drama of redemption’.
[839] Wolfgang Vondey, ‘Review of Kevin VanHoozer’s The Drama of
Doctrine’, Pneuma 30.2 (2008), p. 365.
[840] Archer, A Pentecostal Hermeneutic, p. 229.
[841] Kenneth J. Archer, ‘A Pentecostal Way of Doing Theology: Method and
Manner’, IJST 9.3 (July 2007), p. 311.
[842] James K.A. Smith, Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to
Christian Philosophy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), p. 69.
[843] This is not to say that ‘behind the text’ concerns do not matter. It is to
say, as Lee Roy Martin (The Unheard Voice of God: A Pentecostal Hearing of
the Book of Judges [JPTSup 32; Blandford Forum: Deo Publishing, 2008], p.
14) puts it, that ‘the world within the text takes priority over the world behind
the text’.
[844] Archer, A Pentecostal Hermeneutic, p. 228.
[845] Waddell, The Spirit of the Book of Revelation, p. 101.
[846] John Christopher Thomas and Kimberly Ervin Alexander, ‘“And the
Signs are Following”: Mark 16.9-20 – A Journey into Pentecostal
Hermeneutics’, JPT 11.2 (2003), pp. 147-70.
 [847] Kärkkäinen (‘Authority, Revelation, and Interpretation in the Roman
Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue’, p. 103) holds that this is due, perhaps, to the fact
that historically Pentecostals have maintained (more often than not, implicitly)
that Scripture is ‘clear’ for the Spirit-led individual so that the believer’s ‘private
judgment’ is sufficient for right interpretation. Those who are arguing for a
greater emphasis on the community’s role in interpretation do so in part because
they hope that this will alleviate that old problem.
[848] Pentecostals would agree with Hauerwas, who contends that ‘…
reading scripture in community serves a constitutive purpose by shaping the way
persons-in-community come to see the world and themselves. In sum, the church
is the irreplaceable locus of authority for reading scripture’. See Michael G.
Cartwright, ‘Stanley Hauerwas’s Essays in Theological Ethics: A Reader’s
Guide’ in John Berkman and Michael G. Cartwright (eds.), The Hauerwas
Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), p. 641.
[849] Archer, A Pentecostal Hermeneutic, p. 213.
[850] ‘Community’ should be taken to mean both the local church and the
ecclesia catholica, although the emphasis falls on the local congregation as it
gathers in worship.
[851] Archer, A Pentecostal Hermeneutic, p. 181.
[852] Thomas makes this argument in light of the Acts 15 account of the
Jerusalem community’s decision, and concludes that as it was then, so it is now.
‘It is the community that is able to give and receive testimony as well as assess
the reports of God’s activity in the lives of those who are part of the community’
(Thomas, ‘Women, Pentecostals, and the Bible’, p. 55). In this, Thomas
anticipates Luz (quoted in Emerson B. Powery, ‘Ulrich Luz’s Matthew in
History: A Contribution to Pentecostal Hermeneutics?’, JPT 14 [1999], p. 17),
who puts it pithily: ‘truth is the dialogue’.
[853] Frank Macchia (‘The Book of Revelation and the Hermeneutics of the
Spirit: A Response to Robby Waddell’, JPT 17 [2008], p. 20) suggests that
Waddell should have ‘more clearly and forcefully’ acknowledged the ‘priority’
of the text over the community.
[854] As Martin (The Unheard Voice of God, p. 15) explains, Pentecostals
recognize and celebrate the fact that ‘[m]ultiple voices do not diminish the
meaning of the text’, but ‘enhance, deepen, and strengthen it’.
[855] Like John Christopher Thomas, Archer (A Pentecostal Hermeneutic, p.
213) draws on the Acts 15 story as a model for interpretation.
[856] The work of Ulrich Luz has been influential among Pentecostals, not
least because of Thomas’ influence. For an assessment of the possibilities of
Luz’s approach for Pentecostal studies, see Powery, ‘Ulrich Luz’s Matthew in
History: A Contribution to Pentecostal Hermeneutics?’, pp. 3-17.
[857] John Christopher Thomas, The Spirit of the New Testament (Blandford
Forum: Deo Publishing, 2005), p. 18 (First published as John Christopher
Thomas, ‘Pentecostal Theology in the Twenty-First Century’, Pneuma 20
(1998), pp. 3-19). Waddell (The Spirit of the Book of Revelation, p. 113) also
adopts the metaphor of testimony for this use.
[858] Wesleyan scholar Robert Wall (‘A Response to Thomas/Alexander’, p.
177) expresses this point exactly: ‘the canonical authority of a biblical text is
discerned by the church not in consideration of its originality when critically
appraised, but by its performance in Christian formation when spiritually
attested’.
[859] McQueen, Joel and the Spirit, pp. 68-103.
[860] Waddell, The Spirit of the Book of Revelation, pp. 119-22.
[861] Martin, The Unheard Voice of God, pp. 17-30.
[862] Gary Steven Shogren, ‘How Did They Suppose “The Perfect” Would
Come? 1 Corinthians 13.8-12 in Patristic Exegesis’, JPT 15 (1999), pp. 99-121.
[863] Heather L. Landrus, ‘Hearing 3 John 2 in the Voices of History’, JPT
11.1 (2002), pp. 70-88.
[864] It should perhaps be observed that John Christopher Thomas has been
behind much of this emphasis on effective history in recent Pentecostal
scholarship. He served as joint-supervisor for Waddell’s PhD thesis; at the time
her article was published, Landrus was his MDiv student; and McQueen, Martin,
and Archer have worked or do work closely with him at the Centre for
Pentecostal Theology at the Pentecostal Theological Seminary (Cleveland, TN).
[865] Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, p. 13.
[866] Thomas, ‘Women, Pentecostals, and the Bible’, pp. 41-56.
[867] Thomas and Alexander, ‘“And the Signs Are Following”’, pp. 147-70.
[868] Archer, A Pentecostal Hermeneutic, p. 2.
[869] Archer, A Pentecostal Hermeneutic, pp. 125-26.
[870] Waddell, The Spirit of the Book of Revelation, p. 113.
[871] A close reading of his work suggests that his hermeneutic increasingly
has been shaped by his Pentecostal experience. For example, he seems less
beholden to the historical-critical method he deemed ‘necessary’ in his earlier
work (Living and Active: Scripture in the Economy of Salvation [Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002]? See Telford Work, Ain’t Too Proud to Beg: Exercises
in Prayerful Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), pp. 31-32.
[872] Telford Work, Deuteronomy (BTC; Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2009), pp.
18-22.
[873] Work, Deuteronomy, p. 19.
[874] See, for example, Schell’s article on the ante-Nicene fathers in LRE 7.4
(Jan 1915), pp. 7-11.
[875] Taylor (PHA 15.21 [Sept 17, 1931], pp. 1, 8) acknowledged the need for
‘doctrinal guides by which the Scriptures may be interpreted’ and that these
guides were established by the early church fathers. In the same vein, he spoke
(PHA 15.23 [Oct 1, 1931], pp. 1, 4) of the creeds as ‘ancient landmarks’ that
must not be removed.
[876] See, for a particularly illuminating example, J.H. King’s interpretation
of Prov. 8.22-32 in PHA 20.13 (July 30, 1936), pp. 3, 9.
[877] It is important not to make too much of the lack of references to the
Eucharist in Paul’s other extant letters, as Jerome Murphy O’Conner (‘Eucharist
and Community in First Corinthians’, Worship 50.5 [Spring 1976], p. 370)
explains:
Paul’s allusions to the eucharist are concentrated in Chapters 10-11 of First
Corinthians. His silence regarding this central sacrament in other letters is due
to the occasional character of his communications with the churches for which
he was responsible. He was not a speculative theologian principally concerned
with the interrelationship of concepts within an ideal structure, but a pastor
whose attention was focused by the real problems of Christian living in a
concrete situation … The fact that he devotes so much space to the eucharist
in the Corinthian correspondence is a clear indication that there was
something radically wrong with the Corinthians’ approach to this sacrament.
The fact that he does not touch on the topic in other letters signifies only that
the same problem did not arise in other communities.
I stand in basic agreement with Denis Farkasfalvy (‘The Eucharistic
Provenance of New Testament Texts’ in Roch A. Kereszty (ed.), Rediscovering
the Eucharist: Ecumenical Conversations (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2003),
pp. 27-51), who argues that not only does the New Testament provide a theology
of the Eucharist, but that the entire New Testament – in form and content – arises
in part from Eucharistic experience of the worshipping community.
[878] For an examination of Paul’s treatment of the ‘strong’ and the ‘weak’,
see Volker Gäckle, Die Starken und die Schwachen in Korinth und in Rom: Zu
Herkunft und Funktion der Antithese in 1 Kor 8.1-11.1 und in Rom 14.1-15
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004).
[879] Richard B. Hays (First Corinthians [Interpretation; Louisville: WJKP,
1997], p. 135) explains that these were ‘hot-button issues’ in Corinth for three
inter-related reasons: ‘the problem of boundaries between the church and the
pagan culture, the strained relationship between different social classes in the
community, and the relation between knowledge and love as the foundation of
the church’s life’. For a fuller examination of the issues arising from food
offered to idols, see Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians:
A Commentary on the Greek Text (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), pp.
612-20, 660-61; John Fotopoulos, Food Offered to Idols in Roman Corinth: A
Socio-Rhetorical Reconsideration (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003); David E.
Garland, ‘The Dispute Over Food Offered to Idols (1 Cor. 8.1-11.1)’,
Perspectives in Religious Studies 30.2 (Sum 2003), pp. 173-97.
[880] Following the outline of Thiselton, The First Epistle to the
Corinthians, pp. 607-12, which is itself indebted to Kenneth E. Bailey, ‘The
Structure of 1 Corinthians and Paul’s Theological Method Also With Special
Reference to 4.17’, Novum Testamentum 25.2 (1983), pp. 152-81. See also
Hays, First Corinthians, pp. 159-73.
[881] According to some commentators, Paul acknowledged the Corinthians’
right to eat meat offered to idols, but nonetheless insisted that they should refuse
to make use of this right in deference to the ‘weak’ among them. See, for
example, E. Coye Still III, ‘The Meaning and Uses of EID Ō LOTHYTON in
First Century Non-Pauline Literature and 1 Cor 8.1-11.1: Toward a Resolution of
the Debate’, Trinity Journal 23.2 (Fall 2002), pp. 225-34.
[882] If we can take Paul at his word (1 Cor. 4.17; 7.7; 11.16), then the same
was true for all the Pauline communities.
[883] Dennis Edwin Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in
the Early Christian World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), pp. 173-218.
[884] Rudolph Bultmann (Theology of the New Testament [Waco: Baylor
University Press, 2007], p. 151) concludes that 1 Cor. 10.16 speaks of Holy
Communion as ‘self-evident for Christians’.
[885] This is Thistelton’s translation of koinonia (The First Epistle to the
Corinthians, p. 104).
[886] See Raymond F. Collins, First Corinthians (Sacra Pagina; Collegeville,
MN: Liturgical Press, 1999), p. 375-82.
[887] Collins (First Corinthians, p. 381) says it well: ‘To participate in idol
worship is, implicitly, to deny the sovereignty of the Lord Jesus. Hence there is
radical incompatibility between the worship of idols and sharing the table of the
Lord’.
[888] As Hays (First Corinthians, p. 173) explains, ‘This is the positive
counter-reality set over against the danger of idolatry: authentic Christian
worship draws us together around the table of the Lord in such a way that we
become a covenant people, receiving the blessing of fellowship with God and
sharing our lives with one another’.
[889] Aquinas certainly saw it this way: he read 1 Corinthians as an extended
treatment of the sacraments, singling out chapters 8-11 as an exposition of the
Eucharist. For an extended treatment of Aquinas’ comments on 1 Corinthians,
see Daniel A. Keating, ‘Aquinas on 1 and 2 Corinthians’, in Thomas Gerard
Weinandy, Daniel A. Keating, and John Yocum (eds.), Aquinas on Scripture: An
Introduction to His Biblical Commentaries (London: T&T Clark, 2005), pp.
127-48.
[890] His statements about the resurrection and the resurrected body (chapter
15) resonate to 10.16-17, as well. For example, Paul says Christ, the ‘last
Adam’, is a ‘life-giving spirit’ precisely because he has been raised a ‘spiritual
body’ (15.44-45); this, apparently, explains how the Corinthians can share in and
be enlivened by Christ’s body in the present, even while they await the future
resurrection – so long as they rightly discern the Lord’s body (11.17-34).
[891] Interestingly, by reversing some of the claims of the letter – i.e. by
stating them in positive rather than negative terms – one perhaps uncovers other
signs of a robust sacramentality. As believers eat the loaf and drink the cup in a
worthy manner, they participate in the body and blood of the Lord (11.27), and if
they eat and drink while rightly discerning the body, they receive salvation,
rather than judgment (11.29). Because Christ has indeed been raised from the
dead, the Christian community can eat and drink, not in despair, but in hope
(15.32).
[892] For an examination of two of the key terms in 1 Cor. 10.14-22, koinonia
and metechein, see Harm W. Hollander, ‘The Idea of Fellowship in 1 Corinthians
10.14–22’, New Testament Studies 55.4 (Oct 2009), pp. 456-70.
[893] Collins (First Corinthians, p. 379) explains that in the beginning of the
letter ‘he reminded the Corinthian Christians that they were called to fellowship
with Jesus Christ our Lord. Now he specifies that fellowship with the Lord is
realized through participation in his blood and body’.
[894] See Victor Paul Furnish, The Theology of the First Letter to the
Corinthians (NTT; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 83.
 [895] Collins (First Corinthians, p. 376) suggests that Paul’s lexis ‘expresses
the significance of the Christian Eucharist in a way that would be familiar with
Hellenistic mystery religions’. In one form or another, such claims are frequently
made by commentators on 1 Corinthians. It seems to me, however, that while
such background information may prove illuminating, it also threatens to
obscure Paul’s concern with Israel’s cultic meals, and, in particular, with Jesus’
institution of the Supper.
[896] Didache 10 uses this very language to name the Eucharist.
[897] For an argument that this is indeed the Corinthians’ formula, see Hays,
First Corinthians, p. 141.
[898] Not everyone agrees that this is reference to the Eucharist, of course.
However, see Rodrigo J. Morales, ‘A Liturgical Conversion of the Imagination:
Worship and Ethics in 1 Corinthians’ in Scott W. Hahn and David Scott (eds.),
Letter & Spirit (Vol. 5; Steubenville, OH: St Paul Center for Biblical Theology,
2009), p. 109.
[899] Gordon Fee, Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study
(Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007), p. 123.
[900] Almost certainly, this is Paul’s counter to the Corinthians’ maxim that
food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food (10.13). For an
examination of the slogans in 1 Corinthians and their importance of identifying
them for the interpretive process, see Jay E. Smith, ‘Slogans in 1 Corinthians’,
Bibliotheca Sacra 167.665 (Jan-Mar 2010), pp. 68-88.
[901] Hays (First Corinthians, p. 164) points to the fact that sexual
misconduct is a key theme in the letter (5.1-13; 6.12-20; 7.2-5), but he does not
explore how Paul works this out in light of the ‘one body’ of Christ received and
signified in the Lord’s Supper.
[902] Richard B. Hays, The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as
Interpreter of Israel’s Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), pp. 1-24.
[903] See Mark D. Vander Hart, ‘The Exodus as Sacrament: the Cloud, the
Sea, and Moses Revisited’, Mid-America Journal of Theology 12 (2001), pp. 9-
46.
[904] As Ex. 34.14 says, God’s name is Jealous.
[905] Collins (First Corinthians, p. 381) explains, ‘In the biblical tradition
God’s jealousy is associated with idol worship (Exod. 20.5; 34.14; Deut. 5.9; 1
Kgs 14.22; Ezek. 8.3, etc). Jealousy leads God to judge the people severely when
they abandon him for some god or goddess (Deut. 6.14-15; Josh. 24.19-20; Ps.
78.58-64; Zeph. 1.14; Nah. 1.2, etc.)’.
 [906] John Chrysostom, Homilies on 1 Corinthians 24.3 (NPNF 1.12, p.
139).
[907] Following F.F. Bruce’s suggestion (Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free
[Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979], p. 114), we can read this not as a contrast
between bodily oneness, on the one hand, and an immaterial, spiritual oneness,
on the other hand, but as a contrast between a bodily oneness controlled by the
‘flesh’ and a bodily oneness effected by the same Spirit who has raised Christ
from the dead. To say, then, that believers are made ‘one spirit’ with Christ is to
say that they belong to the same new creation order as he does, as the resurrected
kyrios; the ‘body’ they are as a community already participates in and in some
sense anticipates the resurrected body promised in 1 Corinthians 15.
[908] Nijay K. Gupta (‘Which “Body” Is a Temple (1 Corinthians 6:19)? Paul
Beyond the Individual/Communal Divine’, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 72.3
[July 2010], pp. 518-36) is right to argue that ‘body’ in Paul’s thought goes
beyond an easy individual/communal divide. Strangely, however, he does not
explore how Paul’s reflections on the Eucharist inform this discussion. It seems
possible, even likely, that this notion of ‘body’ might have occurred to Paul in
his reflections on the Eucharist, or, more particularly, on Christ’s claim at the
Last Supper that his body is somehow identifiable with and received through the
Eucharistic bread.
[909] This seems to be the import of Eph. 5.22-33.
[910] Hans Conzelmann, A Commentary on the First Epistle to the
Corinthians (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), p. 171. Similarly, Herman N.
Ridderbos (Paul: An Outline of His Theology [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975],
p. 473), ‘The Supper is no personal affair between the individual believer and
Christ. It is the covenant meal, the congregational meal, par excellence. And it
points to the sacrifice made by Christ, the reconciliation that takes place in his
blood, as the only ground of this communion between God and his people and of
the unity of the church’.
[911] Hebert McCabe, God Matters (London: Continuum, 1987), p. 84.
[912] George Panikulam, Koinonia in the New Testament: A Dynamic
Expression of Christian Life (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1979), p. 27.
[913] Cyril of Jerusalem, ‘Mystagogic Catechesis 4’, in Edward Yarnold,
Cyril of Jerusalem (Early Church Fathers, London: Routledge, 2000), p. 179.
[914] For example Did. 9.8: ‘Even as this broken bread was scattered over the
hills, and was gathered together and became one, so let your church be gathered
together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom’.
 [915] John of Damascus, De Fide Orthodoxa 4.13. Available online:
http://www.orthodox.net/fathers/exactiv.html#BOOK_IV_CHAPTER_XIII.
Accessed November 15, 2010.
[916] Furnish, The Theology of the First Letter to the Corinthians, p. 83.
Emphasis added.
[917] Furnish, The Theology of the First Letter to the Corinthians, pp. 85-
86.
[918] Conzelmann, A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, p.
171.
[919] This resonates strongly to Irenaeus’ theology of the Eucharist. See D.
Jeffrey Bingham, ‘Eucharist and Incarnation: The Second Century and Luther’,
in Kereszty (ed.), Rediscovering the Eucharist: Ecumenical Conversations, pp.
116-41.
[920] See Richard A. Horsley, ‘1 Corinthians: A Case Study of Paul’s
Assembly as an Alternative Society’, in Richard A. Horsley [ed.], Paul and
Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society (Harrisburg, PA:
Trinity Press International, 1997), p. 248.
[921] Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NICNT; Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1987), p. 469.
[922] Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, p. 467.
[923] Emphasis added.
[924] Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, p. 470.
[925] For a Pentecostal examination of this passage, see Thomas, The Devil,
Disease, and Deliverance, pp. 43-54. See also Furnish, The Theology of the
First Letter to the Corinthians, pp. 77-86.
[926] This perhaps suggests an understanding that resulted from Paul’s
Damascus road encounter (Acts 9.3-9)?
[927] Furnish, The Theology of the First Letter to the Corinthians, p. 84.
[928] To speak of the Eucharist as in invitation to share in Christ’s ‘sacrificial
lifestyle’ suggests the image of the cup of suffering Christ has to drink, which his
disciples must also drink (Mk 10.35-40). Collins (First Corinthians, p. 379)
points out that it also resonates with the language of the Psalms that speak of the
cup of salvation (e.g. Ps. 16.5), as well as the cup of divine wrath (e.g. Ps.
116.13). Although Paul himself does not exploit the connection, any reader
sensitive to intertextual resonances will observe that the ‘cup of blessing’ (1 Cor.
10.16) is a source of blessing precisely because it signifies and effects the
church’s sharing in Christ’s redemptive suffering. See John D. Laurence, ‘The
Eucharist as the Imitation of Christ’, Theological Studies 47.2 (June 1986), pp.
286-96.
[929] Certainly, such an emphasis would work as a powerful refutation of the
triumphalist and elitist enthusiasm that seems to have plagued the Corinthian
Christians. If anyone imagines a glorified life is possible apart from the cross,
Paul means to show in no uncertain terms that it is not. For an examination of
these tendencies in Corinth, see Calvin J. Roetzel, The Letters of Paul:
Conversations in Context (Louisville: WJKP, 2009), p. 92; also, Furnish, The
Theology of the First Letter to the Corinthians, pp. 10-12.
[930] Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, p. 767.
[931] Vondey, People of Bread, p. 240.
[932] A direction he claimed to have received ‘from the Lord’ (11.23). Roetzel
(The Letters of Paul, p. 76) reads this as a direct citation of a Eucharistic liturgy
Paul had received from other Christians, perhaps in Antioch or Jerusalem.
Stanley B. Marrow (Paul: His Letters and His Theology [Mahwah, NJ: Paulist
Press, 1986], p. 145) does not believe it is a reference to a ‘private
communication’ from the Lord, but a ‘consecrated formula for the Christian
tradition’. Bruce (Paul, Apostle of the Heart Set Free, p. 283) is more modest:
‘When he tells the Corinthians that he “received from the Lord” the account of
what Jesus did and said “on the night when he was betrayed”, he does not say
when or where he received it. He received it “from the Lord” in the sense that it
is in the crucified and exalted Lord that all true Christian tradition has its source,
as it is by him that it is perpetually validated. The probability is that he received
it at the outset of his Christian career …’
[933] Following the outline of John Christopher Thomas, The Spirit of the
New Testament, p. 230 (work first published as ‘The Charismatic Structure of
Acts’, JPT 31.1 (2004), pp. 19-30). Also, Douglas A. Hume (The Early
Christian Community: A Narrative Analysis of Acts 2.41-47 and 4.32-35
[Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011], p. 91) sees a chiastic structure to the Pentecost
story (2.1-47), with the outer elements describing ‘how the community is
gathered together in one place’. In this way, 2.41-47 serves to explain how those
who at Pentecost were gathered together in one place were made by the Spirit a
genuine community, one in spirit. For still other outlining possibilities, see Ben
Witherington, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998).
[934] On the narrative unity of Luke and Acts, see Robert C. Tannehill, The
Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts: A Literary Interpretation (2 Vols.; Minneapolis:
Augsburg Fortress, 1990); William S. Kurz, Reading Luke-Acts: Dynamics of
Biblical Narrative (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993).
[935] William H. Willimon, Acts (Interpretation; Louisville: John Knox Press,
1988), p. 42.
[936] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Acts of the Apostles (Sacra Pagina;
Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992), p. 58.
[937] As he did in the story of Jesus teaching the two on their way to Emmaus
(Lk. 24.13-34), Luke tells us nothing of the content of the apostles’ teaching. He
does this, perhaps, to force the reader to ask – and then seek to discover – what
in fact Jesus and the apostles did teach.
[938] Scholars disagree on what is meant by koinonia in this passage.
Witherington (The Acts of the Apostles, p. 160) holds that it is a kind of catchall
term, entailing everything from common prayer and worship to sharing their
goods, and David G. Peterson (The Acts of the Apostles [TPNTC; Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2009], p. 161) agrees. Johnson (The Acts of the Apostles, p. 58)
interprets it more narrowly, taking it to refer specifically to the sharing of
material possessions. Although a strong case might be made for the more
inclusive reading, Luke’s characteristic concern for the poor suggests that the
narrower reading is likely the correct one.
[939] It is not clear why Luke uses the plural with the article; perhaps it
implies that the first Christians did not only pray, but continued to use certain
prayers, such as the Lord’s Prayer. On the general significance of prayer in the
Third Gospel and Acts, see P.T. O’Brien, ‘Prayer in Luke-Acts’, Tyndale
Bulletin 24 (1973), pp. 111-27; Kyu Sam Han, ‘Theology of Prayer in the
Gospel of Luke’, JETS 43.4 (Dec 2000), pp. 675-93; Stephen S. Smalley, ‘Spirit,
Kingdom and Prayer in Luke-Acts’, Novum Testamentum 15.1 (Jan 1973), pp.
59-71.
[940] This verb or its cognates appears four other times in Acts (1.14; 2.46;
6.4; 8.13; 10.7), always with this implication.
[941] Willimon (Acts, p. 39) observes, ‘The crowd, formed from the ranks of
the “crooked generation”, was not to be left to its own devices’. The
‘crookedness’ does not straighten itself out on the strength of a ‘spiritual
experience’ alone, but requires constant correction from habit-forming and so
character-building practices.
[942] Willimon, Acts, p. 40.
[943] Perhaps no theologian has given more attention to the significance of
this passage for churchly Eucharistic practice than John Calvin. Elsie Anne
McKee (John Calvin on the Diaconate and Liturgical Almsgiving [Geneva:
Librairie Droz, 1984], p. 85) shows that, for Calvin, these four marks serve as
the always-recognizable ‘face’ of the true church and that ‘no gathering of the
Church should ever be held without the Word, alms, the participation in the
Supper, prayers’.
[944] Acts 2.43 speaks of ‘signs and wonders’, perhaps implying some were
healed in the taking of the bread and wine. On the miraculous in Luke-Acts, see
Peterson, The Acts of the Apostles, pp. 83-86.
[945] McKee (John Calvin on the Diaconate and Liturgical Almsgiving, pp.
82-83) provides examples from the ancient and medieval church of differing
opinions on the question of whether or not Acts 2.42 has any sacramental
reference.
[946] Barbara Rossing (‘Why Luke’s Gospel? Daily Bread and “Recognition”
of Christ in Food-Sharing’, Currents in Theology and Mission [June 2010], pp.
225-29 [225]) explains, ‘Jesus in Luke’s Gospel is a Jesus who loves to eat. One
scholar notes that “Jesus is either going to a meal, at a meal, or coming from a
meal …” The way Jesus eats even leads to his death’.
[947] E.g. Lk. 5.29; 7.33-34, 36-50; 10.38-42; 11.37-52; 14.1-24; 22.14-38;
24.20-49. Andy Johnson (‘Our God Reigns: the Body of the Risen Lord in Luke
24’, Word & World [Spring 2002], p. 137) has it right: ‘Remarkably, [Jesus]
includes at the same table people who were mortal enemies in the normal order
of things. For example, he was regularly host at a table that included both a tax
collector (Levi), “a collaborator with the Romans”, and a Zealot (Simon), a kind
of “Jewish freedom fighter” who struggled to liberate Israel from the Romans.
Jesus’ table fellowship, therefore, dramatically depicted the reconciliation that
characterized the kingdom he was proclaiming.’ Joel B. Green (The Gospel of
Luke [TICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997], p. 227) explains that this
kingdom is ‘a new world order where the demonized, the sick, women, and
others living on the margins of society are embraced in the redemptive purposes
of God’. For an introduction to how scholars read Luke-Acts’ treatment of the
poor and the outcast, as well as the issues of wealth and poverty, see Thomas E.
Phillips’ taxonomic and bibliographic essay ‘Reading Recent Readings of Issues
of Wealth and Poverty in Luke and Acts’, Currents in Biblical Research 1.2
(Apr 2003), pp. 231-69.
[948] Eugene LaVerdiere (Dining in the Kingdom of God: The Origins of the
Eucharist in the Gospel of Luke [Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications,
1994]) describes the first six meals as shared with Jesus the prophet, the next
two, including the Last Supper, as shared with Jesus the Christ, and the final two
as shared with Jesus the Lord. See also Michael Joncas, ‘Tasting the Kingdom of
God: The Meal Ministry of Jesus and Its Implications for Contemporary Worship
and Life’, Worship 74.4 (July 2000), pp. 329-65.
[949] The Third Gospel is at every point concerned with the kingdom of God.
For example, Jesus’ birth is heralded as the birth of Israel’s rightful king (Lk.
1.32-33), and, later, the mature, Spirit-baptized Jesus identifies himself as the
authoritative messenger of the ‘good news of the kingdom of God’ (Lk. 4.43;
8.1; 16.16), a message he calls his disciples to announce, as well (Lk. 9.1-2;
10.1-16). The prayer he models for his disciples (Lk. 11.2) is nothing if not a
calling for the eschatological reign of God to come, and Christ’s miracles (as
well as his disciples’) – especially the healings and exorcisms – are said to signal
the kingdom’s in-breaking (Lk. 11.14-20). On many occasions, the Gospel
narrates accounts of Jesus explaining the nature of the kingdom (e.g. Lk. 13.18-
21), and Acts reports that this was the heart of his message to the apostles after
his resurrection, as well (Acts 1.3). Through these accounts, the reader learns
that the kingdom, though already present, remains presently hidden,
unobservable (Lk. 8.9-10; 17.20-21; 23.3, 37-38). Similarly, in spite of the fact
that the Father gives the kingdom, it must be sought out and claimed by violent
effort (Lk. 12.31-32). The reader also discovers that although in some sense
already ‘realized’, Jesus’ kingdom is not yet fully established. When the
disciples ask if the resurrected Christ will ‘now restore the kingdom to Israel’,
his response is to direct them to prepare themselves for mission: ‘It is not for you
to know the times …’ (Acts 1.6-8).
[950] See, for example, Dennis E. Smith, ‘Table Fellowship as a Literary
Motif in the Gospel of Luke’, JBL 106.4 (Dec 1987), pp. 613-38; Philip Francis
Esler, Community and Gospel in Luke-Acts: The Social and Political
Motivations of Lucan Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1987), pp. 105-109; Craig L. Blomberg, ‘Jesus, Sinners, and Table Fellowship’,
Bulletin for Biblical Research, 19.1 (2009), pp. 35-62. Wilson C.K. Poon
(‘Superabundant Table Fellowship in the Kingdom: The Feeding of the Five
Thousand and the Meal Motif in Luke’, Expository Times 114.7 [Apr 2003], pp.
224-30 [230]) ‘Luke does rather uniquely give high prominence to the theme of
food and feeding’.
[951] In short, when the Didascalia Apostolorum speaks of the Eucharist as
‘the likeness of the body of the kingdom of Christ’ it perhaps gives voice to a
distinctly Lukan theology of the Meal. See Scott W. Hahn, ‘Kingdom and
Church in Luke-Acts: From Davidic Christology to Kingdom Ecclesiology’ in
Craig G. Bartholomew, Joel B. Green, and Anthony C. Thiselton (eds.) Reading
Luke: Interpretation, Reflection, Formation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005),
p. 310.
[952] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke (Sacra Pagina;
Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), p. 106.
[953] See Otto Böcher, ‘Ass Johannes der Taufer kein Brot (Luk 7:33)’, New
Testament Studies 18.1 (Oct 1971), pp. 90-92.
[954] Lk. 11.2-4. On possible translations of the Greek phrase, see Johnson,
The Gospel of Luke, p. 178; Johnson personally decides for ‘the bread we
need’.
[955] For a reading of Luke’s Gospel in light of this theme, see Brendan J.
Byrne, The Hospitality of God: a Reading of Luke’s Gospel (Collegeville, MN:
Liturgical Press, 2000).
[956] Poon (‘Superabundant Table Fellowship in the Kingdom’, p. 224)
argues that the story of the feeding of the five thousand is central to the Gospel
of Luke, and that the meal signifies the superabundance of Jesus’ table
fellowship as opposed to the conventions of the Pharisees. He also suggests (p.
229) that the Feeding looks forward not so much to the Last Supper as to the
story of Jesus’ encounter with the disciples on the road to Emmaus because ‘the
similarity in wording between thanksgivings for the bread in 9.16 and 24.30 is at
least as strong as that between the former and 22.19’, and ‘Luke talks about the
day “wearing away” in each case in reporting the time of the meal’.
[957] Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, p. 206.
[958] Green (The Gospel of Luke, p. 365) makes much of the fact that nothing
is said about the uncleanness/cleanness of the meal and participations: ‘Here are
thousands of people, an undifferentiated mass of people, some undoubtedly
unclean, others clean, some more faithful regarding the law, others less so. The
food itself – is it clean? Has it been properly prepared? Have tithes been paid on
it? Where is the washing in preparation for the table? Such concerns are so
lacking from this scene that we might miss the extraordinary character of this
meal …’
[959] Green (The Gospel of Luke, p. 365) notes that this miracle among other
things shows Jesus’ standing in the tradition of miraculous meals provided by
Israel’s prophets (e.g. Elisha’s feeding of a hundred men in 2 Kgs 4.42-44).
[960] This provokes Jesus to deliver a parable (Lk. 14.16-24), in part to
explain that only the ‘uninvited’ – that is, the sick and poor, the nameless and
faceless – will ‘get a taste of my banquet’ (v. 24). J. Lyle Story (‘All is Now
Ready: An Exegesis of “The Great Banquet” [Luke 14.15-24] and “The
Marriage Feast” [Matthew 22.1-14]’, American Theological Inquiry 2.2 [July
2009], p. 69) points out that ‘Jesus proceeds to share with the ecstatic guest at
his side … the incredible news that the Messianic feast is present, here and now,
thus correcting the guest’s mistaken oversight’.
[961] Green (The Gospel of Luke, p. 759) points out that Jesus’ promise
anticipates ‘the completion of God’s purpose’ and speaks of ‘the coming
eschatological banquet in which his own meal practices would be the norm’.
[962] As Johnson (The Gospel of Luke, p. 206) puts it, ‘Authority is here
expressed in table service’.
[963] See Peter’s sermon (Acts 10.34-43) in which he insists that the nature of
Jesus’ resurrection is revealed in the fact that the risen Jesus ate and drank with
his disciples.
[964] LaVerdiere, Dining in the Kingdom of God, pp. 170-71.
[965] Michael G. Lawler, ‘Christian Rituals: An Essay in Sacramental
Symbolisms’, Horizons 7.1 (Spring 1980), p. 31.
[966] Contra Green (The Gospel of Luke, p. 364), who insists that these were
not significant gestures, but actions expected at ‘any meal among pious Jews, in
preparation for the eating of the food itself’.
[967] On the variant form of ‘to bless’ in Lk. 24.30, see Louis-Marie Chauvet,
The Sacraments: The Word of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville,
MN: Liturgical Press, 2001), p. 25.
[968] Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts, II, p. 334.
[969] As Hume (The Early Christian Community, p. 106) explains, ‘Through
the repetition of key words and motifs that recall Luke’s accounts of the Lord’s
Supper and the shared meal with the disciples at Emmaus, the narrator is
continuing the theme of the recognition of Jesus’ identity in communal meals’.
[970] Chauvet (The Sacraments, pp. 22-28) proposes that the story of Jesus’
meal with the Emmaus disciples is ‘a catechesis in the form a story’ intended to
teach the readers of the Gospel that Jesus’ post-Pentecostal presence – even
while it cannot be found, seen, or touched – is nonetheless real and effective.
Also, he points out how closely this resembles a key theme in the Fourth Gospel:
Jesus’ ‘going away’ is necessary and profitable for the community.
[971] LaVerdiere, The Breaking of Bread, p. 17.
[972] Oscar Cullmann (in his essays published in Oscar Cullmann and F.J.
Leenhardt, Essays on the Lord’s Supper [Cambridge, UK: James Clarke & Co.,
2004], pp. 5-23) famously argued that the early church Eucharist emerged not
from a remembrance of Jesus’ table fellowship or his Last Supper, but from
meals shared with the spiritually-present Risen (not-yet Ascended) Christ. It
seems to me, however, that Cullmann at times exaggerates the difference
between the pre-paschal and post-paschal meals, and between the ontology of
the presence of Christ before and after his resurrection.
[973] Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, p. 405.
[974] Byrne, The Hospitality of God, p. 172.
[975] Willimon, Acts, p. 41. Emphasis original.
[976] See LaVerdiere, Dining in the Kingdom of God, pp. 192-93.
[977] Or, from a different perspective, the Eucharist-event was itself an echo
of Jesus’ table-fellowship, either in his pre-resurrection ministry or at the end of
days.
[978] Willimon, Acts, p. 41.
[979] It is important not to reduce Luke’s stories of eating and drinking so that
they speak only to the church’s Eucharistic practice. Nevertheless, interpreters
are wise to ask what Luke has to teach us about the Eucharist, as well as about
table fellowship of other kinds.
[980] Rossing (‘Why Luke’s Gospel?’, 227) is on target: ‘… Luke makes clear
that the opposite of sharing – excessive greed and hoarding – imperils salvation’.
Rossing also points out that Luke’s view of wealth and poverty is rooted in
Israel’s history, and particularly in the story of manna in the wilderness. See also
Christopher R. Bruno, ‘“Jesus is Our Jubilee” … But How? The OT Background
and Lukan Fulfillment of the Ethics of Jubilee’, JETS 53.1 (Mar 2010), pp. 81-
101; Paul Hertig, ‘The Jubilee Mission of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke: Reversals
of Fortunes’, Missiology 26.2 (Apr 2008), pp. 167-79.
[981] Daniela C. Augustine ‘Pentecost, Communal Economics and the
Household of God’, JPT 19.2 (Fall 2010), p. 232.
[982] Augustine, ‘Pentecost Communal Economics and the Household of
God’, p. 233.
[983] John Howard Yoder, Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian
Community Before the Watching World (Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 2001), p.
17.
[984] Yoder, Body Politics, p. 22.
[985] See Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, pp. 79-81.
[986] See Green, The Gospel of Luke, p. 253. For the possibility that Luke
refers to Second Isaiah and not to the Jubilee described in Leviticus, see
Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts, I, pp. 67-68. On the significance
of Israel’s Jubilee tradition, see John Sietze Bergsma, The Jubilee from
Leviticus to Qumran (Leiden: Brill, 2007).
[987] And, one might add, in the ‘everyday’ meals that echo the Eucharist.
[988] Augustine, ‘Pentecost Communal Economics and the Household of
God’, p. 235.
[989] Joy is one of the dominant Lukan themes. The reader ‘hears’ of those
who joy in the coming of Jesus and/or those who bear witness to him. Zechariah
is promised that his son will bring ‘joy and gladness’, and that many will rejoice
at his birth because he will prepare the way for Christ (Lk. 1.14). Elizabeth
exults in Mary’s news and the child dances joyously in her womb (Lk. 1.44).
Even Herod – for all the wrong reasons – is ‘very glad’ to see Jesus (Lk 23.8).
According to Hume (The Early Christian Community, p. 96), the narrator of
Luke-Acts ‘often portrays characters reacting with joy when they experience
God’s presence’.
[990] Bultmann (Theology of the New Testament, p. 339-40) is right: early
Christian joy was eschatological, arising from conviction about ‘the Christian’s
relatedness to the future’. What is more, this joy was realized in their life
together, in the ‘fellowship and mutual helpfulness’ they enjoyed.
[991] LaVerdiere, Dining in the Kingdom of God, p. 195. Peterson (The Acts
of the Apostles, p. 163) believes they were ‘aware that God was at work in their
midst in a new way and that they were enjoying the benefits of the messianic
salvation’.
[992] Ernst Benz, The Eastern Orthodox Church: Its Thought and Life
(Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1963), pp. 22-23.
[993] Including, for example, Heb. 6.4-5; 13.10; 1 Jn 5.6-8, and 1 Cor. 10.1-4.
This list can and should include numerous Old Testament passages, such as Neh.
8.10 and Isa. 25.6, as well.
[994] Andrew T. Lincoln (The Gospel According to Saint John [BNTC;
London: Continuum, 2005], p. 6) rejects this title for the section because it is
‘not precise enough to describe the public mission, since it makes the specific
signs more dominant than they in fact are and does not do justice to the speech
material’. On ‘signs’ in John’s Gospel, see Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel
According to St John (New York: Seabury Press, 1990), I, pp. 515-28.
[995] Following the outline of Francis J. Maloney, The Gospel of John (Sacra
Pagina; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1988), pp. 23-24, 194. See also D.A.
Carson, The Gospel According to John (TPNTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1991), pp. 105-108; M.M. Thompson, ‘John, Gospel of’ in Joel B. Green, Scot
McKnight, and I. Howard Marshall (eds.), Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels
(Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1992), pp. 373-74.
[996] Including, for example, the belief of Andrew, Simon Peter, and other
disciples (1.35-51; 2.11, 22), and that of the Samaritans who respond to the
witness of the woman Jesus encountered at the well (4.27-42).
[997] Thomas, The Devil, Disease and Deliverance, pp. 92-93.
[998] The feeding of the five thousand is the fourth of seven signs in the
Gospel, and the discourse on the bread of life is the fourth of seven such
discourses. See Lincoln, The Gospel According to Saint John, pp. 6-7. For an
exploration of how the Fourth Gospel uses the Synoptic tradition of the feeding
of the five thousand and Jesus’ walking on water, see Frederick A. Rusch, ‘The
Signs and the Discourse – The Rich Theology of John 6’, Currents in Theology
and Mission 5.6 (Dec 1978), pp. 389-90.
[999] Given the recent miraculous feeding of the multitudes, the crowds’
appeal to the story of manna in the wilderness as the example of what a
validating ‘sign’ must be strikes the reader as strange and unwarranted. Has
Jesus not already given them a ‘sign’ of just this kind?
[1000] Chapter 6 is notoriously difficult to organize neatly, as is more or less
the entire Gospel. As Stephen Fowl (‘John 6.25-35’, Interpretation [July 2007],
p. 316) explains, the widespread disagreement on the breakdown of John 6 is
due at least in part to the fact that ‘Each passage [in John’s Gospel], particularly
its images and ways of identifying Jesus, is intimately connected to a web of
other passages’.
[1001] Maloney, The Gospel of John, p. 194.
[1002] John Dominic Crossan, ‘It is Written: A Structuralist Analysis of John
6’, Semeia 26 (1983), p. 15.
[1003] Some scholars hold that in the Book of Signs John is also drawing
attention to various festivals of the Jewish calendar, using the feasts’ liturgical
and ritual imagery as an interpretive lens for Jesus’ own self-identifying actions
and words. See, for example, Thompson, ‘John, Gospel of’, p. 373; Maloney,
The Gospel of John, pp. 164-65; Gerald Wheaton, The Role of Feasts in John’s
Gospel (PhD thesis; St Andrews, Scotland; 2009); Michael A. Daise (Feasts in
John: Jewish Festivals and Jesus’ ‘Hour’ in the Fourth Gospel [Tübingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 2007]. Others see no such connection. See, for example, Gerald
L. Borchert, John 1-11 (TNAC; Grand Rapids: Broadman & Holman, 1996), pp.
226-27.
 [1004] Following Peder Borgen, Bread from Heaven: An Exegetical Study of
the Concept of Manna in the Gospel of John (Leiden: Brill, 1965), pp. 20-27,
59-98. See also Peder Borgen, ‘Observations on the Midrashic Character of John
6’, Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 54 (1963), pp. 232-40.
For an alternative view, see P.N. Anderson, The Christology of the Fourth
Gospel: Its Unity and Disunity in the Light of John 6 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1996),
pp. 174-78.
[1005] Daise (Feasts in John, p. 139-40) points out that scholarly opinions
differ on the source of the quotation in v. 31; the primary candidates are Ps.
78.24b; Exod. 16.4b; Exod. 16.15d, and Neh. 9.15a. For the use of the Old
Testament in John 6, see Jean Zumstein, ‘La réception de l’écriture en Jean 6’, in
Camille Focant and André Wénin (eds.), Analyse narrative et Bible (Leuven:
Leuven University Press, 2005), pp. 147-66.
[1006] Maloney, The Gospel of John, p. 207. Jerome H. Neyrey (The Gospel
of John [TNCBC; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007], pp. 124-28)
contends that Jesus’ discourse is an extended re-narrating of each term in this
scriptural text. For example, the crowds believe the ‘he’ of the text is Moses, but
Jesus contends that he himself is the true referent; in the same way, Jesus’
hearers assume that the ‘bread’ of the text is the manna given in the wilderness,
but Jesus again insists that he himself is that bread.
[1007] Maloney, The Gospel of John, p. 207.
[1008] As Israel had ‘grumbled’ in the wilderness.
[1009] According to Crossan (‘It is Written’, p. 12), Jesus speaks very
differently to ‘the Jews’ than to the crowds. His teaching was at first primarily an
‘I-You’ dialogue, but in response to ‘the Jews’ grumbling and complaining, the
language shifts to predominantly ‘I-He’.
[1010] On whether this is meant to intensify or ameliorate the offense, see
Carson, The Gospel According to John, pp. 300-301. James F. McGrath (John’s
Apologetic Christology: Legitimation and Development in Johannine
Christology [SNTS 111; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004], p.
178) suggests that this might be a case of characteristic Johannine irony.
[1011] Gary A. Phillips, ‘”This is a Hard Saying. Who Can Be Listener to It?
Creating a Reader in John 6’, Semeia 26 (1983), p. 38.
[1012] Perhaps this constitutes a kind of inclusio? On possible uses of inclusio
in the Gospel, see Carson, The Gospel According to John, p. 237. Also, see
Mark W.G. Stibbe, John’s Gospel (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 112, and idem,
John as Storyteller: Narrative Criticism and the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 19-20.
[1013] Some sacramentalists have made much of the verb ‘eat’ (trogon) used
in Jn 6.54-58 and again in 13.18, but this seems unconvincing because Judas is
the only one who is said to ‘eat’ at the Last Supper! However, if Jesus did not
mean something more than ‘spiritual’ eating, the scandal caused by his claims
seems strange and disproportionate.
[1014] Jane S. Webster, Ingesting Jesus: Eating and Drinking in the Gospel
of John (Atlanta: SBL, 2003), p. 27.
[1015] Webster, Ingesting Jesus, p. 93.
[1016] Webster, Ingesting Jesus, p. 130.
[1017] It is perhaps telling that the Corinthians showed their true colors at the
Lord’s Table, too, or that Jude talks about ‘spots’ in their feasts.
[1018] Obviously, it also echoes the Synoptic accounts (e.g. Mt. 26.26 and Lk.
22.19): ‘this is my body’, although it is impossible to determine if John does this
intentionally or not. However, Lincoln (The Gospel According to Saint John, p.
232) holds that it is ‘highly probable’ that the words of institution from the
Synoptic tradition have influenced John’s account in several ways. He notes that
Mt. 26.26-28 comes closest to the Johannine statement about eating Jesus’ flesh
and drinking his blood.
[1019] This is the position of many interpreters. For example, David Gibson
(‘Eating Is Believing? On Midrash and the Mixing of Metaphors in John 6’,
Themelios 27.7 [Spring 2002], pp. 5-15) contends that ‘if “flesh” and “blood”
refer to Jesus’ person in his death, not the Eucharistic elements, then the verbs
“eat” and “drink” in v. 53 have to be understood in the same metaphorical way
as “eat” in vv. 50-5lb is used in reference to Jesus’ person’. Even if John 6 makes
use of Eucharistic terminology, he concludes, ‘it is used to point to the
significance of Jesus’ death, not the sacramental elements’.
[1020] Borchert (John 1-11, p. 263) observes that the Fourth Gospel often
appeals to a contrast between two levels of reality to hold up Jesus’ superiority:
e.g. the difference between the two temples in 2.19, the two births in 3.3, two
spirits in 3.8, and two waters 4.10. In this context, it is a contrast between two
breads.
[1021] Craig R. Koester, Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel: Meaning,
Mystery, Community (2nd ed.; Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2003), p.
304.
[1022] On the modern historical-critical question of whether John is pro- or
anti-sacramental, see Stephen S. Smalley, John: Evangelist and Interpreter
(New York: Thomas Nelson, 1984), pp. 128-30, 204-10, and Brown, The Gospel
According to John I-XII, pp. 280-94. On John 6 in particular, see Carson, The
Gospel According to John, pp. 276-82; James D.G. Dunn, ‘John VI – A
Eucharistic Discourse?’, New Testament Studies 17 (1971), pp. 328-38; M.J.J.
Menken, ‘John 6.51c-58: Eucharist or Christology?’ in R. Alan Culpepper (ed.),
Critical Readings of John 6 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp. 183-85.
[1023] Craig R. Koester (‘John Six and the Lord’s Supper’, Lutheran
Quarterly [Dec 1990], pp. 420-26) provides a brief but helpful overview of the
history of interpretation. As he tells it, the most influential Eucharistic readings
of John 6 seem to have come from Cyril of Alexandria, Chrysostom, Basil the
Great, and Gregory of Nyssa, among a few others, while non-sacramental
readings have been championed by many equally prominent figures, including
Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Augustine, Aquinas, Erasmus, Luther,
Melanchthon, and Calvin. Koester personally holds to the traditional Lutheran
non-sacramental line of interpretation, maintaining that a Eucharistic reading
creates more problems than it solves. In his judgment, the references to eating
and drinking Christ’s flesh and blood are best understood as an invitation to faith
in Christ and his atoning death. For an examination of Aquinas’ reading of John
6, see Michel Corbin, ‘Pain de la Vie : La Lecture de Jean VI par S Thomas
d’Aquin’, Recherches de Science Religieuse 65.1 (Jan-Mar 1977), pp. 107-38,
and Michael Dauphinais, ‘“And They Shall Be Taught of God”: Wisdom and the
Eucharist in John 6’, in Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering (eds.),
Reading John with St. Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University
of America Press, 2005), pp. 312-17. For Luther’s and Calvin’s uses of the
passage, see David S. Yeago, ‘The Bread of Life: Patristic Christology and
Evangelical Soteriology in Martin Luther’s Sermons on John 6’, SVTQ 39.3
(1995), pp. 257-79, and Eleanor B. Hanna, ‘Biblical Interpretation and
Sacramental Practice: John Calvin's Interpretation of John 6.51-58’, Worship
73.3 (May 1999), pp. 211-30.
[1024] Here I stand in agreement with, among others, Raymond Brown (The
Gospel and Epistles of John, p. 18): ‘In the Fourth Gospel the author frequently
intends the reader to see several layers of meaning in the same narrative or in the
same metaphor (figurative language)’. See also Saeed Hamid-Kahni, Revelation
and Concealment of Christ: A Theological Inquiry into the Elusive Language
of the Fourth Gospel (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000); Earl J. Richard,
‘Expressions of Double Meaning and Their Function in the Gospel of John’,
New Testament Studies 31.1 (Jan 1985), pp. 96-112; D.A. Carson,
‘Understanding Misunderstanding in the Fourth Gospel’, Tyndale Bulletin 33
(1982), pp. 61-91.
[1025] D. Moody Smith, The Theology of the Gospel of John (NTT;
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 156.
[1026] Contra Koester (‘John Six and the Lord’s Supper’, p. 432), who seems
to hold in contempt those readers who hear allusions to the Eucharist in the
Fourth Gospel because they are ‘already steeped in the traditions concerning the
Lord’s Supper’.
[1027] Contra Carson (The Gospel According to John, p. 279), who asks, ‘…
if the arguments against a thoroughly sacramental interpretation of this chapter
are so strong, and the coherence of a metaphorical approach so commanding,
what is to be gained by bringing in a Eucharistic interpretation through the back
door, as a kind of second layer of meaning’.
[1028] In agreement with Gary Burge (‘Revelation and Discipleship in St
John’s Gospel’, in John Liermen [ed.], Challenging Perspectives on the Gospel
of John [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006], p. 246) who points out the ‘hierarchies
of meaning’ in John’s Gospel. See also Neyrey, The Gospel of John, pp. 127-28,
and C.H. Cosgrove, ‘The Place Where Jesus Is: Allusions to Baptism and the
Eucharist in the Fourth Gospel’, New Testament Studies 35 (1989), pp. 522-39.
[1029] They would have agreed with the assessment of Dale C. Allison, Jr.
(‘The Living Water: John 4.10-14; 6.35c; 7.37-39’, SVTQ 30.2 [1986], p. 145)
who observes that attempts to limit the Johannine metaphors to a single, stable
meaning are reductionistic, finally distorting the irreducible complexity and
variegated character of John’s theological code.
[1030] This is strikingly similar to Jesus’ words about ‘living water’ to the
Samaritan woman (4.10, 13-14); however, there he promises her that he gives
living water, while here he claims that he is the bread of life. For formal
similarities between John 4 and John 6, see Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel
According to John I-XII (The Anchor Bible; Garden City, NY: Doubleday &
Company, 1966), p. 267.
[1031] Carson (The Gospel According to John, p. 295) is right: the alert
reader is sure to think of 1.14.
[1032] Some scholars speak of a ‘misunderstanding motif’ in the Fourth
Gospel. For example, see Nicolas Farelly, The Disciples in the Fourth Gospel:
A Narrative Analysis of Their Faith and Understanding (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2010); Andreas J. Kostenberger, A Theology of John’s Gospel and
Letters: The Word, the Christ, the Son of God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
2009), pp. 141-45; R. Alan Culpepper, A Study in the Fourth Gospel: A Study
in Literary Design (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1987), pp. 152-65; Raymond
E. Brown, The Gospel and Epistles of John: A Concise Commentary
(Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1988), p. 17.
[1033] As W.H. Kelber (‘The Birth of a Beginning: John 1.1-18’ in Mark
W.G. Stibbe, The Gospel of John as Literature: an Anthology of Twentieth-
Century Perspectives [Leiden: Brill, 1993], p. 224) explains, ‘Far from
accommodating the Jews, Jesus proceeds to radicalise [sic] the language of his
self-identification with the bread … As if to rub salt in their wounds, Jesus
elaborates the metaphor of flesh in starkly realistic, cannibalistic terms’. Carson
(The Gospel According to John, p. 296) puts it this way: ‘The Jews had found
Jesus’ statement in v. 51c impenetrable at best, blatantly offensive at worst, but
in this expansion Jesus in their view is even more offensive’. See also Lincoln,
The Gospel According to Saint John, p. 231.
[1034] Neyrey (The Gospel of John, p. 128) notes that the ‘unless’ of 6.53
parallels other such demands in the Gospel: being born of water and the Spirit
(3.3, 5), special belief in Jesus as one who saves from sins (8.24), washing by
Jesus (13.8), and abiding in the vine (15.4). Interestingly, three of the four seem
to have at least a secondary reference to sacraments of baptism and Eucharist.
[1035] See Maloney, The Gospel of John, pp. 176-84; 354-56. Also, Andreas
J. Köstenberger, The Missions of Jesus and the Disciples According to the
Fourth Gospel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 121-22;
[1036] On the theme of ‘lifting up’ in John’s Gospel, see Benjamin E.
Reynolds, The Apocalyptic Son of Man in the Gospel of John (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2008), pp. 117-30.
[1037] Herman N. Ridderbos, The Gospel According to John: A Theological
Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), pp. 136-37, 238-43, 430-31.
[1038] Neyrey, The Gospel of John, p. 128. See also Maloney, The Gospel of
John, pp. 214-25.
[1039] This language appears frequently in the Gospel (e.g. in 8.31; 15.4, 6, 9-
10). It is first used (in 1.32-33) of the Spirit’s relation to Jesus – the Spirit
‘remains’ on Jesus – and then immediately used of the relation of the disciples to
Jesus (1.39). Even more impressively, the majority of uses come in the Farewell
Discourse, so that the reader can reasonably conclude that according to John the
disciple shares the same relation to Jesus as the Spirit has to Jesus and Jesus has
to the Father. For a treatment of this theme in the Gospel, see Jurgen Heise,
Bleiben: Menein in den Johanneischen Schriften (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
1967).
[1040] Lincoln, The Gospel According to Saint John, p. 233.
[1041] Lincoln, The Gospel According to Saint John, p. 233.
[1042] Emphasis added.
[1043] Lamar Williamson, Preaching the Gospel of John: Proclaiming the
Living Word (Louisville: WJKP, 2004), p. 83.
[1044] Chauvet (The Sacraments, p. 50) notes, ‘For John, the Eucharistic act
of eating is the great symbolic experience in which we are given, to feel and live,
this scandal of the faith until it enters our bodies, that is to say, our life’. James
W. Voelz, (‘The Discourse on the Bread of Life in John 6: Is It Eucharistic?,
Concordia Journal 15.1 [Jan 1989], p. 34) makes a similar point: ‘I believe that
in the discourse on the Bread of Life, our Lord is speaking of heavenly
sustenance which He gives for His own, for the people of God. What is that
heavenly sustenance? It can properly be thought of, I believe, in specifically
Eucharistic (i.e., oral eating) terms: (verse 54) “He who eats my flesh and drinks
my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” But it can not
only be thought of in such specifically Eucharistic terms: (verse 47) “He who
believes has eternal life.” Yet, the Sacrament of the Altar is one means – and it is
the only means of oral eating and drinking – for the Body of Christ to be fed
with the body of Christ, by the living food of the Lord, her living Savior …’
[1045] In order not to lose sight of the intimate relationship between
sacramental practice and believing, it is perhaps helpful to insist on speaking of
eating/’eating’ and drinking/‘drinking’ Christ’s flesh/‘flesh’ and his
blood/‘blood’, in this way always holding together the symbolic and the actual,
even if this looks inelegant on the page or sounds inelegant to the ear.
[1046] As Borchert (John 1-11, p. 273) warns, ‘These elements can indeed
symbolize the eternal and actual bread that came down from heaven, but they
must never take the place of the living Lord …’ Therefore, he concludes,
‘Inwardly digesting him is the way of life. Eating and drinking elements of
physical food, even God-given physical food, does not guarantee life.’
[1047] Eugene LaVerdiere (The Eucharist in the New Testament and the
Early Church [Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996], p. 123) agrees with
those scholars who see a division within the discourse, with 6.25-50 constituting
the first part in which Jesus declares himself as the bread of life and 6.51-58
making the second part in which Jesus proclaims the bread that he gives. Still,
‘Jesus’ teaching on the bread that he gives, his flesh and blood in the Eucharist,
must not be separated from the bread of life that he is’.
 [1048] Jn 6.63: ‘… ta remata a ego lelaleka umin pneuma estin kai zoe estin’.
[1049] Paul S. Berge, ‘John 6.1-71: The Bread Which Gives Life to the
World’, Word & World 5.3 (June 1985), pp. 311-20.
[1050] Here I am drawing on John Christopher Thomas’ analogy of the black
gospel choir; see Thomas, The Spirit of the New Testament, p. 24.
[1051] Not exclusively, of course, but really.
[1052] As the survey of literature (Chapter 2) has made clear.
[1053] Kärkkäinen (‘The Pentecostal View’, pp. 118, 121-22) finds that at
least at the grass-roots level, most Pentecostals continue to assume a
‘nonsacramental Zwinglian and free church view’ of the sacraments; he also
believes the movement is ‘loaded with antisacramental sentiment’. Similarly, the
British Pentecostal Richard Bicknell (‘In Memory of Christ’s Sacrifice’, pp. 67,
76) finds that Elim Pentecostals’ view of the Lord’s Supper is staunchly ‘anti-
sacramental’, and, in his opinion, reduces Zwinglian ‘bare commemoration’ to
something even more memorialistic. In ecumenical discussions with Roman
Catholicism, a vocal minority of Pentecostals have insisted that the Lord’s
Supper is ‘more than a reminder of Jesus’ death and resurrection’, that it is in
fact a ‘means of grace’; the majority of Pentecostal representatives have held
what some have criticized as a ‘too-evangelical’ (i.e. more or less strictly
memorialist) view of the Supper. See William G. Rusch and Jeffrey Gros (eds.),
Deepening Communion: International Ecumenical Documents with Roman
Catholic Participation (Washington, DC: USCCB Publishing, 1998), pp. 386-
87; Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic
Christianity, p. 253.
[1054] Biddy, ‘Re-envisioning the Pentecostal Understanding of the
Eucharist’, p. 229. Biddy spells out the core convictions of this memorialist
position: ‘It is understood that we undertake these particular actions simply
because they are ordinances of dominical institution: Jesus instructed us to carry
them out, and so we do, but our obedience in that regard does not create the
occasion for a dispensation of grace; the grace – which, in a usage not
uncommon to post-Reformation thought, refers almost strictly to the forgiveness
of sins – has already come to us before our responsive action, and does not come
thereafter or therein’. Obviously, this position has been defended rigorously by
many Pentecostals, perhaps especially by those who most closely identify
themselves with Evangelicalism. For example, see Pruitt, Fundamentals of the
Faith, p. 365 and Menzies and Horton, Bible Doctrine, p. 111; Hunter,
‘Reflections by a Pentecostalist on Aspects of BEM’, pp. 317-45; Hunter,
‘Ordinances, Pentecostal’, pp. 947-49.
[1055] This research has dramatically (re)shaped the way I think and feel
about the Lord’s Supper, and so has determined what I intend to propose in this
chapter regarding its meaning and significance for Christian life. Needless to say,
my construction would have looked drastically different if I had written it before
or without attending to the early Pentecostal material in the way I have done.
[1056] Or at least they have been working to lay the groundwork for such a
development to take place.
[1057] For example, John Christopher Thomas (‘Pentecostal Theology in the
Twenty-First Century’, pp. 3-19) and Ken Archer (‘Nourishment for Our
Journey’, pp. 79-96) have offered descriptions of the sacraments under the rubric
of the Five-fold Gospel. Wesley Scott Biddy (‘Re-envisioning the Pentecostal
Understanding of the Eucharist’, pp. 230-31), whose thesis is largely indebted to
the pioneering work of Frank Macchia, has proposed a Pentecostal
sacramentality that begins with ‘an account of sacraments as events of a divine-
human encounter that take place through symbols’ because he believes that
Pentecostals have at their disposal two primary resources for ‘re-envisioning’ the
Lord’s Supper: first, the belief that ‘divine-human encounters take place in, with,
and under signs’ – as in Macchia’s claims about glossolalia – and, second, the
conviction that these moments of encounter are moments in which God
‘dispenses grace’ – albeit not the forgiveness of sins.
[1058] In this construction, I am trying to model all-at-once what Rowan
Williams calls the three modes of theology: celebratory, communicative, and
critical. See Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell,
2000), p. xiii.
[1059] See for example Seymour’s comments in AF 1.10 (Sept 1907), p. 2.
Also, Michael Welker, What Happens in Holy Communion (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 62-63 and Jenson, Visible Words, pp. 62-64.
[1060] In Chan’s (Liturgical Theology, p. 75) words: ‘Life, as God originally
intended it, is meant to be wholly sacramental, wholly oriented toward
thanksgiving (eucharistia). Redemption restores the basic Eucharistic nature of
life, so that we may once again eat and drink to the glory of God’.
[1061] Jenson (Visible Words, p. 62) notes that the Eucharist is ‘exactly as old
as the gospel itself, and its centrality in the church’s life is uninterrupted’.
[1062] In the words of an early Assemblies of God Sunday School lesson,
‘There are two ceremonies the observance of which is obligatory on Christians,
because divinely ordained: they are Water Baptism and Communion. Because of
their sacred character, distinguishing them from man-devised rites, they are
known as “sacraments,” which means literally, “sacred things,” or “oaths
consecrated by holy ceremonies.” See PE 1098 (May 11, 1935), p. 8.
[1063] Richard John Neuhaus (‘Passion for the Presence: The Eucharist
Today’, Currents in Theology and Mission 5.1 [Feb 1978], pp. 6-7) explains
what it means to use this language: ‘I recognize the danger is speaking of “the
center” in this way. Theologians have a way of focusing on one theme or aspect
of Christian existence and claiming it is the whole. Thus it is said the whole of
Christian existence is encompassed in baptism, or in the understanding of faith,
or of hope, or of the cross, or of the resurrection, or of whatever. Such
monothematic claims, while understandable, are highly problematic. But when
one says the eucharist is the center of the Church’s life it excludes or
shortchanges nothing, for the eucharist is the presence of Christ among his
people, and surely Christ must be the center of the Church’s life. Nothing that is
appropriate to the Christian reality is foreign to the Eucharistic celebration’.
[1064] Simon Chan (Liturgical Theology, pp. 63-66) insists that Word and
Sacrament belong together, and that we must not think of the Supper as either
optional or marginal; in his words, ‘there is no sound basis for relegating it to a
once-a-month ritual’.
[1065] What of those who refuse to follow the mandate? Can and should
Pentecostals believe that disobedience in this matter is fatal? Can and should
Pentecostals teach that the sacraments are the (exclusive) ways in which God
does God’s work? According to M.A. Tomlinson (Basic Bible Beliefs, p. 56), ‘If
such terrible vengeance were pronounced upon those who failed in the
observance of the Passover, how much more do we displease God if we fail to
commemorate the death of His Son who was wounded for our transgressions…’,
a commemoration that takes place at the Table. However, John Wesley is
reported to have said that he would as soon be a Deist as a Quaker, but he would
not accept the claim that the Quakers would be damned for their rejection of the
sacraments. Wesley scholar Randy L. Maddox (Responsible Grace: John
Wesley’s Practical Theology [Nashville: Abingdon, 1994], p. 195) explains that
Wesley ‘refused to confine God’s grace in either direction – whether by
excluding it from all created means or by restricting it to certain authorized
means’. This stance, Maddox points out, arose from Wesley’s
pnuematologically-shaped soteriology. ‘If grace is the uncreated personal
Presence of the Holy Spirit, then while it surely can be mediated through created
means (for these are products of God’s gracious activity in creation), it need not
be confined to such means’.
 [1066] COGE 8.39 (Oct 6, 1917), p. 1.
[1067] In the words of Robert W. Jenson (Story and Promise: A Brief
Theology of the Gospel about Jesus [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1973] p. 84),
‘The morality of the gospel-promise is the morality of what we may do because
Jesus lives’.
[1068] As Sergius Bulgakov (The Comforter [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2004], pp. 311-13) makes clear, true obedience is necessarily always also an
expression of freedom.
[1069] Again, Jenson (Story and Promise, p. 171) suggests that ‘… the
Eucharist is the only dramatically developed enactment of the gospel’s whole
recollection and whole promise. Other churchly performances enact [only]
particular functions in the life of the gospel.’
[1070] Archer, ‘Nourishment for Our Journey’, p. 85. Emphasis added. It is
difficult to discern exactly what Archer means when he speaks of ‘sacramental
ordinances’. He appeals to Grenz who affirms the Radical Reformers’ reaction
against the Scholastic ‘overemphasis on the sacraments and the magical
understanding of their workings’ but denounces the rationalistic impulse that
strips the ordinances of any divine effectiveness. Grenz attempts to find a via
media between medieval sacramentalism on the one hand and rationalistic
memorialism on the other. Archer, apparently, occupies that middle ground, too.
One wonders if this middle ground is firm enough to build on, however.
[1071] Obviously, the one who presides at the Supper plays the role of Christ,
and the rest of the community, the role of the apostles, a fact I will return to in a
later section.
[1072] Speaking of the Eucharist as a ‘ritual meal’, I intend to emphasize the
pre-established, formalized patterns of speaking (‘On the night he was betrayed
…’) and acting (the actual eating and drinking) that give the meal its
recognizable structure in and for the worshipping community. This is in keeping
with Albrecht’s definition (Rites in the Spirit, p. 22): ‘ritual connotes those acts,
actions, dramas and performances that a community creates, continues,
recognizes and sanctions as ways of behaving that express appropriate attitudes,
sensibilities, values and beliefs within a given situation’. See also Cartledge,
Testimony in the Spirit, pp. 39-45.
[1073] Jenson (Visible Words, p. 68) observes that ‘the [biblical] texts
mandate thanksgiving, with sharing of bread and cup’. He is also right that for
our thanksgiving to be what Scripture requires it to be, it must include in some
way all of these factors: ‘doxology, recitation of saving history, and
eschatological invocation’.
[1074] Jenson, Visible Words, p. 69.
[1075] Jenson, Visible Words, p. 74.
[1076] Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology (3 vols.; London: T&T
Clark, 2004), III, p. 305.
[1077] Perhaps a word about the bread and the wine themselves is in order at
this point. Early Pentecostals discerned that each ‘element’ symbolizes/signifies
different dimensions of the one event of the Supper. The bread, they believed, is
the locus of Christ’s body broken for our healing, while the cup serves as the
locus of Christ’s blood shed for the sins of all.
[1078] To speak of ‘the rubric’ is not to downplay the diversity of the biblical
institutional accounts, but only to emphasize their basic harmony.
[1079] Welker (What Happens in Holy Communion, pp. 56-59) warns against
thinking of the Supper as only a thanksgiving meal.
[1080] Jenson, Visible Words, p. 70. He continues (Visible Words, p. 74), ‘If,
of course, we do not do what we are told to, there is nothing more to be said
about the Supper, since no Supper occurs’.
[1081] That is, we must offer the Supper in ‘both kinds’, i.e. both the loaf and
the cup are to be shared and received, and we are not allowed to substitute other
‘elements’ for them; e.g. water cannot substitute for the wine. Again, early
Pentecostal leaders were quite emphatic on this point, and rightly so. See, for
example, PHA 3.11 (July 10, 1919), p. 2. For a qualifying position, see Welker,
What Happens in Holy Communion, pp. 79-82.
[1082] Jenson, Visible Words, p. 106.
[1083] McCabe, ‘Eucharistic Change’, p. 220.
[1084] Jenson, Visible Words, p. 107. This means that the effort to say that
Christ is really present only in the heart or in the gathered community and not at
all in the bread and wine is misguided.
[1085] F.F. Bosworth (LRE 6.9 [June 1914], p. 3), to take but one example,
made just this separation. This claim appears to be peculiar to the Finished Work
tradition and to have no parallel in the Wesleyan-Holiness literature of the
period, presumably because of the differing theological assumptions that
underlie the two streams of early Pentecostalism, as Alexander (Pentecostal
Healing, pp. 230-42) has argued.
[1086] Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), p. 257. Emphasis added.
 [1087] PE 894 (April 18, 1931), p. 2.
[1088] Some Pentecostals (e.g. Slay, This We Believe, p. 98) hold that if
believers are truly led by the Spirit there will be no need for any liturgical forms
to guide Christian worship. This mindset perhaps arises from a (mis)reading of
Acts that leads to the assumption that the Spirit’s leading is so clear, so
overpowering, that it becomes virtually impossible to err. On this, see the
insightful critique of Sergius Bulgakov, The Comforter (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2004), pp. 288-89.
[1089] See, for example, Amos Yong, Discerning the Spirits (JPTSup 20;
Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), p. 165; Warrington, Pentecostal
Theology, p. 169; Daniel Castelo, ‘The Improvisational Quality of Ecclesial
Holiness’, in John Christopher Thomas (ed.), Toward a Pentecostal
Ecclesiology: The Church and the Fivefold Gospel (Cleveland, TN: CPT Press,
2010), p. 89; Peter Althouse, Spirit of the Last Days (JPTSup 25; London: T&T
Clark, 2003), p. 98.
[1090] As seen for example in Slay, This We Believe, p. 98.
[1091] See Yong, Discerning the Spirits, p. 165.
[1092] What Jenson specifies as ‘religious self-concentricity’.
[1093] See Chan, Liturgical Theology, pp. 41-61.
[1094] See Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, pp. 131-214.
[1095] See Castelo, ‘The Improvisational Quality of Ecclesial Holiness’, p.
89.
[1096] Jenson, Visible Words, p. 68.
[1097] As we will discuss later, this ‘we’ includes not only those of us in a
particular local congregation, but every member of the church, wherever and
whenever the member is in time or space. The Eucharist, however uneventful it
might seem to lookers-on, is nothing less than a cosmic event.
[1098] It also bears pointing out that words belong uniquely to humanity’s
creatureliness.
[1099] Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, p. 256.
[1100] Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom
(New York: SVS, 1987), p. 174.
[1101] This may not be the sensual or psychological experience of the
participants – or the interpretation they give to their experience – but it is in fact
what Scripture promises to be true nonetheless. In Christian worship – and this
necessarily includes our gathering at the Lord’s Table – we have come ‘to Mount
Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to
innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who
are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the
righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the
sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel’ (Heb. 12.22-
24).
[1102] Schmemann, The Eucharist, p. 176. What, for Pentecostals, could be
more important than this ‘knowledge’? If the Eucharist can initiate us into that
knowing – as I, with Schmemann, believe it can – then how could we refuse it a
central place in the worship of our community?
[1103] This assumes that the Lord’s Supper brings Christ to our remembrance.
However, it is also in some sense a bringing of Jesus to mind for God (Jenson,
Visible Words, pp. 72-73). In Communion, we petition God to bring Jesus’
victory to bear on our lives and our world. In taking and giving the bread and
wine, we pray for the kingdom to come, in fact; it is an embodied, dramatically
enacted Marana Tha! Neuhaus (‘Passion for the Presence’, p. 15) has it right:
‘In that Eucharistic maranatha is discovered the fullness of the Church’s
mission, to sight, signal, support and celebrate the coming of the Kingdom’.
[1104] Not this only, however. Given Christian theological convictions, to
speak of Jesus’ life is also to speak of the life of the eternal Word; therefore, in
Communion, believers are remembering not only the so-called ‘historical Jesus’,
but also his work in creation and in the playing out of creation’s history. This
means, among other things, that all of Jesus’ table-fellowship – including the
theophany meals of the Old Testament – lie at the roots of the church’s
Eucharistic practice.
[1105] In the words of Donald Gee, the Supper ‘center[s] the thought upon
Christ’. See PE 894 (April 18, 1931), p. 2.
[1106] Williams (Renewal Theology, III, p. 245) maintains that ‘The Lord’s
Supper is the recollection and showing forth of Christ’s death … a perpetual
memorial to the sacrificial death of Christ’. It is also an ‘affirmation of a
historical event’, a reminder of and ‘reaffirmation of God’s new covenant in
Jesus Christ’.
[1107] PE 1077 (Dec 8, 1934), p. 9. As seen in Chapter 3, this conviction that
the Supper points us both to the past and to the future is characteristic of early
Pentecostal thought. See, for example, AF 1.4 (Dec 1906), p. 2.
[1108]Rowan Williams, ‘The Bible Today: “Reading” and “Hearing”’.
Available online: http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/1718. Accessed March
12, 2011.
 [1109] As Macchia (Baptized in the Spirit, p. 252) says, ‘Without Jesus as the
Spirit Baptizer, there is no clear link between the anamnesis and the epiclesis. In
fact, the anamnesis is fulfilled in the epiclesis in the light of Jesus’ resurrection
from death to mediate the Spirit’.
[1110] In agreement with, among others, Archer, ‘Nourishment for our
Journey,’ p. 96.
[1111] WE 162 (Oct 28, 1916), p. 4.
[1112] See Biddy, ‘Re-envisioning the Pentecostal Understanding of the
Eucharist’, pp. 234-36.
[1113] In the words of an early Pentecostal minister (COGE 1.10 [July 15,
1910], pp. 1-2), the Lord’s Supper provides ‘a broader view of the Christ and
wonderful scheme of redemption than ever before’.
[1114] This is in keeping with the instruction of Myer Pearlman: ‘The Head of
the church will Himself administer the Sacrament, as we receive Him by faith’.
See PE 1479 (Sept 12, 1942), p. 2.
[1115] Of course, this awakening and conviction, this ambition and resolve are
never human achievement, but always come as a gift from the divine Spirit that
enables authentic response.
[1116] Neuhaus, ‘Passion for the Presence’, p. 15.
[1117] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, III, p. 311.
[1118] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, III, p. 312.
[1119] See Welker, What Happens in Holy Communion, pp. 131-32.
[1120] Jenson (Visible Words, p. 79). He continues, ‘To be brought into the
fellowship of this Supper is to anticipate belonging to the fellowship of the
kingdom; it is bodily promise of that belonging’.
[1121] Jenson, Story and Promise, p. 184.
[1122] Chan, Liturgical Theology, p. 37.
[1123] Jenson (Systematic Theology [Oxford: OUP, 1999], II, p. 251) defines
heaven as ‘the place of the future as this is anticipated by God’ and then
describes it in this way: ‘… sacramental events make the boundary between our
world and heaven, marking it by the “visible” objects they involve. Just as they
are the embodied presence to our world of what is in heaven; in the present
context, they are the embodied presence of the risen Jesus and the Kingdom he
presents to the Father in the Spirit, as these are anticipated for the Father by the
Spirit.’
[1124] N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the
Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: Harper Collins, 2008),
pp. 271-75.
[1125] Metropolitan John D. Zizioulas (Lectures in Christian Dogmatics
[London: T&T Clark, 2008], p. xxi) suggests that in the Eucharist-event,
‘material creation is able to sing the praises of God and so participate through us
in the freedom of God’. Emphasis added.
[1126] T.F. Torrance (Atonement: The Person and Work of Christ [Downers
Grove, IL: IVP, 2009], p. 307) suggests that baptism and the Eucharist ‘enshrine
together the two essential “moments” of our participation in the new creation …’
While they can agree that the sacraments do in fact provide this momentary
participation, Pentecostals would not limit participation to these two
sacraments.
[1127] Perhaps because it is exaggeratedly more Lukan than it is Pauline or
Johannine in its theological emphasis and orientation.
[1128] So he says (The Church in the Power of the Spirit, p. 251), ‘the
history of Christ’s passion is proclaimed in the Lord’s supper … The connection
between eating and drinking in the kingdom of God and the gift of his given
body and his shed blood becomes clear. At long last we no longer have any need
to seek for a historically dated institution for the Lord’s supper, nor must we
confine its christology to a founder christology. The Lord’s supper is, with inner,
factual cogency, the expression of the eschatological history of Christ – that is to
say, the dawn of the kingdom of God in his self-giving and his resurrection from
the dead’.
[1129] Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, p. 250.
[1130] Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, pp. 246-52.
[1131] Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, p. 251.
[1132] In much the same way, Schmemann (The Eucharist, p. 210) contends
that the Eucharistic remembrance is not primarily a remembering of Christ’s
Last Supper or of the events on Golgotha, but a ‘remembrance of the kingdom of
God’ that Jesus conferred on his apostles (and so on the church throughout
history) on the night of his betrayal (Lk. 22.29-30).
[1133] In support of these claims, Moltmann works out a rather elaborate
theory of eschatological time. See Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the
Spirit, pp. 253-56. See also Welker, What Happens in Holy Communion, p. 97.
[1134] Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, p. 254.
[1135] Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, p. 250.
[1136] In Moltmann’s (The Church in the Power of the Spirit, p. 257) view,
‘Just because the fellowship in the supper is a remembrance of Christ’s death as
the ground of liberation and reconciliation, this remembrance can only be
gratitude; and this gratitude will be as wide and as all-embracing as the
liberating reconciliation itself. It comprehends the whole of creation in
representative thanksgiving and intercession and awaits its coming redemption’.
[1137] Jenson, Visible Words, p. 78.
[1138] Jenson, Visible Words, p. 97.
[1139] Certainly, many early Pentecostal testimonies point up these
dimensions of Eucharistic experience.
[1140] Williams, Renewal Theology, III, p. 246.
[1141] For example, J.H. King (PHA 2.49 [Apr 3, 1919], p. 6) speaks of ‘the
thrill of unspeakable ecstasy’ occasioned by the Supper.
[1142] As Macchia (Baptized in the Spirit, p. 254) explains, ‘… the
experience of God in the sacrament is deeper than that which I may consciously
feel or understand, for God is the one who is able to do “immeasurably more
than we ask or imagine” (Eph. 3.20). The Spirit’s involvement in the Lord’s
Supper transcends time but also human rationality and speech. Like art, these
rituals bear more meanings than we know’.
[1143] Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit, p. 264.
[1144] Williams (Renewal Theology, III, p. 245) sees this as especially
signified in the cup: ‘Thus the cup at the Lord’s Supper is the vivid symbol and
continuing reminder of that new covenant, which Christ’s death made possible.
Hence every celebration of the Lord’s Supper is a reaffirmation of God’s new
covenant in Jesus Christ’. See also, Donald L. Gelpi, Committed Worship: A
Sacramental Theology for Converting Christians (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical
Press, 1993), II, p. 233.
[1145] Arrington, Christian Doctrine, III, p. 212.
[1146] As Yong (Spirit-Word-Community, pp. 249-50) explains, a theology of
the Eucharist must take seriously ‘the Church’s reflecting on its actual
experience of the Eucharist throughout history’.
[1147] Both the impelling and the compelling forces are the Spirit’s work, of
course.
[1148] PHA 2.16 (Aug 15, 1918), p. 7.
[1149] They believed, for instance, that Scripture promised bodily healing as
well as spiritual nourishment. In holding that no command is without promise,
they would have agreed with Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Sanctorum Communio
[Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works Vol. 1; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998], p. 244):
‘This free gathering together to eat from the table of the altar is not a self-chosen
but rather an obedient symbolism, and thus it has the warrant that God will act
in it’.
[1150] WE 131 (Mar 18, 1916), p. 13.
[1151] As seen in the examination of the early periodical materials (Chapter
3), the first generation of Pentecostals believed that Christ (and/or the Spirit) was
actively present to them in their celebrations of the Supper. This is true of most
contemporary Pentecostals, as well, as evidenced in review of literature (Chapter
2). Of course, most Pentecostals then and now would insist (1) that this would
not happen if the participants came to the Table faithlessly and unprepared; (2)
that Christ is present in other ways, apart from the Sacrament; and (3) that
Christ’s (and/or the Spirit’s) presence is never so much in the bread and the wine
as in the ‘midst’ of the congregation. In other words, while they affirm that
Christ (and/or the Spirit) is present to the celebrants, they maintain that Christ
can draw near with or without the Sacrament, and that this drawing near is not so
much through the elements as alongside them. Perhaps it is precisely at this
point that the most careful but drastic revisioning of the tradition is required.
[1152] As the New Testament witnesses, the Father sends the Son by the Spirit
and the Spirit by the Son. In other words, Jesus is both the Spirit-bearer and the
Spirit-baptizer.
[1153] PHA 49.16 (Aug 14, 1965), p. 9. Emphasis added.
[1154] Bulgakov (The Comforter, p. 303) contends that while ‘the life of
grace in the Holy Spirit’ comes in the life of the church with its sacraments and
prayers, it also comes by ‘direct illumination’, for ‘there is one active Spirit and
the grace bestowed in the sacraments continues to operate beyond the limits of
their immediate celebration’.
[1155] Although he does not single out the Lord’s Supper specifically,
Pentecostal Holiness theologian Noel Brooks (Scriptural Holiness [Franklin
Springs, GA: Advocate Press, 1967], p. 51) shows how Pentecostals can hold the
work of the Spirit in sanctification in tightest possible relationship with the
church’s public ministries: ‘This is the mighty ministry of the Holy Spirit in the
Church; and this is its objective and goal, the formation and development of
Christ in human personality and character’.
[1156] In agreement with, among others, Biddy, ‘Re-envisioning the
Pentecostal Understanding of the Eucharist’, p. 233.
[1157] As seen in the previous chapter, G.F. Taylor, editor of the PH
Advocate, explains the relation of Christ and Spirit in the Eucharist in these
terms: ‘as we partake of the bread and wine, our souls feed on the flesh and
blood of Jesus Christ, brought to us through the Holy Ghost’. See PHA 3.11
(July 10, 1919), p. 2. A.S. Copley, speaking more broadly of the Christian
spiritual experience, expresses a similar conviction: ‘Jesus is the food, the Holy
Ghost the feeder’. See The Pentecost 1.2 (Sept, 1908), p. 7.
[1158] WE 146 (July 1, 1916), p. 8.
[1159] They also speak to one another, to those outside the church, and to the
powers (both seen and unseen).
[1160] What is the justification for claiming this other ‘level’ of meaning? (1)
The words of Jesus himself; (2) the witness of the church’s theological
traditions, and especially the Patristics; (3) the testimony of early Pentecostal
experience, and (4) the theological fittingness of the claim. The sacrament is a
means of salvation precisely because it perfectly signifies what salvation is: the
consuming and being consumed by Christ. It would be nothing less than a
cheapening of God’s wisdom and power to say otherwise.
[1161] In this, I am drawing on the Lutheran tradition that holds preaching and
the Eucharist in the closest possible connection. The one Word of God – Jesus –
comes both to preaching and to the Sacrament. See especially Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, Christ the Center (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), pp. 49-58 and
Jenson, Visible Words, pp. 3-25. At least two provisos are required. First, for
Pentecostals, ‘Word’ includes more than preaching and ‘preaching’ includes
more than the sermon; second, the whole of Christian worship cannot be reduced
to Word (even in this expanded sense) and observance of the Sacrament; the
Spirit cannot be proscribed in these ways. Given the infinite creativity of the
Spirit, there are potentially a limitless number of ‘means of grace’. That said,
any means the Spirit might use would of course be used in ways consonant with
the dynamics of the Lord’s Supper.
[1162] Chan (Liturgical Theology, p. 141) avows that ‘The rite of Holy
Communion that the church observes is not a result of some historical event that
eventually produces a commemorative event. It is not the creation of the
community but the creation of Jesus Christ himself. He instituted it because he
actualized or fulfilled the reality that the bread and wine symbolize.’
[1163] See Biddy, ‘Re-envisioning the Pentecostal Understanding of the
Eucharist’, p. 230.
[1164] In a PHA article, E.L Boyce, a PH pastor, affirms the Calvinist view as
the one best fitted to Pentecostals: ‘… the communicant, through the operation
of the Holy Spirit, comes into spiritual contact with the entire person of Christ
and he is thus fed unto life eternal’. See PHA 46.46 (Mar 23, 1963), p. 15.
 [1165] Nicholas The Life in Christ IV.1 ([Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1998],
p. 115).
[1166] Welker, What Happens in Holy Communion, p. 93.
[1167] This is an ecumenically agreed-upon claim. See Welker, What
Happens in Holy Communion, pp. 95-99; Herbert McCabe, ‘Eucharistic
Change’, Priests and People 8.6 (June 1994), pp. 217-21, and Pannenberg,
Systematic Theology, III, pp. 311-26.
[1168] See Welker, What Happens in Holy Communion, pp. 93-99.
[1169] Bonhoeffer, Christ the Center, p. 53. Emphasis added.
[1170] Bonhoeffer, Christ the Center, p. 57.
[1171] PHA 7.31 (Nov 29, 1923), p. 7.
[1172] Of course, Christ is present everywhere – this is what it means for him
to be ‘seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty’. However, Christ is
uniquely present at and in the Eucharist. He is not exclusively present there, of
course; he is present in other sacraments, too including preaching, as well in
ways beyond the sacramental. As Macchia (Baptized in the Spirit, p. 255)
phrases it, ‘the Eucharistic mode of God’s presence, though special, is
continuous with all other modes’ of God’s presence. It is this continuity that
must be emphasized. Early Pentecostals talked often of the ‘continual feast’ they
enjoyed, and contemporary Pentecostals are right to maintain this emphasis.
However, we must be careful always to ground that talk in actual, regular
Eucharistic participation. For by participation in the concreteness and specificity
of the Eucharist-event the Spirit inscribes in us the very character of Christ, and
so sensitizes us to the ways of God.
[1173] Yong (Spirit-Word-Community, p. 258) notes: ‘… the community of
faith gathers around the Lord’s Table to celebrate Jesus as the object of faith on
the one hand, and fellowship with him in an interpersonally subjective manner
on the other. It is this Jesus who is preached, and in that proclamation draws near
to us’.
[1174] Yong, The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh, p. 164. Whether Yong
intends it or not, it is perhaps always best to hear talk about to ‘the body of
Christ’ as having multiple references, as it apparently does in 1 Cor. 11.27-34.
On this, see Thomas, Devil, Disease and Deliverance, pp. 47-50.
[1175] Early Pentecostals often spoke of heaven ‘coming down’ to them in
their celebration of Communion. See AF 1.2 (Oct 1906), p. 4; TBM 3.51 (Dec 1,
1909), p. 4; PHA 2.27 (Oct 31, 1918), p. 12. This language recalls Luther’s
theology of the church and sacraments. Reflecting on Gen. 28.17, he insists,
‘Direct your step to the place where the word resounds and the sacraments are
administered, and there write the title THE GATE OF GOD’. Quoted in Jonathan
D. Trigg, Baptism in the Theology of Martin Luther (Leiden: Brill, 1994), p. 20.
As Trigg explains, Luther affirmed the rite of washing as ‘one of those places
where God wills to be found, a divinely appointed “trysting place” for the
encounter of God and man’. By all accounts, early Pentecostals availed
themselves of this gate, and found God to be exactly where the Scriptures
promise God will be.
[1176] David Coffey, ‘The “Incarnation” of the Holy Spirit in Christ’,
Theological Studies 45 (1984), p. 478.
[1177] This is another way of saying he is present in the Spirit. Also, as seen
in Chapter 3, this was a characteristic emphasis of early Pentecostal theological
reflection on the meaning of the Supper. Mary Boddy, for example, speaks of the
‘wonderful power of His precious Body being given for us’. See Confidence 7.8
(Aug 1914), p. 150. See also COGE 5.31 (Aug 1, 1914), p. 6; PHA 1.45 (Mar 7,
1918), p. 16; PHA 5.30 (Nov 23, 1921), p. 4.
[1178] Many, perhaps most, early Pentecostals believed that the Lord’s Supper
was a means of healing. When taken in faith, the bread, which signifies ‘his
body broken for our bodies’, effects physical healing. Less often, they talked of
the Supper as a means of sanctification as well. To be clear, by ‘sanctification’ I
mean to name the entire process of being saved, of being conformed to the
image of Christ by being drawn into the life of the Triune God.
[1179] Myer Pearlman makes just this connection. See PE 1077 (Dec 8,
1934), p. 9; WE 170 (Dec 23, 1916), p. 8. In this, Pearlman sounds very much
like John of Damascus (Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 4.13) and
Cabasilas (p. 113), who says: ‘But when He has led the initiate to the table and
has given him His Body to eat He entirely changes him, and transforms him into
His own state’. In similar fashion, C.E. Bowen, Church of God (Cleveland, TN)
minister in the 1950’s, could speak of the need for communicants to ‘realize
while we eat the bread we are being partakers of divine life’ and the 1916
Assemblies of God Statement of Fundamental Truth includes this statement:
‘The Lord’s Supper … is the symbol expressing our sharing the divine nature of
our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 Pet 1.4; a memorial of his suffering and death, 1 Cor.
11.26; and a prophecy of His second coming, 1 Cor. 11.26; and is enjoined on all
believers “until he comes”’. At times, for some at least, this talk could move
away from explicit connection to the Communion. For example, a contributor to
PE (964 [Sept 3, 1932], p. 3), reflecting on Jn 6.35, boasts that ‘The Holy Ghost
would lead us to gather around this Lamb in fellowship and communion, feeding
upon Him, being partakers of His divine nature’.
[1180] Again, not only through Communion. Central as it is to Christian life,
the Lord’s Supper is one among other ‘means of grace’.
[1181] See Elena Vishnevskaya, ‘Divinization as Perichoretic Embrace in
Maximus the Confessor’, in Michael J. Christensen and Jeffery A. Wittung
(eds.), Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of
Deification in the Christian Traditions (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007),
p. 139.
[1182] Bonaventure, Breviloquim, VI.9.3 (Works of St Bonaventure Vol. IX;
Saint Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2005, p. 241).
Similarly, Jenson (Systematic Theology, II, p. 299) explains that in the event of
justification ‘… Christ himself becomes the subject by whose liveliness I am
what I am’, so that, through the mediation of the Spirit, ‘the Christ who is what I
am is the Christ who is who I am’.
[1183] In other words, Christ makes us like he is without in any way
obliterating the creator-creature distinction. As Macchia (Justified in the Spirit,
p. 31) sees, ‘Jesus as the man of the Spirit in communion with the Father thus
reveals both God and ideal humanity at the same time’. This confirms both the
word of Athanasius (On the Incarnation 54.3) – God became human so that the
human might become a god – and Bonhoeffer – God became human in order
than the human might become human.
[1184] Rowan Williams (On Christian Theology, p. 197) notes that ‘… what
makes sacraments distinct is what they are for, the activity in which they are
caught up, which is making human beings holy’.
[1185] In Macchia’s words (Baptized in the Spirit, p. 281), ‘God as a self-
giving fountain of love poured out abundantly begins to shape us into something
similar. Jesus pours out the Spirit so that the Spirit may pour forth in our
empowered love for others. We become “Spirit-baptized personalities”’.
[1186] Bonaventure, Breviloquim VI.9.3 (p. 241).
[1187] Bonaventure, Breviloquim VI.9.3 (p. 241). Also, Bonaventure
(Breviloquim VI.9.6-7) believes that Paul’s warning against partaking
unworthily (1 Corinthians 11) is a caution against eating and drinking ‘with
lukewarm, irreverent, and unthinking hearts’.
[1188] John of Damascus uses this very image: ‘Let us draw near to [the
Eucharist] with an ardent desire, and with our hands held in the form of the cross
let us receive the body of the Crucified One: and let us apply our eyes and lips
and brows and partake of the divine coal, in order that the fire of the longing,
that is in us, with the additional heat derived from the coal may utterly consume
our sins and illumine our hearts, and that we may be inflamed and deified by the
participation in the divine fire’. See Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith
4.13 in NPNF, 2nd series, vol. 9 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), p. 83.
[1189] Many ancient and medieval writers took up this image, including, for
example, Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, and William of St. Thierry. See Owen F.
Cummings, Eucharistic Doctors: A Theological History (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist
Press, 2005), p. 69; Elizabeth Saxon, The Eucharist in Romanesque France:
Iconography and Theology (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press, 2006),
pp. 105, 202.
[1190] See Bonaventure, Breviloquim VI.9.4-5.
[1191] In Bonhoeffer’s own words (Christ the Center, p. 54), ‘The sacrament
is not God becoming Man, but the humiliation of the God-Man’.
[1192] Bonhoeffer, Christ the Center, p. 58.
[1193] PHA 3.11 (July 10, 1919), p. 2.
[1194] As Bonhoeffer, (Christ the Center, p. 58) explains, ‘The Christ present
in the sacrament is the creator of this new creation and at the same time a
creature. He is present as our creator, who makes us into new creatures. But he is
also present as the humiliated creature in the sacrament and in no other way.
Thus is he present’.
[1195] ‘In the Spirit we participate in the righteousness yet to come in the new
creation and in ultimate communion because of our participation in the crucified
and risen Christ’ (Macchia, Justified in the Spirit, p. 294).
[1196] Welker (What Happens in Holy Communion, p. 122-23) suggests that
‘Inasmuch as the Supper is a foretaste, inasmuch as the shadow of the
proclamation of Christ’s death still lies over it, the Supper points to the path and
the distance which lie between us and the fulfillment of God’s rule … The
celebration of the Supper proclaims Christ’s death as long as the fullness of
creatures, the fullness of times and worlds cannot join in the heavenly doxology
before the face of God.’
[1197] Archer (‘Nourishment for Our Journey’, p. 86) explains, ‘During
worship “time and space [are] fused and transcended in the Spirit” through
proleptic foretastes of the coming promise and through the recapitulation of past
biblical experiences’. He also cites Land (Pentecostal Spirituality, p. 55)
approvingly: ‘Pentecostals [travel] in the Spirit forward or backward in
time – back to Sinai, back to Calvary, back to Pentecost – forward to
Armageddon, the Great White Throne Judgment, the Marriage Supper of the
Lamb’.
[1198] As Bonhoeffer (Christ the Center, p. 65) says, in the Sacrament
‘elements of the old creation … become elements of the new’ and by the Spirit
are ‘set free from their dumbness and proclaim directly to the believer the new
creative Word of God’.
[1199] Augustine, ‘Empowered Community’, p. 175.
[1200] On the traces of Eucharistic theology in the Letter to the Hebrews, see
Arthur A. Just, Jr. ‘Entering Holiness: Christology and Eucharist in Hebrews’,
Concordia Theological Quarterly 69.1 (Jan 2005), pp. 75-95.
[1201] Against Heresies 5.2.3.
[1202] Not without reason, Cartledge (Testimony in the Spirit, p. 46) has
suggested that ‘A greater focus on the sacrament of Holy Communion’ would be
one way of ‘renewing and reorienting Pentecostal worship and ministry,
especially if this sacramental theology and practice were linked to a theology of
the cross and an awareness of divine sovereignty’.
[1203] This language of humbling oneself at the Lord’s Table recurs
throughout the early Pentecostal periodical literature. For just a couple of
examples, see PHA 2.33-34 (Dec 19-26, 1918), p. 6 and Confidence 7.1 (Jan
1914), p. 11.
[1204] Because the Spirit is the divinely-personal instantiation of the
fulfillment of all God’s purposes for creation. Jenson (Systematic Theology, II,
p. 222) explains it in these terms: ‘The church, we have said, exists in
anticipation. What she anticipates is inclusion in the triune communion. In the
End, the koinonia that the risen Christ and his Father now live in their Spirit will
become the mutual love in which believers will limitlessly find one another. The
church exists to become that fellowship; the church’s own communal Spirit is
sheer arrabon of that Community’.
[1205] In this, I am drawing especially on Macchia’s Justified in the Spirit
and Jenson, Systematic Theology, II, pp. 289-305 in agreement with Macchia’s
vision of ‘a Trinitarian understanding of salvation that gathers up and integrates
all soteriological categories’ (see Justified in the Spirit, p. 4).
[1206] Macchia, ‘Eucharist: Pentecostal’, p. 189.
[1207] Zizioulas (Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 118) notes, ‘There is
no distance between Christ and his body in the Eucharist’.
[1208] AF 1.6 (Feb-Mar 1907), p. 2.
[1209] AF 1.6 (Feb-Mar 1907), p. 2.
 [1210] As is the faith that receives and embodies this salvation; that means
that the church’s (collective) faith is basic to the believer’s.
[1211] Matthias Wenk (‘The Church as Sanctified Community’, in Thomas
[ed.], Toward a Pentecostal Ecclesiology, pp. 124-26) suggests that when
rightly observed the Eucharist and/or ‘ecclesial meals’ (along with baptism and
foot-washing) are enactments of the divine acceptance that assures the genuine
holiness of the community and its members, the holiness that is their (personal)
salvation.
[1212] George Florovsky (Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox
View [Belmont, MA: Nordland Publishers, 1972], pp. 37-38) claims that ‘In the
Church our salvation is perfected; the sanctification and transfiguration, the
theosis of the human race is accomplished’. Of the ancient claim, extra
ecclesiam nulla salus, he says, ‘All the categorical strength and point of this
aphorism lies in its tautology. Outside the Church there is no salvation, because
salvation is the Church.’
[1213] Jenson, Systematic Theology, II, p. 212.
[1214] John of Damascus, Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 4.13; cited
according to Jenson, Systematic Theology, II, p. 212.
[1215] Cartledge (Testimony in the Spirit, p. 51) finds that healing is for
Pentecostals perhaps the dominant soteriological metaphor.
[1216] In other words, Jesus is ‘coming king’ no less in the church’s
sacramental experience than he was in the incarnation or shall be in the
parousia, although at the End, of course, his kingdom shall be finally and fully
established beyond dispute.
[1217] Once again, let me make clear that this is not to suggest that the
Eucharist-event is the only ‘place’ in which Christ meets us gracefully. It is to
suggest, however, that it is unique and paradigmatic event, and in some sense the
most fitting moment for transformative encounter with God. In the words of
Bulgakov (The Comforter, p. 303), ‘there is one active Spirit and the grace
bestowed in the sacraments continues to operate beyond the limits of their
immediate celebration’.
[1218] Macchia (Baptized in the Spirit, p. 276) notes that William Seymour
more than once speaks of divine healing as the ‘sanctification’ of the body.
[1219] AF 1.4 (Dec 1906), p. 2.
[1220] Eschatological healing is cosmic in scope; ‘all things’ shall be put
right, restored and perfected. ‘The goal is the final new creation where
righteousness dwells as well as the communion of saints at the messianic
banquet where the favor and covenant faithfulness of God find fulfillment.
Together as dwelling places of God, we will commune face to face with Christ
and receive the vindication of our hope’ (Macchia, Justified in the Spirit, p.
292). In the words of Elizabeth Sexton (TBM 3.54 [Jan 1910], p. 1), ‘This final
making new of all things is the end of the whole plan of the new covenant
worked out’.
[1221] Cartledge, Testimony in the Spirit, p. 185; see also Yong, The Spirit
Poured Out on All Flesh, p. 163.
[1222] This is in keeping with the early Pentecostal habit of holding healing
and sanctification in the closest possible connection. See for example AF 1.6
(Jan-Feb 1907), p. 6.
[1223] It must be said that healing is not only a sign. For someone to be
healed now is both a fulfillment of an already-given promise and at the same
time a reaffirmation of another, larger promise to heal all things in the End.
[1224] Noel Brooks, Let There Be Life (Franklin Springs, GA: Advocate
Press, 1975), p. 88.
[1225] As Alexander (Pentecostal Healing, pp. 233-34) notes, it is critical not
to lose touch with the fact of God’s transcendence. In her engagement with early
Pentecostal literature, she found that Finished Work models of healing
overemphasized the already-accomplished victory of Christ on the cross at the
expense of the still-to-come eschatological kingdom. For obvious reasons, this
way of thinking led in many cases to an exaggerated sense of the Spirit’s
immanence and so to a mechanistic model of healing. In the light of Alexander’s
arguments, it seems to me best to follow the Wesleyan-Holiness Pentecostals in
thinking of healing as a sign of ‘the inbreaking of the Kingdom to come’ that
awakens faith in the Christ whose salvation is both already and not yet come.
[1226] Alexander (Pentecostal Healing, p. 229) explains that many early
Pentecostals learned to live wisely in ‘the tension between trusting Jesus as
healer and knowing that not all will be healed’.
[1227] If this kind of healing is not taking place in the context of the Supper,
perhaps reflection is needed to identify why it is that the promised signs are not
‘following’. See Thomas, The Devil, Disease and Deliverance, pp. 311-19.
[1228] Chan (‘Jesus as Spirit-Baptizer: Its Significance for Pentecostal
Ecclesiology’, in Thomas [ed.], Toward a Pentecostal Ecclesiology, pp. 140-41)
reminds us that of all the New Testament descriptions of Jesus’ identity, his
identity as Spirit-baptizer is the most widely attested (Mt. 3.11-12; Mk 1.8; Lk.
3.6; Jn 1.26-27, 33; Acts 1.4; 11.16).
 [1229] In Macchia’s (Baptized in the Spirit, p. 87) judgment, ‘The Pentecostal
belief in the connection between Spirit baptism and sanctification, on the one
hand, and between Spirit baptism and the latter rain of the Spirit to end the age,
on the other, can nourish an ecumenical doctrine of Spirit baptism in which
many voices can have a significant role to play'.
[1230] Irenaeus (e.g. Against Heresies 3.24.1 [ANF, I, p. 458) makes this
point forcefully: communion with Christ is possible only in and with and
through the Spirit. The inverse also holds true: to be filled with the Spirit is to
share in Christ’s life (and death), to be drawn into mutuality with Christ and so
with the Triune God. Along the same lines, John Wesley spoke of drinking
‘larger Draughts [sic] of God’ and of being filled with God’s own life through
participation in the sacraments; see Ole E. Borgen, John Wesley on the
Sacraments (Grand Rapids: Francis Asbury Press, 1972), pp. 208-11. This is
very much in keeping with the many early Pentecostals who understood
salvation as the ‘increasing acquisition of God’s triune life’. See Dale Coulter,
‘“Delivered by the Power of God”: Toward a Pentecostal Understanding of
Salvation’, IJST 10.4 (Oct 2008), p. 466.
[1231] See Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit, pp. 257-82.
[1232] Jenson (Systematic Theology, II, p. 298) draws on and highlights a
characteristic Augustinian insight: ‘as the Spirit [is] the bond of love in the
Trinity, so he [is] himself believers’ bond of love with God and one another’.
Because the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, ‘the bond of love he creates is
participation with and in Christ’. Bulgakov (The Comforter, p. 154) makes a
similar move: ‘The Holy Spirit exists by virtue of the Father and the Son, as
Their mutual love and as very Love for Them. In this sense, the Holy Spirit does
not belong to Himself, is not His own, but is the Spirit of the Father and the Son
… But at the same time, as a hypostasis, the Holy Spirit is personal, that is, He is
the Spirit contained within Himself, the Third hypostasis’. Macchia (Justified in
the Spirit, pp. 301-303) warns that this notion needs to be carefully nuanced lest
the Spirit seem to be less personal than the Father and the Son. See also David
Coffey, ‘The Holy Spirit as the Mutual Love of the Father and the Son’,
Theological Studies 51 (1990), pp. 193-229.
[1233] Macchia (Justified in the Spirit, p. 74) describes it exactly: ‘The
Spirit-indwelt Christ baptizes us in the Spirit so that we can be taken up in him
into the embrace of the divine communion’.
[1234] In Macchia’s words (Baptized in the Spirit, pp. 255-56), ‘Spirit
baptism is not a once-and-for-all event but an ongoing, dynamic reality that is
shared in koinonia …’
[1235] Killian McDonnell, O.S.B. and George T. Montague (Christian
Initiation and Baptism in the Spirit: Evidence from the First Eight Centuries
[2nd rev. ed.; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1994], p. 370) suggest that ‘If
the baptism in the Holy Spirit is integral to Christian initiation, to the
constitutive sacraments, then it belongs not to private piety but to public liturgy,
to the official worship of the church’.
[1236] Given that Spirit baptism/infilling is an eschatological reality, a
foretaste of the End, it is fitting that such a tight interplay exists between the
infilling of the Spirit and glossalalia, as seen not only in the text of Acts but also
in the experience of the Pentecostal communities. The phenomenon of ‘speaking
in unknown tongues’ points to realities that ‘transcend our rational or linguistic
abilities’, as Macchia (Baptized in the Spirit, p. 281) says, and in this way
witnesses in its very obliqueness to the ineffable glories of the End. For these
reasons, Macchia emphasizes the ‘brokenness’ of tongues-speech, identifying it
with what Paul describes as the ‘unutterable groaning’ for eschatological
redemption (Romans 8). Macchia (‘Baptized in the Spirit: Toward a Global
Theology of Spirit Baptism’ in Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen (ed.) The Spirit in the
World: Emerging Pentecostal Theologies in Global Context [Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2009], p. 10) also speaks of glossolalia as an ‘ecumenical language’
that shows up the shortcomings of all other languages, and ‘calls into question
the adequacy of human speech to capture divine mystery and lodges an implicit
protest against any effort to make one language or cultural expression
determinative for how the gospel is to be understood or witnessed to in the
world’. Especially in light of the events described in Acts 2, one might also
agree with Murray Dempster (‘The Church’s Moral Witness: A Study in
Glossolalia in Luke’s Theology of Acts’, Paraclete 23 [1989], pp. 1-7) that
glossolalia is the sign par excellence of God’s renewal of humanity (in terms of
both culture and society) in Christ.
[1237] Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit, p. 249.
[1238] Nonetheless, if these charismata are not in evidence, then the
community should consider seriously the possibility that their worship is
somehow restraining the Spirit’s grace, discerning what if anything needs to be
changed in other to remain in step with the Spirit.
[1239] This is the question, of course, that divided the Reformers in particular.
[1240] McCabe, ‘Eucharistic Change’, p. 219.
[1241] Also, this mystery and scandal point to its identification with Christ
himself, who as the mysterious revealer of the revealing God is the scandalon
that brings the world into judgment.
[1242] As already mentioned, Bonhoeffer warns against dealing with the how
question at all. But I will disregard that warning for now.
[1243] John Wesley seems to have thought that such an explanation was not
only impossible but even unnecessary. According to Borgen (John Wesley on the
Sacraments, pp. 185-86), ‘Wesley needs neither a doctrine of ubiquity nor a
philosophy of “substance” and “accidents” to explain this mystery’ and any
attempt to overcome by explanation the mystery of the Supper would necessarily
prove both ‘futile and purposeless’; instead, all that was necessary was the
graceful experience of the celebrants: ‘For him it is enough when experience
proves that grace has actually been received through this means, thus proving
God’s promises to be true …’
[1244] Robert W. Jenson, On Thinking the Human: Resolutions of Difficult
Notions (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), p. 57. See also Wolfgang Vondey and
Chris W. Green, ‘Between This and That: Reality and Sacramentality in the
Pentecostal Worldview’, JPT 19.2 (Fall 2010), pp. 243-64.
[1245] Pannenberg (Systematic Theology, III, p. 331) insists, ‘True,
theological understanding, even if incomplete, is important for what the church
proclaims and teaches about the Lord’s Supper. Yet it is not a prerequisite of
receiving it’.
[1246] John of Damascus, The Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 4.13
(NPNF, 2nd ser., vol. 9, p. 83). On John’s theology of the Eucharist, see
Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Historical Theology: An Introduction (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1978), pp. 152-53. Similarly, John Wesley could sing: ‘Who shall say
how Bread and Wine/GOD into Man conveys?’
[1247] Bulgakov, The Comforter, p. 280.
[1248] Obviously, to say that Christ is present by the Spirit in the rite of Holy
Communion is to make a starkly metaphysical claim, an assertion about the
nature of creaturely reality. As Williams (On Christian Theology, p. 209) says,
Christian talk of the sacraments is ‘at odds with other sorts of description’
because ‘the sacramental action itself traces a transition from one sort of reality
to another’.
[1249] In the Wesleyan tradition, there is no need to decide whether the
epiclesis invokes the Spirit to ‘fall’ upon the bread and the wine or upon the
celebrants themselves. For example, the Wesley brothers’ Hymns on the Lord’s
Supper included a number of hymns of invocation for the Spirit upon the
elements and the community alike. See Maddox, Responsible Grace, pp. 197-
200.
[1250] Whatever we mean by ‘body’ must include the notion of material
substantiality, even – especially! – when we are talking of Christ’s resurrected
body.
[1251] As Paul says, God gives bodies that fit the identity of the embodied
ones (1 Cor. 15.38). Christ, as the one in whom all things hold together (Col.
1.17-18), necessarily receives a body that gives all other bodies their sanctity and
eternal viability. Christ’s body is inseparable from the Spirit’s eschatological
work of giving all other bodies their share in resurrection life. This is why the
bodily-resurrected Christ is spoken of the life-giving spirit (1 Cor. 15.45). In the
words of John Damascene, ‘The Lord’s flesh is life-giving spirit because it was
conceived of the life-giving Spirit. For what is born of the Spirit is Spirit’
(Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 4.13 [NPNF, p. 83].
[1252] As McCabe (‘Eucharistic Change’, p. 221) phrases it, ‘What the bread
has become is the body of Christ, which is to say the Kingdom itself – for Christ
does not inhabit the Kingdom, he, his body, his human way of communicating
with other humans, is the Kingdom of God’.
[1253] This is the same interreality spoken of in 1 Corinthians 11, which
Thomas (Devil, Disease and Deliverance, p. 49) identifies as the ‘extremely
tight interplay in this entire section between the bread and cup, the body and
blood of Jesus, and the church as the body of Christ’.
[1254] That is, in ‘heaven’.
[1255] In agreement with Bonhoeffer, Christ the Center, pp. 43-65.
[1256] Robert W. Jenson, Lutheran Slogans: Use and Abuse (Delhi, NY:
American Lutheran Publication Bureau, 2011), p. 47.
[1257] John of Damascus, The Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 4.13
(NPNF 2nd ser., IX, p. 83).
[1258] Cullmann (Essays on the Lord’s Supper, p. 14) claims to know that ‘the
early Christians, when they prayed Maranatha, did not think at all of a coming
of Christ in the species of bread and wine’, a judgment he makes on the basis of,
among other things, a reading of prayers of the Didache. But Cullmann’s
description of Jesus’ presence in my opinion is hyper-spiritualized, and assumes
a (unnecessary and destructive) break between heaven and earth, between the
risen Christ and the liturgical realities of the church’s life.
[1259] I am attempting to get beyond the virtualism, instrumentalism, and
receptionism that characterizes John Wesley’s reflections on the
Supper – reflections which were shaped to a great extent by the sacramental
theologies of Thomas Cranmer and Richard Hooker – without landing squarely
in the (Thomistic) transubstantiationist camp. On Wesley’s view, see Biddy, ‘Re-
envisioning the Pentecostal Understanding of the Eucharist’, pp. 241-43.
[1260] John of Damascus, The Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 4.13
(NPNF 2nd ser., IX, p. 84).
[1261] Unlike McCabe, however, I am holding that the bread and wine remain
natural objects and eschatological objects, both-at-once.
[1262] McCabe, ‘Eucharistic Change’, p. 220.
[1263] McCabe, ‘Eucharistic Change’, p. 220.
[1264] Sergius Bulgakov, The Holy Grail and the Eucharist (Hudson, NY:
Lindisfarne, 1997), p. 63.
[1265] See McCabe, ‘Eucharistic Change’, pp. 217-22.
[1266] Jenson (Visible Words, p. 108) puts it this way: ‘The sacramental
identity is not given because we believe it is, but by the structure of the word we
here believe’.
[1267] Welker (What Happens in Holy Communion, p. 97) argues that ‘the
so-called elements and the performance of the rite are not self-sufficient. As
“elements” and as a cultic performance they depend upon the gathered
community, the word of proclamation, the explicit remembrance of Christ, and
the clarification of this process.’
[1268] See, for example, Chan, Pentecostal Theology and the Christian
Theology, pp. 54-55; Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism, pp. 9, 36,
226-36; Alister E. McGrath, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: The Protestant
Revolution – A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First (New
York: Harper Collins, 2007), pp. 429-33.
[1269] Margaret M. Poloma, ‘The Symbolic Dilemma and the Future of
Pentecostalism: Mysticism, Ritual, and Revival’, in Eric Patterson and Edmund
John Rybarcyck (eds.), The Future of Pentecostalism in the United States
(Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), p. 105. In this vision, the mystic or
charismatic experiences God first-hand, while the pious and religious experience
God at some remove.
[1270] Graham Ward, Cities of God (London: Routledge, 2000) p. 137.
[1271] At least, insofar as it is proleptically known as eschatologically healed
and set to rights.
[1272] Adrienne Denerink Chaplin (‘The Invisible and the Sublime: From
Participation to Reconcilation’, in James K.A. Smith and James H. Olthius
[eds.], Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-Secular Theology
[Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005], p. 91) insists, contra Milbank and
Radical Orthodoxy, that ‘participation and mediation’ are necessary not because
of creation’s finitude, but solely because of its falleness. In characteristically
Reformed fashion, Chaplin seeks at every turn to downplay the notion of
creation’s divinizing participation in God’s glory for fear of collapsing God into
the creature(ly). She fundamentally misunderstands (in my judgment) what it is
that Radical Orthodoxy – and, more importantly, the Patristics – believe(s) about
the relation of ‘heaven’ and ‘earth’, and so posits what I take to be a false choice
between ‘reconciliation’ and ‘participation’. That said, she is correct to insist that
Reformed theology has no room for mediation, or the analogical.
[1273] See Graham Ward, Christ and Culture (Malden, MA: Blackwell,
2005), p. 31.
[1274] Contra Chauvet’s Heideggerian claims that Christians must ‘consent to
the presence of the absence’, to resign themselves to the fact that the church and
the Eucharist ‘radicalize the vacancy of the place of God’, I am arguing that the
Sacrament in fact focalizes the presence of the risen Christ. See Chauvet,
Symbol and Sacrament: a Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian
Existence (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995), pp. 170-80.
[1275] Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with
God (Lanham, MD: Sheed & Ward, 1963), p. 62.
[1276] Christian and Missionary Alliance 26.20 (May 18, 1901), p. 4.
[1277] Edward Schillebeeckx (On Christian Faith [New York: Crossroad,
1987], p. 66) explains, ‘From God’s side this absolute nearness is immediate; for
us this immediacy is mediated, while it remains immediacy …’ For further
exploration of the notion of mediated immediacy, see William L. Power,
‘Religious Experience and the Christian Experience of God’, International
Journal for Philosophy of Religion 31.2-3 (Apr-June 1992), pp. 177-86.
[1278] Contra Chauvet’s Heideggerian claims that Christians must ‘consent to
the presence of the absence’, to resign themselves to the fact that the church and
the Eucharist ‘radicalize the vacancy of the place of God’, I am arguing that the
Sacrament in fact focalizes the presence of the risen Christ. See Chauvet,
Symbol and Sacrament: a Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian
Existence (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995), pp. 170-80.
[1279] This is in keeping with the Wesleyan sacramental tradition. Maddox
(Responsible Grace, p. 193) explains that Wesley himself ‘explicitly rejected
attempts to substitute a purely spiritual or unmediated communion with Christ
for the mediated communion of the Lord’s Supper. He insisted that while Christ
is the meritorious cause of grace being provided to humanity he is not the
efficient cause by which it is conveyed. This efficient cause (or power), in the
most proper sense, is the Holy Spirit’s Presence. Precisely because of its
“uncreated” nature, this Presence is immediately effective even when mediated
through means’.
[1280] Chan, ‘Jesus as Spirit-Baptizer’, pp. 149-50.
[1281] Chan, ‘Jesus as Spirit-Baptizer’, p. 152.
[1282] This was a characteristic emphasis in John Wesley’s theological
reflections on the sacraments; see Borgen, John Wesley on the Sacraments, pp.
82-85.
[1283] Zizioulas (Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 118) declares, ‘The
Father accepts the Eucharist in the presence of the Son and the Spirit, so the
Holy Trinity as a whole is involved in the Eucharistic event’.
[1284] Chan (‘Jesus as Spirit-Baptizer’, p. 153) sees that this usually leads to
either Christomonism or pneumatomonism.
[1285] While Pentecostals (rightly) allow their sacramental experience to
inform their theological reflection, it is impossible in experience to differentiate
the divine persons in their distinct activities. Therefore, unless the experience is
intentionally interpreted through the lens of a Trinitarian theology, it becomes
impossible to ‘read’ the experience Christianly, that is, in keeping with the
Scriptural and dogmatic tradition. When the ways of the Trinity’s presence in the
Sacrament are not kept distinct, the collapse or divergence into Unitarian
thinking is inevitable. Surely this failure to talk carefully about God’s
presence(s) and work(s) in the Eucharist did not help when the Oneness
controversy arose in the early days of the Pentecostal movement.
[1286] Chan, ‘Jesus as Spirit-Baptizer’, p. 153.
[1287] Macchia, Justified in the Spirit, p. 79.
[1288] As Yong (The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh, pp. 162-63) says, we
must champion the centrality of the Spirit’s work in the Meal.
[1289] Somewhat against the flow of typical contemporary theological
reflection on the role of the Spirit, McDonnell and Montague (Christian
Initiation and Baptism in the Spirit, p. 354) contend that ‘However much one
has reason to speak of the neglect of the Spirit, neither the New Testament nor
the theological tradition makes the Holy Spirit the central content of the gospel
or the principal focus of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen from the dead’.
[1290] Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 107.
[1291] Jenson, Systematic Theology, I, pp. 160-61.
 [1292] Jenson, Systematic Theology, II, p. 179.
[1293] McDonnell and Montague, Christian Initiation and Baptism in the
Holy Spirit, p. 354.
[1294] Bulgakov (The Comforter, pp. 276-77) describes it in this way:
The presence of the Holy Spirit is invisible and mysterious; it is like the breath
of the wind, about which one cannot tell ‘whence it cometh, and whither it
goeth.’ His presence cannot be held on to, just as it cannot be attracted by the
mere force of one’s will. Sometimes His presence flees us, but sometimes it is
the most intimate, gentle, personal, and genuine thing in our lives. It is as if
gentle transparent fingers touch our hardened heart, burning and melting it, so
that it is ‘illuminated with sacred mystery’ (as it is said in the Matins service)
… But the Holy Spirit comes, and you become other than yourself. You feel
fullness in partiality, abundance in meagerness, eternal joy in the pain of semi-
being, catharsis in tragedy, the triumph of eternal life in dying, resurrection in
death.
[1295] Of course, this is not limited to Communion, but surely includes it.
John Wesley certainly understood it in this way; commenting on 1 Cor. 12.13, he
writes: ‘We have all drunk of one Spirit – In that cup, received by faith, we all
imbibed one Spirit, who first inspired, and still preserves the life of God in our
souls’. See Borgen, John Wesley on the Sacraments, p. 208.
[1296] This is why Zizioulas (Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 107)
suggests that ‘The Holy Spirit never makes the creature aware of his presence, so
the creature is not overawed, but simply aware that all other pressures are taken
off, so that they are able to make a decision that is entirely free’. Similarly,
Bulgakov (The Comforter, p. 276) maintains that the Spirit makes himself
known only through the very act of making Christ known: ‘His presence is
recognized according to a certain state of life, of inspiration, not according to a
personal apprehension of Him Himself; and the subject or content of the
inspiration is Christ’.
[1297] Bulgakov, The Comforter, p. 274.
[1298] But not there only.
[1299] This is in keeping with Kilian McDonnell’s (‘Spirit and Experience in
Bernard of Clairvaux’, Theological Studies 58 [1997], p. 11) characterization of
Bernard of Clairvaux’s trinitarian theology of experience: ‘… interior to the
experience of Christ is the experience of the Spirit, and the experience of the
Spirit is through the experience of Christ’.
[1300] T.F. Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1965), pp. 249-50.
[1301] Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction, p. 250.
[1302] Bulgakov, The Comforter, p. 287.
[1303] For the same reason that God cannot lie.
[1304] The Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius, one-time Metropolitan of Latakia,
echoed these same sentiments:
Without the Holy Spirit: God is far away, Christ stays in the past, the Gospel is
a dead letter, the church is simply an organization, authority a matter of
domination, mission a matter of propaganda, liturgy no more than a evocation,
Christian living a slave morality. But with the Holy Spirit: the cosmos is
resurrected and grows with the birth-pangs of the Kingdom, the Risen Christ
is there, the Gospel is the power of life, the Church shows forth the life of the
Trinity, authority is a liberating service, mission is a Pentecost, liturgy is both
memorial and anticipation, and human action is deified.
Quoted in Raniero Cantalamessa, Come, Creator Spirit (Collegeville, MN:
Liturgical Press, 2003), pp. 59-60. On Ephraem’s theology of the Eucharist, see
Sidney H. Griffith, ‘“Spirit in the Bread; Fire in the Wine”: The Eucharist as
“Living Medicine” in the Thought of Ephraem the Syrian’, Modern Theology
15.2 (Apr 1999), pp. 225-46.
[1305] See, for instance, Christopher A. Stephenson, ‘The Rule of Spirituality
and the Rule of Doctrine: A Necessary Relationship in Theological Method’,
JPT 15 (Oct 2006), pp. 83-105.
[1306] Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, p. 100.
[1307] There are of course a variety of churchly ministries through which God
acts on the community. The Eucharist-event – when rightly celebrated – does not
edge out other ministries but makes room for the Spirit to do as the Spirit wills.
[1308] For an exploration of this story as a parable for the relationship of the
Eucharist to Scripture, see Chris E. Green, ‘“Then Their Eyes Were Opened”:
Reflections on the Pentecostal’s Bible and the Lord’s Supper’, a paper presented
at the 39th annual meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies (Memphis, TN;
2010).
[1309] Perhaps it is also the case that those who regard Scripture as endlessly
and multiformly meaningful come to see the Lord’s Supper in much the same
way.
[1310] LRE 2.1 (Oct 1909), p. 17. This is remarkably similar to medieval
descriptions of Scripture. See Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis Vol. 3: The
Four Senses of Scripture (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1998), p. 75. See also
McKay, ‘When the Veil is Taken Away’, pp. 17-40.
[1311] Commenting on Exod. 24.12-13, Brevard Childs (The Book of
Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary [Louisville: WJKP, 1974], p.
507) notes that ‘these verses in their present position in the biblical narrative
function as a Eucharistic festival’.
[1312] After all, the entirety of Scripture is apt for the Spirit’s use. What
Robert Jenson (‘A Second Thought About Inspiration’, Pro Ecclesia 13.4 [Fall
2004], p. 396) says of Christian dogma applies to the sacraments as well, and for
the same reason: ‘The doctrine of Trinity and Chalcedonian – in fact Neo-
Chalcedonian – Christology are, in the appropriate fashion, indeed in the Bible,
and most especially in the Old Testament’ because the canonical texts in their
entirety hang together as God’s word for the ‘whole diachronic people of God’.
See also Robert W. Jenson, ‘The Bible and the Trinity’, Pro Ecclesia 11.3
(Summer 2002), p. 329.
[1313] For a striking example of this hermeneutic in use, see Ephraim
Radner’s (Leviticus [BTC; Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2008], pp. 172-85)
Eucharistic reading of Leviticus 17.
[1314] Cartledge, Testimony in the Spirit, p. 51.
[1315] For an exploration of how this hermeneutic differs from the model
provided by and used in modern historical-critical studies, see David C.
Steinmetz, ‘The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis’, in Stephen E. Fowl (ed.),
The Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Classic and Contemporary
Readings (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1997) and R.R. Reno, ‘Biblical
Theology and Theological Exegesis’, in Craig Bartholomew, Mary Healy, Karl
Moller, and Robin Parry (eds.) Out of Egypt: Biblical Theology and Biblical
Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004).
[1316] Ralph N. McMichael, Eucharist: A Guide for the Perplexed (London:
T&T Clark, 2010), p. 156.
[1317] Geoffrey Wainwright, Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship,
Doctrine, and Life: A Systematic Theology (New York: OUP, 1980), p. 234.
[1318] Smyrneans 7.1.
[1319] Against Heresies 4.18.5 in ANF (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973), I, p.
486.
[1320] Of course, Paul the apostle had already established this paradigm in his
diatribe against the Corinthians’ flirtation with idols (1 Cor. 10.14-22).
[1321] Of course, much depends on the shape of the theology put forward.
Stephenson’s Eucharistic model differs significantly from Macchia’s, and
Macchia’s in turn differs from Chan’s. These differences have real and far-
reaching consequences, of course, but at least in some cases they are not
decisive. Even when conceived as a merely symbolic rite, regular participation
in the sacrament of Holy Communion may serve, in Stephenson’s (‘The Rule of
Spirituality and the Rule of Doctrine’, pp. 101-102) words, as ‘a constant
reminder that [believers] must actively engage the brokenness and suffering of
the world in which they live’ and may prove to be an event through which ‘the
Spirit turns our attention to others and empowers believers for [Christ-like] self-
giving’.
[1322] Stephenson, ‘The Rule of Spirituality and the Rule of Doctrine’, pp.
83-105.
[1323] The importance of this connection between worship and theological
method can hardly be overstated.
[1324] Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit, p. 225. In Macchia’s vision (Baptized
in the Spirit, p. 242), the charismata ‘expand our capacities to receive and
further impart the grace that comes to us through preaching and sacrament’.
[1325] Chan actually addresses himself to the broader Evangelicalism, but
obviously he includes Pentecostals in his audience as well.
[1326] Chan, Spiritual Theology, p. 111.
[1327] Chan, Liturgical Theology, p. 66.
[1328] Macchia’s reflections on footwashing (in conversation with the seminal
work of John Christopher Thomas) and his speculative exploration of the
sacramental quality of glossolalia provide helpful examples of what it means to
bring a sacramental imagination to bear on Pentecostal theology and practice.
[1329] Wolfgang Vondey, ‘Pentecostal Ecclesiology and Eucharistic
Hospitality: Toward a Systematic and Ecumenical Account of the Church’,
Pneuma 32.1 (2010), p. 48.
[1330] Wainwright, ‘Eucharist and/as Ethics’, p. 136.
[1331] Schmemann, The Eucharist, p. 215. Emphasis original.
[1332] For a brief description of the basic shape of Archer’s methodological
model, see Mark Cartledge, ‘Pentecostal Theological Method and Intercultural
Theology’, Transformation 25.2-3 (Apr-July 2008), pp. 92-102.
[1333] Kenneth J. Archer, ‘A Pentecostal Way of Doing Theology: Method
and Manner’, IJST 9.3 (July 2007), pp. 301-14 (305).
[1334] Archer, ‘A Pentecostal Way of Doing Theology’, p. 305.
[1335] Archer, ‘A Pentecostal Way of Doing Theology’, p. 309.
[1336] Archer, ‘A Pentecostal Way of Doing Theology’, p. 311-12. Later in
the essay (p. 312), Archer suggests that Jesus and the Spirit are at the center of
‘God’s dramatic redemptive story’, and in the conclusion of the article (p. 314),
calls for the development of a ‘Spirit-Christology’ that would remain clear of the
‘Christomonistic tendency of Reformation theology of the Word’ and make
possible a ‘fully orbed Pentecostal theology that adequately addresses the
various theological themes arising out of the scriptural witness and fleshes out
the dynamic interactions of the Spirit and Word’.
[1337] Archer, ‘A Pentecostal Way of Doing Theology’, p. 311.
[1338] Archer, ‘A Pentecostal Way of Doing Theology’, p. 313.
[1339] Archer, ‘A Pentecostal Way of Doing Theology’, pp. 313-14.
[1340] Archer, ‘A Pentecostal Way of Doing Theology’, p. 306.
[1341] Archer, ‘A Pentecostal Way of Doing Theology’, pp. 311-12.
[1342] Archer, ‘A Pentecostal Way of Doing Theology’, p. 312.
[1343] Archer, ‘A Pentecostal Way of Doing Theology’, p. 314.
[1344] Archer, ‘A Pentecostal Way of Doing Theology’, p. 314.
[1345] Amos Yong (In the Days of Caesar: Pentecostalism and Political
Theology [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010], p. 88) identifies three major
methods: ‘the Reformation and post-Reformation sola scriptura, the liberal
Protestant turn to experience, and the Orthodox and Catholic approach that sees
Scripture as the book of the church and therefore in continuity with the church’s
teachings and traditions’.
[1346] Yong sometimes uses the lower case to indicate that he refers broadly
to classical Pentecostals, neo-Pentecostals, and charismatics.
[1347] Yong, In the Days of Caesar, p. 91.
[1348] Yong, In the Days of Caesar, p. 91.
[1349] Amos Yong, ‘Performing Global Pentecostal Theology: A Response to
Wolfgang Vondey’, Pneuma 28.2 (Fall 2006), p. 314.
[1350] Yong, ‘Performing Global Pentecostal Theology’, p 314.
[1351] He (‘Performing Global Pentecostal Theology’, p. 315) believes that
‘the tension for Pentecostal theology in our time is to find a way to engage the
theological and ecumenical traditions of the church with respect … but not to
kow-tow to the tradition in ways that would mute the Pentecostal difference’.
[1352] Yong, In the Days of Caesar, p. 91.
[1353] Yong, In the Days of Caesar, p. 93.
[1354] Yong, In the Days of Caesar, p. 94. Yong finds support in the fact that
the Christian canon includes four gospels and not only one, and that readers can
find many ecclesial/communal traditions witnessed to in the sacred texts (e.g.
Matthean, Lukan, Johannine, and Pauline). To make this point, he also draws on
a Pentecostal textus classicus: ‘it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us’
(Acts 15.28).
[1355] Yong, ‘Performing Global Pentecostal Theology’, p. 314.
[1356] Yong, ‘Performing Global Pentecostal Theology’, p. 314.
[1357] Yong, In the Days of Caesar, p. 95.
[1358] This marks a development in Yong’s theological method; since the
publication of his The Spirit Poured Out On All Flesh (2005), two changes
seem to have taken place: first, he has moved from talking of the 4-fold gospel to
the 5-fold, and, second, he gives this rubric a much more prominent place in his
methodology. It should be noted, however, that he does not regard the 5-fold as
distilling an ‘essence’ of Pentecostal theology – he stands convinced that such an
‘essence’ simply does not exist; also, he remains doubtful that early
Pentecostalism in fact is the ‘heart’ of the movement in the way that Archer and
others have proposed.
[1359] Archer, A Pentecostal Hermeneutic, p. 257.
[1360] See also Simon Chan, ‘The Church and the Development of Doctrine’,
JPT 13.1 [2004], pp. 57-77.
[1361] Some first-generation Pentecostals regarded the teaching and moral
example of the ante-Nicene church as particularly authoritative, apparently at
least in part because of the witness of the martyrs and the development of the
crucial christological and trinitarian dogma. Elizabeth Sexton (TBM 3.24 [Jan
1910], p. 1), for example, appeals to the witness of, among others, Justin Martyr,
Origen, and Clement of Alexandria to prove the importance of worship on the
Lord’s Day. She insists that Scripture alone is enough to refute those who say
that worship on Sunday is not biblical but a practice imposed by the Roman
Catholic Church; however, she agrees with those who hold that the witness of
the Ante-Nicene church fathers serves as an ‘additional proof’. Similarly,
William Schell (LRE 7 .4 [Jan 1915], p. 11) argues that the church government
modeled by the Ante-Nicene fathers – a single congregation-leading bishop
flanked by a team of elders and deacons – is in fact a viable New Testament
model, and that Pentecostal churches would benefit from ‘following after the
example of the early Church, the men who lived on the other side of the
apostasy’. He predicts that those who organize their church in this way will find
that they ‘win souls faster and become better saints than any other way, and God
will confirm the word with signs following’.
[1362] PHA 1.25 (Oct 18, 1917), p. 2. See also Elisabeth Sisson’s comments
on the two natures of Christ in LRE 3.10 (July 1911), p. 19.
[1363] For a particularly salient example, see his reading of Prov. 8.22-31 in
PHA 20.13 (July 30, 1936), pp. 3, 9.
[1364] In particular, it appears they were concerned to show their theology
was in keeping with the Wesleyan/Methodist tradition and the Ante-Nicene
church. This does not mean, however, that PH theological reflection was entirely
free of strong forms of biblicism. A clear example of this comes in O.T. Spence’s
The Quest for Christian Purity (Richmond, VA: Whittet and Shepperson, 1964),
and there are traces of it throughout the early periodical literature, even in the
writings of King, Taylor, Brooks, and others who at other times in different
contexts appear to hold to a more nuanced hermeneutic.
[1365] Similarly, W.H. Turner (The Finished Work of Calvary or The Second
Blessing – Which? [Franklin Springs, GA: PHC Publishing, 1947], p. 26), a
long-time PH missionary in China, argued that the doctrine of sanctification as
second blessing ‘is a view shared by the Church Universal’, whereas the
Finished Work doctrine is aberrational, thereby implying that he agreed with
Taylor who had said that any doctrine believed by all Christians throughout time
was therefore trustworthy.
[1366] This in spite of the fact that the Pentecostal Holiness Discipline used
this language.
[1367] Brooks, Let There Be Life, p. 65.
[1368] Noel Brooks, Charismatic Ministries in the New Testament
(Greenville, SC: Holmes Memorial Church, 1988), p. 51.
[1369] PHA 48.6 (June 6, 1964), p. 6.
[1370] PHA 51.22 (Mar 2, 1968), p. 14. Corvin also says that even though the
Athanasian Creed is of medieval provenance and is not included in the Manual
of the PH church, members of the church ‘hold it as scripturally true with the
exception of the condemnatory statements’.
[1371] Robert W. Jenson, ‘A Lutheran Among Friendly Pentecostals’, JPT
20.1 (2011), p. 50.
[1372] Perhaps it would be helpful for Pentecostals to engage – or to continue
to engage, as the case might be – in discerning, critical conversation with
theologians (e.g. Lutheran systematician Robert Jenson and Baptist ecumenist
Stephen R. Harmon) and movements (e.g. Nouvelle Théologie, Radical
Orthodoxy, and Canonical Theism) that seek to ‘rethink tradition as the very
condition of possibility for theological reflection’, as James K.A. Smith (‘What
Hath Cambridge To Do With Azusa Street? Radical Orthodoxy and Pentecostal
Theology in Conversation’, Pneuma 25.1 [Spring 2003], p. 100) suggests. See
also Daniel Castelo, ‘Canonical Theism as Ecclesial and Ecumenical Response’,
Pneuma 33.3 (2011), pp. 370-89.
[1373] See John E. Lawyer, ‘Eucharist and Martyrdom in the Letters of
Ignatius of Antioch’, Anglican Theological Review 73.3 (Summer 1991), pp.
280-97.
[1374] Paul Evdokimov, The Sacrament of Love (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press,
1985), p. 124.
[1375] Augustine, ‘The Empowered Church’, p. 161.
[1376] See Chan, Liturgical Theology, p. 39.
[1377] As readers of the Gospels know, many of the post-resurrection stories
of Jesus’ appearances include an account of his eating and drinking with the
disciples, and perhaps these stories are given by the evangelists not only to
convince readers/hearers of the reality of Christ’s resurrection but also to
establish the connection between Christ’s pre- and post-Easter ministry in the
context of the church’s sharing a meal? Thorwald Lorenzen (Resurrection,
Discipleship, Justice: Affirming the Resurrection of Jesus Today [Macon, GA:
Smyth and Helwys, 2003], p. 149) makes a similar suggestion.
[1378] Bruce D. Marshall, ‘The Disunity of the Church and the Credibility of
the Gospel’, Theology Today 50.1 (Apr 1993), p. 79.
[1379] Maynard Dorow, ‘Worship is Mission: Seeing the Eucharist as the
Drama of God’s Mission to the World’, Missio Apostolica 9.2 (Nov 2001), p.
83.
[1380] See Chan, Liturgical Theology, pp. 39-40. The reverse is also true, of
course. If the church collapses on itself, concerned only for its own ‘purity’ or
integrity, it just in this way loses touch with Christ, its head (Col. 2.19).
[1381] On the relation of the unity and the church and the proclamation and
maintenance of the gospel, see Marshall, ‘The Disunity of the Church and the
Credibility of the Gospel’, pp. 78-89.
[1382] Richard H. Bliese, ‘Speaking in Tongues and the Mission of God Ad
Gentes’, JPT 20.1 (2011), pp. 47.
[1383] Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Texte zum Schwerpunktthema: Mission’. Available
on-line: http://www.ekd.de/print.php?file=/synode99/referate_juengel.html.
Accessed July 10, 2011.
[1384] John G. Flett, The Witness of God: The Trinity, Missio Dei, Karl
Barth, and the Nature of Christian Community (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2010), pp. 61-62.
 [1385] V.C. Samuel, ‘The Mission Implications of Baptism, Eucharist, and
Ministry’, International Review of Mission 72.286 (Apr 1983), p. 207.
[1386] PE 1073 (Nov 10, 1934), p. 21.
[1387] In keeping this custom, Pentecostals were carrying on a long tradition
that extended back through the Wesleyan ‘love feasts’ to the ‘agape meals’ of the
ancient church. See Rebecca P. Skaggs, The Pentecostal Commentary on 1
Peter, 2 Peter, and Jude (London: T&T Clark, 2004), pp. 123-24, 165.
[1388] Geoffrey Wainwright, ‘Eucharist and/as Ethics’, Worship 62.2 (Mar
1988), p. 131.
[1389] Undeniably, this work of ‘translation’ is always a wildly complex,
radically context-specific business. However one might wish it to be, simple
one-to-one translation of the Eucharistic reality into the dialect of ‘real life’ is
simply not possible. What is needed, then, is a kind of fluency – a capacity for
creative adaptation – that makes possible the emergence of an equivalency of the
kingdom in the believer’s life.
[1390] Wainwright, ‘Eucharist and/as Ethics’, p. 131.
[1391] LaVerdiere (The Eucharist in the New Testament and the Early
Church, pp. 54-58) draws attention to the Second Gospel’s ‘Eucharistic teaching
on mission’ in the two stories of breaking bread (6.34-44 and 8.1-10) which
together show that ‘the Eucharist is a sharing in the Messiah’s passion, death,
and resurrection’.
[1392] As Cheryl Bridges Johns, Pentecostal Formation: A Pedagogy among
the Oppressed (JPTSup 2; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), p. 124,
explains, corporate worship is a primary context for spiritual and moral
formation because it is then and there that ‘the community becomes the place
where affective and cognitive aspects are joined together in a powerful manner’.
[1393] See Bernard Häring, ‘Liturgical Piety and Christian Perfection’,
Worship 34.9 (Oct 1, 1960), pp. 523-35.
[1394] Orthodox ethicist Vigen Guroian (‘Liturgy and the Lost Eschatological
Vision of Christian Ethics’, Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 20
[2000], p. 229) contends, ‘The final decisive Christian distinction is not between
the sacred and the profane, the cult and the world, the just or unjust, or even
between good and evil. The decisive distinction is between the old and the new
… From this perspective, it may be seen that Christian liberty and virtue arise
from the deep, rich soil of the church's memory of the central salvific events of
the faith, soil sown with a vital vision of the eschaton wherein the ethical is
transfigured into the holiness of God’.
[1395] Hauerwas, ‘The Servant Community: Christian Social Ethics’, in
Berkman and Cartwright (eds.), The Hauerwas Reader, p. 383. For a
comparison of Hauerwas’ moral theology with that of Bernard Häring, see
Kathleen A. Cahalan, Formed in the Image of Christ: The Sacramental-Moral
Theology of Bernard Häring, C.Ss.R. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press,
2004), pp. 217-30.
[1396] For example, in his letter to the Romans, Ignatius proclaims that he
does not want to be delivered from martyrdom because he desires above all
things to become ‘God’s wheat’ crushed in the mouths of the lions so that, like
the Eucharist, he might become ‘Christ’s pure bread’ and the ancient account of
the martyrdom of Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna is described in explicitly liturgical
terms with Polycarp himself becoming the Eucharist as in the fire he was ‘like
bread being baked’. See Pope Benedict XVI, The Sacrament of Charity
(Washington, DC: USCCB Publishing, 2007), p. 72.
[1397] As the astute reader recognizes, these claims entail the assumption that
the Eucharist is a sacrifice – although plainly it is not a re-crucifixion of Christ,
or some superadditum to Christ’s atoning death. On our part, the Lord’s Supper
involves the offering up of thanksgiving to God for Christ with the bread and the
wine and the reaffirmation of our promise to give ourselves fully to God and
God’s will. On God’s part, the Eucharist is a giving anew of Christ to us in the
Spirit (and the Spirit in Christ) and the reenactment and reaffirmation of God’s
once-for-all offering up of Christ for us on the cross. In these ways, the Supper
serves as an act of covenant renewal, a divine-human embodied exchange of the
promise to surrender all for the other. Or, to put it another way, in the Eucharist
Christ reveals himself as the divinely-human mediator who speaks to us God’s
word of unconditional promise and just in this way enables us to echo back to
God through him our joyfully responsive Yes and Amen.
[1398] See Rev. 17.6 and Acts 1.8.
[1399] LRE 1.8 (May 1909), p. 23.
[1400] Early Pentecostals emphasized this call to living martyrdom; in fact,
many of them believed that to be baptized in the Spirit was to receive the ‘martyr
spirit’ (The Pentecost 1.2 [Sept 1908], p. 3) and to be initiated into the ‘secret of
the endurance of the martyrs’ (AF 1.11 [Oct-Jan 1908], p. 3). G.F. Taylor argued
that ‘every doctrine of our holy religion has been baptized with the blood of
millions of martyrs’, insisting that the Pentecostal doctrine and spirituality was
made possible through the sufferings of the saints of previous generations.
Pentecostals have only what ‘the martyred saints bequeathed to us’. See PHA
9.27 (Nov 5, 1925), p. 1. Again and again, one finds in the early periodical
literature an emphasis on the baptism of the Spirit as a baptism into Christ’s
suffering. For example (LRE 1.8 [May 1909], p. 23): ‘Ah the baptism in the
Holy Spirit means something more than glory and ecstasy; it is more than
physical or psychical manifestations; it is fellowship with Christ in His
humiliation and in His suffering as well as in His glory’.
[1401] Karl Rahner, Spiritual Exercises (New York: Herder and Herder,
1965), p. 212.
[1402] Ephraim Radner (The End of the Church: A Pneumatology of
Christian Division in the West [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998], pp. 270-72),
drawing on the insights of the twelfth-century Archbishop of Canterbury,
Baldwin of Ford, insists: ‘The Eucharistic cup itself, then, becomes a place
where “mercy and judgment” are manifested and received …’ Therefore, the
Eucharistic cup ‘is both a “shining” cup of “inebriating mercy” and one of
“intoxicating torpor” given in divine anger’ all-at-once.
[1403] Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit, pp. 76-77.
[1404] Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit, p. 281.
[1405] Of course, in a sense, the inverse is true as well: God makes the world
exist for the sake of the church.
[1406] It would appear that this was less true in the early decades of the
Pentecostal movement than it is now. Of course, in those days too one could find
a range of practices. However, there is good evidence that many Pentecostals
celebrated the Lord’s Supper frequently – even weekly. For example, the 1922
Church of God (Cleveland, TN) Book of Doctrines, while acknowledging that
Scripture lays down no mandate and maintaining the right of the local
congregation to decide when to celebrate the Sacrament, nonetheless indicates
that most congregations celebrate the Lord’s Supper once a month, with a ‘very
few’ congregations celebrating the Lord’s Supper every week.
[1407] For a description of the basic shape of characteristic Pentecostal
worship, see Telford Work, ‘Pentecostal and Charismatic Worship’, in Geoffrey
Wainwright and Karen Westerfield Tucker (eds.), Oxford History of Christian
Worship (New York: OUP, 2006), pp. 574-80. See also Albrecht, Rites in the
Spirit; Cartledge; Testimony in the Spirit, and Bridges Johns, Pentecostal
Formation.
[1408] This is evident from the fact that the Eucharist embodies in its own
way every other act of worship. It is preaching (in the form of a visible word),
praise and thanksgiving (in the embodied expression of gratitude and awe),
prayer (an embodied dialogue with God), testimony (witness to God’s goodness
and the exhortation of other celebrants), and offering (in the giving and
receiving of gifts).
[1409] Simon Chan (Spiritual Theology, p. 116) identifies three acts as the
‘basic building blocks of corporate worship in all of the traditions’, i.e. corporate
prayer, public reading of Scripture, and corporate singing. Chan believes the
church’s celebration of the Eucharist can serve and be served by this practices.
[1410] Wainwright, Doxology, p. 8.
[1411] Chan, Spiritual Theology, p. 115.
[1412] And this need not come by suppressing preaching, testimony, song and
dance, or anointing with oil, etc.
[1413] Work, ‘Pentecostal and Charismatic Worship’, p. 576.
[1414] In broadest terms, the needed reformed Pentecostal liturgies would be
lively enough for worshippers to sense the vitality of the divine life;
theologically dense enough for the weight and solidity of God’s mandates and
promises to be felt; structurally expansive and complex enough for worshippers
to be awed, and conceptually and practically transparent enough for the radiating
beauty of the story of the Gospel to shine through.
[1415] Daniel Castelo (‘Tarrying on the Lord: Affections, Virtues, and
Theological Ethics in Pentecostal Perspective’, JPT 13.1 [Oct 2004], pp. 50-51)
describes this practice as entailing ‘travailing, waiting, prostrating, and
submitting oneself before the presence of God in the hope that God’s presence
might break forth in the mundane and profane circumstances of life. Tarrying is
an embodiment and demonstration of human desire in search of being ordered by
God’s very presence’. In these ways, this act of tarrying is ‘anticipatory and so
eschatological in form because it is a practice that expects encounter; it beckons
eschatological time and in doing so focuses one’s life on the in-breaking
presence of the Spirit of God, thereby anticipating the coming reign of Christ’.
Castelo concludes that ‘while tarrying on the Lord, one is led by the Spirit to
wait actively for the transforming presence of God that makes possible one’s
faithful existence in the world’.
[1416] As seen in Chapter 3, many early Pentecostals were convinced that the
Lord’s Supper was above all a means of bodily healing. See, for example, AF
1.10 (Sept 1907), p. 2; WE 104 (Aug 21, 1915), p. 3; PHA 5.5 (July 2, 1921), p.
10.
[1417] James K.A. Smith (Thinking in Tongues, p. 62) describes
storytelling – testi-mony – as ‘the oxygen of pentecostal worship’. See also
Mark J. Cartledge, Testimony: Its Importance, Place and Potential (Renewal
Series 9; Cambridge: Grove Books, 2002), and Scott A. Ellington, ‘The Costly
Loss of Testimony’, JPT 16 (2000), pp. 48-59.
[1418] Not that all of these practices have to take place in every Eucharistic
celebration.
[1419] Häring, ‘Liturgical Piety and Christian Perfection’, p. 524.
[1420] Paul F. Bradshaw, Early Christian Worship: A Basic Introduction to
Ideas and Practice (2nd ed.; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2010), p. 63.
[1421] Chauvet (The Sacraments, pp. xiii-xxi) warns against both objectivist
and subjectivist forms of this abuse, the latter of which I suspect is more likely
for Pentecostals.
[1422] Hollenweger (The Pentecostals, p. 389) argues that the early
Pentecostals’ understanding of the meal as a community event served as an
incisive prophetic critique of those churches whose Eucharistic devotion focuses
on the words and acts of the priests rather than the congregation.
[1423] However central and basic Communion is taken to be, regular
participation in the rite must not give rise to a priestly caste.
[1424] Wainwright (Doxology, pp. 115-16) argues that if ‘public glossolalia is
to pass the Pauline test of communal edification, it will best be set within the
tried structures of the liturgy where the familiar witness to Christ will itself
provide a context of interpretation’. Wainwright affirms that ‘a literal witness to
Christ remains dead without the enlivening Spirit, and that presence of the Spirit
brings ‘freedom’ (2 Cor. 3.17), but he also holds that this ‘liberty is defined by
the character of Christ’.
[1425] Chan, Spiritual Theology, pp. 111-12.
[1426] Roman Catholic charismatic systematician and ethicist Ralph Del
Colle (‘Pentecostal/Catholic Dialogue: Theological Suggestions for
Consideration’, Pneuma 25.1 [Spring 2003], pp. 93-96 [96]) believes that in
dialogue with Pentecostals, the Catholic Church is reminded that ‘sacramental
signs beckon for further signification in charismatic manifestation’.
[1427] For example, the 1908 Constitution and General Rules of the Fire-
Baptized Church provides instructions for the observance of ‘the sacrament of
the Lord’s Supper’. To begin, the officiating minister ‘read[s] a lesson from the
Word, either from the Gospels or Epistles, as he may deem appropriate’. After
that, he addresses the congregation, calling them to assume the right attitude to
receive the Supper. His exhortations follow this basic pattern:
Beloved in Christ: This precious sacrament commemorates the suffering and
death of our Lord whereby He offered Himself a ransom for our souls, making
 atonement for our sins in His own blood, and thus satisfying the claims of
Divine justice against us. It also points to His return to earth, when He shall
partake of it anew with us in the kingdom of the Father. Let us draw near in
deep humility and take this sacrament to our comfort, and, devoutly kneeling,
render our sincere thanks to Almighty God.
Then, the minister offers an extemporary prayer for the purpose of
‘consecrating the elements to their sacred use’ and gives an invitation for ‘all
true Christians, all who have fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus
Christ, and who sincerely love the appearing of our Lord’ to come to receive the
Sacrament. When all have received, a hymn is sung, and while the congregation
kneels, the minister prays over them. Finally, before everyone is dismissed, the
doxology is sung. The 1908 Discipline of the Pentecostal Holiness Church
includes a similar rubric, but it is makes a much sharper difference between the
ministers and the communicants. In 1911, the Fire Baptized Church merged with
J.H. King’s Pentecostal Holiness Church, and the new Discipline included the
rubric that had been written (by King?) for the pre-merger Pentecostal Holiness
Church. For an account of how the merge of these churches came about, see
Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition, p. 121-22. See also R.G. Robins,
Pentecostalism in America (Santa Barbara, CA: ABCCLIO, 2010), pp. 43-44.
[1428] Wainwright, ‘Eucharist and/as Ethics’, p. 137.
[1429] This is necessary for many reasons, including the fact the liturgy is in
part a ‘training ground’ for the ‘real life’ situations that require improvisational
skill, the ability to discern what it is God requires in a given moment.
[1430] Relatedly, there is no need to remove the celebration of the Supper
from the worship service in the name of making worship more accessible to non-
believers and the newly converted. The Sacrament is by its very nature
mysterious, scandalous, and even divisive, but these are in fact essential features
of its structure as a missional meal. The Eucharistic invitation depends in part
upon the awkwardness of the event, its alienating and disenchanting character;
this is so because Christ, the desire of all nations (Hag. 2.6-9), is himself strange
and estranging, the missionary Word who draws all people to himself even
though he comes as one without beauty that he should be desired (Isa. 53.2).
[1431] G.F. Taylor, for example, insists that Communion be observed using a
single cup and that all celebrants drink from it because only in this way can the
basic truths of the rite be made plain; in his judgment, when individual cups are
used the symbol of the church’s fellowship is distorted. As with the one cup, so
with the bread. See PHA 3.11 (July 10, 1919), p. 2. See also COGE (June 18,
1921), p. 4; Confidence 10.5 (Sept-Oct 1917), p. 67.
[1432] For example, does it not seem obvious that the use of individual cups
and wafers only encourages the notion that the Lord’s Supper is first and
foremost an individual experience of blessing?
[1433] Pannenberg (Systematic Theology, III, p. 332) notes that there can be
‘nothing against [giving communion to children] once a child can grasp the
thought that Jesus is present at the Supper, mysterious though the thought may
still be’. It would appear that a Pentecostal understanding, however, would not
bind receiving Communion even this closely to a child’s understanding.
[1434] This is in keeping with the ethos of the earliest days of the Pentecostal
movement, as evidenced by testimonies of children being baptized and receiving
Communion and the fact that children were encouraged to seek Spirit baptism.
See for example PHA 2.14 (Aug 1, 1918), p. 7; CE 2.13 (Mar 28, 1914), p. 8;
Confidence 1.2 (May 1908), p. 8.
[1435] See Yong, Theology and Down Syndrome, pp. 209-12.
[1436] Jenson, Visible Words, p. 113.
[1437] Radner, The End of the Church, p. 204.
[1438] Radner, The End of the Church, p. 189.
[1439] For an insightful critique of Radner’s thesis (and attending
methodology), see David S. Cunningham, ‘A Response to Ephraim Radner’s The
End of the Church: A Pneumatology of Christian Division in the West’,
Anglican Theological Review 83.1 (Winter 2001), pp. 89-100.
[1440] See PE 964 (Sept 3, 1932), p. 12.
[1441] Rick Bliese (‘Life on the Edge: A Small Church Redefines Its
Mission’, Christian Century 120.14 [July 12, 2003], p. 27), drawing on the
research of Nancy Ammerman and his own pastoral experience, suggests that
‘Meaningful worship and meaningful meals are critical to any attempts at
renewal, and one doesn’t work well without the other. Never trust a Christian
fellowship where Christians regularly worship together but don’t like to eat
together, or where they eat together but neglect worship’.
[1442] The kind of transformation the Spirit effects is illustrated in the
testimony of an early British Pentecostal, William Bernard, who tells of how his
‘Latter Rain experience’ of the Spirit has transfigured his (Anglican) confession
of the Nicene creed, which he reminds the readers, is ‘recited in the beautiful
communion liturgy each time the Lord’s Supper is celebrated’. For years he had
professed these convictions reverently, he says, ‘but how differently they fell
from my lips after the Indwelling Spirit put His great white light on Jesus and so
revealed to my spirit the great, all-inspiring truth of which these words testify:
the truth of God Incarnate in the flesh ...’ He continues, ‘The blessed Holy Spirit
so burned this stupendous truth into my spirit that since that time this beloved
creed as I utter it, is pronounced in the only way possible to me – with bated
breath’. See LRE 21.6 (Mar 1929), p. 21.
[1443] Robert W. Jenson, ‘Liturgy of the Spirit’, The Lutheran Quarterly 26
(May 1974), p. 190.
[1444] Therefore, both what is done in the worship service and how it is done
matter to the utmost. See Jenson, Liturgy of the Spirit, pp. 189-203.