Pentecostal Experience: An Ecumenical Encounter (Princeton Theological Monograph Series) by Neumann Peter D

Author:Neumann, Peter D. [Neumann, Peter D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, Theology, General
ISBN: 9781630870140
Publisher: Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
Published: 2012-08-20T00:00:00+00:00

Pentecostal Theophanic and Missional/Vocational Spirituality

This leads us to discuss one more emphasis related to Macchia’s broadened Spirit baptism metaphor and the charismatic structure of the church, namely, Pentecostal theophanic, and missional/vocational spirituality. Several of our dialogue partners expressed considerable openness to the variety of charismata operating in the church, including Gelpi, Congar, and Moltmann. Lossky’s and Bulgakov’s emphasis on mystical, ineffable experience might also indicate openness in this regard. It may be that Macchia’s sacramental theology of glossolalia (and ecstasy) would find some congruency here with Eastern Orthodoxy, with his emphasis on the limitation of human rationality to ultimately comprehend and express the fullness of meaning found in encounter with the presence of God in Spirit baptism. Experience of the eschatological Spirit is, in this sense, something beyond words, and yet by the Spirit, nevertheless, orally/aurally communicated.

More to the point, however, while Macchia has expanded Spirit baptism to encompass regeneration and initiation, he wants other church traditions to grow in appreciation for the empowering, vocational and prophetic emphasis of Spirit baptism (symbolically communicated by glossolalia). The experience of Spirit baptism in this sense is missional—a call to enter into the work of the Kingdom by the Spirit. Here, Macchia’s framing this as a “second conversion” of sorts (utilizing the theology of the Blumhardts),270 from God to the world, might serve as a helpful point of discussion. Gelpi, it will be recalled, also emphasizes conversion as the process by which human experience undergoes transformation. He also mentions religious conversion as being that which has the ability to transform all others, and this is perhaps congruent with Macchia’s emphasis on the Spirit’s possessing believers, transforming their lives radically, and thrusting them into kingdom service. Gelpi is amenable to such possibilities, noting that religious conversion includes expressions of prophetic empowerment and witness, although this is grounded in the immanence of the Spirit in creation, already discussed. Macchia’s emphasis on the vocational empowerment element in Spirit baptism is, however, strongly linked to fellowship in the church, and so would challenge Johnson’s and Cone’s weaker emphasis in this regard.

Finally, with Macchia’s Spirit baptism emphasis we may find both a connection with and challenge to the Eastern Orthodox mystical theology and spirituality exemplified in Lossky and Bulgakov. By way of convergence we may recall Lossky’s emphasis on openness to conscious awareness of God, as well as moments of “ecstasy” in prayer (and even the possibility of an ineffable beatific vision).271 Further, humanities’ vocation, for Lossky, is to unite creation with the divine (energies) through deification, requiring a synergistic (participatory) interaction between humans and God.272 Bulgakov advocates similar themes, but with some notable differences, including a panentheistic union with God’s essence (Sophia).

Such experiential and vocational emphases may very well find congruence with certain of Macchia’s themes. We noted earlier Macchia’s placing of Spirit baptism into a Trinitarian structure in which humanity is drawn into union with the koinonia of the Trinity. While this is not quite the same as Lossky’s deification concept, it nevertheless stresses humans being

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