The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought. - book reviews

D. William Faupel, Sheffield, UK, Sheffield Academic Press, 1996, 326pp., US$19.95.

In the last decades of the second millennium of Christianity, reflection has been driven increasingly by the eschaton -- the theology of history that underlies one's understanding of God's work in the world. The World Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Church have taken as one starting point for their reflection the biblical jubilee of Leviticus 25 and Luke 4, a social justice theme that emphasizes the church's mission of unity, justice, peace and care of creation. One would expect other Christian communities, with other underlying understandings of the kingdom and the end time, to be more open to apocalyptic interpretations of millennial change. Among these one would expect to find the Adventists and Pentecostals.

In seeking to understand the Pentecostals as ecumenical partners, other Christians will want to get "inside" the world-view that has given rise to this distinctive mode of Christian thinking about time and history. This volume on the history of Pentecostalism and its eschatology makes an important contribution to this process. The author brings a critical but nonreductionist perspective, seeking both the non-theological factors that are the context for the emergence of this successful Christian revival movement, and the theological resources which this history can provide for understanding and renewal. It is Faupel's thesis that "American Pentecostalism can best be understood as the emergence of a millenarian belief system that resulted from a paradigm shift which took place within 19th-century perfectionism".

For many outside the movement, the distinctiveness of Pentecostalism is often reduced to the glossolalia -- speaking in tongues -- associated with baptism in the Holy Spirit. Most authors, however, identify five theological themes as central in understanding the classical Pentecostalism which emerged from the revival in Los Angeles during the first decade of this century and its antecedents: justification, sanctification, divine healing, the second coming and the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Pentecostal roots are in the Wesleyan Holiness revival of the 19th century, Keswick renewal movements and the millennialism characteristic of much late 19th-century British and American popular Protestantism.

While the idea of progress had captivated the established Protestant community, linking the kingdom of God with the development of the human community, a more dramatic and "drastic" eschatology seemed more adapted to those who fell outside of the benefits of this "progress". Central to the revivals were a belief in the immediacy of the second coming of Christ, as particular events of history were seen as fulfilling purported biblical prophecies, and an urgency to bring the gospel to the whole world. In the two years after the revival's outbreak in 1906, missionaries were in China, India, Britain, Scandinavia, the Middle East, Russia, Holland, Germany, Tibet, Italy, Japan, and throughout Africa and Latin America.

There was no intent to disrupt the churches or to proselytize Christians away from their communities. Originally the movement was a racially integrated renewal which sought to bring Christians together across racial and denominational lines in view of the immediate return of Christ and the power of the Spirit's baptism. By the 1920s dozens of denominations had emerged; some were Wesleyan churches that had taken on the Pentecostal message, others were amalgamations of congregations gathered for mission.

Faupel provides a survey in eight chapters of the prehistory, context, development, revival and finally institutionalization and divisions in the Pentecostal revival. The focus of the history is primarily from the mid-19th century through the 1920s when the ecclesial and doctrinal contours of the Pentecostal denominations became established. The historical review ends with the divisions between two theological positions: the Baptist/ Reformed "finished work" of grace and the Wesleyan "second work" of grace, as well as the rise of the "oneness" or unitarian groups. The work as a whole concludes with the hope that the eschatological urgency of the first generations will be critically recaptured, for the renewal of the Pentecostal movement, that it may serve as a revival dynamic for all Christians.

Jeffrey Gros is associate director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs. National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington, DC, USA.

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