The Authority of the Church in the World:  A United Church of Christ Perspective, Rev. Dr. Susan E. Davies
 

Christian Experience and Authority in the World: 
A Pentecostal Viewpoint

Frank D. Macchia, D.Theol.
Vanguard University of Southern California 

Introduction: Revelation, Experience of God, and Authority

The authority of the church in the world is a complex topic. In part, this authority is based on the authority of the Gospel. More fully, the triune God disclosed in the Gospel is the fount of authority that is involved in the faithful witness, especially proclamation, of the church. Pentecostalism shares with its Evangelical siblings a devotion to the proclamation of the Word of God but stands in tension with certain streams of Evangelicalism in its concomitant devotion to an intense experience of God that is extraordinary and deeper than merely rational or cognitive “illumination” of the Word of God. As Terry Cross has shown, this tension is felt most profoundly on the methodological level, since many Pentecostals will tend to state that deeply felt “experiences” of God and the “revelation” of God are not necessarily to be placed in adversarial relationship with each other in the context of theological reflection.[i] Most Pentecostals would thus agree with Moltmann’s dissatisfaction with the conflict between a theology of experience (a la Schleiermacher) and a theology of revelation (a la Barth).[ii] 

Moltmann admits that there is merit to Barth’s emphasis on the contradiction between God’s Spirit and the human spirit in the sense that humans are sinful. But Moltmann finds Barth’s eschatology, which stresses a one-sided disjunction between God’s eternity and all that is temporal and human, as not adequate to support a biblical appreciation for the revelatory implications of our experience of God. An eschatology that focuses instead on the renewal of creation is more adequate to an understanding of the continuity between the revelatory work of God’s Spirit and the experiences of the human spirit, without denying the discontinuity caused by human sinfulness.[iii]   

All of the above means that the revelation of God in Scripture and proclamation that functions authoritatively to guide faith and life does so in continuity with the revelation implied in the varieties of human experience of God. Furthermore, talk of the authority of the church in the world implies that there is some kind of “point of contact” between the proclamation of the church and the experiences everywhere that may be viewed as at least implicitly of God. For this reason, many have turned to various “correlation theologians” such as Paul Tillich and Karl Rahner (even Schleiermacher and Barth rightly understood[iv]) for guidance in how God’s revelation connects with human experience in all of its individual and communal dimensions. Without such insights, the revelation of God behind the authority of the church in the world “hangs in the air,” speaking to no one and meaning nothing. In Rahner’s terms, there is an intimate and mutually enriching relationship between the “inner word” of experience and the “outer word” given in and through the church as revelation. If the church is to have authority in the world that is meaningful, its message and ministry will need to strike the chord of human experience effectively. 

Such an authority will be exercised through multiple gifts of the Spirit and not merely from those who occupy church offices. Giving experience of God an important role to play helps to prevent the preachers and teachers of the Bible from making an exclusive claim on revelation. Moltmann stated rightly that a theology of revelation is a theology of “pastors and priests,” but that a theology of experience is “lay theology.”[v] Without denying the importance of church office or at least ministerial leadership, Pentecostals implicitly support such a lay theology with their emphasis on the revelatory implications of both human experience of God and human participation in the multiple gifts of the Spirit involved in the clarification and mediation of revelation to others. In this paper, I want to elaborate on a distinctly Pentecostal "experiential" and “charismatic” understanding of the authority of the church in the world. But before we proceed any further, however, we need to define more precisely what we mean by “experience” of God. 

Towards a Definition of Religious Experience

As is widely known, H. G. Godamer referred to this question of the nature of experience as the most vexing in philosophy and theology.  F. W. Dillistone notes that in premodern times “experience” was commonly associated closely with personal “testing.” For example, the KJV translates Romans 5:3f as “tribulation worketh patience and patience experience,” while the NEB has it translated, “suffering trains us to endure and endurance brings proof that we have stood the test.” In time, “experience” took on the connotation of a “state of mind or feeling produced by environmental influences- nature, man, and God.”[vi]  This definition of experience was influenced no doubt in part by the Western modernist preoccupation with human consciousness.  The roots of this preoccupation are Platonic and Augustinian and flower in Descartes’s reduction of the human self to a “thing that thinks.”  

Schleiermacher, however, refused to reduce religious consciousness to rational knowledge, locating it instead in "feeling," which refers to the “taste for” or “dependence upon” the infinite. This taste or dependence was for Schleiermacher not an emotional mood but rather an in-depth sense of being carried or determined in life by the infinite.  Rudolf Otto also understood religious experience in other than purely rationalistic terms, referring to the “numinous,” which one encounters with a sense of awe and fascination that keeps one from recoiling in fear at the eeriness of the experience. Similarly, Paul Tillich also spoke of the temptation for believers to flee but also to be drawn by an experience of the presence of God. He referred to an in-depth “ultimate concern” that functions creatively only in response to the divine Self-disclosure. The work of William James is also connected to this overall appreciation for the depth of human consciousness and its religious implications.  

Such “depth” appreciations of religious consciousness at the base of the experience of God serves to liberate one from merely rational or cognitive understandings of experience, conversion, or illumination. In current discussion, religious experience tends to be understood more holistically still, i.e, as physical, social, cultural, linguistic, etc.  In essential agreement is the 1981 Honolulu Report of the Methodist-Roman Catholic Conversation: "we affirm that the Christian experience toward which we aspire…includes mystery and clarity, feeling and reason, individual conscience and acknowledged authority, charisms and sacraments, spiritual exercises and service, individual and communal 'discernments of spirits,' local community and worldwide mission, fidelity to the past and openness to the present and future" (#28). 

Such a holistic view of Christian experience goes beyond the modernist focus on religious consciousness and opens one up to a fully "charismatic" understanding of experience in which a limitless variety of gifts are used by the Spirit to encounter and to change us in all dimensions of our existence. Such a holistic experiential theology has played a critical role in Liberation theologies among others. Various feminist theologians, for example, will distinguish their theologies from the theological mainstream because their experiences of God, the self, and others are significantly different culturally (etc.) from those of many male theologians. Such counter-cultural voices distinguish God from mainstream cultural and linguistic symbols and account for how revolutionary experiences of God could spring forth and call for changes in our symbolic systems. 

 What accounts for the rise of such revolutionary experiences of God? Is there an ambiguous depth of experience of God possible that is only inadequately expressed in our symbols or interpretive frameworks and can then call these frameworks into question and change them? It is becoming increasingly difficult today to imagine a depth to human experience apart from the symbol systems which cradle them. The postmodern context for evaluating religious experience tends to view experience as derivative from cultural and linguistic frameworks. For example, rather than view our symbol systems as merely “expressive” of a deeper religious experience, George Lindbeck holds that these systems serve to provide the very basis for such experience. He notes that “it is necessary to have a means for expressing an experience in order to have it, and the richer our expressive or linguistic system, the more subtle, varied, and differentiated can be our experience.”[vii]  Lindbeck’s understanding of symbol systems is holistic and not merely verbal or cognitive. 

Yet, questions remain. Is there no sense in which experience impacts and changes the symbol systems that serve as the means by which these experiences are possible and take shape? Lindbeck agrees that the symbol system or interpretive framework changes. Since it is embodied in religious practice and belief such a framework will “develop anomalies in its application to new contexts.”[viii] If religious “experience” is practical as well as internal, it would certainly be a part of the entrance of our symbols into new contexts along with the change that comes with the development of anomalies. But Lindbeck is clear that what distinguishes his “cultural-linguistic” view of the relationship of experience and symbol from the “expressive-experiential” view is his belief that experience is derived from symbol systems and not the other way around.[ix] 

The problem that might typically occur for the Pentecostal at this point is in how to introduce God's Spirit into this discussion. After all, Pentecostals would not hesitate to say that religious experience is most fundamentally effected by God’s presence and action. Our religious experience is to be experience of God and not most fundamentally of our interpretive frameworks! One can talk of cultural-linguistic determination of experience and still not get at the heart of that reality from which all religious experience worthy of the term derives. There can be no doubt that the complex system of symbols involved in the interpretive framework of religious experience influences how God is experienced through and through. But these symbols function in dialectical relationship with the presence of God through the Holy Spirit. As such, it is not only changing contexts for lived experience that accounts for the transformation of symbols but even more fundamentally the presence of God that calls forth renewed impulses within believers in relation to new contexts. In other words, since God's Spirit is ultimately at the root of all genuinely religious experience, there is a depth to experience that causes all symbols to remain “broken” (R. C. Neville) and destined for change. And there is the possibility that "the Spirit can move" and grace be "magnified" to the point that we are thrown upon the depth and ultimate horizon of our experience and dramatically reminded of the provisional and relative nature of even our most cherished systems of interpretation. From this general discussion of religious experience, it is important to focus on how Pentecostals typically describe and cherish experiences of God. 

Pentecostalism and Experience

The Honolulu Report (1981) of the Methodist-Roman Catholic Conversation stated correctly that "Christian experience is a rich field largely unexplored at least in ecumenical dialogue" (#23).  Pentecostalism finds itself in that Pietistic stream of Christian tradition that emphasizes a conversionistic or transformational understanding of Christian initiation as well as an experiential view of ongoing Christian identity. This stream regards highly the experience of the Holy Spirit as the very "heartthrob" of Christian life and identity (of course, there are other traditions outside the Protestant family, such as the Eastern Orthodox, that advocate a strongly pneumatological understanding of Christian existence as well). Writers such as James Dunn have granted biblical support for this pneumatological and experiential emphasis. Dunn argued persuasively that the diverse voices of the New Testament grant a unified witness to the fact that the reception/experience of the Holy Spirit was the "nerve center" of early Christian identity.[x]  Such an experience of the Spirit was a felt and observable phenomenon in earliest Christianity according to Dunn and was not merely a logical conclusion to be drawn from an ecclesiastical rite or an agreement with biblical preaching and/or confessions.[xi]  For example, the key issue for Paul concerning justification by faith was whether the Spirit was received and actually experienced in extraordinary ways among the Galatians because of their faith or due to the requirements of the law (Gal. 3:1-4). Is this the way we speak about justification by faith today? If not, why not? 

What are the unique contours of Christian experience as cherished by Pentecostals? Walter J. Hollenweger has maintained that the Pentecostal understanding of Christian experience has been typically Non-Western, since it taps the non-rational and physical dimensions of human existence. Emphases on speaking in tongues and the healing of the body are examples of a Pentecostal spirituality that has gained vast popularity in Non-Western settings.[xii] Miroslav Volf has even referred to the Pentecostal "material" understanding of salvation in the sense that experience of God for them effects one's bodily and social existence as well as one's interior life.[xiii] One could also focus attention on the communal and charismatic setting of Christian experience among Pentecostal movements. Christian experience for Pentecostals is charismatic, highlighting the empowerment and giftedness of the laity in service to others. 

David William Faupel adds a sharp eschatological focus to this charismatic experience cherished by Pentecostals, arguing that the  restoration of apostolic power among the laity valued among early Pentecostals was connected to the missionary goal of winning the world for Christ before Christ's soon return takes place.[xiv] Such scholarship broadens what is unique to Pentecostal experience beyond the realm of Spirit baptism or speaking in tongues. As Donald Dayton has shown in his classic, The Theological Roots of Pentecostalism, early Pentecostals took from the Holiness Movement a Christ-centered devotion to Jesus as Savior, Spirit baptizer, healer, and coming King.[xv]  There can be no doubt that Pentecostals viewed the work of the Spirit today as the continuation, even enhancement, of the work of the historical Jesus as the principle bearer of the Spirit. For this reason, the Pentecostal understanding of salvation and experience of God is also pneumatological from the foundation up.  

Christian Experience and the Authority of the Church in the World

There can be little doubt that Pentecostals judge their authority as Christ's representatives in the world in predominantly experiential terms. Authority in Pentecostal literature is something that conveys the liberating power of the Spirit to heal bodies, mend broken relationships, and bring people into the awareness of God's awesome presence. The forces of darkness are shattered by the light of the Gospel in the power of the Spirit. Those who discover this authority discover it in the experience of the Spirit in faith and ministry. Those who are receptive to this authority do so because they have been impacted in ways that are liberating. This authority is predominantly experiential and charismatic and not dogmatic or confessional. For this reason, public dogmatic or even ethical statements by Pentecostal groups are relatively rare and tend to be awkward imitations of statements published by other churches and co-opted to meet practical needs. 

As noted above, Pentecostals tend to accent the extraordinary and miraculous work of the Spirit in Christian experience. Tied to this accent on the extraordinary is an eschatological framework that is apocalyptic. Apocalypticism fits well with an accent on the miraculous because it stresses an eschatology "from above," in which human solutions to problems in history are distrusted and universal salvation is viewed as initiated by Christ at his coming. In such a framework for Christian experience, the ultimate future of God overwhelms the historical present and so relativizes it that it recedes into near insignificance except as a pointer toward the ultimate end. Apocalyptic Christian movements also tend to accent a dualistic struggle with the forces of evil because this is a preview of the final battle and allows one to continue in the belief that solutions to our deepest problems are miraculous in nature and given exclusively "from above." 

Much like the book of Romans functioned for the churches of the classical Reformation, the Book of Revelation has tended to function for many Pentecostal and Pietistic movements as a pivotal guide to faithful public witness to the Gospel in the power of the Spirit.  In such a symbolic framework, Christian experience tends to be set in relation to the world as an alien place with threatening forces of darkness that incarnate themselves in cultural trends and movements.  The authority of the church in the world in such a "Christ against culture" framework tends not to be optimistic about culture. This authority is thus viewed as confrontational and aggressive in nature. It must overcome and conquer. There is an eschatological boldness and confidence among Pentecostals because the final victory at the end of history is already assured, and the Spirit is present in multiple gifts to grant us a foretaste of this victory today. 

But it needs to be noted that Pentecostal experience and authority are more complex than the picture painted above. For example, though Pentecostals emphasize the miraculous work of the Spirit, their understanding of that work is very "this worldly," accenting the healing of bodies and the transformation of people in the midst of their social relationships and contexts. Furthermore, their "pragmatic" tendency causes Pentecostals to easily adopt cultural forms or trends if these prove expedient in their missionary efforts.  

Criticisms that Pentecostal experience is otherworldly are, therefore, one-sided. Pentecostals tend to be ambivalent about this point. The matter is complex since many Pentecostals from among the poor distrust political solutions to human need for very good reasons. On the theological level, greater clarity is needed for Pentecostals concerning how to turn experience of God into a force of social transformation. There are signs that Pentecostal groups have moved and are moving in such a direction experientially and theologically. For example, there are Pentecostals in Korea and Africa who have prayed and acted for the rescue of the environment from destruction. Prayer for the healing of the body is taking a "turn to the world." Authors such as Walter Hollenweger and Doug Peterson have given other examples of Pentecostals who have embraced the Spirit's providential work in political and social developments and movements.[xvi] 

The dominant Pentecostal approach to authority in the world is obviously a mixed blessing (as with all other approaches).  But we should not neglect the fact that the experiential and charismatic orientation to authority has obvious benefits. Juridical authority handed down from above tends to exclude adequate input from the laity and also tends to be detached from the daily needs and woes of the masses. An experiential and charismatic approach to authority has the potential of involving the laity in the power of the Gospel and the Spirit in the world today and in a way that meets the everyday needs of people.   

And apocalypticism can join postmodern critiques of any and all universal and tyrannical human solutions or offers of salvation in the world today. The Christian Gospel, however, points to a solution that will not be tyrannical, because it will come from the crucified and risen Christ[xvii]  The authority of the church, rooted in the shared experience of this Christ through the Spirit, will proclaim truth and will join in all genuine efforts at peace, justice, and healing to incarnate this truth in human lives.