#12. 'IT'S ALL SO DIVISIVE THAT WE OUGHT TO LEAVE CHARISMATIC ISSUES WELL ALONE'.

Divisiveness would head anyone's list of the issues confronting us in the modern charismatic renewal (an interesting concern in the light of 20,800 varieties of Christians extant today, with Christianity itself separating from Judaism, dividing the calendar into BC and AD. And are Protestants guiltless?).

Certainly the Spirit is given to the church, not to divide but to unite it. In the end, any form of piety will be reassured by the same rule: do faith, hope and especially love abound? By their fruit - by their behaviour - they will be known.

My observation, however, is that divisiveness is not a function of the presence or absence of certain spiritual gifts, but of insecurity, fear ('charisphobia'), insensitivity ('charismania'), or lovelessness on one or both sides. It's also a product, sometimes, of inept or insecure leadership. The Thessalonian church was in danger here, so Paul has some appropriate advice for both the younger enthusiasts and the elders (see 1 Thess. 5:12-19). Any renewal movement - including this one - needs guidance and nurturing. It's good that Catholics appoint a priest in most dioceses to liaise with the renewal.

David Watson talked about tidy churches, with piles of papers neatly in order. The windows are opened, but the fresh wind of the Spirit blows the papers about, so the elders scurry around collecting them all again, and close the windows. 'You've got tidiness, even stuffiness. That's the picture of many a church. I would prefer to have the windows open with a fresh breath of the Holy Spirit blowing... Give me untidiness with life every day if the alternative is tidiness and death. One of the tidiest places you can find is the cemetery.' (23)

Let us beware of the error Gamaliel warned about (Acts 5:33-39). If this is of God, we must take the movement seriously. But let us keep it all in perspective. Paul who spoke in tongues, does not discuss this gift outside 1 Corinthians; doesn't mention the Holy Spirit at all in Colossians, nor does James in his letter. (Acts does not mention tongues in relation to Paul or to the Corinthian church, but we know both experienced this gift; Acts does describe the Ephesian experience with tongues, but this is not mentioned in Paul's letter to that church). However, Protestantism and Catholicism cannot be accused of over-emphasizing the person and work of the Holy Spirit. As Karl Barth put it: there's often been too little of the pneumatic in the church, rarely too much.

Certainly the swift stream of renewal often throws debris on to the banks. Old wineskins can't cope with new wine without bursting. When the Spirit is at work, the devil will be sowing weeds among the wheat. Movements of spiritual renewal are refracted through fallible, sinning human beings. Gifts are exploited for wrong motives, or in mistaken ways. The genuine is imitated by counterfeits. There are exaggerated claims of healing and deliverance, personal guidance or supernatural signs and wonders. Let us beware of insupportable claims. There's too often a hunger for the spectacular and sensational. We too live in a generation lusting for signs. Let us learn from history; it's all happened before. Renewal movements become dogmatized; 'illuminism' - claims to special, individualistic messages from God - becomes rampant. None of this should surprise us. We ask, simply: 'What is of God, and what isn't?' and then operate on the old dictum 'In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things charity.'

#13. 'EXPERIENCE-CENTRED AND WORD-CENTRED THEOLOGIES WON'T MIX'.

Within Western Christianity there have been two classic approaches to theology: one emphasizing God's objective actions towards us; the other our subjective experiences of God. The first is credal - a theology of the Word, focussing on Christology (Augustine, Calvin, Luther); the second intuitive - a theology of experience, focussing on Spirit (Schleiermacher).

The success of an experiential theology must be judged by the ease (or lack of ease) with which it moves from Spirit to Word. If Word and Spirit can be held in dynamic union, then experiential theology has the possibility of becoming definitive for the life and witness of the church today. Too often Word takes the place of Spirit. (24) Our traditional theologies run the risk of being rationalistic, contrived conceptual schemas. The Holy Spirit is the subject of a sterile 'pneumatology', with little openness to an experience of his power. But, again, an experience-centred theology sometimes stays there. (25) Sometimes there's an unhealthy identification of truth with a prophetic leader, or a great experience: everything else derives validity through reference to these. Or else the Bible is used as a sanction for one's independent feelings and experiences. Or perhaps we are not open to the whole of experience. (26) Thus an unhealthy individualism and a pervasive subjectivism often accompanies pieties of personal experience. As Russell Spittler has put it:

Individualism is a virtue when it assures conscious religious experience, but becomes something of an occupational hazard for Pentecostal-charismatics. Add in some dominant personality traits, take away an acquaintance with the church's collective past, delete theological sophistication, and the mix can be volatile, catastrophic.(27)

Let us beware of inhabiting simplicity this side of complexity, or complexity the other side of simplicity, but rather move to simplicity the other side of complexity! (28) The security of the slogan is easier than the hard work of discovering the truth. Much of what is written in pentecostal/charismatic books is what Kilian McDonnell calls 'enthusiastic theological fluff - pink hot air in printed form'. (29)

There is a great need for a thorough-going charismatic theology. For example the juxtaposition of the ideas of 'baptism in the Spirit' and the release of spiritual gifts may be seen to be a roost significant contribution to twentieth-century theology , but a lot more work has to be done on it yet. Our theology ought to be bipolar, with Word and Spirit joined. To the traditional theologies we say: don't develop closed systems - limiting what the Spirit can and cannot do. And to the others: experiential flesh without a theological skeletal structure produces spiritual jelly-fish!