It seems that certain Charismatic and Pentecostal theologians want to jump onto the NPP (New Perspective on Paul) bandwagan. As stated:
Amos Yong, a charismatic theologian at Regent University, in his book review of Don Garlington's, In Defense of the New Perspective on Paul: Essays and Reviews (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2005), comments on Assembly of God scholar Frank Macchia's new book:
What I have observed is not that Renewal (by which I mean pentecostal-and-charismatic, broadly speaking) biblical scholarship has engaged the NPP--they might well have, but I am not as up-to-date in this area — but that pentecostal theologians and, especially, systematicians have made some recent proposals at least consistent with, if not presuming of, some of the basic NPP proposals as defended by Garlington. For instance, one of the main points in Frank D. Macchia's Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology (Zondervan, 2006) concerns the interconnectedness between the doctrines of justification and sanctification. For Macchia, the pentecostal theological emphasis on the Spirit means that justification can never be merely a forensic imputation of alien righteousness, but must also be a pneumatological impartation of the righteousness of Christ resulting in a transformed life. As an extension of this idea (although actually preceding Macchia's book by two years), pentecostal systematician Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen — although he prefers to call himself an ecumenical theologian — has argued in his One with God: Salvation as Deification and Justification (Liturgical, 2004) that justification is intimately tied in not only with sanctification but also with full salvation understood as glorification. [Bold in original post]
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I'm not too impressed with Amos Yong himself.
ReplyDeleteCame across some of Yong's work during my research on Augustianian Trinity. As mentioned in the Keith Johnson's Ph.D. dissertation on "A Trinitarian theology of religions", which discusses contemporary writings on Augustinian Trinity, Johnson critiques Amos Yong's "Discerning the Spirit" for arguing that the Holy Spirit is present and active among adherents of non‐Christian religions and that Christians must learn to discern the Spirit's presence. Yong argues for a process for discerning the "religious" activity of the Spirit among other adherents of other religions that involves three elements (experiential, ethical and theological). Yong writes that "When the Spirit’s presence is discerned, one may recognize a non‐Christian religion “as salvific in the Christian sense."
Messy stuff.
Joel:
ReplyDeleteHaha. Neither am I. He approves of the NPP it seems.