Return to the Primacy of Scripture

A commitment to the primacy of Scripture characterized the Pentecostal Movement from its beginnings. Founders believed the Scriptures to be the authoritative standard for “beliefs, affections, and actions.” [1]

They regularly confirmed the validity of their spiritual experiences by consulting the Scriptures. According to Russell P. Spittler, Pentecostals attempted to square their spirituality with “biblical precedent and command.” [2]

William Menzies, speaking of the early days of the Assemblies of God, writes:

The modern Pentecostal revival, like other revivals in the past, could have fallen into the abuse of overemphasis on spectacular phenomena that accompany revivals. The baptism in the Spirit and the manifestations of the gifts of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12-14) are experiential in nature. Such experiences were defining of the revival. The Assemblies of God avoided the pitfalls of extremism and unbalanced emphases because of an early commitment to the authority of the Bible as the all-sufficient rule for faith and practice. [3]

For Pentecostals, theology was an attempt to search the Scriptures to understand what the Holy Spirit is doing in and saying to His Church. Pentecostal theology was and continues to be a work in progress. For Pentecostals, theology was not “identified solely or even primarily with systematic treatises, monographs and scholarly apparatus in centers of academia.” [4] According to Steven Land,

In the context of American restoration-revivalism, it was the “black spirituality of the former slaves in the United States” encountering the specific Catholic spirituality of the movement’s “grandfather,” John Wesley, that produced Pentecostalism’s distinctive spirituality. Neither Wesley nor the African-Americans did theology in the traditional scholastic way. Sermons, pamphlets, hymns, testimonies, conferences, spirituals—these were the media of this movement. [5]

However non-traditional the apparatus, Pentecostal media were replete with Scripture.

Likewise, Pentecostal history was filled with systematic Bible teaching, expositional Bible preaching, and sober attempts at practicing Biblical precepts. While sometimes naïve and simplistic and at other times legalistic, early Pentecostals were serious about the Bible.

Is this commitment to the primacy of Scripture attenuating? Should contemporary Pentecostals be concerned by the decline of systematic Bible instruction?

Some local churches are dismissing Sunday school in favor of extended worship services. Others are replacing systematic Bible teaching with topical treatments that draw heavily from the social sciences. Curricula based solely on the social sciences will result in a fuzzy spirituality of human self-help or self-deification.

Pastors are moving from expository to topical preaching. After listening to hundreds (thousands?) of sermons in homiletics classes and elsewhere, I am seriously concerned that Michael Horton is right. In his book, Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church, he asserts that contemporary preachers exclude Christ to proclaim a message of moralism, personal comfort, self-help, self-improvement, and individualistic religion.

Neglect of Biblical content in sermons will result in less than authentic Pentecostal spirituality.

Continuation down this slippery slope will result in congregations singing “worship him, worship him” without knowing “Him.” The pronouns and metaphors of their music will be meaningless.

While not a Pentecostal, Henri J. M. Nouwen issues a warning appropriate for Pentecostals:

Few ministers and priests think theologically. Most of them have been educated in a climate in which the behavioral sciences, such as psychology and sociology, so dominated the educational milieu that little true theology was being learned. Most Christian leaders today raise psychological or sociological questions even though they frame them in scriptural terms. Real theological thinking, which is thinking with the mind of Christ, is hard to find in the practice of the ministry. Without solid theological reflection, future leaders will be little more than pseudo-psychologists, pseudo-sociologists, pseudo-social workers. They will think of themselves as enablers, facilitators, role models, father or mother figures, big brothers or big sisters, and so on, and thus join the countless men and women who make a living trying to help their fellow human beings to cope with the stresses and strains of everyday living. But that has little to do with Christian leadership because the Christian leader thinks, speaks, and acts in the name of Jesus, who came to free humanity from the power of death and open the way to eternal life. [6]

[1] Steven J. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press Ltd., 1997), 41.

[2] Russell P. Spittler, “Spirituality, Pentecostal and Charismatic,” in Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, ed. Stanley M. Burgess and Gary B. McGee (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1988), 805.

[3] William W. Menzies, “Lessons From the Past: What Our History Teaches Us,” Enrichment 4, no. 4 (1999), 84.

[4] Land, 35.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Henri J. M. Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1989), 65.