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Revisioning Pentecostal Ethics: The Epicletic Community
From the back cover:
“In this monograph, Daniel Castelo revisions Pentecostal ethics by means of a moral-theological proposal. Privileging the early years of the American Pentecostal Movement as a way of garnering ‘institutional memory,’ he seeks to establish a basis by which to evaluate historical and theological continuity and divergence.
Specifically, he argues that early Pentecostals harboured certain impulses and intuitions that were quite important but were diminished or reconfigured in light of a number of pressures that arose over time.
The practice-orientations of ‘abiding’ and ‘waiting,’ drawn from the conceptual frameworks of the affections and virtues, enable Castelo to offer a sustained critique and reconstruction of holiness/sanctification and eschatological urgency, both of which are currently in disrepair within the tradition. Throughout the work, a salutary reconfiguration of what it means to inhabit the Pentecostal ethos as a doxological and pneumatic existential is offered.”
“In this monograph, Daniel Castelo revisions Pentecostal ethics by means of a moral-theological proposal. Privileging the early years of the American Pentecostal Movement as a way of garnering ‘institutional memory,’ he seeks to establish a basis by which to evaluate historical and theological continuity and divergence.
Specifically, he argues that early Pentecostals harboured certain impulses and intuitions that were quite important but were diminished or reconfigured in light of a number of pressures that arose over time.
The practice-orientations of ‘abiding’ and ‘waiting,’ drawn from the conceptual frameworks of the affections and virtues, enable Castelo to offer a sustained critique and reconstruction of holiness/sanctification and eschatological urgency, both of which are currently in disrepair within the tradition. Throughout the work, a salutary reconfiguration of what it means to inhabit the Pentecostal ethos as a doxological and pneumatic existential is offered.”
141 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
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September 25, 2012
From Ch 5: “Reframing Eschatological Expectation”
“Patience is not an attribute one usually associates with Pentecostals. They are sometimes said to reflect uncritically modernist culture and to be technologically innovative, pragmatic, passionate, and even loud. . . . But of all these characterizations, patience is not one that readily comes to mind. (107)
The task for Pentecostals is to recast their theological self-understanding and their sense of what eschatological expectations ought to look like. . . . The task at hand is to determine what features of eschatological expectation are reflective of God’s own work through the Spirit and what has been misconstrued by overzealous Pentecostals who had a penchant to locate themselves at the cusp of cosmic fulfilment. Without a kind of intentional and patient negotiation of eschatological expectation – in other words, without sensibilities and practices that fit under the practice-orientation of ‘waiting’ – Pentecostal zeal has the potential of being diminished or altered, and such developments could potentially corrupt the role eschatology ought to play in the worship of an epicletic community. These circumstances raise the overarching question: How should Pentecostals live in the ‘already-not yet’ tension now that the sense of eschatological immediacy ahs dissipated with time? . . . How should Pentecostals ‘wait’ or ’tarry’ in light of unfulfilled eschatological expectation?” (111) One strategy for negotiating this eschatological tension is the Christian virtue of patience. . . . (112)
“Finally, Pentecostals would do well to operate with a reverent sense of the mysteries of God in such a way that patience takes the form of resisting explanation when one does not understand or when a certain expectation has not been fulfilled, whether it be the second coming more generally or any specific request for healing, blessing, or the like.
Pentecostal belief in the immediacy of God’s presence in doxological space and mode carries with it the pressure to explain God’s apparent lack of action. Pentecostals, compelled as they are to make the theo-logic of their altar encounters available and coherent to themselves and others, have all too easily made the leap to clarify or elaborate God’s purpose in unbridled and rushed ways. The only way apparently out of such a conundrum involves a theological reconfiguration of both God’s manifest and hidden work. Both require a re-enchantment and maybe even a fearful appreciation of the divine mystery. (125)
Such framing within the holy mysteries suggest that expectancy has a similar shape to faith, one that operates precisely in patience for its eventual resolution. Some mysteries remain, and God is the only one who will make them known in God’s own time. In the meantime, the role of believers is to endure the ‘cognitive dissonance’ and tests of faith that stem from both God’s visibility and hiddneness, from God’s work in the forms of ‘signs and wonders’ and God’s tarrying. . . . . Certain hypotheses, end-times scenarios, and theological explanations and rationales simply are unnecessary and potentially even spiritually derailing to the faithful at large. The gratuity on display in the divine self-disclosure is both sufficiently generative and enchanting for the epicletic community to continue on in its tasks of ‘abiding’ and ‘waiting.’ (126)
The epicletic community can abide in and wait for God with hope-filled expectancy even in the midst of persecutions and hardships, for its vision of how things are is thoroughly inflected and configured by who they will be . . . in God’s own time and way.” (127)
“Patience is not an attribute one usually associates with Pentecostals. They are sometimes said to reflect uncritically modernist culture and to be technologically innovative, pragmatic, passionate, and even loud. . . . But of all these characterizations, patience is not one that readily comes to mind. (107)
The task for Pentecostals is to recast their theological self-understanding and their sense of what eschatological expectations ought to look like. . . . The task at hand is to determine what features of eschatological expectation are reflective of God’s own work through the Spirit and what has been misconstrued by overzealous Pentecostals who had a penchant to locate themselves at the cusp of cosmic fulfilment. Without a kind of intentional and patient negotiation of eschatological expectation – in other words, without sensibilities and practices that fit under the practice-orientation of ‘waiting’ – Pentecostal zeal has the potential of being diminished or altered, and such developments could potentially corrupt the role eschatology ought to play in the worship of an epicletic community. These circumstances raise the overarching question: How should Pentecostals live in the ‘already-not yet’ tension now that the sense of eschatological immediacy ahs dissipated with time? . . . How should Pentecostals ‘wait’ or ’tarry’ in light of unfulfilled eschatological expectation?” (111) One strategy for negotiating this eschatological tension is the Christian virtue of patience. . . . (112)
“Finally, Pentecostals would do well to operate with a reverent sense of the mysteries of God in such a way that patience takes the form of resisting explanation when one does not understand or when a certain expectation has not been fulfilled, whether it be the second coming more generally or any specific request for healing, blessing, or the like.
Pentecostal belief in the immediacy of God’s presence in doxological space and mode carries with it the pressure to explain God’s apparent lack of action. Pentecostals, compelled as they are to make the theo-logic of their altar encounters available and coherent to themselves and others, have all too easily made the leap to clarify or elaborate God’s purpose in unbridled and rushed ways. The only way apparently out of such a conundrum involves a theological reconfiguration of both God’s manifest and hidden work. Both require a re-enchantment and maybe even a fearful appreciation of the divine mystery. (125)
Such framing within the holy mysteries suggest that expectancy has a similar shape to faith, one that operates precisely in patience for its eventual resolution. Some mysteries remain, and God is the only one who will make them known in God’s own time. In the meantime, the role of believers is to endure the ‘cognitive dissonance’ and tests of faith that stem from both God’s visibility and hiddneness, from God’s work in the forms of ‘signs and wonders’ and God’s tarrying. . . . . Certain hypotheses, end-times scenarios, and theological explanations and rationales simply are unnecessary and potentially even spiritually derailing to the faithful at large. The gratuity on display in the divine self-disclosure is both sufficiently generative and enchanting for the epicletic community to continue on in its tasks of ‘abiding’ and ‘waiting.’ (126)
The epicletic community can abide in and wait for God with hope-filled expectancy even in the midst of persecutions and hardships, for its vision of how things are is thoroughly inflected and configured by who they will be . . . in God’s own time and way.” (127)
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