> I agree we should be looking for a vital experience of God (or the Holy Spirit) > to be the basis for understanding the will of God. One way to do this to try > and understand the experience others have had of God. One way to do that is to > read the record of those experiences in the bible.
Gordon Fee is one of the notable New Testament scholars of our time. He was written a monumental work entitled, "God's Empowering Presence - The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul", in which he systematically works through every Pauline reference to the Spirit and then forms it into a synthesis. One of the things I admire about Fee is the academic rigour he demonstrates by refusing to accommodate interpretation to the church of our day. For example, speaking of the powerful experience of the Holy Spirit in the early Church, he writes: "Our own experience of the church tends to cause us to be either unfamiliar or quite uncomfortable with such phenomena. We would prefer to believe that the Pauline churches were more like ours and less like the Pauline and Lukan documents suggest they really were." This highlights the tension for the Uniting Church. By and large the *Uniting Church* is "either unfamiliar or uncomfortable with such phenomena" also. The problem with this unfamiliarity is that only such a powerful experience of the Holy Spirit enabled the early Church to understand the difference between Christianity and Judaism and to confirm the inclusion of Gentiles because the "eschatological Spirit" had arrived. That is, a new era of time was breaking into our own, of which the resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit were prima facie evidence. This apparent absence of a dynamic experience of the Holy Spirit makes its impression felt in a number of ways. I remember a few years ago attending the open lecture at UTC in Seminar Week when Prof. James (Jimmy) Dunn was the principle speaker. The open lecture was given by a Jewish rabbi whom I think was a friend of John Squires. I seem to remember the rabbi saying that he had explored Christianity but had never found it credible because of the lack of any kind of dynamic experience as presupposed. I am not sure whether he construed this as "experience of the Holy Spirit" or "encounter with Christ". Whatever, the absence of such an element for him failed to authenticate Christianity. On the other hand, we have some congregations within the Uniting Church and many within the Pentecostal denominations who do claim such a dynamic experience. But let's be honest! We are cynical. Is this experience the same as that of the early Church? For one thing, Paul was careful to ensure that the experience of the Spirit was not confused with an anti-intellectual emotionalism. Admittedly his treatment of this in 1 Corinthians 14 is difficult because he does not clearly distinguish between "the spirit" meaning the human spirit and "the Spirit", meaning the Holy Spirit. However, many Pentecostal Churches display a rabid stance against science, in a superficial glossing over of what Paul said (no pun intended) and apparently in ignorance of the fact that science grew out of the Church as an implication of the Incarnation. Thus the tension is that, on the one hand, the early Church found a dynamic experience of the Holy Spirit authenticating, but contemporary claims about the Holy Spirit only raise questions for many. For me the question is, can we pursue the self-authenticating experience of the Holy Spirit known in the early Church without either kidding ourselves, or without rationalising the church we are comfortable with as just such a church. I think the question is vital for churches like the Uniting Church which is slowly dying - perhaps suffocating with apathy. I remember a song from the past: "You say you believe in a God who raises the dead, but when it comes to following him, you can't even get out of bed." The answer, of course, is not to force yourself out of bed, but to let the Holy Spirit lift you out. Maybe what we urgently need is a good theology to open the way to an authenticate experience of the Holy Spirit. But I'm not sure that we should let the Penetcostalists provide it. - Greg ------------------------------------------------------ - You are subscribed to the mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the message body 'unsubscribe insights-l' (ell, not one (1)) See: http://nsw.uca.org.au/insights-l-information.htm ------------------------------------------------------
