In 1980, J.I. Packer wrote a series of articles for Churchman about the charismatic movement. His conclusions were wise, and they follow below.
Some conclusions are now in order.
1) The common charismatic theology of Spirit-baptism (common, at least, in the world-wide movement as a whole, if not in particular segments of it in Britain and Germany) is the Pentecostal development of the two-level, two-stage view of the Christian life which goes back through the last-century holiness movements (Keswick, Higher Life, Victorious Life), and the power-for-service accounts of Spirit-baptism that intertwined with them, to John Wesley’s doctrine of Christian perfection, otherwise perfect love, entire sanctification, the clean heart, or simply the second blessing. This charismatic theology sees the apostles’ experience at Pentecost as the normative model for transition from the first and lower level to the higher, Spirit-filled level. But this idea, though put forward in good faith, seems to lack both biblical and experiential justification, while the implication that all Christians who are strangers to a Pentecostal transition-experience are lower-level folk, not Spirit-filled, is, to say the least, unconvincing. Yet the honest, penitent, expectant quest for more of God, out of which has come for so many the precious experience miscalled Spirit-baptism, with all that has followed it, is always the tap-root of spiritual renewal, whether impeccably theologized or not; and so it has been in this case.
2) The restorationist theory of ‘sign-gifts’, which the charismatic movement also inherited from older Pentecostalism, is inapplicable; nobody can be sure, nor does it seem likely, that the New Testament gifts of tongues, interpretation, healing and miracles have been restored, while Spirit-given prophecy, which in essence is not new revelation (though in biblical times this was often part of it), but rather power to apply to people truth already revealed, is not specially related to the charismatic milieu but has been in the church all along. Yet the movement’s accompanying emphasis on every-member ministry in the body of Christ, using ordinary (!) spiritual gifts of which all have some, is wholly right, and has produced rich resources of support and help for the weak and hurting in particular.
3) The charismatic stresses on faith in a living Lord, learning of God from God through Scripture, openness to the indwelling Spirit, close fellowship in prayer and praise, discernment and service of personal need, and expecting God actively to answer prayer and change things for the better, are tokens of true spiritual renewal from which all Christians should learn, despite associated oddities to which mistaken theology gave rise.
4) Charismatic glossolalia, a chosen way of non-verbal self-expression before God (chosen, be it said, in the belief that God wills the choice), has its place in the inescapable pluriformity of Christian experience, in which the varied make-up of both cultures and individuals is reflected by a wide range of devotional styles. It seems no less clear that as a devotional exercise glossolalia enriches some, than that for others it is a valueless irreverence. Some who have practised it have later testified to the spiritual unreality for them of what they were doing, while others who have begun it have recorded a vast deepening of their communion with God as a result, and there is no reason to doubt either testimony. Glossolalic prayer may help to free up and warm up some cerebral people, just as structured verbal prayer may helpto steady up and shape up some emotional people. Those who know that glossolalia is not God’s path for them and those for whom it is a proven enrichment should neither try to impose their own way on others, nor judge others inferior for being different, nor stagger if someone in their camp transfers to the other, believing that God has led him or her to do so.
Those who pray with tongues and those who pray without tongues do it to the Lord; they stand or fall to their own master, not their fellow-servants; and in the same sense that there is in Christ neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female, so in Christ there is neither glossolalist nor non-glossolalist. Even if (as I suspect, though cannot prove) today’s glossolalists do not speak such tongues as were spoken at Corinth, none should forbid them their practice; but they should not suppose that every would-be top-class Christian needs to adopt it.
5) Two questions needing to be pressed are whether, along with a sense of worship and of love, the charismatic movement also fosters a realistic sense of sin, and whether its euphoric ethos does not tend to encourage naive pride among its supporters, rather than humility.
6) Though theologically uneven (and what spiritually significant movement has not been?) the charismatic renewal should commend itself to Christian people as a God-sent corrective of formalism, institutionalism and intellectualism; as creatively expressing the gospel by its music and worship style, its praise-permeated spontaneity and bold ventures in community; and as forcing all Christendom, including those who will not take this from evangelicals as such, to ask: What then does it mean to be a Christian, and to believe in the Holy Spirit? Who is Spirit-filled? Are they? Am I? With radical theology inviting the church into the barren wastes of neo-Unitarianism, it is (dare I say) just like God—the God who uses the weak to confound the mighty—to have raised up, not a new Calvin or John Owen or Abraham Kuyper, but a scratch movement, cheerfully improvising, which proclaims the divine personhood and power of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit not by great theological eloquence, originality or accuracy, but by the power of renewed lives creating a new, simplified, unconventional and uncomfortably challenging life-style. O sancta simplicitas! Yet the charismatic life-stream needs an adequately biblical theology and remains vulnerable while it lacks one. The present essay has been written in the perhaps audacious hope of helping at this point.
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