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    This chapter explores the relationship between pneumatology and christology through examining the fivefold gospel and Spirit christologies from pentecostal and ecumenical perspectives. It summarizes recent pentecostal articulations of the fivefold gospel as the organizing principle of pentecostal theology. The chapter then presents select orthodox Catholic Spirit christologies and recent pentecostal Spirit christologies. It suggests a way forward for understanding the relationship between pneumatology and christology and addresses the theological validity and ecumenical potential of the fivefold gospel and Spirit christology approaches.

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    This chapter explores the relationship between pneumatology and christology through examining the fivefold gospel and Spirit christologies from pentecostal and ecumenical perspectives. It summarizes recent pentecostal articulations of the fivefold gospel as the organizing principle of pentecostal theology. The chapter then presents select orthodox Catholic Spirit christologies and recent pentecostal Spirit christologies. It suggests a way forward for understanding the relationship between pneumatology and christology and addresses the theological validity and ecumenical potential of the fivefold gospel and Spirit christology approaches.

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    This chapter explores the relationship between pneumatology and christology through examining the fivefold gospel and Spirit christologies from pentecostal and ecumenical perspectives. It summarizes recent pentecostal articulations of the fivefold gospel as the organizing principle of pentecostal theology. The chapter then presents select orthodox Catholic Spirit christologies and recent pentecostal Spirit christologies. It suggests a way forward for understanding the relationship between pneumatology and christology and addresses the theological validity and ecumenical potential of the fivefold gospel and Spirit christology approaches.

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    46 views2 pages

    Book Edcoll 9789004408371 BP000012-preview

    Uploaded by

    Th3Lov3OfG0d
    This chapter explores the relationship between pneumatology and christology through examining the fivefold gospel and Spirit christologies from pentecostal and ecumenical perspectives. It summarizes recent pentecostal articulations of the fivefold gospel as the organizing principle of pentecostal theology. The chapter then presents select orthodox Catholic Spirit christologies and recent pentecostal Spirit christologies. It suggests a way forward for understanding the relationship between pneumatology and christology and addresses the theological validity and ecumenical potential of the fivefold gospel and Spirit christology approaches.

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    of 2

    Chapter 10

    Fivefold Gospel and Spirit Christology: Pentecostal


    and Ecumenical Explorations

    Christopher A. Stephenson

    From a systematic theological perspective, one of the key elements of any doc-
    trine is its relationship to other doctrines. From an ecumenical perspective,
    one of the key elements of any doctrine is the extent to which aspects of it
    unite or distinguish two or more church traditions. Thus, I explore in pente-
    costal and ecumenical perspective some elements of the relationship between
    pneumatology and christology by considering the fivefold gospel and Spirit
    christology. I summarize recent pentecostal articulations of the fivefold gospel
    as the organizing principle of pentecostal theology, present select orthodox
    Catholic Spirit christologies, briefly treat recent pentecostal Spirit christolo-
    gies, suggest a way forward for this facet of the relationship between pneu-
    matology and christology, and address the dogmatic viability and ecumenical
    potential of the fivefold gospel and Spirit christology.1

    1 Fivefold Gospel as the Center of Pentecostal Theology

    Donald Dayton’s highly influential argument that the four/fivefold gospel—


    Jesus as savior, sanctifier, baptizer in the Holy Spirit, healer, and soon com-
    ing king—most clearly relays the logic of early pentecostal theology in North
    America is well known.2 This cluster of beliefs is the wide confessional umbrel-
    la under which there was room, according to Dayton, for all of the major wings
    of early pentecostalism. For example, in spite of their internal differences

    1 Some of my evaluation of Wolfgang Vondey’s use of the fivefold gospel with respect to Spirit
    christology first appeared in Christopher A. Stephenson, “Wolfgang Vondey’s Structure for
    Systematic Pentecostal Theology: Full Gospel or Gospel Lite?” Journal of Pentecostal Theology
    28 (2019): 12–20.
    2 Donald W. Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1987). Early
    uses of the fivefold pattern may be detectible outside North America as well. See Mark J.
    Cartledge, “The Early Pentecostal Theology of Confidence Magazine (1908–1926): A Version of
    the Five-Fold Gospel?” The Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 28, no.
    2 (2008): 117–30.

    © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:10.1163/9789004408371_011


    Fivefold Gospel and Spirit Christology 201

    otherwise, both trinitarian and Oneness pentecostals agreed on Jesus’ soterio-


    logical significance as articulated in the fivefold gospel. Further, pentecostals
    affirming two distinct works of grace and those affirming three works preached
    the same “full gospel”—as the four/fivefold gospel was also called—except for
    respective disagreements about whether to include “Jesus as sanctifier” (hence,
    both a fourfold and a fivefold pattern).3
    While Dayton uses fivefold gospel descriptively to give an historical account
    of early pentecostal thought, others have since employed it prescriptively as
    an organizing principle for present pentecostal theology. These uses of the
    fivefold gospel for constructive theology largely imply that the relationship
    between Jesus and the Spirit within the fivefold gospel is one in which Jesus is
    only active with respect to the Spirit and the Spirit is only passive with respect
    to Jesus—that is, Jesus baptizes in the Holy Spirit. This active-passive relation-
    ship is due in part to a lack in the area of Spirit christology. It is not that the
    proponents of the fivefold gospel themselves explicitly affirm an active-passive
    relationship but that the five tenets on their own describe the relationship with
    no more complexity than this. When proponents of the fivefold gospel refer
    to elements of Spirit christology, they do not integrate them with the fivefold
    gospel in a way that shows that the respective paradigms are compatible with
    each other. Steven J. Land is one of the first to use the fivefold gospel, which he
    calls “the core of early Pentecostal orthodoxy,”4 for more than descriptive pur-
    poses, although not without ambiguity. For example, he states that pneuma-
    tology is central to pentecostal theology and impinges on the fivefold gospel
    tenet that Jesus baptizes in the Holy Spirit. While he admits that the fivefold
    gospel gives priority to Jesus Christ, Land insists that the focus on Jesus is due
    to its starting point in the Holy Spirit and that pentecostal spirituality based on
    the fivefold gospel is “Christocentric precisely because it is pneumatic.”5 Land’s
    claim that the pneumatological basis of pentecostal spirituality and theology
    in fact demonstrates its christological basis is unclear and receives no elabo-
    ration. Elsewhere, Land states that in Pentecostal Spirituality he attempts to
    make the Holy Spirit the starting point of theology.6 However, his claims about

    3 In what follows, I use “fivefold” gospel exclusively, even when the authors I discuss use “four-
    fold” or “full” gospel. While there are at times important differences among these terms (es-
    pecially for Wolfgang Vondey), those differences have no bearing on my purposes here.
    4 Steven J. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom (Sheffield: Sheffield, 1993),
    183.
    5 Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, 23.
    6 Steven J. Land, “Response to Professor Harvey Cox,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 5 (1994):
    13.

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