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ABSTRACT
Wolfgang Vondey’s Pentecostalism: A Guide for the Perplexed (2013) is a significant theological introduction to the global Pentecostal movement. In the book Vondey invites his readers to appreciate the diversity of Pentecostalism without attempting to homogenize or essentialise the movement. Ten years on from publication, what has changed in the world of Pentecostalism and to what extent is the book’s argument still valid today? These questions were explored in a roundtable discussion at the 2022 EPTA conference. This discussion – encapsulated in this article – explores Pentecostal orthodoxy, theological methodology, the movement’s relationship with modernity, its glocal features, and approaches to scholarship, before re-articulating how global Pentecostal theology continues to be constituted by its ‘mainstream’ and ‘extreme’ components. This conversation has implications for how global Pentecostalism is best understood, as well as how Pentecostal theology should be conceived.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 The references and page numbers to Vondey’s Pentecostalism: A Guide for the Perplexed will be given in the main body of the text.
2 2022 EPTA Conference, ‘Pentecostal Theology: Mainstream and Extremes,’ College of Theology and Social Sciences, Warsaw, Poland, July 4–6, 2022.
3 Kärkkäinen, “Mission and Salvation.”
4 Urvas, “Our Concern for Creation.”
5 The theme of the 2023 EPTA Conference is ‘“The World on Fire”: Pentecostal Eschatology and Ecotheology,’ Theological Seminary Erzhausen, Erzhausen, Germany, July 17–19, 2023.
6 Frestadius, “Epistemologiaa helluntailaisittain,” 79–92; Frestadius, Pentecostal Rationality.
7 This can be viewed as an experience of an individual or a community. The communal experience is seen through contextuality, which informs the theological enterprise. Kärkkäinen utilizes this contextual feature of theologizing in his five-volume systematic theology series. E.g., see Kärkkäinen, Christ and Reconciliation, 18–20; see also Grey, “Biblical Hermeneutics,” 129–139.
8 Urvas, “Helluntailainen raamattukäsitys,” 167–200.
9 Grey, “Biblical Hermeneutics,” 129.
10 Bernard, “Oneness Theology,” 195–205.
11 Duncan, “The Moral Pathway,” 97–100; see also Land, Pentecostal Spirituality.
12 Urvas, “The ‘Flourishing of Life.’”
13 Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 18, 35, 40–41, 44.
14 Atkinson, Trinity After Pentecost.
15 Johnson, “Counting Pentecostals Worldwide,” xxiii.
16 Johnson and Zurlo, World Christian Encyclopedia, 6–8, 26.
17 He has provided substantial reflection on this; see Vondey, “Pentecostalism as a Theological Tradition,” 521–536. I might suggest that the Vondey edited Routledge Handbook of Pentecostal Theology demonstrates a theological tradition within global Pentecostalism that has resisted such tradition-formation as unnecessary, even as I would also contend that the sub-traditions within the breadth of global Pentecostalism form (an unruly) macro-tradition which demonstrates that it is a tradition which passes along human ways of life in so far as it can be named without dissolution. To the degree it dissolves, I might suggest, it fails to be a tradition.
18 The reference here is to Dempster, Klaus, and Peterson, eds., The Globalization of Pentecostalism.
19 Hollenweger, “Handbuch der Pfingstbewegung.”
20 For a similar analogy see Cross, “The Rich Feast of Theology,” 27–47.
21 The second edition of the book was published in 2014.
22 Vondey, “Pentecostalism as a Theological Tradition,” 521–535.
23 Vondey and Green, “Between This and That,” 243–264.
24 See Vondey, “Religion at Play,” 17–36; Vondey, “Religion as Play,” 1–16; Vondey, Pentecostal Theology, 12–14; Vondey, Beyond Pentecostalism, 13–15, 34–46, 66–77, 129–140, 159–170, 182–191.
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Notes on contributors
Simo Frestadius
Simo Frestadius is the dean of research at Regents Theological College, West Malvern, UK, and the chair of the European Pentecostal Theological Association.
L. William Oliverio
L. William Oliverio Jr. is an associate professor of public theology at Northwest University, Kirkland, Washington, and the co-editor of Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies.
Sanna Urvas
Sanna Urvas is a theology lecturer at Suomen Teologinen Opisto, Tampere, Finland.
Wolfgang Vondey
Wolfgang Vondey is the professor of Christian theology and Pentecostal studies and the director of the Centre for Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies at the University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.