The Blog of Hobbes

What is disturbing … is the way places like Brownsville and Toronto, themselves representing very different theological and spiritual motifs, are mimicked uncritically. Susceptibility to only the latest and the sensational demonstrates an adolescent spirituality; one that is demonstrably ill prepared for the vagaries and mundanities of normal Christian living. Moreover, it encourages a fascination with the novel that weakens the tenacity and perseverance required for the challenging missiological setting the charismatic-Evangelical church finds itself in.

[Ian Stackhouse, Revival, Faddism and the Gospel, in Andrew Walter and Kristin Aune (eds.), On Revival: A Critical Examination (Paternoster, 2003), p242]

Biblically, the theme of revival appears as a verb: the cry in Psalms 80 and 85 for God to revive his people, the work of his hands. This cry is elemental, visceral, and, given the propensity of the contemporary church to fade into mediocrity, an entirely legitimate one to adopt. Nothing is more common in the Christian church than spiritual atrophy, against which the prayer for the Spirit to revive his church is not only apt, but necessary. Once the verb becomes a noun, however, an important shift takes place in the collective consciousness. By dismissing a decent, robust and dynamic verb for a noun, which is what we do when we deploy the term revival, we enter a particular religious psychology, and arguably a consumer package, that has at its centre the hope and expectation of a large-scale evangelistic impact and church growth. We enter the world of altar calls, the anxious seat, and mood-inducing music. We enter the world not just of revival but revivalism.

[Ian Stackhouse, Revival, Faddism and the Gospel, in Andrew Walter and Kristin Aune (eds.), On Revival: A Critical Examination (Paternoster, 2003), p239]

[Jonathan] Edwards’ analysis of the correlation between physical responses and lasting inner change also remains pertinent. Some showed strong reactions and enjoyed lasting change; some, strong reactions and no significant change; some, no reactions, and no change; and some, no reactions and lasting change. Edwards’ observations invite two conclusions. Firstly, the revival phenomena are neutral in themselves, neither proving nor disproving an authentic work of God. Secondly, the phenomena neither guarantee nor preclude significant inner change. In short, while revival phenomena were initially endorsed by Edwards with some enthusiasm, his later conclusions suggest that the church is wise to move beyond ecstatic spirituality as soon as pastorally appropriate. Such eruptions may be spontaneous and authentic, but placed centre stage they tend to generate inauthentic conformity, exhaustion, disillusion and unreality.

Even when genuine, such phenomena matter little and are of no lasting consequence. Ecstatic spirituality is a so-what spirituality, deserving neither the hysterical denunciations of Chauncy nor the hype of its indiscriminate devotees. Edwards scrupulously sought to distance himself from both polarities.

[Rob Warner, 'Ecstatic Spirituality and Entrepreneurial Revivalism: Reflections on the "Toronto Blessing"' in Walker and Aune (eds.), On Revival: A Critical Examination (Paternoster 2003), p226]

Well, I think there are some “manifestations” that clearly disprove an authentic work of God. For example, gratuitous physical violence.

The Spirit of God works by inspiration upon and within the humanity that has been bestowed upon us. Such inspiration embraces the conscious and unconscious realms of the human person and produces effects. In the unconscious or psychic realm these effects may take unusual and dramatic forms as energies are unlocked. Because these are essentially human experiences, they are always potentially to be induced or evoked by other forms of inspiration, supremely by other human beings or groups. There is no particular need to resort to the category of the demonic at this point (although I would not want absolutely to exclude it) and it is usually unhelpful and high-blown to do so, just as it is to assess all unusual phenomena as being necessarily inspired by God. There is something much more human going on. However, humanly to induce such phenomena, intentionally or otherwise, is spiritually unhelpful, since it pushes people into their own subjectivity rather than into God and ultimately leads to spiritual emptiness.

[Nigel Wright, 'Does Revival Quicken or Deaden the Church?' in Walker and Aune (eds.), On Revival: A Critical Examination (Paternoster 2003), p130]

I think we should go further than Wright. Surely it is dangerous and harmful to humanly induce human phenmona while giving the impression that it is the Spirit who is causing such manifestations?

In Angus Kinnear’s biography of the Chinese Christian leader Watchman Nee, he records a period in the 1930’s during which there was an outpouring of the Spirit of God associated with Nee’s ministry and an emphasis over a year or two on spiritual excitement and subjective experience. This was expressed by means of ‘jumping, clapping, laughter, unknown tongues that conveyed no message to hearers or even speaker, and a flood of dramatic healings, some undoubtedly real but not a few mistaken’ (Kinnear 1973: 134). Kinnear adds Nee’s judgement in about 1935 that ’some revival methods … worked like spiritual opium. Addiction to them compelled an ever-increasing dosage.’ The loss of restraint led to Nee’s assessment after three years that ‘We find on looking back over this period that the gain has been rather trivial, the loss rather large’ (Kinnear 1973: 135).

[Nigel Wright, in Walker and Aune (eds.), On Revival: A Critical Examination (Paternoster 2003), p122]

For too long the caricature of revival and revivalism has drawn from the spectacular, the transcendent, the downright dotty. But in real terms, the power of revival is most empowering at the level of the mundane, the routine. This, if you think about it, makes sense. For, as Gunton reminds us, it is the Spirit who gives direction to the created order (Gunton 1998:86). As the Spirit recreates the divine intention for creation, it is in the slight, the insignificant, the menial and mundane that the true nature of God’s power is revealed… It is humanity at the margins that experiences the Spirit’s revivication, not humanity at the heights of its own glory.

[Graham McFarlane, in Walker and Aune (eds.), On Revival: A Critical Examination (Paternoster 2003), p53]

…a trenchant warning for any revivalistic tendencies [is]: the Spirit [should] not to be understood in terms of his own independent personality. Whilst danger bells may well be ringing at this point, the issue needs to be stated unequivocally: the Spirit never comes to us in his own name but in the name of another, whether Father and/or Son. As such, then, to focus attention on either the Spirit himself or on his effects is to miss the whole point. Whoever or whatever the Spirit is and does, it is for another. He is never and end in himself.

[Graham McFarlane, in Walker and Aune (eds.), On Revival: A Critical Examination (Paternoster 2003), p49]

…we suffer from what [Plascher] calls the ‘domestication of transcendence’ (Plascher 1996). God no longer comes to us strangely. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is no longer a startling figure. He is benign, friendly, overly familiar. Consequently, the Spirit who raised our Lord Jesus from the dead is no longer a Holy Spirit, that is, other, transcendent, different, or, to use Brueggemann again, evasive, irascible, polyvalen. Rather, this Spirit is a terribly familiar Spirit, whom we have made into our own family likeness: the evasive has been captured; the irascible has been broken and controlled; the polyvalent has been reduced to a single theology economy.

[Graham McFarlane, in Walker and Aune (eds.), On Revival: A Critical Examination (Paternoster 2003), p46]

…the problem is that revivalistic pneumatologies inevitably collapse into various forms of evidentialism. That is, revival is deemed to have occurred on the grounds that certain phenomena, usually charismatic, are evidenced. The problem with this, put bluntly, is that the phenomena inevitably becomes ends in themselves. In time, a vicious circle of cause and effect emerges, somewhat similar to the revivalist dog repeatedly chasing its own tail. In such instances, ‘revivalism’ becomes simply a catchword for the more insidious ‘human technology for producing “revival”‘ (Piggin 2000:1)

[Graham McFarlane, in Walker and Aune (eds.), On Revival: A Critical Examination (Paternoster 2003), p46]

… the holiness of God is a vital feature of revival. This cannot be denied… There is absolutely no doubt that revival brings a sense of the judgement of God and an awful realisation of his purity and our compromises. In revival times, one of the primary works of the Spirit is certainly conviction and repentance, as people cry out for mercy and come to the Cross for salvation and forgiveness. None of this should be forgotten, lest we will fall into the trap of crass sentimentality, emphasising intimacy at the expense of purity.

[Mark Stibbe, in Walker and Aune (eds.), On Revival: A Critical Examination (Paternoster 2003), p38]

Nevertheless, he immediately makes the point that the love of God “has found far too little emphasis in revival theology.” That may be true, but surely the mercy, Cross and forgiveness of God are all expressions of the love of God?