Fivefold Gospel and Spirit Christology: Pentecostal and Ecumenical Explorations

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 doctrine 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 pentecostal 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 christologies, suggest a way forward for this facet of the relationship between pneumatology 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.

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 relationship 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 purposes, although not without ambiguity. For example, he states that pneumatology 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 “fourfold” 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.