Christian Apologetics Slides... Feb 2013 - Copy.ppt

Christian Apologetics
Introductory
Discussion

Part I
Where Shall We Start?
 Philosophy as a source of Truth;
 Somethingness or Nothingness?
 Branches of Philosophy
-Metaphysics; Cases of reality
-Axiology; Cases of value
-Epistemology; Cases of true knowledge
-Aesthetics ; Cases of true beauty

Continued….
 Science as a source of Truth
-Not concerned about Origins but Nature itself
-Theology is more concerned on God as the source of every
knowledge.
-Theology may be understood as;
the natural perception of existence in Humanity. It is an
attempt of putting religious, or biblical or any sort of belief in a
systematic language and tradition/dogma.
-The Bible has key role responding to such questions. It is also
the foundation to theology Proper/ Systematic Theology. For
example see Ex 20:3-17 much condensed in a systematic way
in the sermon delivery of Jesus in Matt 22:37-40.

Faith/Reason
 Christianity as a reasonable choice-Christian
Rationalism
 Radical Distinction between faith and reason-
Christian Agnosticism
 Faith as a bridge towards reason or the other way
round
 Faith is a self establishing element-Autonomous
Christianity

title: Faith and Reason From Plato to Plantinga : An
Introduction to Reformed Epistemology
 author: Hoitenga, Dewey J.
 publisher: State University of New York Press
 isbn10 | asin: 0791405907
 print isbn13: 9780791405901
 ebook isbn13: 9780585057477
 language: English
 subject God--Knowableness--History of doctrines,
Reformed Church--Doctrines--History,
 Reformed Church--Doctrines, Plato--Contributions in
 doctrine of knowableness of God, Augustine,--Saint,
 Bishop of Hippo--Contributions in doctrine of
knowable

Contents
Preface ix
 1 Knowledge and Belief: Plato 1
 Two Theories of Knowledge and Belief
 The Republic Approach;
 The Theaetetus Approach;
 Ever since Plato proposed them, there have been
two main theories of knowledge and belief. One of
them,
 presented in his Republic, is that knowledge and
belief are two different and opposite states of mind,
similar in

Plato…
 some formal respects, but with knowledge in no way
being definable in terms of belief.
 The second view, suggested already in the Meno but
explored in detail later in the Theaetetus, is that the
difference between knowledge and belief is not
so absolute, that knowledge is actually a form of
belief, so that it must be defined in terms of belief.
In this view, knowledge is true belief accompanied by
an account, as Plato puts it, or,
 in the language of contemporary philosophers,
knowledge is justified true belief.

Plato…Knowledge Vs Belief
 Propositions
 Acquaintance/friendly and Infallibility/reliability
 Knowledge as Justified True Belief
 The Vision of the Good/Plato

2 Faith: Abraham 35
 Faith as Trust, Belief, and Obedience
 Faith: Human and Divine
 Human Testimony and the Existence of God
 Divine Faith vs. Knowledge of God in the Bible

God and the Philosophers: Religion and Medieval Philosophy
..refer to…the book…“ A Short History of Philosophy” by Robert C.
Solomon & Kathleen M.Higgins pp 79-174
 The chapter begins by discussing that religion has
preceded Philosophy by thousand years, at least in a
narrow sense
 and the difference between philosophy and religion
is often captured in the distinction between reason
and faith, where in actuality it is difficult to discern.

See Robert C Solomon…
 In contrast to the influence of the mid-eastern
religions upon the western world,
 the philosophical world views of ancient China and
India (especially Buddhism and Hinduism)
 are not focused on humanities relationship to a
single God (80).

 The first theme is the no doubt pre-historic,
primordial sense that we share our world with
other beings.
 The truth for most people and most philosophers,
too, is that the world is rich with animated
inhabitants. (81).

 The second theme is justice, either in the counter
relationship between the ancestors and creatures,
an all powerful loving God and sometimes wrathful,
 or through karma like in Hinduism and so on. The

Third and finally, virtually all
religions embrace as a
theme is some possibility
of a personal essence
which continues after
death and, perhaps, lives
again (83)

Robert C Solomon…
 Traditional Hindu mythology makes much of the idea
that all of deities are in some sense manifestations of
the one God (henotheism),
 and some Vedanta philosophers have further
elaborated the argument that Brahman is the only
God-indeed, the only substantial being(85).
 What most unites them is that all three religions have
as central themes the suffering of life (dukkha) and
the notion of “release” or “liberation” (nirvana in
Buddhism, Moksha in Hinduism and Jainism (86).

Robert C Solomon….
 The Wisdom of East III: Lao-Tzu, and Taoism
 Confucianism and Taoism are two of the major
currents in Chinese thought and religion.
 Lao-Tzu’s philosophy was primarily focused on the
means for achieving wisdom, which he believed to
be a process of attuning the inner person to the
rhythms of nature-the Tao, the way of the universe.
 Simplicity, the avoidance of artificiality, is the way to
wisdom (96).The greatest virtue, according to Lao-
Tzu, is acting naturally and without resistance
(sometimes translated “non-action” woo wei).

Robert C Solomon…
 From Athens to Jerusalem: Judaism, Christianity
and Islam
 The three major religions of the western world,
Judaism Christianity and Islam, can be thought of
as a single family.
 All grew out of the same region of the Middle East,
and all the three focused their center on the
singular city of Jerusalem, all three claim the
common ancestry of Abraham. And most
important of all, all three are profoundly
monotheistic, devoted in their belief in one God.
 For Philo, the same God of the Jews had inspired

Robert C Solomon….
 later interpreters of Plato called Neo-Platonism.
 The most influential Platonist thinker was Plotinus
(204-270 C.E.). Plotinus correlated the good
(supreme mind) in
 Plato as the God in Christian thought,
 For Plotinus the soul is in some sense divine and
there is no evil in the world …… therefore there is
no problem.
 At worst, we encounter an absence of Good, a lack

Robert C Solomon…
 Augustine and the Inner Life of the Spirit
 Saint Augustine (354-430 C.E.), eventually
bequeathed Plotinus’s message that evil was only
the absence of good to generations of Christians.
 Perhaps Augustine’s greatest single contribution to
western philosophy (and not only Christian thinking)
was his emphasis on one’s personal, inner life
 with this the relationship between God and the
human soul as the central concern of religion
(123-124).

Robert C Solomon…
 Thinking God: Anselm, Abelard, Aquinas and
scholasticism
 Just as the “peripatetic School” most often refers to
the Islamic Philosophical tradition of the Middle
ages, Scholasticism is the general term used to refer
to the medieval thought practices in the Christian
west approximately between 1050-1350, a thought
that was grounded in Aristotle’s logic (142).
 Besides sharing the basic method, the scholastics
shared a commitment to the fundamental premises
of the catholic faith and a belief that human reason
could be utilized to extend the truths learned in
revelation.

Robert C Solomon…
 Peter Abelard (1079-1144) had unorthodox
applications of logic to theology which caused him to
be condemned twice by the church(143). He had an
excuse for sin as only evil intention.
 He also has married to Heloise secretly despite
his theological and philosophical commitment which
later grew to extant erotic love correspondence and
then after, he was castrated by Heloise’s uncle and
renewed his vow.
 As a philosopher, however, Abelard was primarily
interested in logic, or , more accurately, in what we
now would call the philosophy of language. Abelard

Robert C Solomon…
 Thomas Aquinas (Thomas of Aquino, 1225-1274) is
the culminating figure of Scholasticism. His most
significant and influential philosophical works are the
multivolume Summa Contra Gentiles (A summary
against the Gentiles)and his(incomplete) Summa
Theologica (A summary of theology).
 Thomas aimed to show that Christian faith was
grounded in reason and that the law inherent in
nature is rational.
 Thomas endorsed Aristotle’s thought of reason and
made Christianity to have high regard for the natural
world.

Robert C Solomon…
 The Reformation: Luther and His Progeny(1483-
1546)
 The reformation begun when Martin Luther, an
Augustinian Friar, nailed “95 theses” on the door of
the church at Wittenberg on October 31,1517.
 Drawing on Augustinian Philosophy, Luther
emphasized the sinful nature of humanity (154-155).
Luther opposed to scholasticism and was no fan of
Aristotle.
 He insisted that faith alone was essential to salvation
which also amounted to a denial of the Catholic
doctrine of the sacraments particularly the mediation

Rober C Solomon….
 Against this Erasmus and More, were caught within
the counter reformation. (160).
 The first is the Dutch humanist Erasmus(1466?-
1536), a devout but outspoken reformer who locked
horns with the church but nevertheless refused to
join the reformation(160).
 The second is his friend sir Thomas More(1478-
1535), who served as chancellor of England under
the infamous Henry VIII, and was also known for his
classic work Utopia(1515)meaning ‘no place’ and
‘a good place’, which like Plato’s republic, provides
a detailed blueprint for an ideal society (162).

Robert C Solomon…
 Then follows the renaissance, (probably from the
mid-14th C-to at least 1600, with its watchword
‘humanism’.

Robert C Solomon…
 A good deal of pre-colonial African philosophy can
be characterized by means of the twin notions of
tribalism and a special sense of identity with nature.
 Traditional African tribes tend to see personhood as
something achieved over time by means of
becoming a part of one’s community (170).
 As far as African attitude towards nature is
concerned it (and this would apply to many of the
tribes of North America and the South pacific, too)
embraces animism, the belief that entities through
out nature are endowed with souls, often thought to
be souls of ancestors who are no longer individually

Robert C Solomon…
 The core Mesoamerican (that is, the Area comprising
Mexico and Central America) philosophy was a belief
in three levels of time and reality-ordinary, mythical
and divine (172-174).

6 The Universal Awareness of God: John
Calvin 143
 Immediacy and Vitality
 Faith as Knowledge
 The Immediacy of Our Knowledge of God
 The Vitality of Our Knowledge of God
 The Effects of the Fall
 The Effects of Grace
 Faith Seeking Understanding

7 Properly Basic Beliefs: Alvin
Plantinga 175
 The Revival of Knowledge as Justified True Belief
 Belief in God as Properly Basic
 Knowledge vs. Belief
 Noetic Faculties Working Properly
 Reformed Anthropology
 Reformed Metaphysics

Truth
 What is Truth? Where do we get it? What are the
criteria's?
 Can we consider Theology as one of the sciences?
Knowledge or Revelation?
 Therefore, according to Bernard Ramm, the issue
will finally be left for a choice; but the choice must be
a responsible and reasonable choice…

Criteria for a Choice
 A Choice must be a representative of great
options….
 A choice is still open for more disclosure or
entailment. This is true even for science….

Procedures to deal with Doubters
 Atheist-Militant; Virtual; Lazy
 Skeptic-Nothing can be foundational
 Humanist-God is our own mind
 Existentialist-believes that the world of Fact and
Faith are divorced
 Cynic-Little Hope or nothing, negative, pessimist
Solution;
*Bring them the word of God and believe that you will
be aided supernaturally-a regenerating faith will
occur by the Holy Spirit

Part II
Seeming inconsistency Within the biblical Narratives
 The seeming historical and linguistic discrepancies
in the Old Testament against its Inspirational
authority and Inerrancy. Examples are; firstly, the
record of the anointing Saul, the first king of Israel in
1st Sam with three seemingly contradictory traditions
in the first 15 chapters. (Ch 1;1/ ch
2;13/3;1/5;5/9;9b/10;1-3;8;12b;19-23/11;14/13;1;7-
14/15;1) See also Gen 1;1/ and 1;4;7
 Secondly, Graff and Wellhowsen’s observation of
“Scissors and Paste” ; in the Pentateuchal texts from
preexisting sources such as Sumerian; Babylonian;
Assyrian, as all are dated 2100-1100 B.C.E, which
these documents are said to predate the Old

Inconsistency…
 Third, parallels of traditions between Israel and
Mesopotamia discovered in Archeological findings
(the 1st 9 Chs of Genesis with Atra- hasis and the
Galgamesh Epic; similarity in Laws and Legal
matters; similar poetic literatures showing that one
copied the other) etc.
 Fourth, is the pro-Hitler activism by Arthur Bonus
(1914), the National Socialism against Zionism,
which dumped the German Church into struggle of
belief or unbelief in the inerrancy of the Bible and
truthfulness of the Biblical Israel.

Reliability of the Scriptures
Read Walter C. Kaiser…pp 15…
 How did the OT originate?
-2 Esdras 14:37-47, written about 100 A.D says Ezra
Wrote everything as he was in deep ecstasy after
drinking a strong wine.
--The many ways in Heb 1:1 tell that sometimes God
reveals His will Face to face; such as to Moses,
through inspired lyrics, through observation of the
wise men, Visions, dreams etc…
-In this process Gen 2:4;5:1;6:9;10:1;11:27 are taken
as basic sources

Continued….. …
--Hebrew way of understanding the origins of scriptures
is in three steps of inspirations
1-Inspird Utterance
2-Inspired Writings and Books
3-Collection of those books (Canon/Recognition)
-this process took more or less 1000yrs, the years in
between 1400-400 BC.

Continued…
 Most probably four books of Moses were collected
1st
 Next the Deuteronomistic History
 Next later Prophets (Dan 9:2)
 Then a progressive recognition of scriptures TA-NA-
KH

Then what is the Bible for us today?
 It is inspired
 - as the Holy Spirit inspired the utterance even
during the oral tradition stage
 - as the Holy Spirit still initiated, controlled, guided
also protected whoever participated in the writing
process
 -the Holy Spirit also made the book realization and
collection and recognition to be true……

What is the Bible for us today?…
 It is inerrant
 -as far as the author's intention and God’s ultimate
message is concerned…not necessarily the syntax,
or documentation of events etc etc…
 It is infallible and authoritative for life and practice
 -as it truly transforms life in every age everywhere;
anytime…

Part III
The Nature and Existence of God
 Read the book “the Nicene Creed illuminated by
modern thought” by Gedds McGregor
 The relationship of nature and God
-Creation contradistinguished from emanation(
Augustine; Aquinas; John Calvin etc..)
-God is a totaliterator, meaning wholly other than the
Universe (Karl Barth)

Continued…
– What do we mean by creating?
-Bringing something out of nothing (ex-nihilo), meaning God
Himself emerged out of nothing.
-In the beginning there was nothing (Phil) Or God created the
heavens and the earth (Gen 1) Or there was the Word and
the Word was God Himself…(Jn 1)
-Bringing something out of another something.
-Bringing something out of something but the “something”
cannot mean anything other than God Himself.

Continued…
Has the eternally self-existent and self-sufficient God need to
create at all?
Is creation a second stage after thought for God or eternally
part of God’s nature and His decree?
If this is an afterthought act then His Omniscience will be
questioned. If this is part of God’s eternal decree then we
imply that God and nature are one in some aspects.
As God is Omni-yes he can create and the Bible says so (Gen
1:1; Jn 1:1). But why?
May be out of His good will. May be out of His love. May be
He can’t do otherwise. If he can’t do otherwise then His

Continued…
 Does God pour out the universe as the Sun pours
out its light or does he decide to bring it as an act of
His will?
 Is nature an occurrence or an act?
 Has God made the universe out of nothing? This
looks philosophically non-sensical and scientifically
unconvincing.

Continued…
 But what if the authors of the creed were to say that
God made the universe out of nothing other than
Himself?
 Nothingness as the cause of something or
something as the cause of another something…
-Has God created at a specific point of time or he
continued to create eternally as we habitually call
Him ‘a creator’?

God’s Existence
 Is There a God? What is the proof? Can we prove
History?
-Apostriory pointers-reasoning from the effect to the
cause; Look outside and come up with conclusions.
Motion, change, dynamism; who moves it all? Must be
a prime mover; the first cause or uncaused cause;
or an excellent order and dynamic kinship between
parts of nature (Teleological argument)…

Continued…
 A priory arguments
-Check into your own nature: Innate ideas, the idea of
being, (Existence/Ontology).
-Do you believe you are existing? Descartes said “I
think therefore I am”. May be yes; therefore you are
interacting and your very existence proves the
existence of God.

Part IV
Uniqueness of Jesus Christ
 What makes Christ Unique? Can we prove his
incarnation Or Resurrection?
 Some say he is unique because he is the Only
Begotten;
 was born of a Virgin;
 Was born without a human father;

Uniqueness of Jesus Christ….
-Uniqueness should not necessarily be a matter of
argument, as everybody is unique; even an
individual today is not the same individual tomorrow
-Therefore in the antique language of the creed “Jesus
Christ is the only ‘begotten Son’ of God” or “the only
Son of the only God”.
-This means there is no other who is the same in
essence with God but Jesus also both Fully Human
and Fully Divine.

His Humanity Vs Divinity
 Nestorius-So distinguished between the two;
Mary cannot be the mother of God as one cannot
give birth to his/her eldest (421-431).
 Two natures conjugated with moral union not real
(Merging of wills rather than an essential union)
 All his concern was to protect the divine immutability;
a distinction between human and divine acts

Humanity Vs Divinity Continued…
 Cyril- went for a perfect union, as in the union of the
soul and body in human nature, one entity out of
duality (Weinandy :182–92), where the soul and
body coexist under one entity but keep their identity,
which this argument of Cyril actually stands as a
strong case for soteriology than Christology.
 Schaff adds; apart from Cyril’s partisan excesses, he
powerfully and successfully represented the
important truth of the unity of the person of Christ
against the abstract diaphysitism of Nestorius

– In an unqualified manner one can say that, as man, the Son
of God had experiences he never had before because he
never existed as man before—not the least of which are
suffering and death.
– This is what, for Cyril, a proper understanding of the
Incarnation requires and affirms, and this is what the
communication of idioms so remarkably, clearly, and even
scandalously safeguards, advocates, and confesses
(Russell :105).

 When we study Euthyches in this line of
discussion; against Nestorius, he favored a total mix
with total assimilation of one by the other to the point
of losing former peculiar qualities, as far as total
confusion of the identities.
 This was also done away as Monophysite heresy
(Haggland : 98).

What makes Cyril different from
Monophysites?
 In contrast to Cyril, Euthyches doesn’t make a difference
between the natures after the union
 but the Christology of Cyril clearly referred the union of the two
natures making a comparison of the natural body and soul, not
to be confused and not to be separated but under one person.
 Therefore Cyril’s analysis is totally different from the concept of
Monophysis and should rather be termed as Miaphysis.

Humanity Vs Divinity Continued….
 Nestorius only focused on the impassibility of God
but never treated the possibility of passibility in God
the Son, in the nature of man.
 This is exactly why Cyril asserts that he who is
impassible as God actually is passible as man
therefore the impassible suffered.
 To say, in accordance with Cyril, that ‘the Impassible
suffers’ is not, then, to be incoherent, but to state the
very heart of the incarnational mystery.
 Firstly, the term ‘the Impassible’ guarantees that it is

Chalcedon
 As a result it seems fair to assert that Chalcedon is
born with such antecedent Christological thoughts.
 Nestorius, Euthyches, Cyril and even Arius were
referred either negatively or positively. So the
genesis of Chalcedon was in any of the forerunner
Christological analytic attempts.
 For example, three times the Council employs the
Cyrillian phrase ‘one and the same’ (ἕνα καὶ τὸν
αὐτὸν) and five times speaks of ‘the same’ (τὸν
αὐτὸν).

Chalcedon Continued…
 It is one and the same Son who is ‘perfect in
Godhead’ and ‘perfect in manhood, truly God and
truly man … consubstantial (ὁμοούσιον) with the
Father in Godhead, and the same consubstantial
(ὁμοούσιον) with us in manhood’.
 The thought evolution led to Nicene Creed 431 A.D.,
which both the East and West repeated as standard
and actually a theory held to the Chalcedonian
theology (Latourette :573).

Chalcedon Continued…
 Then Chalcedon tried to balance the above plays by
respectfully recognizing the two natures avoiding the
extreme of separation in Nestorius ( which made
Nestorius to be banned at 451 A.D decision
(Haggland : 98)
 and, the notion of perfect union in Cyril,
 also the notion of assimilation in the thoughts of
Euthyches.

A bit Biblical Exegesis…
 The beginning verses of John Chapter 1:1-4
narrated the God-Logos who was ‘coming out of
God’ with a functional duty (creation and salvation).
 Its parallel is the creation tone (Gen 1:1), which is
more functional than ontological. The ‘Word’, who is
God (ontologically), was coming (functionally) to this
world.
 The Word ‘coming out’ was also ‘becoming’ man (Jn
1:14). What is natural is natural therefore no change;
what is ontological will remain ontological.

Bib Continued…
 However, what is functional or relational is adjustable
to any context therefore the becoming of the Word
into flesh (Incarnation) was made possible.
 As we find it in the discussions of Fauset and David,
after each verse, then, the reader must say, “It was
He who is thus, and thus, and thus described who
was made flesh.” (Fauset A.R; and David: 1997).
 It was him ‘the God, the eternal, the unchangeable’
as we find in Turner also (Turner :17) that θεὸς ἦν
ὁ λόγος meant the same thing as ὁ λόγος ἦν ὁ θεός;
who became flesh.

Continued…
 “Analytical Lexicon of the Greek New Testament”
puts it saying ‘and the Word became flesh, Cf. ὁ
λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο (Jn. 1:14).
 Following this line of thought, John 1: 18 says, “No
one has seen God at any time; the only begotten
God…. .
 “ At the conclusion of his prologue to the Gospel, the
evangelist states emphatically, “God… [First in the
Greek word order] no one has ever seen.” 1:18.

Continued…
 The question is, if the divine is with full heat within
the incarnation, how can the humiliation and
crucifixion be a reality?
 To say it has been made zero, may not be close to
the seeming truth….
 but the divine empowerment must be seen managed
in restriction and deactivation up until the
resurrection, just for the mission of saving humanity.
This management is because of the “becoming”.
 Next issue is the whereabouts of the divine

Continued…
 The same tone seems to be implied in Philippians
2:6-8. A simple reading of the Philippians Text in
Chapter 2 verse 5-11, looks to have a structure like;
1-Vs 6; Christ’s being in the very nature of God: 2-
Vs 7-8: Christ’s becoming new form (incarnation): 3-
Vs 9-11;His exalted form.
 As the interest here is to find out the substantial
nature of Christ during the incarnation before the
resurrection, our exegesis of the book of Philippians,
in chapter 2 has focused on Vs 7-8.
 What do the words “emptied”; “humbled” imply?

Continued…
 This doesn’t bring any difference as far as meaning
is concerned. When we see the next statements, the
degree of variance is more as the phrase “being
found in human form” is also said “in human
likeness” and an extension of a word “in
appearance” in the New American Bible version.
 What confuses may be the meaning of “human
form”; “human likeness”; and “appearance”. Does
this imply that Jesus was not really in a human
likeness, in the form of a servant, as this is
measured in reality?

the Greek ὁμοίωμα7likeness (Rom
8:3),…..
 If we follow the Greek ὁμοίωμα /likeness (Rom 8:3),
it denies nothing of the content of μορφή but of itself
indicates simply that in every respect he was like a
man.
 When the outward appearance of Jesus is measured
in content and likeness (μορφή, ὁμοίωμα), Jesus
never missed any of the organs which any human
being could have.
 F. F. Bruce adds that such expressions as “born in
the likeness of man” and “found in human form” in Vs
7, should not mislead us; apart from the form, the
consideration that they may belong to a pre-Pauline

Introduction to Pneumatology
 Reasons to study it
-The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit
-The place of the Holy Spirit and His gifts in the
ecclesiastical circles
-His person and his empowerment; one and two; first
and second

Reasons Continued…
-The east joined the ecumenical circle
-the special celebration of pneumatology in WCC,
1997-Christology, 1998 God the Father,1999- Come
Holy Spirit and renew the face of the earth

Reasons Continued…
 Historically the Holy Spirit is an emphasis of the East
where Christology is an emphasis of the West yet
both camps share the same theology of Trinity

The Place of Pneumatology on
Systematic Theology
 Trinity and Christology were almost settled and have
been independently treated within systematic
studies.
 Where as pneumatology was treated in either
ecclesiology or soteriology which hints less respect
to the subject.
 Reasons for these are many but ambiguous
experiences in early history may be taken as one.

General Biblical perspectives
 The Old Testament is clear Concerning the Father
 The New Testament is clear concerning the Son
 Treatment of the Person of the Holy Spirit within the
Biblical context also in church history is not clear as
it is to the Father and the Son

Continued
 Cyprians series of visions as a positive remark
towards the Holy Spirit
 Irenaeus modeled the Spirit as a renewing wine
 The incarnation has anointed humanity by the Holy
Spirit. Eastern Fathers as Athanasius, Gregory of
Nyssa, Gregory of Nazzianzus, Cyril of Alexandra
 According to Cyril Christ has filled the whole body
by the life giving Spirit
 As we survey for issues of divinity, Athanasius and
Basil of Caesarea chose honorable silence
 The cappadocean fathers were very convinced of
the divinity and co-equality of the H.S with the father
and the Son

Historical Unfolding of the Holy
Spirit
 Charismatic Experiences were as a norm in the first
two centuries after Christ. Clement set rules for
application of gifts.
 Montanism-Negative as well as positive attitudes…
 Emerging bishops in the first three centuries were
being recruited as of their charismatic experiences
 Montanous divided the church as the church of the
Spirit and the Church of the Bishops for the first Time

Medieval Perspectives
 Hediegard Begon 1098-1179- a herbalist, medical
technologist, composer, visionary prophetess,
excellent preacher, theologian, multitalented woman,
was very sensitive of the Holy Spirit saying He is
linked with “veriditas” or greening.

Continued…
 Philosophical Pneumatology BY Hegel (1770-
1831):Truth as a process of dynamic reasoning, the
Spirit or Giest/gist is a comprehensive term for min
or spirit in Germen theology

Continued…
 The Spirit as “a kiss of the beloved” Bernard
Clairovaux, 1090-1153
 OT is the age of the father; NT is the age of the Son
and church history is the age of the Spirit;
Bonaventure, 1217-1274
 Trinitarian pneumatology by Catherine of Sienna-
1347-1380, the Father as the Table, the Son as the
Food and the Holy Spirit as the Servant

The Spirit in Pentecostal
Charismatic Circles
 The spark at Topeka Kansas, USA, Charles F.
Penham 1901 as the return of the full glory of
Pentecostal movement
 Students at Bethel Bible school spoke in tongues
while they study the book of Acts
 New developed message and practice of Pentecost
by William J Seymour-a Holiness preacher at Azuza
St in Losangeles California.
 Currently the Pentecostal movement has grown from
Zero to 400 million in only 90 years where the
Pentecostals make up 20% of Christianity now.
 The category now goes like Classical Pentecostals;
Charismatics; third wave etc…

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