Charismatic Revival As a Sign of the Times (Part I)
by Fr. Seraphim Rose
"COSTA DEIR TOOK THE MIKE and told us how his heart was burdened for the Greek Orthodox Church. He asked Episcopalian Father Driscoll to pray that the Holy Spirit would sweep that Church as He was sweeping the Catholic Church. While Father Driscoll prayed, Costa Deir wept into the mike. Following the prayer was a long message in tongues and an equally long interpretation saying that the prayers had been heard and the Holy Spirit would blow through and awaken the Greek Orthodox Church. By this time there was so much weeping and calling out that I backed away from it all emotionally... Yet I heard myself saying a surprising thing, 'Some day when we read how the Spirit is moving in the Greek Orthodox Church, let us remember that we were here the moment that it began'" [1].
Six months after the event here described occurred at an interdenominational "charismatic" meeting in Seattle, Orthodox Christians did indeed begin to hear that the "charismatic spirit"was moving in the Greek Orthodox Church. Beginning in January, 1972, Fr. Eusebius Stephanou's Logos began to report on this movement, which had begun earlier in several Greek and Syrian parishes in America and now has spread to a number of others, being actively promoted by Fr. Eusebius. After the reader has read the description of this "spirit" from the words of its leading representatives in the pages that follow, he should not find it difficult to believe that in very fact it was evoked and instilled into the Orthodox world by just such urgent entreaties of "interdenominational Christians." For if one conclusion emerges from this description, it must certainly be that the spectacular present-day "charismatic revival" is not merely a phenomenon of hyper-emotionalism and Protestant revivalism-although these elements are also strongly present-but is actually the work of a "spirit" who can be invoked and who works "miracles."
The question we shall attempt to answer in these pages is: what or who is this spirit? As Orthodox Christians we know that it is not only God Who works miracles; the devil has his own "miracles," and in fact he can and does imitate virtually every genuine miracle of God. We shall therefore attempt in these pages to be careful to "try the spirits, whether they are of God" (1 John 4:1). We shall begin with a brief historical background, since no one can deny that the "charismatic revival" has come to the Orthodox world from the Protestant and Catholic denominations, which in turn received it from the Pentecostal sects.
The Pentecostal Movement
THE MODERN PENTECOSTAL MOVEMENT, although it did have 19th-century antecedents, dates its origin precisely to 7:00 p.m. on New Year's Eve of the year 1900. For some time before that moment a Methodist minister in Topeka, Kansas, Charles Parham, as an answer to the confessed feebleness of his Christian ministry, had been concentratedly studying the New Testament with a group of his students with the aim of discovering the secret of the power of Apostolic Christianity. The students finally deduced that this secret lay in the "speaking in tongues" which, they thought, always accompanied the reception of the Holy Spirit in the Acts of the Apostles. With increasing excitement and tension, Parham and his students resolved to pray until they themselves received the "Baptism of the Holy Spirit" together with speaking in tongues. On December 31, 1900, they prayed from morning to night with no success, until one young girl suggested that one ingredient was missing in this experiment: "laying on of hands." Parham put his hands on the girl's head, and immediately she began to speak in an "unknown tongue." Within three days there were many such "Baptisms," including that of Parham himself and twelve other ministers of various denominations, and all of them were accompanied by speaking in tongues. Soon the revival spread to Texas, and then it had spectacular success at a small Black church in Los Angeles. Since then it has spread throughout the world and claims ten million members.
For half a century the Pentecostal Movement remained sectarian and everywhere it was received with hostility by the established denominations. Then, however, speaking in tongues began gradually to appear in the denominations themselves, although at first it was kept rather quiet, until in 1960 an Episcopalian priest near Los Angeles gave wide publicity to this fact by publicly declaring that he had received the "Baptism of the Holy Spirit" and spoke in tongues. After some initial hostility, the "charismatic revival" gained the official or unofficial approval of all the major denominations and has spread rapidly both in America and abroad. Even the once rigid and exclusivist Roman Catholic Church, once it took up the "charismatic renewal" in earnest in the late 1960's, has been enthusiastically swept up in this movement. In America, the Roman Catholic bishops gave their approval to the movement in l969, and the few thousand Catholics involved in it then have since increased to untold hundreds of thousands, who gather periodically in local and nationwide "charismatic" conferences whose participants are sometimes numbered in the tens of thousands. The Roman Catholic countries of Europe have also become enthusiastically "charismatic," as witnessed by the "charismatic" conference in the Summer, 1978, in Ireland, attended by thousands of Irish priests. Not long before his death Pope Paul VI met with a delegation of "charismatics" and proclaimed that he too is a pentecostal.
What can be the reason for such a spectacular success of a "Christian" revival in a seemingly "post-Christian" world? Doubtless the answer lies in two factors: first, the receptive ground which consists of those millions of "Christians" who feel that their religion is dry, over-rational, merely external, without fervency or power; and second, the evidently powerful "spirit" that lies behind the phenomena, which is capable, under the proper conditions, of producing a multitude and variety of "charismatic" phenomena, including healing, speaking in tongues, interpretation, prophecy-and, underlying all of these, an overwhelming experience which is called the "Baptism of (or in, or with) the Holy Spirit."
But what precisely is this "spirit"? Significantly, this question is seldom if ever even raised by followers of the "charismatic revival"; their own "baptismal" experience is so powerful and has been preceded by such an effective psychological preparation in the form of concentrated prayer and expectation that there is never any doubt in their minds but that they have received the Holy Spirit and that the phenomena they have experienced and seen are exactly those described in the Acts of the Apostles. Too, the psychological atmosphere of the movement is often so one-sided and tense that it is regarded as the very blasphemy against the Holy Spirit to entertain any doubts in this regard. Of the hundreds of books that have already appeared on the movement, only a very few express any even slight doubts as to its spiritual validity.
In order to obtain a better idea of the distinctive characteristics of the "charismatic revival," let us examine some of the testimonies and practices of its participants, always checking them against the standard of Holy Orthodoxy. These testimonies will be taken, with a few exceptions as noted, from the apologetical books and magazines of the movement, written by people who are favorable to it and who obviously publish only that material which seems to support their position. Further, we shall make only minimal use of narrowly Pentecostal sources, confining ourselves chiefly to Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox participants in the contemporary "charismatic revival."
The "Ecumenical" Spirit of the "Charismatic Revival"
BEFORE QUOTING THE "CHARISMATIC" testimonies, we should take note of a chief characteristic of the original Pentecostal Movement which is seldom mentioned by "charismatic" writers, and that is that the number and variety of Pentecostal sects is astonishing, each with its own doctrinal emphasis, and many of them having no fellowship with the others. There are "Assemblies of God," "Churches of God," "Pentecostal" and "Holiness" bodies, "Full Gospel" groups, etc., many of them divided into smaller sects. The first thing that one would have to say about the "spirit" that inspires such anarchy is that it certainly is not a spirit of unity, in sharp contrast to the Apostolic church of the first century to which the movement professes to be returning. Nevertheless, there is much talk especially in the "charismatic revival" within the denominations in the past decade, of the "unity" which it inspires. But what kind of unity is this?-the true unity of the Church which Orthodox Christians of the first and twentieth centuries alike know, or the pseudo-unity of the Ecumenical Movement which denies that the Church of Christ exists?
The answer to this question is stated quite clearly by perhaps the leading "prophet" of 20th-century Pentecostalism David Du Plessis, who for the last twenty years has been actively spreading news of the "Baptism of the Holy Spirit" among the denominations of the World Council of Churches, in answer to a "voice" which commanded him to do so in 1951. "The Pentecostal revival within the churches is gathering force and speed. The most remarkable thing is that this revival is found in the so-called liberal societies and much less in the evangelical and not at all in the fundamentalist segments of Protestantism. The last-mentioned are now the most vehement opponents of this glorious revival because it is in the Pentecostal Movement and in the modernist World Council Movements that we find the most powerful manifestations of the Spirit" (Du Plessis, p. 28, [2]).
In the Roman Catholic Church likewise, the "charismatic renewal" is occurring precisely in "liberal" circles, and one of its results is to inspire even more their ecumenism and liturgical experimentation ("guitar masses" and the like); whereas traditionalist Catholics are as opposed to the movement as are fundamentalist Protestants. Without any doubt the orientation of the "charismatic revival" is strongly ecumenist. A "charismatic" Lutheran pastor, Clarence Finsaas, writes: "Many are surprised that the Holy Spirit can move also in the various traditions of the historic Church... whether the church doctrine has a background of Calvinism or Arminianism, this matters little, proving God is bigger than our creeds and that no denomination has a monopoly on Him" (Christenson, p. 99). An Episcopalian pastor, speaking of the "charismatic revival," reports that "ecumenically it is leading to a remarkable joining together of Christians of different traditions, mainly at the local church level" (Harper, p. 17). The California "charismatic" periodical Inter-Church Renewal is full of "unity" demonstrations such as this one: "The darkness of the ages was dispelled and a Roman Catholic nun and a Protestant could love each other with a strange new kind of love," which proves that "old denominational barriers are crumbling. Superficial doctrinal differences are being put aside for all believers to come into the unity of the Holy Spirit." The Orthodox priest Fr. Eusebius Stephanou believes that "this outpouring of the Holy Spirit is transcending denominational lines... The Spirit of God is moving... both inside and outside the Orthodox Church" (Logos, Jan., 1972, p. 12).
Here the Orthodox Christian who is alert to "try the spirits" finds himself on familiar ground, sown with the usual ecumenist cliches. And above all let us note that this new "outpouring of the Holy Spirit," exactly like the Ecumenical Movement itself, arises outside the Orthodox Church; those few Orthodox parishes that are now taking it up are obviously following a fashion of the times that matured completely outside the bounds of the Church of Christ.
But what is it that those outside the Church of Christ are capable of teaching Orthodox Christians? It is certainly true (no conscious Orthodox person will deny it) that Orthodox Christians are sometimes put to shame by the fervor and zeal of some Roman Catholics and Protestants for church attendance, missionary activities, praying together, reading the Scripture, and the like. Fervent non-Orthodox persons can shame the Orthodox, even in the error of their beliefs, when they make more effort to please God than many Orthodox people do while possessing the whole fullness of apostolic Christianity. The Orthodox would do well to learn from them and wake up to the spiritual riches in their own Church which they fail to see out of spiritual sloth or bad habits. All this relates to the human side of faith, to the human efforts which can be expended in religious activities whether one's belief is right or wrong.
The "charismatic" movement, however, claims to be in contact with God, to have found a means for receiving the Holy Spirit, the outpouring of God's grace. And yet it is precisely the Church, and nothing else, that our Lord Jesus Christ established as the means of communicating grace to men. Are we to believe that the Church is now to be superseded by some "new revelation" capable of transmitting grace outside the Church, among any group of people who may happen to believe in Christ but who have no knowledge or experience of the Mysteries (Sacraments) which Christ instituted and no contact with the Apostles and their successors whom He appointed to administer the Mysteries? No: it is as certain today as it was in the first century that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are not revealed in those outside the Church. The great Orthodox Father of the 19th century, Bishop Theophan the Recluse, writes that the gift of the Holy Spirit is given "precisely through the Sacrament of Chrismation, which was introduced by the Apostles in place of the laying on of hands" (which is the form the Sacrament takes in the Acts of the Apostles). "We all-who have been baptized and chrismated-have the gift of the Holy Spirit... even though it is not active in everyone." The Orthodox Church provides the means for making this gift active, and "there is no other path... Without the Sacrament of Chrismation, just as earlier without the laying on of hands of the Apostles, the Holy Spirit has never descended and never will descend" [3].
In a word, the orientation of the "charismatic revival" may be described as one of a new and deeper or "spiritual" ecumenism: each Christian "renewed" in his own tradition, but at the same time strangely united for it is the same experience with others equally "renewed" in their own traditions, all of which contain various degrees of heresy and impiety! This relativism leads also to openness to completely new religious practices, as when an Orthodox priest allows laymen to "lay hands" on him in front of the Royal Doors of an Orthodox church (Logos, April, 1972, p. 4).
The end of all this is the super-ecumenist vision of the leading Pentecostal "prophet," who says that many Pentecostals "began to visualize the possibility of the Movement becoming the Church of Christ in the closing days of time. However, this situation has completely changed during the past ten years. Many of my brethren are now convinced that the Lord Jesus Christ, the head of the Church, will pour out His Spirit upon all flesh and that the historic churches will be revived or renewed and then in this renewal be united by the Holy Spirit" (Du Plessis, p. 33). Clearly, there is no room in the "charismatic revival" for those who believe that the Orthodox Church is the Church of Christ. It is no wonder that even some Orthodox Pentecostals admit that in the beginning they were "suspicious of the Orthodoxy" of this movement (Logos, April, 1972, p. 9).
But now let us begin to look beyond the ecumenistic theories and practices of Pentecostalism to that which really inspires and gives strength to the "charismatic revival": the actual experience of the power of the "spirit."
"Speaking in Tongues"
IF WE LOOK CAREFULLY at the writings of the "charismatic revival," we shall find that this movement closely resembles many sectarian movements of the past in basing itself primarily or even entirely on one rather bizarre doctrinal emphasis or religious practice. The only difference is that the emphasis now is placed on a specific point which no sectarians in the past regarded as so central: speaking in tongues.
According to the constitution of various Pentecostal sects, "The Baptism of believers in the Holy Ghost is witnessed by the initial physical sign of speaking with other tongues" (Sherrill, p. 79). And not only is this the first sign of conversion to a Pentecostal sect or orientation: according to the best Pentecostal authorities, this practice must be continued or the "Spirit" may be lost. Writes David Du Plessis: "The practice of praying in tongues should continue and increase in the lives of those who are baptized in the Spirit, otherwise they may find that the other manifestations of the Spirit come seldom or stop altogether" (Du Plessis, p. 89). Many testify, as does one Protestant, that tongues "have now become an essential accompaniment of my devotional life" (Lillie, p. 50). And a Roman Catholic book on the subject, more cautiously, says that of the "gifts of the Holy Spirit" tongues "is often but not always the first received. For many it is thus a threshold through which one passes into the realm of the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit" (Ranaghan, p. 19).
Here already one may note an overemphasis that is certainly not present in the New Testament, where speaking in tongues has a decidedly minor significance, serving as a sign of the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2) and on two other occasions (Acts 10 and 19). After the first or perhaps the second century there is no record of it in any Orthodox source, and it is not recorded as occurring even among the great Fathers of the Egyptian desert, who were so filled with the Spirit of God that they performed numerous astonishing miracles, including raising the dead. The Orthodox attitude to genuine speaking in tongues, then, may be summed up in the words of Blessed Augustine (Homilies on John, VI:10): "In the earliest times "the Holy Spirit fell upon them that believed, and they spake with tongues" which they had not learned, "as the Spirit gave them utterance." These were signs adapted to the time. For it was fitting that there be this sign of the Holy Spirit in all tongues to show that the Gospel of God was to run through all tongues over the whole earth. That was done for a sign, and it passed away." And as if to answer contemporary Pentecostals with their strange emphasis on this point, Augustine continues: "Is it now expected that they upon whom hands are laid, should speak with tongues? Or when we imposed our hand upon these children, did each of you wait to see whether they would speak with tongues? And when he saw that they did not speak with tongues, was any of you so perverse of heart as to say, 'These have not received the Holy Spirit'?"
Modern Pentecostals, to justify their use of tongues, refer most of all to St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians (chs. 12-14). But St. Paul wrote this passage precisely because 'tongues' had become a source of disorder in the Church of Corinth; and even while he does not forbid them, he decidedly minimizes their significance. This passage, therefore, far from encouraging any modern revival of "tongues," should on the contrary discourage it‹especially when one discovers (as Pentecostals themselves admit) that there are other sources of speaking in tongues besides the Holy Spirit! As Orthodox Christians we already know that speaking in tongues as a true gift of the Holy Spirit cannot appear among those outside the Church of Christ; but let us look more closely at this modern phenomenon and see if it possesses characteristics that might reveal from what source it does come.
If we are already made suspicious by the exaggerated importance accorded to "tongues" by modern Pentecostals, we should be completely awakened about them when we examine the circumstances in which they occur.
Far from being given freely and spontaneously, without man's interference - as are the true gifts of the Holy Spirit- speaking in tongues can be caused to occur quite predictably by a regular technique of concentrated group "prayer" accompanied by psychologically suggestive Protestant hymns ("He comes! He comes!"), culminating in a "laying on of hands," and sometimes involving such purely physical efforts as repeating a given phrase over and over again (Koch, p. 24), or just making sounds with the mouth. One person admits that, like many others, after speaking in tongues, "I often did mouth nonsense syllables in an effort to start the flow of prayer-in-tongues" (Sherrill, p. 127); and such efforts, far from being discouraged, are actually advocated by Pentecostals. "Making sounds with the mouth is not 'speaking-in-tongues,' but it may signify an honest act of faith, which the Holy Spirit will honor by giving that person the power to speak in another language" (Harper, p. 11). Another Protestant pastor says: "The initial hurdle to speaking in tongues, it seems, is simply the realization that you must 'speak forth'...The first syllables and words may sound strange to your ear... They may be halting and inarticulate. You may have the thought that you are just making it up. But as you continue to speak in faith... the Spirit will shape for you a language of prayer and praise" (Christenson, p. 130). A Jesuit "theologian" tells how he put such advice into practice: "After breakfast I felt almost physically drawn to the chapel where I sat down to pray. Following Jim's description of his own reception of the gift of tongues, I began to say quietly to myself "la, la, la, la." To my immense consternation there ensued a rapid movement of tongue and lips accompanied by a tremendous feeling of inner devotion" (Gelpi, p. 1).
Can any sober Orthodox Christian possibly confuse these dangerous psychic games with the gifts of the Holy Spirit?! There is clearly nothing whatever Christian, nothing spiritual here in the least. This is the realm, rather, of psychic mechanisms which can be set in operation by means of definite psychological or physical techniques, and "speaking in tongues" would seem to occupy a key role as a kind of "trigger" in this realm. In any case, it certainly bears no resemblance whatever to the spiritual gift described in the New Testament, and if anything is much closer to shaministic "speaking in tongues" as practiced in primitive religions, where the shaman or witch doctor has a regular technique for going into a trance and then giving a message to or from a "god" in a tongue he has not learned [4].
In the pages that follow we shall encounter "charismatic" experiences so weird that the comparison with shamanism will not seem terribly far-fetched, especially if we understand that primitive shamanism is but a particular expression of a "religious" phenomenon which, far from being foreign to the modern West, actually plays a significant role in the lives of some contemporary "Christians:" mediumism. |
