Jesus before Pentecost by William P. Atkinson

Abstract

Reviewed by: Jesus before Pentecost by William P. Atkinson Martin W. Mittelstadt william p. atkinson, Jesus before Pentecost ( Cambridge: Lutterworth, 2016). Pp. ix + 222. Paper £17.95. Though Pentecostals generally welcome the label "people of the Spirit," they often receive ridicule for inadequate attention to the life of Jesus. William Atkinson, Senior Lecturer of Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies at London School of Theology, attempts to address such criticism. According to A., since Pentecost launches life in the Spirit, Pentecostals obviously seek models from the post-Pentecost communities described in Acts. Yet they also return to the life of Jesus, the consummate exemplar for a Spirit-filled life; Pentecostals seek to imitate and extend the life and ministry of Jesus into the current world, and they do so as Christians filled with the Spirit of Jesus. A., an ordained minister with the Elim Pentecostal Church, employs the Foursquare rubric—Jesus the savior, healer, baptizer, and soon-coming king—to link the historical Jesus to modern Pentecostal experience and mission. To do so, A. builds his methodological foundation upon a "hermeneutic of trust," a perspective that affirms historical reliability of the canonical Gospels. As the authors of the Gospels trust eyewitness testimony concerning Jesus (John 19:25-26; 20:2-5; Luke 1:1-4), A. affirms that the same Spirit of the living Jesus remains "mighty in word and deed" on the modern stage. If John trusted these stories, so should we; and if they happened then, they should happen now (pp. 16, 19). In a Pentecostal worldview, Jesus the savior offers more than hope for the life to come (p. 47). A. illustrates this through consistent use of Pentecostal sources, as in an Elim account on the immediate salvific benefits of an encounter with Jesus: "He broke the power of demons, forgave the sins of the guilty, restored the joy of mourners, healed those with broken bodies, offered salvation to sinners, and even raised the dead. … Wherever Jesus appeared, things and people changed" (p. 47). In a straightforward reading of the Gospels, Jesus saves people at sea and from illness, demonization, and physical death (p. 48). Jesus provides real food for the hungry, changes water to wine at a wedding feast, and, in order "to seek and save the lost" (Luke 19:10), reclines among the outcasts of society. Furthermore, Jesus the exorcist is not immune to personal attack (e.g., temptation and Gethsemane) but struggles with divine silence and absence (p. 65). For A., Pentecostals find in the Gospels not only a biography of Jesus but a pattern for their lives, a model for personal transformation, and the standard for contemporary mission. [End Page 720] Second, Pentecostals teach fervently on Jesus the healer (and exorcist). They reflect carefully on the "possible origins of illness; what Jesus' healings declared about his identity, and therefore indirectly about those who would seek to follow in his healing ministry; and the place of the atonement in healing" (p. 81). Once again, Jesus serves as a model for contemporary Pentecostals; in fact, failure to see Jesus as exemplar marginalizes both the historical Jesus and his mission and thus diminishes at least partial realization of Jesus's kingdom and his immediate challenge to Satan's grip on people. A. demonstrates that Pentecostal teaching emerges as (and remains) a defense of Jesus's healing ministry in a contemporary world bent on anti-supernaturalism. The third title refers to Jesus the baptizer in the Spirit. Though Pentecostals communicate that "Jesus was and is uniquely divine," they believe ardently that "Jesus had an anointing that others can also experience" (p. 117). Jesus gathers more than an audience of followers; he fashions multiple mission teams. He qualifies them to join his ministry of preaching, healing, and exorcism by giving them authority and power. Because of this, Pentecostals proclaim a Jesus not simply able "to conduct his mission by means of his innate divinity, true as that divinity is, but … a Jesus enabled to minister by means of the divine Spirit upon him" (p. 120). At Pentecost and beyond, Jesus extends his ministry through release of his enabling Spirit. Finally, Pentecostals emerge as twentieth-century restorationists, and Jesus the soon...