The Table Video

Todd Vasquez interviews visiting scholar Amos Yong. Among other topics, they discuss pentecostalism throughout church history.

Transcript

All right, my name is Todd Vasquez, I’m the Assistant Director here at the Center for Christian Thought at Biola University. I’m here with Professor Amos Yong, who is in residence with us at the center. And Amos, just wondering if you could tell us a little bit about yourself. You’re a Pentecostal theologian, you of a lot of work in Pentecostal theology. A number of people have different understandings of what Pentecostal means. I was just wondering if you’d maybe tell us a little bit about what it means to be a Pentecostal theologian and some of the work that you’ve done?

Thank you, Todd, I appreciate it. Thanks for the invitation and for this opportunity to chat with you a little bit. Yeah, Pentecostal theologian, maybe not too long ago and maybe even in some circles today, that’s still considered kind of an oxymoron, the mixture of Pentecostals and theology. Yeah, I grew up as a pastor’s kid. My dad was and remains an Assembly of God pastor. They still pastor our church, him and my mother, although it’s not officially affiliated with the Assemblies of God right now. But so I certainly grew up within the Assemblies of God. Born in Malaysia, so the first 10 years of my life, it was kind of Malaysian Assemblies of God version. And then after my parents moved to California to do work among Chinese speaking immigrants to northern California, it was an Assemblies of God church, Pentecostal church. So, after 10 years old, I was basically sort of living out a kind of immigrant Pentecostal community, but very much informed by sort of the North American Assemblies of God. The churches that were started in northern California among which my dad pastored were all considered to be what’s called whole missions congregations within the Assemblies of God denomination of this country. Yeah, so Pentecostalism by and large has a fairly long history of anti-intellectualism within it in various parts of it. And so even, I think, growing up I would hear jokes in high school, planning on going on to college and then maybe going on to seminary, jokes about going on to a cemetery, for example, right? Yeah, it’s familiar in other conservative, protestant traditions, as well. But certainly for Pentecostals even, again, ’60s, ’70s, that was still pretty prevalent. I think over the last 20 or 30 years, of course, Pentecostals have developed their Bible Institutes and the Bible Colleges ascended into now there are universities. One of the first Pentecostal seminaries to get started was in the 1970s in Springfield, Assemblies got a theological seminary, which is still operating. The point, I think, would be that I think over the last generation, it sort of slowly kind of developed so that more and more Pentecostals are going to universities and more and more are going off to seminary. And even more and more slowly are going on to doing doctoral studies. It started primarily among historians. People in the ’60s and ’70s wanting to make sure they got the stories of the original generation of Pentecostals from the early 20th century before they all passed away. And then, you know Pentecostals being really, we’re very close to conservative protestants and evangelicals with regard to the world of scripture, after the historians came, the Bible scholars or Biblical studies folks. And it wasn’t until probably about the early ’90s that we slowly started seeing Pentecostals do PhDs in like theology for example. You know I got my PhD in theology in the late ’90s, kind of still within one of the first generation of folks who somehow.

You are part of the first fruits?

Yeah, I guess, maybe one way of putting it. [both chuckling] Yeah.

So would you say that that anti-intellectualism was something that was a reaction to something Pentecostal? Something about Pentecostalism that just kind of naturally led in the direction of anti-intellectualism? And two, is there something that’s more authentically, something that’s authentically Pentecostal that you see as kind of a common thread?

In that anti-intellectualism, you mean?

Not necessarily in that anti-intellectualism, but just something that’s, because I guess what my question is, is there a reaction to something within Pentecostalism that naturally gravitates towards anti-intellectualism?

I think there are a couple things. One had more to do with historical and social factors, which included the fact that in the early 20th century when the Pentecostals were kind of beginning to grow and develop and so and so forth, when they emerged initially, that was sort of right almost at the heart of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. Which most folks would date from around the turn of the century to about the 1930s, for instance. That’s basically when Pentecostalism first arrived on the scene. And I think those social and historical factors led the earliest Pentecostals, who by and large came from holiness and other, if you will, more conservative protestant traditions, they felt like they had only sort of two base options, right? Either go with the modernist or go with the more sort of fundamentalist version of Christianity. And I think that initial alignment was kind of a no-brainer ’cause at least the fundamentalists took the Bible seriously. And so for Pentecostals, it was the Bible that informed their own spirituality and so on. So, if there was a choice between going with the liberals or the fundamentalists, they went fundamentalist. And I think that choice in part informed a certain kind of suspicion about higher education. It informed a certain kind of suspicion about here’s what happens when you go off and study the Bible critically with the liberals, you’ll end up coming back emasculated in terms of your spirituality. I think the other part of it that’s more internal to Pentecostal spirituality is that, you know, there is a sense in which Pentecostal encounter with God is very affective, very emotional at a certain level. I think lots of folks have done studies that have talked about Pentecostal spirituality as a kind of reaction to modernity. What might that mean? Well, I think it means something like this. If modernity was a kind of period of time in which reason ascended and kind of, reason ascended to the point of either minimizing or denigrating or marginalizing affect, or the emotions, or the embodied character of human life, human religiosity and so on and so forth. In that respect, I think Pentecostalism can be understood as a kind of reaction to modernity, in so far as it’s almost like if you say something like, if modernity prides rational discourse, conceptualization, rationalization, discursive articulation, all that sort of stuff. Pentecostals though, for example, speaking in tongues is almost like a way of resisting that kind of totalizing hegemonic ordering of the world, right? So it’s almost like, well no, I mean God works through the weeping or the tears, or God works through the shout, or God meets us in our embodied encounter, raising up of hands, the dance, the slaying of the spirit, and so on and so forth. So it’s very kinesthetic, very palpable and body character which engages, if you will, the multidimensions of who we are, our affectivity, our emotions. And so in that respect, I think we can say almost something like this, that if intellectualism or if intellectual achievement has to come at the expense of recognizing and cultivating the emotional and affective and the embodied character of who we are, I think for all of those reasons, Pentecostals in the first couple generations felt like it was an either-or, right? Because if you went on and cultivated a life of the mind, it almost seemingly had to come at the expense od nurturing, if you will, the spiritual. There are these other spirit, these other dimensions that were associated with the spiritual dimension. You know, spiritual vitality, after all, is associated with sort of heart religiosity, passion, well, you know, the way in which modernity carved it out, if you were intellectual, then your passions were under control. Right it was very, in one sense old, platonic kind of dualism. Well, if you’re really passionate about something, then that means that your intellect somehow has to be put on the shelf or something along those lines. So at a certain level, I think Pentecostals internalize that kind of modernist framing of things. And by internalizing it, they also felt like, well yeah, if it’s between cultivating the life of the spirit and then the life of the intellect, the life of the mind, there’s a no-brainer there. Obviously, you’ve gotta go with life of spirit. Who cares about intellectual achievement, right? So it was in part maybe an internalization of that sort of dualism, and then a reaction to it that I think fueled part of this anti-intellectualism. And inevitably, of course, after two or three generations, I think the earliest Pentecostals who actually went on and got doctoral credentials were like in the late ’30s. It’s almost like you have to have a second generation of folks who were already sort of born and raised within the movement, for whom those earlier battles were more like historical memories rather than the battles that they had to fight on their own. But of course, then they have to find ways to rationalize and justify this pursuit of the life of the mind, and in some respects, it’s been a kind of an uphill battle.

How have you seen your own work fitting into this narrative of marrying both a robust intellectualism with an authentically Pentecostal spirituality?

Well I don’t know about any robust intellectualism. We’re just trying here. [both chuckle] Well, you know yeah, it’s certainly a challenge. I think that there have been models that have begun to emerge. You know people like Gordon Fee in biblical studies have, in some respects, retained a very Pentecostal spirituality but yet have achieved widespread recognition as a New Testament scholar, in his particular case. I think for my generation, one of the questions we’re asking of Fee’s generation while being completely, while we completely recognize his legacy and recognize the path that he has paved for us, I think one of the questions we’re asking is that, well, Gordon Fee and others of his generation, it almost still seems like they, that their intellectual achievements were, in some respects, according to the norms of the wider evangelical world. Yes, they retained a very vibrant Pentecostal spirituality, but how do we register that Pentecostal spirituality in our scholarship, in our intellectual work? Versus, or is it the case that our spirituality is for when we worship, in our devotional life, but our scholarship therefore has to be, sort of follow after maybe a more broadly evangelical paradigm? And those are the kinds of questions that we’re asking. I think those are the kinds of questions in particular that myself as a theologian, I think, and others of our generation are also asking. And it’s a fine line between, on the one hand, because we want to really say something. While we really want all of our theological reflection to be, let’s say, thoroughly Pentecostal, then at a certain level, if that’s the case, the rest of the world are gonna say, Okay, yeah, that’s nice. Pentecostal theology is for Pentecostals. That’s a nice little conversation, a little side group with a bunch of Pentecostals and they can have their theology. I want to say something like, well I think there’s space for that and it’s an important role for that, right? Pentecostal theology by Pentecostals for Pentecostals, but I’m more interested, also, in well, is there anything else that Pentecostals can offer theologically to the Church Catholic, the Church Ecumenical? Or do we have to offer only our spirituality, only our missionary zeal, only our speaking in tongues, and only our miracles and signs and wonders? Is there any theological content that we might be able to offer? And so that’s a question that I’m in particular always asking. In may respects it’s also, is a way of saying, well yes I’m a Pentecostal, but I’m also a Christian, right? And if I’m Pentecostal and a Christian, then my theological work should be hopefully of some value not only to Pentecostals, but for Christians, as well. But whether or not it is, I guess in the long run, we’ll have to see. It’s sometimes a challenge to be able to speak meaningfully and with intelligibility, I suppose. Sometimes I feel like I’m talking in tongues and I’ve gotta interpret myself, you know?

Nice. Well, it seems like it’s always difficult for any group that’s viewed as on the margins or has some type of marginal perspective to offer something that’s viewed as central to the Christian faith. And from the perspective of anti-intellectualism, you can see where that’s not something you wanna lose as a part of Pentecostal theology. That’s not something that we have to give up as Pentecostals, but from the other side, there’s a question about what’s inherently authentic about Pentecostalism that is something that if it’s foregrounded, if it’s given particular attention, is seen to be a renewed emphasis that’s legitimate to the Christian faith and has more of a, translates across other denominations?

Right, right, right. And so I think, yeah, you’ve put your finger on, I think, a couple things that I think are in part what urges people like me onward. One is that, yeah, 100 years ago Pentecostals were marginal in all kinds of different ways, right? But today, in the second decade of the 21st century, people keep telling us that Pentecostal type of Christianity is really sort of the vanguard or at the forefront of what Christianity is around the world, right? So at least at that level, people can’t say that Pentecostal or charismatic spirituality is marginal. Even in terms of the role of charismatic renewal across the churches starting in the 1960s across all the protestant denominations. And even today, I mean the Catholic charismatic renewal, people say between 150 to 250 million Catholics in the world, like 1/4th of Catholics in the world are charismatic, right? So in all of these registers, Pentecostal charismatic spirituality is no longer marginal, right. So, then the challenge would be okay, so we’re no longer socially marginal, or we’re not longer phenomenologically marginal, but what about theologically? Is there any theological substance, then, to this, right? And so I think that’s part of chats, and I think then, at the end of the day, from my perspective I do think that what Pentecostals have to contribute theologically, it’s not even necessarily anything new. I think like what you were gesturing to a minute ago, I think all we’ve ever really hoped for from the beginning was we felt like we were tapping into a strain or a dimension or a reality of Christian life that, you know in some circles, had been overlooked or neglected or maybe even intentionally repressed, and life in the spirit. You know, the life following after the works of the spirit that often times do upset our nicely organized worlds. So there’s that sort of risky element to it, but I think at the end of the day, the whole point about being Pentecostal wasn’t to be Pentecostal, but to experience Christian life in it’s sort of fullest. Now it starting to get a little but tricky here, right? Because I mean that’s also fed a lot of what’s called Pentecostal triumphalism over the century, that Pentecostals sort of feel like, oh yeah, they’re better than other Christians because they lived a more full Christian life or they would have like the five-fold gospel and their Jesus as Savior, as baptizer, as healer, as sanctifier, and as coming king. The whole point of the five-fold gospel was other churches either had lesser than five or maybe none of it, you know? Or something along those lines, right? So there is always gonna be this tension about our contribution being, on the one hand, a contribution that simply is a kind of reminder about well, here is what the apostolic experience was and is there a way for us to experience it? But on the other hand, that sometimes can come across, that sometimes will come across as, you know we’ve got more of the apostolic experience than you do, so there is a tension between here is an offering versus that offering can also be looked at kind of as a put down. That, well, you’re not full enough or something along those lines.

Right, yeah, absolutely. So Pentecostalism has changed quite a bit, and we now have these global movements that are happening in various parts of the world. You’ve been doing quite a bit of work, theology in a global context. Could you tell us a little bit about how you’ve kind of built and expanded on Pentecostal scholarship?

Yeah, I mean what are the things, I think, that I was drawn to early on as a theologian, sort of trying to think these things through, recognizing the global character of Pentecostal charismatic movements, recognizing certainly that in the Book of Acts, Acts 1:8 says, “And you shall receive power “after the Holy Spirit comes upon you. “You shall be my witnesses.” Beginning in Jerusalem and then going to Judea, then Samaria, then the ends of the Earth, and kind of recognizing well it seems like we’ve kind of gotten to the ends of the Earth. If we’ve kind of expanded and done that, but the ends of the Earth after 2,000 years are in some respects no more Christian than they were at the end of the first century, right, in the sense that yeah, at the end of the first century, Christianity had gone to the ends of the Earth according to its knowledge of the ends of the Earth, Rome. But it was still, and now we know, as pluralistic and as diverse an environment then as we remain today, right? So one of the questions I’ve been asking is, okay, while Pentecostals are certainly well known for their missionary commitment, their evangelistic fervor and zeal. But what about the fact that we live in a world in which there are people of many religions and in many respects we rub shoulders with ’em all the time? Pentecostals have been very good at evangelizing and missionizing, but the results we might could say, in the big scheme of things, you know we certainly can’t be triumphalistic about that. We can’t say, oh, Pentecostal missions and evangelism is turning the world over for Jesus. I mean, at one level, depending on how we count and so on and so forth, yes. But at another level, other religions are just as vigorous in our time and so one and so forth. So one of the questions I’ve had is, okay, how can we as Pentecostals, and then my secondary followup question to that is then as Christians, again, I’m Pentecostal but I’m also thinking about as Christians, you know? Is there a way for us to kind of maybe rethink our understanding of other religions and our theologies of other religions and our theologies of interfaith encounter, to account for this reality in which we live? We live in a firstly pluralistic world. How do we continue to maintain our commitments to evangelism and supremacy of Christ in all things, but yet at the same time also recognize, without this triumphalism that I’ve been talking about–

Yeah, could you spell that out a little bit for people who may not be used to hearing the word triumphalistic? It obviously has application to traditions that are not just Pentecostal. Many denominations and parts of the Christian faith throughout history have had a kind of triumphalistic dimension to them or disposition.

Yeah.

Can you just spell that out a little bit more?

Well, I think for instance, the claim, for instance, that salvation is only available through Christ. I think at a theological level, there’s no debate about that from my perspective as a theologian within the Christian, among the broad scope of Christian traditions. You know, there are some theologians and so on that might wanna qualify that and all this kind, but or me as a Pentecostal as an evangelical, there’s certainly no budging on that point, salvation being through Christ. But, what does that mean when we approach people of other faiths? How does that shape the way in which we interact with people? And form my perspective as Pentecostal, I think one of the ways in which we have, in light of that conviction, approached people of other faiths, that I don’t think has been as helpful. For instance, is that we haven’t been very dialogical. That conviction about salvation only coming through Christ has so fueled us to the extent that we think, well the whole point about meeting someone of another faith is then to share the gospel with them, which yes, I agree about that. But that attitude that, since we have the truth, and you just need our truth, isn’t conducive to more dialogical, more relational kind of approach. And then at a certain point then, that kind of a, you know that this traditional approach that I’m talking about, doesn’t recognize the perspective, the value, the gifts even that that other might have for us as Christians, right? So because we’re so caught up with the fact that we’ve got it all, you’ve got what we need, so just listen to us, right? I mean that’s what I’m talking about.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I think there’s some who will hear that and the red flags will be going off for them because

they see it as a, why if you have the truth, you believe you have the truth, why would you open yourself up to a two-way conversation about salvation? Especially if you have the answers?

Right.

So, for someone who has got that perspective and they see it as primarily a one-directional form of communication and evangelism, what is it that they’re missing in the exchange?

Well, I mean, I like to think that a lot of times our theologies mirror, if you, I mean theologies are, what I would call, second order reflections upon live practices. But I think a lot of times out contemporary theologies actually reflect lived experiences of generations ago, okay? So for instance, right, in a colonial mentality, I’m not sure if that’s too big of a word, but you know the earliest missionaries who went out in the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th centuries, along with the colonial apparatus behind them, right? They brought the medicine, they brought the guns, they brought the whatever, right? Okay, so in that kind of context it’s a lot easier to just speak and expect the natives to just listen, okay. So we develop a certain kind of thinking about people of other faiths within that colonial paradigm, we’ve continued to perpetuate that. But I’d like us to actually think about the fact now that if we pay attention to our actual practices today, that we actually do have practices that are much more dialogical. For instance, I mean think about the fact that if you meet your neighbor, who is a person of another religion, do you automatically start saying repent and be baptized in Jesus’ name? I mean most of the time, we are pretty civil, pretty friendly. We find out about who they are. Whether we have coworkers. So my point is this, in our practices, we are already being dialogical, but our theologies still sort of reflect the kind of 100 year or 200 year old version of what we used to do. Does that make sense?

Sure.

So I think, I’m trying to get us to reconsider how, okay, in light of our current practices, in light of our current situation in the world which is diverse and increasingly so, yeah we look for opportunities to bear witness. We look for opportunities to share the gospel. But we’re also sensitive to the dynamics of relationships, and so don’t we need that more dynamic and relational theology that is, from what I, this is my version, led by the spirit? I mean, let me put it to you this way, right? If we have a rule-based theology that says something like anytime you meet someone who is of another faith, share Christ. Okay, that rule-based theology doesn’t give you much room to not do that, right? So that if you don’t that, you kind of feel like, okay, I’ve just not followed the rule. But what if you had another kind of theology that said something like this, life in the spirit means that we have to discern in every encounter, in every relationship, what is the appropriate thing to do? And it may be that when you first meet your neighbor, the appropriate thing to do is introduce yourself and say hi and et cetera, et cetera. And maybe in that relationship, there will emerge a moment in which Christ is shared, right? But that has to be discerned. That can’t just follow a rule.

Right, right.

Right?

You know it’s always possible to win an argument and lose a person, and you lose sight of the actual genuine, Christian care you might have for your neighbor.

Right.

Or somebody who is from another faith. Historically, there have been moments where there’s been intersections between various religious traditions and the Christian tradition. You know, you think in the Middle Ages and there’s quite a bit of intersection between Muslim, Jewish, and Christian faith in the Middle Ages, so this isn’t–

It really isn’t new.

It’s not new.

No, you’re right. You’re totally right, but the problem with us Pentecostals is that we have a very, we actually it’s not even the short term, we just don’t have much of a memory. It’s us and then the apostles. [chuckling] Right? So I think we’re very alert to the fact that when the prophets stand up and give prophecies, well the rest of the congregation has gotta judge that. In other words, we’re always alert to the fact that whatever happens, it still requires discernment. It still requires the body to ask, is this of God, or how is this of God, or what’s the meaning? So in other words, it’s build into our spirituality, I think, that we have less of a rule-based approach and more of, okay, a spirit filled life means kind of be open to always thinking about what is happening. And within the community of faith, asking what the meaning of it and judging it, maybe rejecting it, maybe holding judgment. So in other words, I’m trying to sort of say, okay, if that’s really part of our practices, right, then why doesn’t it apply to our encounter with people of other faiths? Or why doesn’t it apply to our encounter with science? Or why doesn’t it apply to our politics, or et cetera, et cetera, et cetera?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think within the Christian, mystical tradition it’s always been the chief of virtues has been discretion, discretio, and that’s a tough thing to teach.

It is a tough thing to teach, yeah.

Are there resources within Pentecostal churches and within the Pentecostal tradition that are good for cultivating this? I mean, obviously, discernment, spirit, these kind of things, are there resources within the Pentecostal tradition and are there Pentecostal theologians writing about the important of discernment?

Well it’s interesting you mention that. I mean, I’ve written a book that’s got a title called Discernment.

Yeah.

Discerning the Spirit in the title, but so I think the short answer is, in fact I don’t know. There’s a fellow at Seattle Pacific University named Daniel Castelo who is gonna be working on a book on Pentecostal discernment and dialogue with mysticism, or rethinking Pentecostal, it’s Pentecostal spirituality within the context of historic mysticism and it’s mystical traditions. I’m very looking forward to how that argument’s gonna unfold. I think the short answer to your question, though, is that Pentecostals are more of an oral culture, right? So are there resources? Well, not if we’re expecting these resources to be kind of written down maybe, reduced to these kinds of formats, which is part of the challenge, right? And I think, again, the strength, which is also the biggest weakness, is that for Pentecostals, learning how to discern is more a matter of following exemplars like senior pastors or other mentors than it is about reading about it in a book, right? So, it’s very much an apprenticed kind of way of learning on the one hand, and that has a lot of virtues to it, but on the other hand, since all exemplars are human, and finite, and have finite horizons, and we all also socialize as Pentecostals and Christians, conservative, et cetera, whatever, certain habits and certain ways of operating in the world. So with regard to some of these other questions that I’m wrestling with, like for example, interfaith encounter, there are still very, very few exemplars that are modeling, if you will, this kind of approach, which I’m trying to argue is already sort of intrinsic to the spirituality. But we’ll have to see whether or not maybe it catches on or not.

Sure.

Yeah. [laughing]

No, that’s good. So, in addition to theology in a global context, and some of the narrative of Pentecostals and how it’s changed over time, you’ve also come out with a couple books in the past on theology and disability. I was at a lecture you gave here at Biola in one of our chapels where you gave a lesson on Zacchaeus and foregrounded the possibility that he may have been a little person. And talks about him there and–

Well he was a little person.

Yeah, he was.

What does it mean?

Todd: Right, he was a little person, what does that mean, and if you foreground some of the stigmatisms and some of the things that are prejudices that are attached to–

Little personal lives.

Right, little people who, yeah. I mean when you foreground the fact that there may be more going on there than just the fact that he was a shorter person. It changes the way you experience the story. So I’m wondering, could you tell us a little bit about your work on theology and disability and the significance that that has for your work?

Would love to do that, actually. My interest in that, actually, goes back to when I was nine years old, and my little brother, my youngest brother; I’m the oldest of three boys, my youngest brother was born and a couple years later they finally gave him a label, down syndrome. So I’ve grown up as an older brother of a person with down syndrome. After I finished my dissertation and got it published, I was really proud of it, obviously. I sent a copy to my mother and she said, well, the next thing you’ve gotta do is write a book about Mark. Mark is my brother. And so I said, oh, okay, maybe I’ll do that someday. And a few years later I started looking at that in more detail, and one of the things I realized was that I think within the Christian community, in terms of Christian literature on disability, there are a lot of inspirational stories, testimonies of people who’ve made it against all odds, which is all really good. Excuse me, man this root beer is really doing it to me here. There’s a lot, also, about ministry, ministering to people with disabilities in a church, which is all very important. We certainly need to, as the body of Christ, continue to work at ministries to people with disabilities. But one of the things I began to realize is that, by and large in many respects, our fundamental, theological intuitions about disability were in many respects very modernist. And in that sense, not very Biblical at all. Sort of like we had internalized modernity’s way of valuing work, of valuing people, of valuing identity. And so, by modernity in this I’m talking about everything from economic structures to our political structures, to our achievements in biomedical technology, and so on and so forth, okay? And as Christians, since we live in that kind of a world, to those of us who don’t have disabilities, it’s normal, it’s nothing non-Christian about it. It’s just normal, but what has happened is, from my perspective, so that’s why I began to write about this as a theologian was that, well I actually think that we’ve actually read a lot of the biblical materials through this long history of what I now call normalism, or an ableist perspective. You know we think of, let’s say, a feminist perspective, right, and at a kind of non-pejorative level, a feminist perspective is simply saying, let’s just not assume that there’s a neutral perspective. Let’s assume that males look at the world through male eyes, and if that’s the case, females have a particular women’s perspective on the world, and so therefore we need to register that in our theological work. And that’s just sort of very basic level. And so I would say something like this, that Christian tradition has over the last 2,000 years, because much of our theological reflection is written by folks who are normal, meaning not disabled, right? Our readings of the Bible is therefore informed by our normalist perspective. We just never bothered to question it, why? Because most of us are normal. And so if everybody sort of, everybody that we know, all our theologian friends all have the same perspective, this normal one, what’s there to question about that, right? But that’s in part because people with disabilities had never have voice, never had agency, they never had education, they’ve never had the capacity to actually register their views. And now, after the Civil Rights Movement in the late 1960s, all of a sudden we’re not hearing that people with disabilities are not just passive recipients of our help. But they have perspective, they have agency, they have voice, they have a view on the world. And voila, their view was actually a little bit different from those of us who don’t have to deal with the world from their set of challenges, in all of that complexity. So what happens theologically if we at least begin to pay attention to these experiences, these perspectives on the world? So for me as a theologian, that’s really the more fundamental question because now it moves from just simply, let’s have ministries to people with disabilities because they need our help, to having to rethink the whole relationship about what makes a community the body of Christ? Overcoming the sort of us that are able and them that are disabled dichotomy. Now all of a sudden, Paul’s statements about the weak being at the center of the church take on a whole new, different mandate, actually. It’s not even just about, oh let’s just all get together. I mean all of a sudden now I’m finding myself challenged as a normal person that my ableist prejudices and biases have not allowed me to be challenged by Paul’s claim. And I actually make an argument, actually, in one of my books on disability, that there has been a long debate, for instance, about Paul, whether or not he had some kind of eye disability of some sort. But we know that he had a number of different kinds of physical ailments, and does it all add up to disability? Would he have had a kind of disability parking permit in our time? Well, we don’t know any of that for sure, but there’s enough evidence, it seems to me, in the Paulian letters to say that even if he doesn’t get, and of course it’s anachronistic for us to apply parking, and I would say something like, you know would he have had a special donkey to get around the empire?

Yeah.

Or something along those lines, right? My point is that, all of a sudden, if I start to read Saint Paul as maybe a person with a disability, as anachronistic as that might be for us to use that language today, but maybe certain parts of the Paulian message might really–

Have more punch?

Have more punch.

Yeah.

And actually challenge our complacency, ’cause we’ve so domesticated Paul to our, what I call, ableist point of view. And that I think in particular for me as a Pentecostal, as well, is a really challenging issue, right? Because in the Pentecostal tradition, there’s very, very little space for disability.

Yeah.

Right? Because what do we do with people with disabilities or people who are not well? Well, we expect to lay our hands on ’em, pray for ’em, cast out some demons, and maybe get ’em healed. And then we wonder why, as Pentecostals, that we have very few people with disabilities in our churches, right? Is it because our theological anthropology has somehow been domesticated by what we think is the normal, able-bodied, whole physique?

Yeah, Aristotle’s Magnanimous Man.

Exactly.

Yeah, I remember I ran into, I think it’s Michael Hanyak, I’m not sure if that’s how you pronounce his name, but he had finished a dissertation called Growth and Community, he’s actually rewriting the book I think now, Growth and Community. He worked in the community of L’Arche for a bit.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Where they actually handle people with disabilities and the primary orientation is ministry to, ministry for people who have these particular needs. And I remember reading his work and just being confronted with this, actually he was confronted with this reality of–

Absolutely.

Something happens, in the moment when you think you’re going to minister to somebody with a disability and you simply are holding a broken human being in your arms. Physically they may have some type of ailment or something that makes them, you know, they have this particular lack that doesn’t enable them to do the same kinds of things, but there’s something about just simply being this broken, frail human being who is being held by a normal, enabled human being, that speaks to what it means to be human.

Yeah.

And the person who I disabled is actually communicating something that showcases to the enabled person more about their humanity than maybe they would have experienced prior,

Yeah.

To that encounter. So, I don’t know, can you speak to some of that?

Yeah, you know, that’s a really major, I think, one of the major challenges theologically. And our language, in many respects, I think still fails at this point, and I still think that we are struggling to rearticulate. So on the one hand, I think we can all understand when you make reference to the broken human being. There is a sense in which someone, and most people in L’Arche are what we call severely or profoundly disabled, not just physically but even intellectually, right? So there is this very real, fundamental sense in which there is brokenness in that environment, in that situation, but within the context of this conversation even that we’re having, right, all of a sudden emerges to us, and it should I think, and this is I think where the challenge lies, all of a sudden emerges then that, how come it’s these friends, these brothers and sisters who have to bear the representation and this symbolization of brokenness and not us?

Absolutely.

Right?

Yeah.

You know even just by applying brokenness to that, already objectifies and others that person. Now, the flip side of that is that we don’t wanna say that there’s absolutely no difference between us and them, because yeah, I mean as severely and profoundly disabled people, they have genuine needs for care and so and so forth, right? But this is the tension, I think, in terms of the discourse on disability, that at the end of the day, we’re still, I think, gesturing and yearning for a language that enables us to overcome this chasm of objectivizing them as bearers of brokenness, right? Because, at another fundamental and real level, we’re all broken.

Yeah.

We live in a broken world, right? But what happens is that the people with disabilities now often have to bear the burden of representing that brokenness. And so I think that part of the challenge for us theologically is, how do we find ways to overcome even that way of being prejudiced? Or even that rhetoric of prejudice? Let’s just put it that way, all right. Because then all of a sudden now, these folks have this special charism of having to do all the work that you and I, as a result of our able-bodiedness, all the privileges that we enjoy, they now have to bear the brunt of signaling the brokenness of the world to us. There’s a certain level of ways that’s unfair, right?

Yeah, well, you see I mean you’ve got, for example, in Liberation Theology and some of these movements the whole notion of solidarity with the poor, solidaridad, that you know there’s this privileged position that comes from being with those who are kind of on the bottom of the totem pole and whether it’s economically or physically, whatever. It does seem to me there’s a sense in which having a disability creates the conditions for being in touch with certain aspects of what it means to be a human being that people who are normal and able just cannot connect with. And there’s actually, if you could say it, there’s a privilege that actually comes with that. Obviously there’s probably a scale

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

In terms of how that works out with the level of intellectual or physical disability, but it seems to me that there’s an irony–

Sure.

To the fact that someone who has a disability may actually have some–

Right, right.

Some aspects to their life that they’re more in touch with what it means to live a humble existence in submission to the spirit of God, and these kinds of things.

So I think there are two key things that you’ve said I think that are really important here. One is, they show solidarity, right? In other words, and here’s where I think the large experience really makes a very big difference, because you know there, there’s a genuine solidarity, I think, that in many respects even I don’t have. I mean I’m a brother of a person with down syndrome, so I’ve got that kind of family relationship, but I’ve also not been home for like 30 years since I left for college, for instance, right? So yeah, I might seem him once maybe every other year or something like that, how does that make me in solidarity with my brother, right? But my point is this, I think, that at L’Arche, for example, they call the folks with disability the core members, and the helpers are called the assistant members, right? So there’s a real since in which there’s a privileging here of saying that this community, the folks in the middle, in the center of the community, are those who have disabilities, and therefore the people who are their assistants are in solidarity precisely because this is not just a tourist kind of thing, you know people don’t just sort of go and visit L’Arche, you know this is a real–

Vocation.

Right, it’s a vocation, absolutely, it’s a calling. So there is a real sense in which there is entry into solidarity, which then, that’s what I’m looking for when I’m talking about how do we recreate with the help of the spirit of Jesus communities that overcome the us versus them, or us and then dichotomy, I think? And then so in that space of solidarity, then we can speak, if you will, together informed by, I think Liberation Theology is exactly right here, the privilege of those who previously we had marginalized. I think there’s a way to read the New Testament that we might have talked about it a little bit over our CCT conversations about Jesus and Paul being sort of on the underside of society and having that perspective.

Yeah, the persecution.

Exactly.

Derelict church.

Right, right.

Viewing things from that lens.

Yep, yep. And so maybe being in solidarity with the poor or with people with disabilities is partly part of what can help us to reaccess, if you will, aspects of the Gospel message that otherwise we just read through a privileged perspective, and don’t have the capacity to sort of interrogate.

Yeah, I know from a personal perspective, growing up with your brother as a Pentecostal, a part of an Assembly of God background, are there any particular experiences that stand out to you in terms of having to be an advocate for your brother, sensitivity to various prejudices or moments? Is there anything that just stands out to you that–

Well, I’m not sure about experiences about being an advocate. I will say this, that I think the first year or so, yeah, the first actually few months of his being born, we knew that something really seriously wrong, like the first three months he was born he was on an incubator because he couldn’t breathe on his own, couldn’t feed on his own, that kind of a thing, you know? And so the first year of his life there were lots of soul searing in our family. You know it’s a shame culture, Chinese culture, what did we do wrong that we had this broken human being? Obviously, I mean again that question about the man born blind in John nine, who sinned, his parents or him, that this happened to him? But you know again, these are in some respects, very common to indigenous cultures around the world that this is a sign of something gone wrong in the system, bad karma, whatever the case might be. And in many respects as I look back on it, and I was only 10 years old at that time, so I was experiencing all this, just this real pain that my parents, my mother in particular, Lord, why did this happen to us? We thought we were doing everything you wanted us to do. We’re in the ministry, we’re, you know? I mean in terms of leading the Christian life, you can’t get any sort of more into it than that, but here comes Mark. So the Job question, you know, I’m a righteous person, we’re righteous people, how come this is happening? But what does that do? That capitulates to the worldly conventions about these things, doesn’t it, right? And I guess in response to your question, I think it’s sad at this point, but to acknowledge that we just were bound by those conventions. We couldn’t see beyond those conventions at that point. We prayed for God to heal Mark, and what did we mean by those prayers? Obviously, we meant make him 100% normal so that we don’t have to deal with this shame and stigma and we don’t have to feel bad about the fact that have we not lived up to your calling, Lord, or what have we done to deserve? My point is this that, we basically lived into that worldly convention. We didn’t have the resources or the tools to question that. But 30 years later, though, I mean God teaches us slowly and painful, doesn’t he, right?

Exactly.

Now my mother, if you talk to her, and well if she gets a chance to talk to you, actually, you know she will tell us that God healed Mark, but God healed Mark not in all of the ways that we were praying for those early years. And a lot of God’s healing of Mark involves transforming us.

Mm-hmm.

And transforming our views, transforming our practices. Mark, if he would have grown up in Malaysia, would have been hidden in a back room. That’s just what you did with people with disabilities, you hide ’em, you know? But Mark is a visible member of our congregation. He is part of our welcome committee when he can. Sometimes he doesn’t quite do that, but here’s the point that, I think we have come a long ways in terms of seeing that God can accomplish miracles, God can accomplish healing, God can accomplish salvific transformations that really are beyond what our conventional understandings of those might be. We expect when God heals, God’s gonna heal according to, what I call, ableist conventions. But no, God’s healing actually involves a transformation of our own hearts so that we can see the truth for what it really is. That Mark, just as he is, is created in the image of God. Now that’s our healing now, not his healing. He was just fine the way he was, at a certain level, you know? And what we needed to do was we needed to be saved from our assumptions, our conventions, our presumptions even. Our lostness, right? ‘Cause we had no means to interrogate these assumptions at the time, but God had to bring this through a very slow process. So, now of course I’ll talk about it a little bit differently than my mother will, but the general message is the same, that the problem isn’t with Mark, the problem is with us, the problem is with our society, the problem is with the ways in which we classify people like Mark, the ways in which we create social systems that even people with disabilities internalize themselves and their families, right? In other words, an ableist society will create social ways of knowing that the people with disabilities, when they internalize those things, will then define themselves in these inferior ways, right? Because they don’t measure up according to the norms of what whole or productive or healthy or able are in the worldly sense. And so, from my perspective, I think why? That’s a theological issue. And so it goes beyond just sort of ministering to, even though that’s baseline important, but it goes to how do we understand what the nature of the image of God is? How so we understand what salvation is in a world in which just by labeling somebody something, you’ve already located them in a certain place in a nonsalvific social reality?

Yeah.

Right? And what does salvation mean then? Well, at that point, it’s maybe got less to do with whether or not they said the sinner’s prayer, which in the case of Mark, I’m not sure that he’ll ever say the sinner’s prayer. Because he doesn’t really have what it takes to understand that, right?

Yeah. Now when we first started talking, we got into triumphalism and some of these aspects of Pentecostalism we were talking about, and I’m wondering to kind of tie it all together here, you mention the five?

Five-fold gospel.

The five-fold gospel as part of Pentecostalism. I wonder if, I’m curious whether you could bring Mark through that grid of the five-fold gospel and just address each of those issues and look at it foregrounding,

Yeah, yeah.

His experience and thinking of the five-fold gospel through that?

Well, you know I think one of the first things that I would say from thinking through with Mark, with Mark and through Mark, and I think I do this in my books on disability and theology is, I do say something like this, that the image of God as male and female, or actually it’s even in the way in which you talked about, the image of God as male and female already is a social definition. That the image of God is not just an individual body, but it’s the togetherness of male and female, right?

Yeah, I was actually gonna bring, I was curious about that, too, in connection with that. ‘Cause you were talking about Mark’s experience with the family, that it wasn’t, you know we do live in kind of an individualistic culture.

Right.

And as you started describing the experience of Mark’s coming into the family of how he can heal the family.

Yeah.

And so that’s kind of got me thinking about this five-fold gospel.

Yep, yep, yep.

What is it that Mark brought in more of a corporate and social way

Yeah, absolutely.

Into the family, and what kind of gospel is that?

Yeah, that’s I think you’ve, in other words, I think that that disability invites us and maybe challenges and spurs us to think about Jesus as healer and Jesus as savior, not just of individuals, but of people.

Yeah.

And communities, exactly. Yeah, you know, that God’s touching Mark involves God’s touching and transforming us as his family. And by extension then, the communities around which, within which Mark lives and in part through which he is constituted and so on. So I would say it’s not necessarily to minimize or to deny that there is an individual dimension to it, to our relationship with God and so on, but I often think that sometimes we reduce these theological notions, like soteriology, salvation, healing, sanctification, to very individualized constructs as befitting sort of a very modern, egalitarian, western mentalities. I think, so without denying that there’s an individual dimension, but I would say that we’re much more guilty of reducing it to that individual dimension so that then we neglect to, and then we wonder why it’s so difficult for us to live sanctified lives. Why would it be easy when we’re all struggling individually to do it?

Absolutely.

It’s there when we first talk about sanctification, ecclesially, or within the broader family and social context, as well, right? Since we are interpersonal, relational, and social creatures, as well. And so I think that disability, because of it’s the way in which it really accentuates or foregrounds interrelationality or interdependence, right? So that identities already defined in relationship, okay? So it invites, actually, a rearticulation of a Christian soteriology, a rearticulation of a Christian doctrine of the church, a rearticulation of the Christrine doctrine of even what it means to, so I’ve got a chapter in my book on theology and down syndrome on eschatology. What does it mean to live everlasting life within a communal, interpersonal, and intersubjective framework, right? Because often times, I mean I just imagine that eternity will be just me and Jesus at a certain level, you know? And again, disability really challenges our individualism, if you will, right? And so at that level I think that all of these invite us as theologians to stretch ourselves and come back to the New Testament and the Old Testament and say, you know, maybe there are more communal and maybe there are more social mentions to the story of God with Israel and with the Church that a modernist and ableist perspective doesn’t recognize or isn’t able to lift up as easily.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, so if I’m remembering those, well, if I’m remembering those five points.

Oh.

I think it was, Christ as savior, healer, all those things.

Baptizer in the spirit, sanctifier, and coming king.

Are there other aspects of Mark’s life that reflect off each one of those?

Yeah, so you know what’s interesting, for example, when I think about Jesus the spirit baptizer, within the Pentecostal tradition, the whole point about baptism in the spirit is empowerment for witness, okay? In a traditionalist, individualistic sense, Mark cannot receive the baptism of the spirit. Why, because Mark has very, very limited verbal capacities and Mark will never be able to be an evangelist, okay? So within this very traditionalist, individualist construct, Jesus the spirit baptizer doesn’t apply to Mark, right? But what if we think about the bearing of witness not just as an individual enterprise, but as something that the church does, right? So that Mark’s life provides, if you will, an icon to use a certain kind of language, right? Through which then, my mother, who is not theologically educated, can tell the story, the testimony, as a mother of Mark, about all that God has brought her through, all right? That’s a witness, that’s giving testimony. That’s what Pentecostals do, right? But my mother’s story is interwoven with Mark’s life, as you can well imagine. He still lives with her, right? So, all my mother’s testimonies revolve around what God’s done through Mark. Well if that’s the case, why do we have to think that it’s my mother who has the baptism of the spirit and not Mark? Rather, is it the baptism of the spirit, the empowerment to bear witness, in and through this intertwined relationship which is my mother’s and Mark’s lives together, and therefore the testimony that is told comes through the spirit’s inhabitation of that relationship, right? So it invites maybe a more, a different notion of understanding what it means to be filled with the spirit than what a classical Pentecostal. Now this I haven’t quite developed, but since you’re prodding me, I’m sort of trying to think through this a little bit. But again, it’s consistent with thinking about sanctification, Jesus eschatology, soteriology, and what was it, savior, healer, and healing, as again, core–

Healing the family, right?

Heal the family, so it’s consistent with rethinking all these categories within a more corporate or interrelational or interpersonal or in a subjective framework.

Well, Dr. Yong, we really appreciate you being here at the Center for Christian Thought, Biola. And it’s been great talking to you. Thanks for taking some time. [upbeat music]

Spokeswoman: Biola University offers a variety of biblically centered degree programs, ranging from business to ministry, to the arts and sciences. Visit biola.edu to find out how Biola could make the difference in your life.