Features
2024 — Foundation’s President Publishes Spirit-related Articles and Essays: The Wind Blows Where It Wishes
The Wind Blows Where It Wishes is composed of twenty chapters, including six bonus chapters. Most of the chapters have been previously published in journals and magazines such as the Pentecostal Evangel, Paraclete, Pneuma Review, Moody Monthly, Church of God Evangel, and previous books by Graves. The bonus chapters are shorter articles and short stories. In the book description, Graves said, “. . . without exaggeration . . . there literally is something in this anthology for every kind of reader: the lover of fiction will find award-winning short stories with spiritual ramifications in the ‘Bonus Chapters’ section; the layman, non-fiction reader will find interesting chapters in the beginning of the book and in the bonus section; the academic, I hope, will be roused by the middle portion of the book that tends to get more and more technical regarding topics of pentecostal interest the further the reader goes, until the reader gets to chapter 14, which is a semi-technical essay related to the reliability of the Spirit-inspired message of the Bible and its transmission through the ages.”
According to Graves the most important chapters for the scholar are the chapters on 1 Corinthians 12:13, the chapter on initial evidence, and the chapter on the nature of glossolalia. These three chapters have never been widely printed, and others have been updated and expanded. If you don’t include the bonus chapters (23 pages), over half of the volume has never been widely in print.
The Preface briefly explains how Graves, a layman, came to intrude into the sacred waters of biblical scholarship, formed an association with some of the earliest modern scholars within the Pentecostal movement (including Stanley Horton, William Menzies, Gordon Fee, Paul Elbert, Mel Robeck, Anthony Palma, Roger Stronstad, Jon Ruthven, Horace Ward, Robert Menzies, Howard Ervin, and Craig Keener; although they all are not mentioned in the Preface, you’ll see their influence by their appearance in the index), and came to found The Foundation for Pentecostal Scholarship.
2023 — Paul Elbert Receives Lifetime Achievement Award
This year the Foundation conferred its first Lifetime Achievement Award to physicist-theologian Paul Elbert. He worked mainly in interpretive methods and narrative-rhetorical backgrounds with respect to Luke-Acts, including Greco-Roman education and the fulfillment of prophecy theme. He was a member of the Steering Committee for the Formation of the Luke-Acts Section within the Society of Biblical Literature and a member of the New Testament Section within the Tyndale Fellowship for Biblical and Theological Research. He served as chairperson of the charismatic themes in Luke-Acts five-year dialogue within the Evangelical Theological Society and served on the editorial board of the Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies. He was the founding editor of the Journal for Biblical and Pneumatological Research.
Elbert served as editor of two festschrifts for American Old Testament scholars, Essays on Apostolic Themes (in honor of Howard Ervin) and Faces of Renewal (in honor of Stanley Horton); his writings have appeared in Theologische Zeitschrift, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Journal of Biblical Literature, Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, Journal of Theological Studies, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Evangelical Quarterly, Trinity Journal, Refleks: Med Karismatisk Kristendom i Fokus, Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, and the Journal of Pentecostal Theology. His essays have been recently compiled and published in Essays in Biblical Studies and Luke’s Rhetorical Compositions; The Lukan Gift of the Holy Spirit was published as a monograph. He is also the author of Pastoral Letter to Theo: An Introduction to Interpretation and Women’s Ministries.
In addition to being a long-time member of Society for Pentecostal Studies and Society of Biblical Literature, Paul was also a member of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and formerly served as chairperson of the Georgia Superconducting Super Collider Committee.
2022 — Scholar and Author Gordon Fee Passes Away
Leaves Behind a Rich Legacy of Scholarship
Gordon Fee taught for almost two decades at Gordon-Conwell—Hamilton, from the 1970s to the early 1990s. He was a popular New Testament professor, hosted students and their families often in his home, and preached and taught widely in the United States, Canada, and frequently in Africa and Europe. He and his wife Maudine had a special ministry to foreign missionaries, visiting mission stations where groups of missionaries in a given region would gather, teaching biblical topics and methods to them in ways that they in turn could teach to the people among whom they ministered.
Gordon earned his doctorate at USC and was already an influential specialist in New Testament text criticism by the time he joined the seminary faculty. I first met him in Wheaton, IL, where he was teaching. Three of us faculty members from Gordon-Conwell (David Scholer, Ramsey Michaels, and I) took him to lunch during a scholarly conference to try to persuade him to leave Wheaton and come to teach at Gordon-Conwell. It worked. (Actually, God worked.) He and Maudine stayed at our home when they first visited the Massachusetts North Shore to look for housing, and our families had many happy interactions thereafter.
Gordon was a passionate teacher and preacher. Students loved his courses because he taught with authority, unafraid to contend vigorously for whatever he believed was true and worthy of believing, unlike academics who present their views with endless qualifications and disclaimers. Audiences loved his preaching, which was enthusiastic and direct, often involving deep emotion as Gordon preached even the supportive details of a passage with the conviction that every word of God’s revelation was an integral part of God’s saving truth. He often broke down and wept when preaching, so moved was he to show the greatness of what God had inspired, and the power of the Spirit to use the Word to transform people for eternity.
He was a disciplined and prolific writing scholar, whose works have influenced more than one generation of scholars and pastors. But he also had a deep desire to help lay people become better readers of the Bible. One day in 1981, he stopped me in the faculty office hallway in the lower level of the Goddard Library and said, “I need your help. I’ve got an idea for a book, and I can’t write it by myself.” The idea was to help people understand the Bible better by breaking up its contents into the ten major literary genres (law, narrative, gospel, prophecy, parables, apocalyptic, etc.) and then to lay out basic ground rules for making sure that readers would not confuse genres and would get the most out of each category of literature God had inspired in his Word. Although I wrote the chapters on the five major Old Testament genres and he wrote on the five major New Testament genres, we spent many hours sending manuscripts back and forth, critiquing each other’s contributions, and making suggestions to each other, right down to individual sentences and words. Gordon had very strong opinions but loved God’s truth, so he always gladly considered suggestions for improving things. We even spent a long time trying to come up with the right title. Gordon’s working title was Let the Reader Understand, but when I came up with How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth he loved it and readily endorsed it. We went on to work together on a total of four editions, the most recent appearing in 2014, as well as a sequel, How to Read the Bible Book by Book, and two exegesis handbooks, Old Testament Exegesis and New Testament Exegesis, both of which also became best sellers. Once, in the middle of writing How to Read the Bible Book by Book, he said, “It’s a good book now, but not yet a great book. We have to keep working.” That shows something of the nature of his drive for excellence in everything he did.
Gordon left Gordon-Conwell to complete his teaching career at Regent College in Vancouver, BC, Canada, where for many years he worked under a special arrangement that allowed him to spend half the year teaching at Regent and half the year teaching missionaries on the field. Gordon developed Alzheimer’s and by his early seventies stopped teaching. He and Maudine, who had suffered uncomplainingly from arthritis for decades, left Vancouver and moved to New York City to live with one of their sons. Eight years ago, even though his Alzheimer’s was rather advanced by then, he was still working on various scholarly projects, and he and I were working on the most recent edition of one of our books. He had trouble remembering conversations and recent events but had lost none of his sharpness for biblical scholarship nor his love for God’s word. After 88 years on earth, he joined God’s eternal family on October 25, 2022, “old and full of years” as the Bible says, and still full of enthusiasm for helping people to know the truth that he so eagerly had preached, taught, and written about during his influential lifetime. (By Douglas Stuart as posted on Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary Website)
Fee’s commentary on Galatians won the Foundation’s 2009 Award of Excellence. Several of his books were award worthy, for example, his commentary on 1 Corinthians (1987), God’s Empowering Presence (1994), and Pauline Christology (2007).
2022 — Foundation Publishes Its Seventh Book: The Kingdom Case against Cessationism: Embracing the Power of the Kingdom {CLICK ON BOOK COVER TO PURCHASE}
The Kingdom Case against Cessationism is a twelve-essay book arguing against the theological doctrine of charismata cessation. These essays were written by nine authors connected to the Pentecostal or Charismatic expression of Christianity: Michael L. Brown, Randy Clark, Robert W. Graves, Gary S. Greig, James Hernando, Derek Morphew, Jon M. Ruthven, Graham H. Twelftree, and Don Williams, with an endorsement by Dr. Sam Storms and a Foreword by Dr. Craig S. Keener, who writes,
“The book’s thesis is compelling: The king who is yet to return and consummate his kingdom has already come once and thus inaugurated that kingdom. Jesus demonstrated God’s reign through signs and empowered his followers by his Spirit to continue his mission to the world. To doubt these theses is to doubt central claims of the gospel—Jesus’s kingship, his promised role as Spirit-baptizer, his mission that must be continued until he returns. The exalted Lord who began pouring out the Spirit “in the last days” certainly didn’t pour the Spirit back, as if it is now earlier than the last days. The kingdom that Jesus inaugurated continues to advance as we continue to preach and demonstrate the good news of his reign.” Dr. Sam Storms endorses it, writing, “I struggle to understand how cessationism is still regarded in the church of Jesus Christ as a viable perspective on the ministry and gifts of the Holy Spirit. Numerous books and articles have thoroughly answered the objections it raises and a solid case from both the text of Scripture and church history have demonstrated the on-going validity of the Spirit’s supernatural work. The approach taken in this excellent volume . . . draws our attention to yet another irrefutable argument for the contemporary operation of the full range of spiritual gifts. The kingdom of God is central to all that we believe about New Testament Christianity, not least of which is the way it bears witness to the ministry of the Spirit through the variety of charismata outlined in the Scriptures.”
2022 — The Foundation Compiles and Publishes Elbert’s Luke’s Rhetorical Compositions: Essays in Lukan Studies [Wipf & Stock]
This is the Foundation’s third book based on the writings of Paul Elbert, a physicist-theologian and New Testament scholar. Elbert served as chair and co-chair of the Formation of Luke-Acts section within the Society of Biblical Literature. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Biblical and Pneumatological Research.
From the back cover: Luke’s Rhetorical Compositions offers new ideas in Lukan scholarship, especially regarding Aelius Theon’s first-century rhetoric manual Progymnasmata and inter-textual Lukan-Pauline biblical studies. Two chapters deserve special mention: the material in chapter 3 is a groundbreaking discussion of Acts 2:38 in which its Greek verb tense speaks to the subsequent reception of the gift of the Holy Spirit following salvation, not coincident with salvation. In Acts 2:38 it is Luke’s intention to portray Peter as promising the gift of the Holy Spirit to hearers and to those beyond narrative time as a Pentecostal experience.
Chapter 9 discusses Luke’s use of progymnasmatic examples in his descriptions of the salvation experience. It also discusses Luke’s clarification of Paul using narrative persuasion from Jesus tradition and history. Also, Luke’s use of basic soteriological vocabulary provides clarity and plausibility. His distinctive selection of examples from the Jesus tradition and his duplication of Paul’s soteriological vocabulary is very helpful.
2022 — Roger Stronstad, Author of Seminal Pentecostal Work The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke and Former Foundation Board of Advisor Member, Passes
Roger Jonathon Stronstad was born on November 15, 1944 to Melvin and Edith Stronstad of Turner Valley, Alberta, who were at that time, pastors of the PAOC congregation at Royalties, AB. Melvin Stronstad was a first generation Canadian, born only one year after the Stronstad family emigrated from Norway in 1909.
Growing up in a classical Pentecostal environment, Roger was accepted into Western Pentecostal Bible College (now Summit Pacific College) where he graduated in 1971. He went on to earn his MCS in Theology from Regent College; he was also recognized with an honorary Doctor of Divinity from Christian Bible College, and a second honorary Doctor of Divinity from Pentecostal Theological Seminary in Cleveland, Tennessee.
Following graduation, Roger returned to Western Pentecostal Bible College to begin his teaching career in 1978, served as Dean of Education from 1986–2005, and retired as scholar-in-residence in 2017. He was a leader, instructor, mentor, and friend. Roger is best known among his SPS colleagues for his ground-breaking study, The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke, published in 1984 (2nd edition in 2012). He maintained a lifelong passion for all things Lukan, as exhibited by the aforementioned seminal study as well as his 1999 book The Prophethood of All Believers as well as numerous other monographs, articles, and book chapters on hermeneutics and biblical theology.
Roger was nominated to serve on the Executive Committee for the Society for Pentecostal Studies in 1992 where he began working toward his role as the Program Chair for the 1993 annual meeting held in Guadalajara, Mexico with the theme, “To the Ends of the Earth.” Roger later served as President of SPS in 1994 and remained on the Executive Committee through 1996.
A festschrift in his honor, aptly titled Reading St. Luke’s Text and Theology: Pentecostal Voices, was published in 2019. This work includes a litany of SPS contributors and was edited by Riku Tuppurainen, who serves as the current Dean of Graduate Studies at Graduate studies at Summit Pacific College. Roger was later recognized in 2021 by the Society for Pentecostal Studies with the Lifetime Achievement Award for his outstanding contribution to Pentecostal scholarship.
Through both his teaching and academic writing, Roger Stro
2022 — Jon Ruthven, Esteemed Scholar and Educator and Author of On the Cessation of the Charismata, Passed Away
Jon Mark Ruthven, Ph.D., passed away April 11, 2022, due to complications from Covid. He is survived by his children Sara, Jana, and John Michael, and his two grandchildren Gabriel and Graham.
Dr. Ruthven, spent his life in service to the Lord. He continually gave of himself to further the Kingdom through the writing of books and the training of others. He was a selfless servant, a great prayer warrior, and filled with jokes. He authored many books and continued to write, teach, and pray until the end of his days. He was passionate and proud about his Ph.D. program, that he created, for Iris Global University, and was currently teaching classes at Global Awakening Theological Seminary.
He served as:
• Pastor of Lincoln Christian Fellowship Church (1967–1980)
• President and Dean of Pan Africa Christian College in Nairobi Kenya (1980– 982)
(While serving in Africa he met Pam Underhill and fell in love. They were married May of 1982 and had three children together. Pam went home to be with the Lord in 2001.)
• Dean of Students at Christ for the Nations Institute (1984–1985)
• Professor of Systematic and Practical Theology at Regent University (1986–2005)
• Founding Mentor of United Theological Seminary (2010–2015)
• PhD Program Director for Iris Global University (2019–2022)
Dr. Ruthven received:
• BA from Central Bible College (1964)
• BD from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (1967)
• MA in Hebrew from the Institute of Holy Land Studies and further study at Hebrew University (1979)
• PhD in Religious Studies from Marquette University (1989)
Written works include:
• How Jesus Defined Christianity: His 7 Original Mandates (forthcoming)
• What’s Wrong with Protestant Theology: Tradition vs. Biblical Emphasis
• On the Cessation of the Charismata: The Protestant Polemic on Miracles
• The Prophecy that Is Shaping History: New Research on Ezekiel’s Vision of the End
A portion of Dr. Ruthven’s PhD dissertation was published in 1993 as On the Cessation of the Charismata, which argues against the cessation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It continues to remain the best defense of the continuationist position and has never been rebutted by cessationists. Another portion of his dissertation was recently published in the anthology The Kingdom Case against Cessationism: Embracing the Power of the Spirit, published by The Foundation for Pentecostal Scholarship and dedicated posthumously to Dr. Ruthven.
Foundation Publishes Paul Elbert’s The Lukan Gift of the Holy Spirit: Understanding Luke’s Expectations for Theophilus, which Challenges the von Baer-Dunn Conversion-Initiation Thesis
This may be our most important book to date, a short but seminal work that supports the Pentecostal doctrine of subsequence. Those arguing and building upon the von Baer-Dunn model will have to interact with this book. Robert Menzies writes in his foreword to the book:
“. . . Jesus’s encouragement of his disciples to pray for the Holy Spirit in Luke 11:13, the climax of Peter’s sermon in Acts 2:38, and the account of the Ephesian disciples’ reception of the Spirit in Acts 18:23–19:7 are key passages that take us to the heart of Luke’s pneumatology. How students of the Bible read these important texts will not only shape how they understand the work of the Spirit in Luke-Acts, but will largely determine their response to the Pentecostal movement. . . . This volume analyzes in context and at length each of these important passages from Luke-Acts. While this monograph is notable because of its subject matter, it is also marked by excellent scholarship. The book is filled with helpful exegetical insights, enhanced by an astonishing command of and interaction with the scholarly literature, and characterized by sensitivity to Luke’s literary skill. . . .
"This work is significant because, as the chapter titles indicate, it analyzes three critically important texts in context. Actually, the term “context” here can be understood in three ways. First, the author carefully interprets each of these passages within the larger literary context of Luke-Acts. So, Elbert argues that Luke writes to encourage Theophilus by setting out “a coherent pneumatological picture” for him, affirming that if Theophilus “prays for the gift of the Holy Spirit as Jesus taught, then it will be given” to him.” Elbert demonstrates that we must read Jesus’s exhortation to pray for the Spirit in light of the Pentecostal event and promise (Acts 2:38) and Luke’s successive descriptions of its fulfilment, including the decisive story of the Ephesian disciples’ reception of the Spirit (Acts 19:1–7). As Luke’s narrative indicates, this gift of the Spirit will include “prophetic-type phenomena” and “make [Theophilus] a more effective witness” for Jesus.
"Second, the author analyzes these key texts in the light of the first-century context of Graeco-Roman rhetorical conventions. Elbert shows how Luke frequently reflects his Hellenistic setting and upbringing by utilizing literary techniques common in the Graeco-Roman world of his day. So, for example, Elbert helpfully points out how Luke’s description of Apollos (Acts 18:24–28), juxtaposed as it is with his account of Paul’s ministry in Ephesus (Acts 19:1–7), follows a “comparison and contrast” literary strategy common among Hellenistic authors of this period.
"Finally, by highlighting Luke’s desire to strengthen and encourage Theophilus, an exemplar of Luke’s audience, Elbert encourages contemporary readers to apply Luke’s message to our context. So, just as “the phenomenological categories of prophecy, glossolalia, dreams, visions, and physically defying transcendent signs” might seem as strange to us as they were to Theophilus, hopefully we, like Theophilus, will also read this record with the knowledge that Luke is a reliable and trustworthy guide. Above all, Elbert calls us to recognize that Luke, a Spirit-inspired and authoritative guide, urges us to desire and expect the power of the Spirit to transform and enhance our participation in God’s great mission.”
Foundation Compiles and Publishes Paul Elbert’s Essays in Biblical Studies: New and Penetrating Ideas on the Work of the Holy Spirit
This is a compilation of nine essays, each containing new and specific ideas on the work of the Holy Spirit in various capacities. For example, in creative deeds, in biblical interpretation, in the administration of spiritual gifts, in Spirit-reception and narrative sequence, and in Pentecostal hermeneutics, to name a few.
From Lyle Story’s endorsement: “. . . Paul Elbert wears many hats: philosopher, Pentecostal, theologian, Greek expert with acumen in Greek rhetoric, professor, scientist, and of utmost importance, a servant of Jesus Christ in his personal and church life, and the academy, with a solid Pentecostal witness.
“His welcome essays reinforce the principle that presuppositions mean everything as we look at the Bible, including its nature and interpretation. He takes on approaches such as relativism, proof-texting, and dogmatic chasmal and epochal distortions of meaning as we read the Bible to know God, not simply to “make-it-fit.” Paul accentuates the purpose and message of biblical writers within specific historical, literary, and cultural contexts and regards many aberrations as attempts to harmonize everything in the Bible that narrowly select and filter the Bible, governed by faulty presuppositions. He pays particular attention to connections between Acts 2:4; Luke 3:6, and Luke 11:13 in ways that readers would note common bonds and thematic links.”
The Foundation's First Anthology Published—Strangers to Fire: When Tradition Trumps Scripture
Strangers to Fire is an anthology of 35 previously published (for the most part) essays by 26 authors of the Pentecostal, Charismatic, and Third Wave movements, or non-cessationists of traditional denominations, responding to John F. MacArthur's Strange Fire or cessationism and the abuse of the charismata in general.
Contributors:
Stanley Burgess, Randy Clark, Ronald Cottle, William De Arteaga, Jack Deere, Paul Elbert, Andrew Floris, Robert Graves, Gary Greig, Wayne Grudem, James Hernando, Melvin Hodges, Eddie Hyatt, William Kay, Craig Keener, Robert Menzies, J. P. Moreland, Doug Oss, Mel Robeck Jr., Jon Ruthven, Mark Rutland, Omer Jaye Sharp, Gary Shogren, Sam Storms, Horace Ward, David Womack
WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING ABOUT STRANGERS TO FIRE:
"Cessationism is no longer the default position of evangelical Christianity. This is partly due to the worldwide growth of the Pentecostal-charismatic movement, in which miraculous spiritual gifts play a prominent role. It is mostly due, however, to the biblical, theological, and historical errors of cessationism itself, errors that are patently refuted in this new anthology from The Foundation for Pentecostal Scholarship." —George O. Wood, General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God (USA) and Chairman of the World Assemblies of God Fellowship
"John MacArthur’s cessationist views, which he has advocated over a few decades now, have been re-stated in a recent publication. This is the occasion for a compilation of chapters by many highly competent scholars to deal with far more than an effective rebuttal of cessationism. In dealing with cessationism the authors have actually engaged in substantial biblical theology. I have always been of the view that the best defense against cessationism is not simply to refute the details of the position, but to positively describe major theological themes of scripture, particularly the kingdom of God as inaugurated eschatology, the primary mission and message of Jesus. Where such theology is positively articulated, cessationism will wither on the vine. This is the virtue of this work. The first half does refute MacAuthur’s position, point by point, but the second half includes various examples of a positive biblical theology. This is most gratifying. There are also a number of chapters on signs and wonders in church history, proving continuation. A general impression of the contributions from this gathering of scholars is that they are both competent in their academic fields and living witnesses to the ongoing charismatic presence of the Holy Spirit today." —Derek Morphew, Ph.D., Academic Dean, Vineyard Institute, Author of Breakthrough: Discovering the Kingdom