We’ll be hosting a live Reformed Media Review Monday, April 20 at 8PM Eastern. We’ll be asking the question “What books got you started in reformed theology?” You can listen live at http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/28332 or call (724) 444-7444 (Call ID: 28332). We’ll be giving away a couple copies of the latest issue of the Confessional Presbyterian Journal to people who call in to the show. Join us for our first live episode!

Michael Haykin shares a few thoughts about reading the church fathers.

We would like to begin offering transcripts of our podcast episodes, but unfortunately, transcripts are cost-prohibitive at this point.  We hope to be able to begin offering transcripts of at least portions of our shows using our newly launched wiki.  If you’re able, please consider helping out by visiting the wiki and transcribing a few minutes of an episode.  You can also help out by adding bibliographic data, outlines and other helpful information for our shows.  We would like to begin using the wiki to create our show notes and then copy them over to the regular website once the notes are filled out.  If we can get several people to pitch in, we’ll be able to provide a much better set of notes and information for visitors to the site.

The Pentecostal Movement had two main roots: a Wesleyan and a non-Wesleyan root.  In the Wesleyan tradition, Phoebe Palmer represents the movement well.  She picked up on the doctrine of perfectionism - that it is possible to be freed from sin in this life.  Palmer taught a “second blessing” which was an extraordinary work of the Spirit which would accomplish this perfection.  Palmer was highly influential through various publications and had many opportunities to teach her perfectionism.

The other root is perhaps best illustrated in Dwight L. Moody.  This root should be distinguished from the Phoebe Palmer brand of Pentecostalism since Moody did not see the Spirit as a second blessing and agent of perfectionism.  Rather Moody saw the work of the Holy Spirit empowering him particularly for extraordinary evangelism.  Moody did not seem to develop much of a distinct theology, but used his views of the Spirit’s work and moved forward in evangelistic work.  This non-Wesleyan tradition did not emphasize baptism of the Holy Spirit but focused on the Spirit’s role in producing holy living.  This was not perfectionism.  Holy living was accomplished through sanctification which for this brand of Pentecostalism was best understood as an act of faith accomplished through the Spirit.  The Moody style of Pentecostalism did not engender the perfectionist bent, but placed a premium on holy living in conjunction with evangelism.

William Boardman, another pillar of Pentecostalism, became influenced by this Pentecostal teaching and became involved in the Moody revivals in the Keswick perish of English.  This Keswick movement (which is sometimes called the Higher Life movement) taught the second blessing/perfectionism doctrine and influenced many people.  Charles Fox Parham was a teacher at a bible college, was one of these people.  He taught that the baptism of the Holy Spirit was confirmed by the speaking of tongues.  This teaching resulted in a large outbreak of tongues speaking on Azusa Street in Los Angeles - an event for which the LA Times picked up the story.  The Times reported people speaking strange non-earthly languages and thus helped spread Pentecostalism by publicizing it.

It’s not too difficult to understand the growth of Pentecostalism.  It was attractive to many because it was conservative, yet simple.  It defended the inerrancy of the Bible, justification by faith, and the Trinity and therefore wasn’t too “scary” to the average church-goer.  The Assemblies of God wrote these traditional beliefs into their statement of faith but they added what have become Pentecostal distinctives such as speaking in tongues as a confirmation of baptism of the Holy Spirit and premillennial eschatology.

A second wave of Pentecostalism which arose in the 1960s was concerned with the attendant signs and wonders of the Holy Spirit and a third wave incorporated much of what we consider the charismatic movement.  John Wimber could be considered the father of the worship style found in many (if not most) American churches.  Wimber was a music producer and following his conversion sought to incorporate contemporary music into the worship service.  In some ways he was following the example of Aimee Semple McPherson.  “Sister Aimee” as she was called was perhaps the first major figure to bring contemporary music to the church when she incorporated it into the services at her Angelus Temple (dedicated in 1923).  Following her lead (perhaps unknowlingly) Wimber and the Vineyard Movement have had a huge impact on the worship services of Western Churches.

Today, the charismatic movement remains very preoccupied with the speaking of tongues.  It has even stretched into non-Pentecostal spheres.  Wayne Grudem in many ways has legitimated charismatic gifts for people holding to some reformed theology.  John Piper, a Calvinistic baptist with covenantal leanings, has been very influnece by Grudem in this area.  The Sovereign Grace Movement (CJ Mahaney, et al) is viewed by many as a reformed charismatic movement.

You can begin to see the strands of development and the complexities involved in understanding the Pentecostal Movement.  It is a fascinating topic of study that helps us to understand much of what the Western Church has become.  And according the Phillip Jenkins, the Pentecostal influence is not going to slow down anytime soon.

*As a matter of full-disclosure, this post is based on my notes from Jeff Jue’s Church in the Modern Age course taught at WTS.

I’m a huge fan of Zotero since it’s an extremely useful tool for managing bibliographies and making research more efficient.  I use the tool to handle all the bibliographies for Christ the Center and have included a downloadable bibliography for each show.  Each site in the Reformed Forum network are integrated with Zotero as well so you will be able to quickly add our books and articles to your library.  Zotero 1.5 beta has just been released and the following video is a helpful demonstration of just what it can do.

Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. discusses the relationship of the forensic to the other elements of the work of Christ in accomplishing redemption for his people. This is an excerpt from Christ the Center episode 57.

Please help us out by filling out this listener survey.  This information will help us learn about our audience demographics, etc.  It will be a big help.

R. Scott Clark will be live blogging the Calvin’s Legacy conference.  The blogging will start January 16th at 6PST/9EST.  This should be a great conference, so stay tuned to the conference blog RSS feed.

We had a great 2008 here at the Reformed Forum.  We started out as Castle Church and eventually shifted over to the less confusing “Reformed Forum.”  We produced 50 episodes of Christ the Center throughout 2008.  We started all the way back on January 25, 2008 and were able to publish a new episode every Friday morning without missing a week through the year.  I must admit, it has been painful to listen to our first few episodes.  The sound quality was bad and there were more than a fair share of “ums.”  Listening to our more recent episodes still reminds me of our constant need of improvement, but it is still encouraging to see the progress we’ve made up to this point.

We had the privilege of speaking with many of today’s leading reformed theologians, but we are planning to make 2009 an even better year.  One of the opportunities we’re exploring as we book guests for the first part of the year is having two guests on a program who are experts in the same field.  At the Reformed Forum, we are looking forward to making edifying discussions available to the church.

2008 saw two episodes of our newest show The Reformed Media Review.  This is our show dedicated to reformed book news and reviews of books and other related media.  We are also working toward producing additional programs.  We want to continue serving the confessional Presbyterian section of the church in addition to broadly reformed believers.  While we do not want to make our content broadly evangelical, we do want to broaden our audience in terms of theological familiarity.  Christ the Center will remain a more “scholarly” discussion, but we are working on producing programs that will be more accessible to people who are new to reformed theology.  We are also looking at a devotional-style program that listeners of all education levels will find edifying.

Thanks for listening throughout 2008.  We’re looking forward to hearing from you in the new year and publishing more great material in 2009.

You may be interested in a few new books that have hit the shelf.

• John Calvin: A Heart for Devotion, Doctrine & Doxology edited by Burk Parsons
• The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism: Responding to New Challenges to Biblical Authority
  by Greg Beale
• Concise Reformed Dogmatics by J. van Genderen and W. H. Velema
• Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation: 1523-1552 edited by James T. Dennison, Jr.

For more information and discussion, listen to our new program: the Reformed Media Review.