The whole Church was baptised with the Holy Spirit on this Day of
Pentecost, and She manifests that baptism through a rich plurality of
gifts, the charisms. The whole Church, and thus every member, is
therefore both Pentecostal and Charismatic.
Every gift is a charism, and
each is always given for the good of the whole body, in response to Her
evangelistic activity, in the context of Her sacramental life, and
subject to Her gift of discernment. She exercises that gift within Her
institutional life, because the institutional Church and the charismatic
Church are inseparable, being two aspects of a single reality. It is
wholly unscriptural to impose any requirement that anyone exercise any
particular charism in order to be considered a full, believing member of
the Church.
There has never been the slightest doubt that the charisms include healing, exorcism, prophecy and words of knowledge, nor really even that they include speaking in tongues. Furthermore, healing is here understood as even those of us not raised in the Charismatic Movement understand it: it is the restoration of the human person to wholeness, which might or might not take the form of healing as understood by medical science, depending on what is known best to the Holy Spirit, Who is the Wisdom of God. Similarly, the performance of exorcism is restricted to suitably qualified people, and it is only ever used against the power of that objective evil which we can but thank God that we do not fully understand.
Prophecy is recognised as the gift of being able to read the signs of the times and to communicate effectively what is thus read, while words of knowledge are always relevant, always wise counsel and always independently verifiable. Speaking in tongues is never without the interpretation of tongues, and together they make it possible to understand where this would not otherwise be the case.
By contrast, glossolalia is not Biblical word, but a twentieth-century running together of two such words in order to describe a twentieth-century phenomenon associated with the denial that those who do not exercise it have been “baptised with the Holy Spirit”, with the degeneration of worship into banality and incoherence, with the refusal of legitimate ecclesial authority, with the denial or minimisation of doctrine, and with the transfer of ecclesial authority to parachurch leaders.
For example, as well as having been miraculously healed, the great Dominican Saint Vincent Ferrer was also blessed with the gift of tongues. Other than Ecclesiastical Latin and despite his English father, he had no language but Limousin, which was what they spoke in his native Valencia in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Yet he was a tireless itinerant missionary, preaching to tremendous effect in Aragon, Castile, Switzerland, France, Italy, England, Ireland and Scotland.
There has never been the slightest doubt that the charisms include healing, exorcism, prophecy and words of knowledge, nor really even that they include speaking in tongues. Furthermore, healing is here understood as even those of us not raised in the Charismatic Movement understand it: it is the restoration of the human person to wholeness, which might or might not take the form of healing as understood by medical science, depending on what is known best to the Holy Spirit, Who is the Wisdom of God. Similarly, the performance of exorcism is restricted to suitably qualified people, and it is only ever used against the power of that objective evil which we can but thank God that we do not fully understand.
Prophecy is recognised as the gift of being able to read the signs of the times and to communicate effectively what is thus read, while words of knowledge are always relevant, always wise counsel and always independently verifiable. Speaking in tongues is never without the interpretation of tongues, and together they make it possible to understand where this would not otherwise be the case.
By contrast, glossolalia is not Biblical word, but a twentieth-century running together of two such words in order to describe a twentieth-century phenomenon associated with the denial that those who do not exercise it have been “baptised with the Holy Spirit”, with the degeneration of worship into banality and incoherence, with the refusal of legitimate ecclesial authority, with the denial or minimisation of doctrine, and with the transfer of ecclesial authority to parachurch leaders.
For example, as well as having been miraculously healed, the great Dominican Saint Vincent Ferrer was also blessed with the gift of tongues. Other than Ecclesiastical Latin and despite his English father, he had no language but Limousin, which was what they spoke in his native Valencia in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Yet he was a tireless itinerant missionary, preaching to tremendous effect in Aragon, Castile, Switzerland, France, Italy, England, Ireland and Scotland.
Whereas glossolalia
is, it is worth repeating, a twentieth-century running together of two
Biblical Greek words in order to describe a twentieth-century phenomenon
which does not occur in the Bible. Is it Saint Paul's “tongues of
angels”? There is nothing in Scripture to support that view. The true
gift of tongues is as manifested by Saint Vincent Ferrer OP, Biblical
scholar, philosopher, thus doubly informed and doubly informing
theologian, and thanks to that ongoing formation a gloriously successful
preacher of the Gospel, not least to the Jews, precisely as an ordained
priest and a solemnly professed Religious in perfect unity with the See
of Peter.
These and the other charisms serve to re-root Theology in experience, and to call the whole Church to watch at all times for the Second Coming. They restore the integrity of the Liturgy by freeing it from over-formality and over-conventionality. And they release the ministries of women, young people, the poor, and others who experience marginalisation and oppression. Yet there is never any question of any one gift being used to decide whether or not someone has been “baptised with the Holy Spirit”, because it is the whole Church that has been so baptised.
These and the other charisms serve to re-root Theology in experience, and to call the whole Church to watch at all times for the Second Coming. They restore the integrity of the Liturgy by freeing it from over-formality and over-conventionality. And they release the ministries of women, young people, the poor, and others who experience marginalisation and oppression. Yet there is never any question of any one gift being used to decide whether or not someone has been “baptised with the Holy Spirit”, because it is the whole Church that has been so baptised.
Nor need there be any degeneration into banal and incoherent
services; indeed, any such degeneration, like any refusal of legitimate
ecclesial authority, or any denial or minimisation of anything taught by
the Magisterium, is a sign to the institutional Church, in Her exercise
of Her charism of discernment, that the spirits being tested are not of
God. And nor is there any transfer of ecclesial authority to parachurch
leaders, because there is no parachurch. Rather, there is the Holy,
Catholic and Roman Church.
"There has never been the slightest doubt that the charisms include healing, exorcism, prophecy and words of knowledge, nor really even that they include speaking in tongues."
ReplyDeleteBWAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Speaking in tongues is never without the interpretation of tongues, and together they make it possible to understand where this would not otherwise be the case.
ReplyDeleteBy contrast, glossolalia is not Biblical word, but a twentieth-century running together of two such words in order to describe a twentieth-century phenomenon.
The true gift of tongues is as manifested by Saint Vincent Ferrer OP, Biblical scholar, philosopher, thus doubly informed and doubly informing theologian, and thanks to that ongoing formation a gloriously successful preacher of the Gospel, not least to the Jews, precisely as an ordained priest and a solemnly professed Religious in perfect unity with the See of Peter.
He never said "BWAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA."
Yet another of your tribute sites over the years. He probably thinks he is desperately original, considering he was probably about 12 when the first ones were briefly up and running.
ReplyDeleteTragic. Still trapped in the pre-postsecular, pre-postliberal thought world that has nothing to say to this age after the collapse of neoliberal economic policy, liberal social policy, neoconservative foreign policy and the relentlessly secular basis of all of them.
Whereas you were already there years and years ago. “Before Red Tory and Blue Labour there was David Lindsay. He was arguably the first to announce a postliberal politics of paradox, and to delve into the deep, unwritten British past in order to craft, theoretically, an alternative British and international future. It is high time that the singular and yet wholly pertinent writings of this County Durham Catholic Labour prophet receive a wider circulation.” Professor John Milbank, Professor in Religion, Politics and Ethics, University of Nottingham..
Or, as the Call for Papers for the eagerly anticipated book of responses puts it: “For half his lifetime, David Lindsay has been quietly formulating a generation’s alternative to neoliberal economic policy, unrestricted liberal social policy, neoconservative foreign policy, and the triumph of the 1970s sectarian Left and the 1980s sectarian Right on the supposedly centrist basis of the common position at which they have arrived since 1990. Britain’s nearest thing to an economically populist and socially conservative American Democrat, or to a Canadian Red Tory, or to an Australian disciple of Bob Santamaria, David Lindsay anticipated the British Red Tory and Blue Labour movements by at least a decade. In February 2012, the publication of his Confessions of an Old Labour High Tory was a milestone in his articulation of ... In this volume, a wide range of figures engages both appreciatively and critically with that timely, challenging, generation-defining book and author.”
YOU'RE GOING TO BE DEALT WITH YOU'RE GOING TO BE DEALT WITH. 9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB. Signed J Milbank
ReplyDeleteYou shouldn't believe everything you hear from Oliver Kamm. You shouldn't believe anything you hear from Oliver Kamm. As both a Blairite activist and a Murdoch employee, he is for all practical purposes dead, anyway.
ReplyDelete"Still trapped in the pre-postsecular, pre-postliberal thought world that has nothing to say to this age after the collapse of neoliberal economic policy, liberal social policy, neoconservative foreign policy and the relentlessly secular basis of all of them," indeed.
Whereas with Ed Miliband (Leader of a party 14 points ahead in the polls) comes Jon Cruddas, with Jon comes Maurice Glasman, with Maurice comes John Milbank, and with Maurice and John, I suppose, comes David Lindsay, among other people.
On topic, please.
Sorry, just one last thing off topic. Demos, the Eurocommunist continuity organisation that became the intellectual heart of Blairism, is now under the Directorship of David Goodhart, who is hardly if at all less enthusiastic for your work than Glasman and Milbank. As beautiful as the appointment of Cruddas to head the policy review. You have been right for half a generation, and now everyone who matters can see it. Anyone who can't see it doesn't matter, justly condemned to be a tea boy for another thirty years.
ReplyDelete