This book not only articulates a tradition-specific Pentecostal rationality of Biblical Pragmatism, but also provides the first intellectual history of a major British classical Pentecostal denomination: the Elim Pentecostal Church. Pentecostal theologians increasingly acknowledge that their theological methodology should be informed by a Pentecostal rationality, epistemology and theological hermeneutics. Simo Frestadius offers such a Pentecostal rationality from a Foursquare perspective. Frestadius first analyses and evaluates some of the main contemporary Pentecostal rationalities and epistemologies to date, with a particular emphasis on the works of Amos Yong and James K.A. Smith and L. William Oliverio Jr., before proposing that Alasdair MacIntyre’s tradition-focused and historically-minded narrative approach is conducive in providing a more tradition-constituted Pentecostal rationality. Utilising the methodological insights of MacIntyre, the book then provides a philosophically informed historical narrative of a major British Pentecostal tradition, namely, the Elim Foursquare Gospel Alliance, by exploring its underlying context and roots as a classical Pentecostal movement, its emergence as a religious tradition, and its two major ‘epistemological crises’. Based on this historical narration and analysis, it is argued that Elim’s tacit Pentecostal rationality is best defined as Pentecostal Biblical Pragmatism in a Foursquare Gospel framework. This form of rationality is then developed vis-à-vis Elim’s Pentecostal concept of truth, biblical hermeneutics, and pragmatic epistemic justification in dialogue with William P. Alston. In doing the above, the book not only articulates a tradition-specific Pentecostal rationality of Biblical Pragmatism but also provides the first intellectual history of a major British classical Pentecostal denomination.
Simo Frestadius is Academic Dean of Undergraduate Studies at Regents Theological College, Malvern, UK.
Wolfgang Vondey is Professor of Christian Theology and Pentecostal Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK and Director of the Centre for Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies.
Daniela C. Augustine (DTh, University of South Africa) is a member of the faculty of the University of Birmingham, UK. She has published with focus on public theology, theological ethics, interdisciplinary studies in social transformation, postmodernity, and globalization, theology of economics, and the intersection of religion and culture from Pentecostal and Eastern European perspective. She currently serves as associate editor of the Journal of Pentecostal Theology.
