In Pentecostalism, Postmodernism, and Reformed Epistemology, Yoon Shin critically builds on James K. A. Smith’s postmodern Pentecostal epistemology with the aid of Reformed epistemology. It takes the reader through an interdisciplinary journey that exposits and illumines the relationship among Pentecostal spirituality, continental and analytic philosophy, postliberalism, moral psychology, and philosophy of emotion. This work clarifies misunderstandings of Smith, in Smith, and between continental and analytic epistemology, constructively and coherently synthesizing the sources through interdisciplinary analysis and thereby demonstrating the value of mashup philosophy. The resulting epistemology strengthens the mostly descriptive epistemology of Smith with the warrant criteria of Alvin Plantinga.

This brief but comprehensive introduction to Christian worldview helps readers understand the Christian faith as the substance of Spirit-filled living and as a knowledge tradition stemming from the global Pentecostal movement. Using beauty, truth, and goodness as organizing principles, the authors delineate a Christian worldview by tracing each category historically, comparing and contrasting each with alternative Christian expressions, and constructing fresh takes on each as read through the lived Pentecostal experience. Unlike other worldview books, the authors' approach emphasizes beauty (relating to experience) rather than truth (involving knowledge acquisition); that difference in emphasis flows naturally from the Pentecostal perspective, which has traditionally centered the experience of the Spirit. Pentecostal Christians will find this volume indispensable for thinking lucidly about their worldview from a renewal perspective.

The past several decades have seen a renaissance in Christian philosophy, led by the work of Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, William Alston, Eleonore Stump, and others. In the spirit of Plantinga s famous manifesto, Advice to Christian Philosophers, James K. A. Smith here offers not only advice to Pentecostal philosophers but also some Pentecostal advice to Christian philosophers. In this inaugural Pentecostal Manifestos volume Smith begins from the conviction that implicit in Pentecostal and charismatic spirituality is a tacit worldview or social imaginary. Thinking in Tongues unpacks and articulates the key elements of this Pentecostal worldview and then explores their implications for philosophical reflection on ontology, epistemology, aesthetics, language, science, and philosophy of religion. In each case, Smith demonstrates how the implicit wisdom of Pentecostal spirituality makes unique contributions to current conversations in Christian philosophy.

The story of Christian thought is essential to understanding Christian faith today and the last two millennia of world history. This fresh and lively introduction explores the central ideas, persons, events, and movements that gave rise to Christian thought, from early beginnings to its present forms. By highlighting the important but often neglected role of women and the influence of non-Christian ideas and movements, this book provides a broader context for understanding the history of Christian ideas and their role in shaping our world. Christian Thought: provides an overview of the context of Christianity’s origin, including discussion of the influence of Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans explores the major events and figures of the history of Christian thought, while drawing attention to significant voices which have often been suppressed analyses the impact on Christian thought of widely discussed events such as The Great Schism, the Scientific Revolution, and modernism surveys contemporary trends such as fundamentalism, feminism, and postmodernism. This fully revised and updated second edition features a new chapter on liberal theology and reflects recent scholarship in the field. Complete with figures, timelines and maps, this is an ideal resource for anyone wanting to learn more about the development of Christian thought and its influence over the centuries. Further teaching and learning resources are available on the companion website at www.routledge.com/cw/meister.

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.

This title was first published in 2002. How does one go about "doing Christian theology"? Yong explores this question by proposing a pneumatological-trinitarian hermeneutic. Its thesis is that interpretation and theological method is an ongoing tri-logue of Spirit-Word-Community: of interpretive subjects as imaginative, obligated and relational agents; of the horizons of the interpreter, the biblical and ecclesial traditions, and the world; and of founding, historical, and ongoing communities of faith and inquiry. Ecumenical perspectives on the topics of pneumatology (the doctrine of the Spirit), metaphysics (foundational pneumatology), epistemology (the pneumatological imagination), and trinitarian theology converge in this book to move forward the present discussion of theological method.

The Interpreting Spirit is both a consideration of the Spirit's role in the interpretation of Scripture and a celebration of renewal scholarship. It examines those who have focused on the Spirit's role in their hermeneutical considerations, recognizing common, uniting themes amidst the diversity of scholarly approach and opinion. Working on the principle that the Spirit communicates in ways that seek to unify and celebrate the other, Mather works diachronically from 1970, identifying and drawing together these common, uniting hallmarks into a collective understanding. Pivotal to Mather's argument is her emphasis that we do not just interpret Scripture, but that the Spirit through Scripture, and working in our lives in ways that lead us towards Scripture, interprets us. The Interpreting Spirit is the first comprehensive analysis of the conversation surrounding pneumatic interpretation that has been taking place, particularly among renewal scholars, since 1970. It seeks to answer the notoriously difficult question, "What does the Spirit do in the process of biblical interpretation?"

Helping you navigate the complex debate among Christians over postmodernism, Robert C. Greer maps four different paths marked out by Francis Schaeffer, Karl Barth, John Hick and George Lindbeck. Ultimately, he points to the true Subject who makes knowledge possible through the language of revelation and relationship with God.

Insofar as Christian theology aims to make truthful claims about the nature of reality, it is necessarily involved in the enterprise of metaphysics. Pentecostals, precisely as Christians, are thus obliged to participate. Through this study it becomes evident that pentecostals aim to participate in the metaphysical discipline in the same way they theologize - that is, informed by the norms, practices, and speech acts that constitute their spirituality. This book aims to construct a Christian metaphysics that is at once attuned to pentecostal spirituality/theology and informed by the classical tradition of Christian metaphysics. Ultimately, this work offers a constructive and critical engagement with pentecostal spirituality, and with pentecostal theology via the larger ecumenical, creedal, and dogmatic metaphysical tradition. Thus, this book is explicitly and intentionally limited to understand metaphysics in conversation with the historical Christian tradition, and to understand a pentecostal vision of it.

The second edition of this important foundatinal text for the emerging church includes a new foreword by Biran McLaren and a new afterword from John Franke updating the book for the contemporary church scene.