Journal No.32 Abstracts

Abstracts of CGST JOURNAL (Issue No.33 Jul 2002)
The Holy Spirit: Theological Reflections and Movements

The Gifts and the Work of the Holy Spirit:
A Theological Reflection and an Attempt at Dialogue (An abstract)
Carver T. Yu

I Believe in the Holy Spirit
--The Genesis of the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (An abstract)
Kang Phee Seng @ Jiang Pisheng

Contextualization of the Holy Spirit Movements in Hong Kong (An abstract)
Agnes T. F. Liu

A Preliminary Study on Pentecostal Hermeneutics (An abstract)
Luke Cheung

A Dialogue between Christianity and
the Postmodern View of Self (II):
"I Am Loved; Therefore I Am" (An abstract)
Kai-man Kwan

Chea Kun Kong: The First Martyr of the Chinese Church (An abstract)
Siu-lun Lau

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CGST JOURNAL No. 33
(in Chinese)

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The Gifts and the Work of the Holy Spirit:
A Theological Reflection and an Attempt at Dialogue
(An abstract)

Carver T. Yu
Vice President
China Graduate School of Theology

This paper is not meant to be a detached academic study on certain aspects of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. It is written with an existing concern for what may be missing in the evangelical church as well as among those in the so-called Pentecostal-Charismatic camp in regard to their respective understanding and experience of the Holy Spirit. It is also written with the hope that the two traditions may come into deeper mutual understanding and dialogue.

The paper begins with an attempt at rediscovery. It tries to retrieve the wealth of the Reformers?teaching on the Holy Spirit. Both Luther and Calvin place the Holy Spirit right at the heart of their theology, and both have a lot to teach us. If the death and resurrection of Christ has achieved salvation for us as an objective reality, then the Holy Spirit makes revelation and the reality of salvation real to us in our inner life and its manifestation. The continual presence and work of the Holy Spirit within us is vital to the working out of our salvation. The Holy Spirit is real not in abstract doctrinal confession but in our experience. Yet the Holy Spirit never operates in abstraction from what God has already revealed to us in Christ as testified by the Scripture. The cross is at the center of everything. The Holy Spirit is to make the wonder of God's love in Christ and the power of His resurrection real in the life of believers. What the church experiences as the gifts of the Holy Spirit continue to be real and powerful in the present day. Calvin even teaches about new gifts being continually bestowed, and that the church should not restrict herself to certain gifts. The work of the Holy Spirit for the assurance of salvation and sanctification is the constant, while His gifts in various forms may come and go. The greatest of all gifts is the Holy Spirit Himself.

It is hoped that on the basis of the Reformers' theology of the Holy Spirit, we may come into a deeper understanding and appreciation of each other. The Protestant tradition in general and the evangelical tradition in particular have to reflect on what has been lost through almost three centuries of endless theological formalization, due to doctrinal controversies, theological compromises under the pressure from the Enlightenment, and apologetic defense against liberalism. For evangelical theologians, the Holy Spirit has often been reduced to an epistemological item in our strategies of apologetic defense. For fear of erosion of the objective truth, they shun all forms of experience. An objectivist concept of the Word of God could have become a castle for them within which they are safe and secure, but they may have missed out the richness of God's personal presence and His wonderful gifts. The Pentecostal-Charismatics, on the other hand, are in danger of taking the Holy Spirit in abstraction from the Word. In being triumphalistic, they could have forgotten that the wonder of all wonders is Christ's death on the Cross. Any form of God's power is at once the power of Him who forfeits His power on the cross.

Jonathan Edwards provides us with a paradigm of how deep theological understanding and celebration of spiritual experiences may integrate, as the presence of the Holy Spirit manifest in all His power. Edwards' approach is worth reflecting on, for both the evangelical church and the Pentecostal-Charismatic camp.

I Believe in the Holy Spirit
--The Genesis of the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit
(An abstract)

Kang Phee Seng @ Jiang Pisheng
Associate Professor
Department of Religion and Philosophy
Hong Kong Baptist University

This paper examines the development of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the early church and the underlying theological methodology. The difficulty of the doctrine lies in the inherent invisibility and ultimate ineffability of the Spirit. The Spirit does not speak of himself and remains veiled by the very revelation of the Father and the Son he brings. However, this ineffability does not mean that the Spirit is unintelligible. He is known as the third person in the triune God. Weakness in pneumatology inevitably reflects a corresponding weakness in the doctrine of the Trinity.

The study further shows that the doctrine arises out of the life and worship of the early church in the triune God. Pneumatology thus cannot be the product of abstract, metaphysical, speculative and personal reflections. Rather, it is the reflection of the whole church on her new life and mission in Christ. Pneumatology therefore is not just an essential component of systematic theology, it lies at the centre of practical (pastoral) theology.

Moreover, properly understood, Nicene christology is pneumatological and its pneumatology christological. Nicene pneumatology is built upon the solid foundation of its earlier Christology in A.D.325 and the christological relevance of its pneumatology is further explicated. Failure to understand the inseparable relation between the Son and the Spirit leads to a one-sided emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit as only Pentecostal. The full range of charismatic experience of love and power, failure and triumph, weakness and strength, suffering and healing, dying and rising again is significantly weakened when the Spirit is separated from the cross.

Contextualization of the Holy Spirit Movements in Hong Kong
(An abstract)

Agnes T. F. Liu
President
The Jubilee Ministries

This paper evaluates the contextualization of the three "Holy Spirit movements" which have emerged in Hong Kong, namely, the Pentecostal movement, the Charismatic movement and the Third Wave. The author discovers that, in spite of their success among the westernized, the youngsters and the grass-root people in the society, these movements are not well received among the middle-aged traditional Chinese Christians.

As a reason of this, the author suggests that the movements disagree with traditional Chinese religious culture in many aspects. The Chinese prefers the spiritual over against the physical. Li (§) teaches the restraining of expression and the curbing of natural tendencies. The Chinese religious culture does not have any ecstatic prophetic tradition that allows for the amalgamation of the supernatural and the didactic. Intense emotions are considered characteristics of primitive religions. There is no place for the experience of the fullness of the Holy Spirit in the Chinese concept of "union with Heaven." Only Shamans who are despised by Confucian teachers perform healing and deliverance ministries upon people's request. Likewise, in the eyes of the middle-aged Chinese Christians, ministers who carry out similar healing ministries are in fact not much different from those Shamans. Lastly, middle-class Chinese evangelical Christians adopt a Confucian value system that prefers a more inward, traditional and staid form of Christianity.

The paper finishes with some suggestions on the directions that contextual movements of the Holy Spirit can take. The movements need to go back to its roots of pietism, to develop a theology of experience, to integrate the work of the Holy Spirit with the evangelical emphasis on Scripture. The movements should ferret out how the life-giving Spirit can bring vitality to the conservative Chinese culture and how the healing ministry of the Spirit can respond to the hurts of a person in suffering. In practice, the Holy Spirit movements need to reduce its reliance on foreign speakers and develop a form that is truly indigenous. It is essential that the people within the movements be humble and self-effacing, so as to be consistent with Christ's "kenosis" and the Confucian ideal of the gentleman-scholar. Finally, the movements ought to be renewed continuously to keep pace with Hong Kong's changing context.

A Preliminary Study on Pentecostal Hermeneutics
(An abstract)

Luke Cheung
Associate Professor
China Graduate School of Theology

Pentecostals often regard the Pentecostal movement as another reformation after Reformation. They claim to have recovered what the Christian church had lost since the time of the early church. In other words, the Pentecostal church is the true successor to the apostolic church. In this study, the author investigates the validity of their way of understanding the scripture with particular reference to their doctrine of the initial sign of tongues or the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which is a defining doctrine for the Pentecostals. Some of the presuppositions of their hermeneutics are brought into focus: 1. Their world view of spiritual warfare; 2. the eschatological tension; 3. the experience of supernatural gifts; and 4. the prominence of Lukan theology. The author then examines how the historical-critical approach affects the new generation of Pentecostal biblical scholars. They tend to be more willing to engage in dialogue with non-charismatic evangelicals on the basis of this common approach. Although a consensus have not been arrived at on the issue of initial sign, such a dialogue is to be encouraged in the Christian church at large. This study concludes with a reflection on the ultimate purpose of biblical interpretation, and the role of the Holy Spirit and personal experiences on hermeneutics. Both the contributions and the pitfalls of Pentecostal hermeneutics are examined in this study.

On the Similarity between Wang Chuan-shan's
History of Tao and Jurgen Moltmann's History
of the Spirit: A Dialectic Perspective
(An abstract)

Andres S. K. Tang
Associate Professor of Theology and Culture
Lutheran Theological Seminary

This paper aims at giving an analysis of the similarity between Wang Chuan-shan's history of Tao and Jurgen Moltmann's history of the Spirit, focusing on the dialectics of their theories. On the one hand, neither of them agrees to the ahistorical understanding of Tao and God. On the other hand, they both advocate a kind of dialectical history, of Tao and of God in the Spirit, respectively. Their similarities can be articulated in three aspects. The first aspect is the nature of Tao/the Spirit in relation to the world. Wang believes that ontologically speaking, Tao is Tao of the world in the senses of manifestation and in-itself. Likewise, in Moltmann's theology, the Spirit is the Spirit-in-the-world as manifested in the Trinitarian Christ event which is grounded on and determined by the inner divine life of the triune God.

The second aspect that reveals their similarity is the structure of the history of Tao/the Spirit with the world. For Wang, the history of Tao of the world is dialectically structured. While Tao of the world has to manifest itself in the world, it simultaneously and dialectically develops its history with the world. Moltmann's conception of the history of the Spirit consists of two moments, that is, the mutual indwelling and the perichoretic unity within the triune God. Furthermore, owing to the indwelling of the Spirit in the world, the Spirit shares the destiny of the world and creates a new chapter for the both of them in the future.

The third aspect in which the similarity between Wang and Moltmann can be seen lies in the internal structure of Tao-in-itself/Spirit-in-itself. Wang takes Tao-in-itself as the dialectics of two-in-one and one-in-two. The difference between the two initiates a movement within the One, causing the One to move out of itself to the world eventually. For Moltmann, the Spirit is to be understood within the framework of the Trinity. The difference among the three persons constitutes a dialectical movement of indwelling and perichoresis that is open to the world.

As a conclusion of this paper, the difference between Wang and Moltmann is drafted here in advance for further discussion.

A Dialogue between Christianity and
the Postmodern View of Self (II):
"I Am Loved; Therefore I Am"
(An abstract)

Kai-man Kwan
Assistant Professor
Department of Religion and Philosophy
Hong Kong Baptist University

This is the second paper of a series on the dialogue between Christianity and the postmodern view of self. In the first paper, I delineate the postmodern view of self and point out its various shortcomings. In this paper, I first explore Kierkegaard's view on becoming a self before God. I argue that his dialectical view of self as the synthesis of the finite and the infinite avoids both the arrogance of modernism and the despair of postmodernism. Then I explain several significant aspects of the Christian view of self in contrast with both the modern and the postmodern view: 1. In line with postmodernism, Christianity acknowledges the fragility of self. 2. However, in contrast with postmodernism, the Christian doctrines of creation, redemption and incarnation provide a basis for the value and identity of the human self. 3. Knowledge of God is inseparable from self-knowledge. 4. Oneself's fidelity to the other helps create the self of the other and his own self. 5. Jesus Christ's self-emptying shows the dialectical relationship between losing oneself and gaining oneself. A Christ-centered self is therefore a self that is centered around self-giving love. It is not necessarily oppressive (pace postmodernism). 6. A Christian self can be open, creative and forever self-transcending.

Finally, I argue that, given the death of God, the problem of the true self is very hard to solve. This is the cause behind the predicament of postmodernists over the issue of self.

Chea Kun Kong: The First Martyr of the Chinese Church
(An abstract)

Siu-lun Lau
Assistant Research Officer
Chinese Culture Research Centre
China Graduate School of Theology

Chea Kun Kong of Poklo, Kwangtong Province of China, was the first believer in the Chinese Church who became a martyr. Soon after his conversion to Christianity, a series of cultural and religious confrontation was stirred up in the local gentry. Chea insisted his faith in face of the opposition, and thus put his life in jeopardy. He was eventually put to death at the Kong Tong village near Poklo in 1861. Based on documents taken from the archives of the London Missionary Society, the author of this paper reconstructs the events of Chea's life: his conversion to Christianity, his relentless effort in preaching the gospel to his fellow villagers, and the tragic ending, namely, his martyrdom.

To begin his report, the author points out that previous research made on the lives of early Chinese Christians pays attention only to the "littoral intellectual," meaning those who lived in treaty ports or large cities, who received western education and might subsequently took an active part in the modernization of China. They were an elite group at the time of Chea which is hence a natural target of research studies. However, there were other Chinese preachers and laymen in the hinterland, and they were of large numbers. Many of them, including Chea, were of no less significance than that of the littoral intellectuals, but as part of Chinese church history they have been unnoted so far. This paper is written to fill in this gap.

Chea Kun Kong was converted to Christ in 1856 after reading evangelistic booklets distributed by a certain colporteur of the Bible Society, who happened to pass by Poklo. He was baptized in Hong Kong about three months later by James Legge of the London Missionary Society (LMS). After baptism, Chea went back to his native village and preached the gospel without any financial support from foreign missionary societies. Chea's undaunted effort in evangelizing his fellow people was very fruitful. Groups of new converts went from Poklo to Hong Kong to be baptized by LMS missionaries. A small congregation emerged gradually in Poklo, and the congregation had, of course, a strong link with LMS. In 1861, with the help of LMS, the congregation planned to buy a house and set up their own chapel in the town of Poklo. This attempt triggered animosity among the local gentry and villagers because there was a general resentment against foreign invasion at that time. Thus the move was strongly opposed and the property claim of the premise by the congregation was condemned as illegal. To handle this, missionaries including Legge went to Poklo to exert pressure on the Chinese government officers. While they were there, they received consent, and the right of ownership of the disputed house was granted with a legal document. Once they left Poklo, however, an extensive outrage broke out in a couple of days. The would-be chapel was devastated and Christians were persecuted. Chea, as the leader of the local church, was seized by a group of villagers. He was tortured to death on October 16, 1861.

The situation of early Chinese Christians in the hinterland was never an easy one. Like many other Christian intellectuals in those days, they were caught in the dilemma of conforming to their native culture on the one hand and remaining true to their newly adopted faith on the other hand. However, unlike their littoral counterparts, they were, in many ways, deprived of the privileges that their conversion might have brought them. Their faith did not lead them to higher social prestige, nor were they given the legal protection or freedom of religion that one might have enjoyed in treaty ports and big cities. They could have had survived conflicts and persecutions if they have remained silent or kept a low profile of their faith, but if they have lived as devoted Christians of faith, they would have had to pay the cost, to even endure death. Chea's martyrdom is an evidence of this.

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CGST JOURNAL No. 33
(in Chinese)

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