charismatic movement

• Apostolic succession

  The authority of the pope and the magisterium in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches comes from the apostles
• Sola scriptura


  The authority in the reformed tradition comes from the Bible alone
• Charismatic movement

  Locates its authority in the Holy Spirit and the individual's experience of it in their lives
• Scripture, tradition, and reason


  The basis of authority in the Church of England
• "Other tongues"


  Other humanly understandable languages
• What the Holy Spirit is like

  • Powerful
  • Transcendent
• What the Holy Spirit does

  • Transform
  • Give different abilities
• The Holy Spirit enabled the apostles to speak in their mother tongues when trying to speak to Galileans
• Gifts of the Spirit (Romans 12:6-8)


  • Prophecy
  • Ministry
  • Teaching
  • Exhorting
  • Giving
  • Leading
  • Diligence
  • Compassion
  • Cheerfulness
• Gifts of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:8-11)

  • Healing
  • Utterance of wisdom
  • Utterance of knowledge according to the same spirit
  • Miracles
  • Prophecy
  • Discernment of spirits
  • Various types of tongues
  • Interpretation of tongues
• Strengths of the charismatic movement

  • More personal experience of worship
  • Brings a community together
  • Heavy reliance upon the written texts
  • Going out into the community and evangelising
  • Healing others (whether in body or in spirit)
  • Closer to the early church's practices
  • Not having empirical proof is a challenge to all believers
  • Doesn't forget the Holy Spirit
  • You can experience God
• Weaknesses of the charismatic movement

  • Is there actually physical healing?
  • Can experiences really be verified and trusted?
  • Group hysteria?
  • Acts 2 is not fully followed
  • "Spoke in different tongues" is it a verifiable thing?
  • Did you have your lunch?
  • Experiencing God isn't unique to charismatic churches
• Analytic statements


  Statements that are true by definition, like "ice is icy"
• Mathematical statements

  Statements that are verifiable a priori, like "the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees"
• Synthetic statements

  Statements that need to be verified by experience, a posteriori
• Logical positivism holds that a claim is meaningful if it can be tested using sense experience, and meaningless otherwise
• Treating sentences about faith as if they are scientific statements is making an error of understanding, according to Vincent Brummer
• Jill Oliphant argues that the verification principle is itself unverifiable
• Michael Wilcockson argues that the verification principle means statements conveying emotions or unverifiable opinions are considered meaningless, but even unverifiable statements can be meaningful
• Challenges to the charismatic experience

  • Psychological factors
  • Physiological factors
  • Cultural/sociological factors
• Freud's psychological challenge

  Religious experiences are a human projection of a desire for a perpetual parent figure (God)
• Dawkins' psychological challenge

  Religious experiences are an illusion to help the mind cope with the fear of the unknown
• Physiological challenge

  Religious experiences are the result of chemical reactions in the brain, similar to the effects of drugs or alcohol
• The Toronto Blessing was a controversial charismatic Christian movement in the 1990s that spread widely
• Swinburne's principle of credulity


  Unless there is good reason to reject it, we should accept people's testimony about their experiences