Flecks of gold falling from above, “glory clouds” swirling over the stage, and angel feathers landing on congregants’ heads: such are the phenomena allegedly experienced regularly at Bethel Church services, a charismatic movement formerly aligned with the Assemblies of God denomination.[1] Senior pastor Bill Johnson preaches that it is always God’s will to heal someone; thus if there is a deficiency, it is up to us to “fix”. “Books will help, if the author has a miracle lifestyle,” Johnson advises, with an auxiliary warning: “Don’t try to learn from those who only have the theory of miracles.”[2] Such statements—though extreme—exemplify the rich Pentecostal doctrine of divine providence, or God’s sovereign control over creation, into which palpable beliefs in the supernatural are embedded. Previously, the natural laws formulated in the Enlightenment espoused an opposing extreme, placing a staunch divide between the pre-modern continuum of the natural. In its hangover, the domains of science and theological tradition have continued to run on separate turf. Contemporary philosopher Philip Clayton poses the dilemma this way:

Modern science presupposes that the universe is a closed physical system, that interactions are regular and law-like, that all causal histories can be traced, and that anomalies will ultimately have physical explanations. But traditional assertions of God acting in the world conflict with all four of these conditions: they presuppose that the universe is open, that God acts from time to time according to his purposes, that the ultimate source and explanation of these actions is the divine will, and that no earthly account would ever suffice to explain God’s intentions.[3]

This division is laden with irony, however, as it did not exist when the term supernatural entered the theological conversation in the thirteenth century.[4] The non-dualistic way of thinking normative to pre-modernity is now an indispensable tool to the contemporary Church, especially as opportunity for cross-domain advancement arises. I shall argue that the theologically necessary divergence of Pentecostal pneumatology from Naturalism should not be repeated regarding current scientific discovery, lest the tradition resists a harmonious and increasingly holistic doctrine of divine providence.

The Enlightenment was a philosophical movement in the 18^th century that was marked by an emphasis on rationalism and an accompanying rejection of traditional social, religious, and political ideas.[5] Prior to the movement, God’s providence was understood as continuity between natural and supernatural categories. Thomas Aquinas—the medieval thinker aptly known as the “Angelic Doctor—used the word in a theological context as part of his defense regarding the polarity occupying his day: faith and reason. Employing the term 336 times,[6] Aquinas largely uses it in discussion of what he deems the three supernatural or theological virtues, which enhance and elevate human capacity: faith, hope, and charity.[7] Insofar as the term applies to miracles, Aquinas holds that rather than being antithetical to nature, miraculous events surpass the faculty of nature; in other words, miracles did no denote something unnatural, but rather something especially natural. He defined them as “works done by God outside the order usually observed in things,” or “when we see an effect without knowing the cause.”[8] Ironically, though he believed “the natural order is enveloped in the supernatural,” Aquinas’s interrelated distinction between the two contributed to a far wider juxtaposition during modernity, which sliced them into differentiated realms.[9]

During the Enlightenment, the vernacular of the miraculous came under strong critique, as did the principle of faith in general. Of chief importance within the intellectual and philosophical movement were the significant advances born of natural science, which “becomes the concern of all civilization.”[10] Describing the breadth and effect of such shifts, Enlightenment-era mathematician Jean-Baptiste le Rond d’Alembert wrote: “Spreading throughout nature in all directions, this fermentation has swept with a sort of violence everything before it which stood in its way, like a river which has burst its dams.” Commenting on statements such as d’Alembert’s, Ernst Cassier explains that the whole eighteenth century permeated the conviction that “in the history of humanity the time had now arrived to deprive nature of its carefully guarded secret, to leave it no longer in the dark to be marveled at as an incomprehensible mystery but to bring it under the bright light of reason and analyze it with all its fundamental forces.” To do this, he claims, “it was above all necessary to sever the bond between theology and physics once and for all.”[11] The split had already begun with scientific breakthroughs such as Galileo’s principle of inertia and Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and of universal gravitation; thus by the eighteenth century, “the regularities of the world once thought to be the product of the divine will were naturalized and dislodged from their theistic underpinnings.”[12] In regards to divine providence, Pinoza’s formulation of the physical principle of inertia “marked the final emancipation from dependence on God”, at least in regards to self-preservation. [13] Because it fit somewhat safely within the arising worldview, Deism—the belief that God’s only intervention in the Universe was in its creation—was widely adopted and developed by Enlightenment theologians. Hints of such views are found in the writings of René Descartes, who said there is no need for God to intervene in the world process after what God did “[i]n the beginning [as] he created matter, along with its motion and rest; and now, merely by regularly letting things run their course.”[14] The pervading pneumatology—if there was any at all—demoted the Spirit from person to power.[15]

This subordination of the Spirit was not novel to tradition; rather, it is so apparent throughout doctrinal history that many refer to the Spirit as the Cinderella of the Trinity.[16] However, theological development in twentieth-century saw the pendulum swing fiercely the other way, due to the “pneumatological windfall” brought on by Pentecostalism.[17] The tradition’s name derives from the pneumatic event at Pentecost as described in the New Testament. In the second chapter of Acts, the “baptism of the Holy Spirit”—interpreted by Pentecostals as a “supernatural experience of instant and complete sanctification of the individual subsequent to justification”[18]—is depicted as a “mighty rushing wind” and “tongues of fire,” as former prophecies are fulfilled. The remainder of Acts is the riddled with references to “the Spirit filling, empowering, and directing the early church’s life and mission.”[19] The tradition itself had its beginnings in revivals such as William Seymour’s famous Azusa Street revivals in Los Angeles. In the 1960s, Pentecostalism “spilled beyond the bounds of its own various churches” in the emerging trans-denominational “charismatic movement.” Charismatic theology—like that of Bethel—is generally not as doctrinaire as the more established Pentecostal denominations and leans even heavier on particular pneumatology, touting “a supernatural encounter with God in both worship and daily life that includes manifestations of extraordinary charismata—the gifts of the Spirit, such as prophecy, healings, and speaking in other tongues.”[20] Thus, in contrast to the general understanding of providence, that creation must be kept in existence and preserved, most Pentecostal Christians “expect God’s ongoing intervention in the same manner as divine action was displayed in the lives of the earliest Christians;” i.e., “in their fairly straightforward and literal reading of the New Testament narrative, God healed the sick, cleansed lepers, and raised the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit given on the day of Pentecost—doing all of this in response to the prayers and requests of God’s people..”

This interventionist doctrine of providence juxtaposes Deism’s hands-off view of God, situating daily encounters with the divine as palpable, tangible, and kinesthetic.[21] This was perhaps in reaction to two dominant theologies of the early twentieth century: the Cessationism (the doctrine that spiritual gifts ended with the apostolic age) of fundamentalist Christianity of the right, and the naturalism of Liberal Protestantism on the left.[22] Pentecostalism effectively added modern science onto the massive bob in their swing away from Enlightenment Deism. Pentecostal theologian Amos Yong claims that since their genesis, Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement have embraced modern science. Though this is a jump, his qualifying statement better hits the mark: that they “have neglected to think through the theological questions pertaining to this set of practices.”[23] Expounding upon his former claim, Yong says:

PC supernaturalism questioned neither the logical nor the metaphysical underpinnings of the naturalistic paradigm. In fact, supernaturalism actually requires a fairly robust view of nature governed by physical laws to begin with, because without this all-encompassing framework, divine signs, wonders, and miracles would not stand out from such laws and thereby would lose much of their capacity to evoke astonishment. Ironically, then, it was this assumption regarding the laws of nature propounded within a naturalistic framework that secured the interventionist and supernaturalistic worldview of PC Christianity. After all, if the laws of nature dictated that things happen in this or that way, only the supernatural intervention of God into the natural order of things could cause events to turn out differently.[24]

Yong goes on to say that it was this “unquestioning” view of natural laws that rendered Pentecostalism’s supernaturalist tendencies problematic in the eyes of modern science.[25] However, though natural law may be theologically subsumed in their doctrine of providence, real-world examples from charismatic churches like Bethel display a mindset far from “unquestioning.” A 2014 law-suit shines light on one such instance, filed by the victim of a cliff-fall after two of his classmates at the Bethel School of International Healing spent hours debating whether or not to call the police, opting to attempt to pray him back to life and only calling the police after they thought he was dead. Perhaps they had Johnson’s message that “Powerlessness in inexcusable,” ringing in their ears; “Our mandate in simple: raise up a generation that can openly display the raw power of God” he says.[26] The victim was in a month-long coma and is left paraplegic. According to the lawsuit transcript, “(The) defendants’ refusal to summon assistance was willful, malicious, morally outrageous and indefensible”.[27] Such pneumatology that resists reason and modern science is clearly fraught with danger. It is no wonder then that anti-intellectualism has been a longstanding critique of Pentecostalism.

A 2016 article by the Christian Research Institute details two noteworthy facts about Bethel’s “signs and wonders”—the term they use for particular divine providence—which rings true of many neo-charismatic churches. First, these ministries never provided any documentation of the alleged miracles: “When people come forward at a meeting for healing and leave claiming to be cured, there isn’t any documented follow-up to see if the purported healing actually occurred or was simply the result of wishful thinking on the part of the person supposedly healed.” This can be catastrophic: “When someone feels they’ve been healed of cancer and then stops treatment as a sign of faith, the results can be horrific.”[28] Secondly, though Biblicism—interpreting the bible literally—is a common critique of Pentecostalism, this movement actually relies on extrabiblical revelation, thus “the theological paradigm undergirding Bethel’s miracle claims contradicts biblical teaching.”[29] Some instances—like the aforementioned “angel feathers” which were studied by ornithologists and proven to be feathers from an ordinary bird—give some weight to David Hume’s Enlightenment a posteriori arguments against miracles: that miraculous claims often originate from undependable eyewitnesses, and that the perpetuation of miracles is often accomplished through human gullibility.[30] But Johnson urges Christians to reject reason entirely:

Usually those who use the natural mind to protect themselves from deception are the most deceived. They’ve relied on their own finite logic and reason to keep them safe, which is in itself a deception. They usually have an explanation for all that’s going on in their walk with the Lord, but criticize those who long for more. Our hearts can embrace things that our heads can’t. Our hearts will lead us where our logic would never dare to go.[31]

This adamant Pentecostal mindset of divine providence being particular and supernatural differs greatly from the pre-modern mindset. Surprisingly, the writings of 18^th and 19^th century philosopher-theologian Friedrich Schlieiermacher share more similarities. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen breaks down Schleiermacher’s view of miracles, which he places on the spectrum of general providence:

“Miracle is simply the religious name for event. Every event, even the most natural and usual, becomes a miracle, as soon as the religious view of it can be the dominant. To me all is miracle.” This statement is not meant to reject the concept of the miraculous but rather, materially echoing Saint Augustine, to rightly not that only a religious interpretation “sees the deeper nature of everyday events, experiencing them as miraculous, as an expression of the providence of God.” Hence, “we will find the fact of the order of nature, its regularities and enduring constructs, genuinely astounding. . . . Since it is not self-evident that anything should take place, not merely the emergence but above all the continuation of creaturely forms and states is at every moment miraculous.”[32]

Along the same lines, C.S. Lewis famously said “Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.”[33] Such views rely on a non-dualistic view of the natural.

Scientific discovery is proving C.S Lewis’s to be true on multiple levels. Modern science has shown a law-like nature to the universe that remains—for the most part—uniform. However, in the midst of the uniformity there is space for God’s creativity. Take dark energy, for example: as much as astrophysicists study it, there is vastly more that is unknown than known—the stuff is seemingly beyond human comprehension, and yet it is thought to account for roughly 68% of the universe.[34] Additionally, there is an entire field of study for the random and unpredictable behavior in systems governed by deterministic laws: chaos theory.[35] Natural law itself indicates that there are places where law-like behavior ceases. It cannot be assumed that the human domain of knowledge has lassoed all there is to know about the universe; rather, as soon as we think we know what is going on, new discovery proves us wrong. Dr. Tom Bennett says that this should not surprise Christians because “God is in the business of exposing something new that explains everything before and yet brings new possibilities.” He goes on to say “maybe there is space for the Spirit to work within nature in ways that are just beyond what we always understand, or we can see them as God’s providential ordering and elegance.” In this way, the path of discovery mimics how God reveals God’s own interpenetrating (rather than a deistic hit-and-run) triune work in the world. The Pentecostal belief in the immanence of the Spirit overlaps greatly with such findings, but because of the cleave that began during the Enlightenment, neither field wants to meet at the intersection. Even within theology, there is a divide:

Conservatives continued the affirmation of divine acts without concern for science, and liberals virtually left behind any factual notion of divine acts as they were conceived to be merely subjective responses to religious influences (Schleiermacher). Neo-orthodox theologians, with all their resistance to classical liberalism, subscribed to the “nature-history” dualism, thus removing God and his acts from the realm of the sciences.[36]

However, Kärkkäinen does give credit to one group that is taking strides to breach the gap: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action. In their theological-philosophical approach known as Non-Interventionist Objective Divine Action (NIODA). Unfortunately, even this project “follows the canons od the post-Enlightenment worldview,”[37] as their model does not leave room for miraculous divine action (i.e. intervention). The Newtonian worldview of causality has to be rejected in order to recast the doctrine of divine providence in a way that is scientifically compatible. Kärkkäinen urges that:

we should be open to recognizing “the profound metaphysical point that divine causality transcends any other category of causality.” This is not an effort to divorce God from the world, nor to make divine action more mysterious than it is. Rather, it is to cash out the implications of God’s thoroughgoing, all-pervasive presence through the Spirit in the world created and sustained in and through the Son because of the Father’s overflowing love.[38]

The paradigm of the incarnation may point us back to a healthy view of divine providence. In Christ, there is living and breathing embodiment of the overlap between human and divine, matter and spirit. Quantum theory should help us shatter the distinction between latter two categories, as it proves that everything in existence is mysteriously a combination of both. As Franciscan scientist and theologian Ilia Delio says, “We are in the universe and the universe is in us.”[39]Aquinas and his contemporaries were ahead of the game, but scientific discovery can help us reclaim the paradox our dualistic minds have lost. The Church must run and plunge into the overlap in a manner similar to how Pentecostals see God permeating the universe’s interstices here and now. Then all of God’s creative work—from evolutionary processes and medicine to miraculous healing (and maybe even “glory clouds”)—can evoke wonder, be studied and be praised, and once again be called natural.

Notes

[1] “Response to Glory Cloud at Bethel,” Youtube, October 22, 2011, accessed March 05, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=407&v=tcPkOR4Lwj0.

[2] Bill Johnson, “Is it Always God’s Will to Heal Someone?” Bill Johnson Ministries, accessed March 05, 2019, [3] Veli-Matti" class="redactor-autoparser-object">http://bjm.org/qa/is-it-always... Kärkkäinen, Hope and Community: A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World. Vol. 3. 5 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2015), Kindle Ediiton, 5253-5256

[4] Ibid., 5612.

[5] “Enlightenment,” Merriam-Webster, accessed March 20, 2019, [6] Andrew" class="redactor-autoparser-object">https://www.merriam-webster.co... Murray, “The Spiritual and the Supernatural According to Thomas Aquinas,” proceedings of Biennial Conference in Philosophy, Religion and Culture, Catholic Institute of Sydney, 1, accessed March 9, 2019

[7] Jospeh P. Wawrykow, "Theological Virtues ,” Oxford Handbooks, June 17, 2017, accessed March 09, 2019, [8] Kärkkäinen, Hope" class="redactor-autoparser-object">http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com... and Community, 5619-5624.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ernst Cassier, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), 46.

[11] Ibid., 47-48.

[12] Amos Yong, “Natural Laws and Divine Intervention: What Difference Does Being Pentecostal or Charismatic Make?” Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science 43, no. 4 (December 2008): accessed March 8, 2019, [13] Kärkkäinen, Hope" class="redactor-autoparser-object">https://web-b-ebscohost-com.fu... and Community, 5210.

[14] Ibid., 5204-5206.

[15] Richard J. Plantinga, Thomas R. Thompson, and Matthew D. Lundberg, eds., An Introduction to Christian Theology (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), Kindle edition, 299.

[16] Ibid., 285.

[17] Ibid., 284-285.

[18] Ibid., 301.

[19] Ibid., 289-290.

[20] Ibid., 301.

[21] Yong, “Natural Laws and Divine Intervention,” 962.

[22] Ibid., 964.

[23] Ibid., 961.

[24] Ibid., 964.

[25] Ibid.

[26] "Off the Map: Bill Johnson and the Pursuit of Extrabiblical Authentication," Christian Research Institute, June 15, 2016, accessed March 20, 2019, [27] Faith" class="redactor-autoparser-object">https://www.equip.org/article/... Healing or Foul Play? 2008 Cliff-fall Victim Sues Bible School Students,” Religion News Blog, October 22, 2010, accessed March 10, 2019, [28] “Off" class="redactor-autoparser-object">http://www.religionnewsblog.co... the Map,” Christian Research Institute.

[30] Yong, “Natural Laws and Divine Intervention,” 971.

[31] “Off the Map,” Christian Research Institute.

[32] Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. Hope and Community: A Constructive Christian Theology for the Pluralistic World. Vol. 3. 5 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company), 2015, Kindle edition, 5187-5191.

[33] C.S. Lewis, "Miracles," in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper, accessed March 20, 2019, [34] "Dark" class="redactor-autoparser-object">https://just84465.weebly.com/u... Energy, Dark Matter.," NASA, accessed March 20, 2019, [35] "Chaos" class="redactor-autoparser-object">https://science.nasa.gov/astro... Theory," Encyclopædia Britannica, November 21, 2018, accessed March 20, 2019, [36] Kärkkäinen, Hope" class="redactor-autoparser-object">https://www.britannica.com/sci... and Community, 5267-5268.

[37] Kärkkäinen, Hope and Community, 5606.

[38] Kärkkäinen, Hope and Community, 5598-5602.

[39] Richard Rohr, "Christ Is Everyman and Everywoman," Center for Action and Contemplation, January 23, 2019, accessed March 20, 2019, https://cac.org/christ-is-everyman-and-everywoman-2019-01-30/.

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