Marius Nel

Pentecostals emphasize that God is still the Healer of all illnesses, implying that God answers all prayers. What about those who are not healed? How do we explain suffering? Why does a good God allow suffering? Is God not powerful enough to prevent it? In this publication, the author reconsiders these questions from a Pentecostal hermeneutical perspective to develop a novel way to think about God's involvement with suffering among people. His experimental theology speculates how a Pentecostal ethos accommodates a theodicy that acknowledges suffering and God's involvement in people's lives. Although the book is a theologically constituted attempt, anyone can follow and understand its arguments. It concludes with alternative views of suffering, evil, God's loving attention to people, the doctrine of original sin, and Satan. The author also suggests some ways to respond to suffering.

Pentecostals emphasize that God is still the Healer of all illnesses, implying that God answers all prayers. What about those who are not healed? How do we explain suffering? Why does a good God allow suffering? Is God not powerful enough to prevent it? In this publication, the author reconsiders these questions from a Pentecostal hermeneutical perspective to develop a novel way to think about God's involvement with suffering among people. His experimental theology speculates how a Pentecostal ethos accommodates a theodicy that acknowledges suffering and God's involvement in people's lives. Although the book is a theologically constituted attempt, anyone can follow and understand its arguments. It concludes with alternative views of suffering, evil, God's loving attention to people, the doctrine of original sin, and Satan. The author also suggests some ways to respond to suffering.

Most of the early twentieth-century Pentecostal denominations were peace churches that encouraged a stance of conscientious objection. However, since the Second World War Pentecostals have largely abandoned their pacifist viewpoint as they have taken on a more literal Biblical hermeneutic from their interaction with Evangelical denominations. This book traces the history of nonviolence in Pentecostalism and suggests that a new hermeneutic of the Bible is needed by today’s Pentecostals in order for them to rediscover their pacifist roots and effect positive social change. The book focuses on how Pentecostalism has manifested in South Africa during the twentieth century. Much of the available academic literature on hermeneutics and exegesis in the field of Pentecostal Studies is of an American or British-European origin. This book redresses this imbalance by exploring how the Bible has been used amongst African Pentecostals to teach on the apparent paradox of a simultaneously wrathful and loving God. It then goes onto suggest that how the Bible is read directly affects how Pentecostals view their role as potential reformers of society. So, it must be engaged seriously and thoughtfully.By bringing Pentecostalism’s function in South African society to the fore, this book adds a fresh perspective on the issue of pacifism in world Christianity. As such it will be of great use to scholars of Pentecostal Studies, Theology, and Religion and Violence as well as those working in African Studies.

Africans' prevailing interest in the prosperity gospel is not only connected to the influence of American prosperity teachers reaching a worldwide audience through their imaginative use of the media, but is also related to the African worldview and African traditional religion, and its lasting influence on contemporary Africans and the way they think about prosperity, as well as their interest in prosperity in post-colonial Africa. The research from a classical Pentecostal perspective about the impact of the prosperity message on Africa is necessary, timely, and relevant because of its influence in the African Pentecostal movement and its potential to harm the faith of believers, leading to the potential disillusionment of Christian believers who put their trust (and money) in formulas and recipes that seemingly only work for others, especially the prosperity leaders who lead by example with incredulous riches and wealth.

Africans' prevailing interest in the prosperity gospel is not only connected to the influence of American prosperity teachers reaching a worldwide audience through their imaginative use of the media, but is also related to the African worldview and African traditional religion, and its lasting influence on contemporary Africans and the way they think about prosperity, as well as their interest in prosperity in post-colonial Africa. The research from a classical Pentecostal perspective about the impact of the prosperity message on Africa is necessary, timely, and relevant because of its influence in the African Pentecostal movement and its potential to harm the faith of believers, leading to the potential disillusionment of Christian believers who put their trust (and money) in formulas and recipes that seemingly only work for others, especially the prosperity leaders who lead by example with incredulous riches and wealth.

The face of African Christianity is becoming Pentecostal. African Pentecostalism is a diverse movement, but its collective interest in baptism in the Spirit and the result of Pentecost in daily living binds it together. Pentecostals read the Bible with the expectation that the Spirit who inspired the authors will again inspire them to hear it as God's word. They emphasize the experiential, at times at the cost of proper doctrine and practice. This book sketches an African hermeneutic that provides guidance to a diverse movement with many faces, and serves as corrective for doctrine and practice in the face of some excesses and abuses (especially in some parts of the neo-Pentecostal movement). African Pentecostalism's contribution to the hermeneutical debate is described before three points are discussed that define it: the centrality of the Holy Spirit in reading the Bible, the eschatological lens that Pentecostals use when they read the Bible, and the faith community as normative for the interpretation of the Bible. ""From one of the southern ends of the earth, Marius Nel provides a near exhaustive engagement with the existing literature on pentecostal hermeneutics--scholars should not miss out on the feast of extensive footnotes reaching from cover to cover --and comes up with an almost comprehensive synthesis from a southern African perspective. What emerges is a reformulation of the classic this-is-that eschatological sensibility that bridges the scriptural text with the contemporary horizon, albeit in this case enriched with the orality and performativity characteristic of an authentically African pentecostal movement that itself stretches back, however complicatedly, to the early twentieth-century transnational and worldwide revival."" --Amos Yong, Professor of Theology & Mission, Fuller Theological Seminary ""In this carefully researched and historically sensitive book, Marius Nel recognizes that 'deep in the soul of Pentecostalism are its African origins.' He draws together his interests in Pentecostalism and African Christianity to make a wise call for a Jesus-centered hermeneutic that is Spirit led, eschatologically alert, and community based. Readers will benefit from the wealth of information brought together here. --William P. Atkinson, Senior Lecturer in Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies, London School of Theology ""In this book Marius Nel defines the distinctive contribution that African pentecostal hermeneutics makes to hermeneutics . . . He] shows how orthodoxy, orthopathy, and orthopraxy are intertwined in pentecostal hermeneutics, and that interpreters of the Bible should expect that what people in biblical times experienced with God is to be repeated in the contemporary experience."" --Fika J. van Rensburg, Professor of New Testament Studies, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, North-West University, South Africa Marius Nel is Research Professor of Ecumene: Pentecostalism and Neo-Pentecostalism at the Unit for Reformational Theology and the Development of the South African Society of North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa. He is the author of Pacifism and Pentecostals in South Africa (2018).

The face of African Christianity is becoming Pentecostal. African Pentecostalism is a diverse movement, but its collective interest in baptism in the Spirit and the result of Pentecost in daily living binds it together. Pentecostals read the Bible with the expectation that the Spirit who inspired the authors will again inspire them to hear it as God's word. They emphasize the experiential, at times at the cost of proper doctrine and practice. This book sketches an African hermeneutic that provides guidance to a diverse movement with many faces, and serves as corrective for doctrine and practice in the face of some excesses and abuses (especially in some parts of the neo-Pentecostal movement). African Pentecostalism's contribution to the hermeneutical debate is described before three points are discussed that define it: the centrality of the Holy Spirit in reading the Bible, the eschatological lens that Pentecostals use when they read the Bible, and the faith community as normative for the interpretation of the Bible. ""From one of the southern ends of the earth, Marius Nel provides a near exhaustive engagement with the existing literature on pentecostal hermeneutics--scholars should not miss out on the feast of extensive footnotes reaching from cover to cover --and comes up with an almost comprehensive synthesis from a southern African perspective. What emerges is a reformulation of the classic this-is-that eschatological sensibility that bridges the scriptural text with the contemporary horizon, albeit in this case enriched with the orality and performativity characteristic of an authentically African pentecostal movement that itself stretches back, however complicatedly, to the early twentieth-century transnational and worldwide revival."" --Amos Yong, Professor of Theology & Mission, Fuller Theological Seminary ""In this carefully researched and historically sensitive book, Marius Nel recognizes that 'deep in the soul of Pentecostalism are its African origins.' He draws together his interests in Pentecostalism and African Christianity to make a wise call for a Jesus-centered hermeneutic that is Spirit led, eschatologically alert, and community based. Readers will benefit from the wealth of information brought together here. --William P. Atkinson, Senior Lecturer in Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies, London School of Theology ""In this book Marius Nel defines the distinctive contribution that African pentecostal hermeneutics makes to hermeneutics . . . He] shows how orthodoxy, orthopathy, and orthopraxy are intertwined in pentecostal hermeneutics, and that interpreters of the Bible should expect that what people in biblical times experienced with God is to be repeated in the contemporary experience."" --Fika J. van Rensburg, Professor of New Testament Studies, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, North-West University, South Africa Marius Nel is Research Professor of Ecumene: Pentecostalism and Neo-Pentecostalism at the Unit for Reformational Theology and the Development of the South African Society of North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa. He is the author of Pacifism and Pentecostals in South Africa (2018).

Most of the early twentieth-century Pentecostal denominations were peace churches that encouraged a stance of conscientious objection. However, since the Second World War Pentecostals have largely abandoned their pacifist viewpoint as they have taken on a more literal Biblical hermeneutic from their interaction with Evangelical denominations. This book traces the history of nonviolence in Pentecostalism and suggests that a new hermeneutic of the Bible is needed by today’s Pentecostals in order for them to rediscover their pacifist roots and effect positive social change. The book focuses on how Pentecostalism has manifested in South Africa during the twentieth century. Much of the available academic literature on hermeneutics and exegesis in the field of Pentecostal Studies is of an American or British-European origin. This book redresses this imbalance by exploring how the Bible has been used amongst African Pentecostals to teach on the apparent paradox of a simultaneously wrathful and loving God. It then goes onto suggest that how the Bible is read directly affects how Pentecostals view their role as potential reformers of society. So, it must be engaged seriously and thoughtfully.By bringing Pentecostalism’s function in South African society to the fore, this book adds a fresh perspective on the issue of pacifism in world Christianity. As such it will be of great use to scholars of Pentecostal Studies, Theology, and Religion and Violence as well as those working in African Studies.