EMQ » October–December 2020 » Volume 56 Issue 4
By Amos Yong
Baker Academic, 2019
300 pages
USD $18.49
Reviewed by Cameron D. Armstrong, International Mission Board, Bucharest, Romania.
“Yong’s readings of biblical texts explode preconceived notions of God’s triadic presence and activity in the world.” Thus says one of the endorsers of Yong’s Mission after Pentecost. While I hesitate to use the word “explode,” this treatise is indeed a substantive corrective to mission texts on the Holy Spirit.
Mission after Pentecost is at once a work of biblical studies, pneumatology, and missiology. Yong analyzes biblical passages concerning the work of the divine Spirit, showing how they relate to mission in the twenty-first century. Chapters one through four discuss Old Testament occurrences of ruah. Proceeding canonically, Yong demonstrates that the Holy Spirit empowers both destructive and renewing acts that simultaneously purify God’s people (centripetal) and witness to surrounding nations of the justice and glory of the God of Israel (centrifugal). Chapters five through eight concern New Testament references, although Yong selects only those passages where he views pneumatology intersecting with missiology. As in the Old Testament, the Spirit both refines God’s people and empowers witness, while at the same time exalting the incarnated Jesus.
Two significant strengths of the book are noteworthy. First, Yong is to be commended for another prolifically researched study. Conversing with myriad authors on pneumatology and missiology, including several vignettes from Majority World scholars, Yong draws important conclusions for future missionary imagination. Second, Yong calls attention to the Spirit’s empowering of socioeconomic and political change. Yong rightly believes that renewal is not simply a spiritual matter but has ramifications for all segments of culture.
Two potential weaknesses ought also to be highlighted. First, evangelical readers might take issue with Yong’s acceptance of historical-critical stances, such as Isaiah having three or more authors. Although Yong partially explains his reasoning, he appears to take such stances as established fact. Second, confusion may occur with Yong’s decision not to capitalize holy spirit or its synonyms, such as divine breath. Yong does this an effort to not read post-Nicene trinitarian formulas into the Bible. Yet it is questionable that reading Scripture without Nicene conceptualizations is helpful (or possible), since even New Testament writers viewed the divine breath as the Godhead who ignites and empowers Christian witness.
All told, Yong’s Mission after Pentecost is a formidable contribution to biblical studies. Any mission-minded Christian, including those outside charismatic circles, ought to consider Yong’s careful analyses of the “missionary deity” (14). Focusing on the ways and movements of the divine Spirit, as outlined in Scripture, will bring much-needed correctives to how and to what end missions is empowered.
For Further Reading
Ma, Wonsuk, Karkkainen, Veli-Matti, and J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu. Pentecostal Mission and Global Christianity. Regnum, 2014.
Yong, Amos. The Spirit Poured out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology. Baker Academic, 2005.
EMQ, Volume 56, Issue 4. Copyright © 2020 by Missio Nexus. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from Missio Nexus. Email: EMQ@MissioNexus.org.
