Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Sam Storms on Charismatic Renewal

Dr. Sam Storms is one of my favorite authors and teachers, especially in helping me make sense of strong reformed and charismatic elements in my story with God. His book Convergence: Spiritual Journeys of a Charismatic Calvinist (2005) was wonderful and very challenging. I highly recommend it.

A recent post on his blog got my attention by being very balanced and wise, so I wanted to share it. Let me know what you think.

Charismatic Renewal: 10 Strengths and Weaknesses

[UPDATE: I forgot I had recorded thoughts back in 2010 after I read Convergence, and thought it pertinent to add those to this post. See post #1 and post #2.]

[UPDATE #2: Sam Storms’ follow-up article that is also excellent, “Charismatic Renewal: 10 Steps for the Way Forward.” I couldn’t agree more with his analysis and prescriptions.]

6 comments:

Bill Bell said...

Hey Scott, could you give just a few particular things you liked/found helpful? I would (quietly and with nuance) call myself a Charismatic Calvinist--though that's true theologically and not so much practically. Just to say that I'm curious, but wonder where I would intersect with it.

Bill Bell said...
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Scott said...

Bill, I found myself in complete agreement with Storms' assessment of strengths and weaknesses.

I particularly appreciated how he critiqued what I would call the "theology of glory" in charismatic renewal and its need to be more grounded in the "theology of the cross" (Luther's categories).

The passionate hunger of the charismatic heart lends itself well (in my opinion) to a ragamuffin humility and trust, but it rarely gets fleshed out that way. It is a "corporate" expression of the old self (committed to glory, strength and success) that prevents this. I also think the resources of the reformed faith enable the charismatic faith to ground itself in categories and ideas far larger and deeper than temporal circumstances, like whether or not I get "healed" or have a particular spiritual experience. Hope that makes sense! Good to hear from you, brother.

Bill Bell said...

That helps a ton. I can very much appreciate the points you've drawn out. If I could ask two more questions: First, does he flesh out what this would actually look like in daily life? I struggle with that one a lot, especially since I believe all of the gifts (can) still exist, but don't really see all of them outside of explicitly charismatic circles. Second, do you have any experiences you could relate? I'm assuming if you've read this and liked it, you hold similar views.

Scott said...
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Scott said...

Bill, he does flesh out what that looks like in his book, but not so much in this particular blog post (see my update to the blog, linking to my two posts reflecting on his book). I would also guess that he has more "fleshing out" of these things on his website.

As to your second question, I guess a recent example of this in my life is my venture into the world of healing conversational prayer. It used to be that only charismatics talked about "hearing God" like that, but I am encountering it in many different quarters, but it reminds me a lot of charismatic teaching on how God speaks today, words of wisdom and knowledge, etc. Hope that helps.