The Scandal of Pentecost: A Theology of the Public Church [Paperback]

Through a systematic analysis of the conflicts emerging when the public church encounters the public world,The Scandal of Pentecostargues that the public advent of the church stands in continuity with the public scandal of the incarnate and crucified Christ.

The book traces the contours of this scandal in the confrontation of the dominant ruling hermeneutic of authority with a Christian hermeneutic of resistance. This highlights the brokenness of the human condition manifested by the church in the drunkenness of the disciples, the speaking in other tongues, the baptism with the Spirit, the empowerment of the flesh, and its public witness to a scandalized world.

The effects of the scandal transform both the disciples' individual and communal witness and their public recognition as the church. Through the lens of a symbolic hermeneutic, the public witness of the church at Pentecost reveals a Christian scandal of anthropological proportions: with the outpouring of the Spirit on all flesh the church emerges as the symbol of humanity.

The church has domesticated Pentecost! According to Vondey, modern-day Pentecostal Christianity has privatised and personalized Pentecost, comfortably establishing itself in the language of individualism, power and prosperity.

The modern church prefers a theology of itself as symbolizing wholeness and unity. The scandal of Pentecost is that it was in its inconsistencies and struggles that the church emerged as a symbol of the brokenness and the transformation of humanity inallits dimensions. The modern church owns the Spirit. The forgotten scandal of Pentecost, according to Vondey, is that the church burst intopubliclife. The scandal is that the Spirit was given toallflesh.

The scandal of this important and finely argued book is that it challenges the chl#¼