Abstract
The Pentecostal Principle: Ethical Methodology in New Spirit
Nimi Wariboko
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012. 235 pp. $25.00
To alter playfully a running theme of Nimi Wariboko’s recent work, let me begin with its ending, where Wariboko shares a bit of his personal testimony regarding how he was attracted to and shaped within Pentecostalism. The Holy Spirit, he says, is about doing new things that exceed the perceived possibilities and expectations inherent within any given moment and subject. Such new works rest on realities ushered in by the Christ-event and the empowerment of the Spirit itself, and the ethos that such activity creates involves both a critical approach to the world as well as a sense of joy and playfulness within worship and life in general. I start with this book’s concluding pages because the work emits from these concerns and sensibilities, yet rarely does it betray their native soil in what is an exceedingly technical and sophisticated exercise of ethical-methodological construction.
Simply put, The Pentecostal Principle is a very demanding book. It assumes an unapologetic rigor as it draws freely and copiously from the likes of Paul Tillich, Giorgio Agamben, and Hannah Arendt. The result is an endeavor that demonstrates moments of creative interchanges encased within a structure and presentation that is often organizationally and terminologically complex as well as markedly ambitious.
To begin with an elaboration of the title, one notes that Wariboko assumes the existence of something he terms “the pentecostal principle.” The legitimacy of such grounding rests on a Tillichian framework, one that posits a dynamic between the “Catholic substance” and the “Protestant principle.” Wariboko presses through this dyad to expose its many discrepancies, particularly its insidious duality. Rather than ending with the critical features of the Protestant principle, Wariboko wishes to press for an account of creativity, newness, and the like. In other words, rather than stopping short with the crucifixion, he aspires to consider the interruption and newness of the resurrection and Pentecost. What results from these concerns is the affirmation of the “pentecostal principle,” one that accounts for “the capacity of social existence to begin something new” (viii). It is a category of social analysis that “is the expression of the general will of existence (life): the name of the process of creative emergence that figures and disfigures biological and social life” (4). Once Wariboko affirms the principle’s existence and legitimacy, he moves to consider aspects of its outworking and relevance. Topics include emergentist philosophy and ethics, pluralism and the formulation of public policy, and a treatment of the “theology of play.”
To be thoroughly compelled by the arguments of The Pentecostal Principle, one must find legitimate the process of abstracting from the dynamics of history an ordering principle that in turn serves as an anchor to judge it. In other words, one must by sympathetic to Tillich’s project. Without this architectonic point of confluence, one can recognize compelling sub-arguments based on their own merits, but these are always directed back to their ties with the “pentecostal principle.” Such prevalence of this running theme makes the limitations of the book all the more drastic. One such difficulty is its largely a-theological presentation. Wariboko wants to keep his project within the realm of ethical methodology, but if in fact his work is also trying to be true to Pentecostal sensibilities as he has intuited them, it is difficult to assume that these can retain their character apart from some kind of theological framing. As a case in point, Wariboko’s spirit-talk is very much driven by a species of idealism, which in turn heightens further the need for grades of such speech that in turn can account for the person and work of the Holy Spirit. As interdisciplinary as the book intends to be, something appears lost in the exchanges, particularly from the Pentecostal side of the interchange.
Despite these reservations, Wariboko’s is a fascinating thought-experiment. On several occasions, this reader was delighted to see moments of originality and creativity that make one ponder anew basic methodological considerations. Time will tell if it proves to be the kind of work that generates and prods forward discussions related to the ethical task.