Supernatural Theology 147: Charismatic Anti-Intellectualism vs the Apostle Paul

When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. –1 Corinthians 2:1-5

With persuasive doctrines of human wisdom: in every case I left man out, that God might become the more evident. I used none of the means of which great orators avail themselves in order to become popular, and thereby to gain fame…The doctrine that he preached was revealed by the Spirit: that it was a revelation of the Spirit, the holiness, purity, and usefulness of the doctrine rendered manifest: and the overthrow of idolatry, and the conversion of souls, by the power and energy of the preaching, were the demonstration that all was Divine. The greater part of the best MSS., versions, and fathers, leave out the adjective ανθρωπινης, man’s, before σοφιας, wisdom: it is possible that the word may be a gloss, but it is necessarily implied in the clause. Not with the persuasive discourses, or doctrines of wisdom; i.e. of human philosophy.  –Adam Clarke



John Wimber, Power Evangelism.

—. Power Healing.

—. Power Encounters.

—. Power Points.

Jack Deere, Why I Am Still Surprised by the Power of the Spirit.

—. Why I Am Still Surprised by the Voice of God.

John White, When the Spirit Comes with Power.

Guy Chevreau, Catch the Fire.

J. Rodman Williams, Renewal Theology.


Harald Lindstrom, Wesley and Sanctification.

Augustin Poulain, The Graces of Interior Prayer.

Henry Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism.

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