Open Renewal is a constructive theology that is Jesus-centric, informed by Open Theism’s emphasis on the love of God, and dependent on the Holy Spirit’s renewing work both for personal spirituality and in the implementing of Jesus’ kingdom. Open Renewal brings together insights from historical, recent, and practicing theologians, particularly John Wesley, Clark Pinnock, John Sanders, Thomas Jay Oord, and Greg Boyd.
While they wouldn’t necessarily label themselves open theists, Tom Wright and Brian Zahnd contribute core ideas.

Videos from SPS 2023

Rory Randall’s An Open Theist Renewal Theology: God’s Love, The Spirit’s Power, and Human Freedom 

An Appreciative Reflection by 

Kimberly Ervin Alexander, PhD 

Rory and his work hold, and—not to be too deterministic here—will always hold a “strangely warm” place in my heart. Rory was one of two PhD students whom I inherited when, after eleven years, I moved from Pentecostal Theological Seminary in Cleveland, TN [where, strangely enough, Daniel Costelo had been (barely) one of my students in my first year of teaching! I apologize, Daniel. I know it was rough!], transitioning to the Regent University School of Divinity in Virginia Beach, VA. Yes, the home of Pat Robertson, who just came out of his recent retirement (he’s in his mid-nineties!) to announce that God was compelling Putin to invade Ukraine so that he could move closer to his [predestined] massive invasion of Israel—to fulfill end times prophecy, you know. I have to remind, or maybe inform people, that in another space and time, there was good evidence of some brilliant Pentecostal scholars and administrators’ fully cooperating with God in doing some real good in the world of Pentecostal scholarship—doing constructive and creative work on renewal theology, as the Spirit led, creating a hospitable and nurturing environment for scholars and PhD students, who embarked on a project of defining renewal theology as well as creating methodologies congruent with and even in cooperation with the renewing work of the Holy Spirit. In fact, that’s what made Rory’s project so exciting—it fit firmly within that vision: constructing a renewal theology resonant with Wesleyan and Open Theist perspectives. But, alas, the Empire struck back, and there is barely a residue of that green and fruitful season remaining. Including, my presence there. 

But back to Rory and his work. These two students passed on to me as I came on faculty were both at the dissertation writing stage of their program. For the next few years, I worked with Ewen Butler, a Pentecostal educator and pastor from Newfoundland, and Rory Randall, like a midwife helping to see their dissertations come to birth. In fact, their defenses were held on the same day, via Skype (in the olden days before Zoom), just before Christmas. Oddly enough, I was visiting my daughter’s family in Hamilton, AL and Skyped in for those defenses from the offices of the school where I now teach and do administration. Full circle! 

What always struck me about Rory when we met or talked during that dissertation phase of his work, was his warmth and openness, his kindness. Much like Clark Pinnock, that optimism and hospitality shines through in this book—the product of all of that hard work. So, that is my first observation, and my first point of appreciation for this work: not only does this project do the careful work of making an evidence-based argument, and the creative work of constructing an open theist renewal theology—but it bears witness to the essence of a relational theology that invites and includes, rather than closing doors and building walls—that is hopeful and optimistic, rather than doomsaying, fearmongering, and pessimistic. Like the experience of reading Pinnock, I feel I am being drawn into a conversation—like we are having a family dinner conversation together. Rory’s work inherently values the reader, just as God values us.

While I am both fiercely and lovingly Wesleyan, I am not a Wesley scholar. Neither have I done the hard work of constructing open theist theologies, in the way that those in this room have done. I will leave the critique of those parts of Rory’s research to scholars more proficient in those areas than I. What I can do, based on years of spending time reading and reflecting on early Pentecostal literature, is to focus on Rory’s examination of the parallels between early Pentecostalism in its Azusa St. expression and open theism. From the perspective of a historian, a case can certainly be made that Rory’s research represents a very small slice of even the earliest iterations of Pentecostalism. It is limited to one revival in one location. After all, because of the urgency early Pentecostals felt to “spread the fire”[1] before the waning of the Azusa St. revival itself, by 1908, there were already expressions of Pentecostalism on five continents—mostly directly connected to earlier Holiness missions on those continents. Still, these new revivals bore a striking resemblance to the one in Los Angeles because of its significance as a catalyst, and the dissemination of its spirituality via personal encounter and the circulation of its newspaper, The Apostolic Faith. 

To contribute further to Rory’s argument substantiating the resonance between Pentecostal spirituality and open theism, it should be a salient point—but is apparently overlooked or dismissed by many—that Pentecostals in Los Angeles, and those influenced by the Wesleyan revivals before, had a self-awareness of their playing significant role in seeing revival poured out. In those pre-April 1906 prayer meetings on Bonnie Brae St., and even before those gatherings, in homes and churches throughout Los Angeles, the seekers certainly were not praying to an unmovable, immutable God, just so that they could be changed. They prayed in order to move God! They prayed for the Spirit to be poured out. And they continued to do—as has the global Pentecostal movement ever since, most obviously in prayers for healing. Let me just say it: I have seen no evidence that early Holiness-Pentecostal folk saw the early 20th century Pentecostal revival, as a “sovereign move of God.” They believed that their prayers had moved the God of compassion (not a God without passions) to act on their behalf and to pour out the Spirit on all flesh, everywhere—not just on an elect, predestined few. They went out from these early revivals, spreading fire, because, like Wesley, they believed all can be saved, all may be saved to the uttermost (not the “vulgar notion” of being “barely saved”), and, importantly, all may know they are saved. How? Because they perceived the Spirit’s work in them and in the world; they saw the signs; they spoke in tongues. 

Following Walter Hollenweger, Azusa St. can be seen as a reliable measure of the “heart” of the movement—and not its infancy. Since Pentecostalism is, I argue, best understood as a spirituality more than a doctrinal statement to which one subscribes, the early impulses, testimonies, and practices of those participating in the revival provide vital insights into exactly how these holiness adherents were experiencing the renewing influence of the Holy Spirit, and how they understood the meaning of those manifestations. And Rory is exactly right: they experienced the Spirit as love—divine love. From my first examination of that periodical literature, I was struck by the front page testimony of “a Nazarene brother”—possibly an antecedent of someone in this very room!-- who had experienced baptism in the Spirit. Recorded in the inaugural issue of The Apostolic Faith, an unknown narrator, shares this brother’s testimony:

A Nazarene brother who received the baptism with the Holy Ghost in his own home in family worship, in trying to tell about it said, ‘It was a baptism of love. Such abounding love! Such compassion seemed to almost kill me with its sweetness! People do not know what they are doing when they stand against it. The devil never gave me a sweet thing, he was always trying to get me to censuring people. This baptism fills us with divine love.’[2]

This account was immediately followed by a similar one, describing a minister who had been Spirit baptized: “He is filled with divine love. His family were first afraid to see him speaking in tongues, thinking he had lost his mind, but when his wife and children felt the sympathy and divine love which the Holy Ghost puts in people’s hearts, they said, ‘Papa was never as sane in his life.’”[3]

As a lifelong Pentecostal, these testimonies arrested me because in my hearing growing up in the Pentecostal church, including attendance at fervent revival services without number throughout my life, I cannot recall ever hearing Spirit baptism associated with love—--power, but not love; boldness, but not love. I can’t recall being taught that “Pentecostal power, when you sum it up, is just more of God’s love” as the readers of The Apostolic Faith were instructed in May of 1908.[4] But what I can vividly remember is that, regardless of what my tribe was saying about what they had received, what they exhibited when at their best was a loving, relational spirituality, in which they were overwhelmed with the love of God and love for neighbor. Actually, it was unusual to me when I first heard people calling fellow church attenders “Mr.” or “Mrs.” We only knew each other as “Sister” and “Brother.” In in this democratization of and by the Spirit, even the pastor or evangelist was called “Sister Branch” or “Brother Hughes,” rather than by their ministerial title—which they may or may not formally have—or by the more common Southern colloquialism “Preacher Fritts.” Perhaps this was because the sister or brother on the pew was just as apt to preach the Word with an anointing as was the one designated as pastor. Further, I heard testimonies of the rank sinner—often a previously unsaved husband-- who prayed through to “all three experiences” (“saved, sanctified, and filled with the Holy Ghost”) at the revival altar and those words were filled with dispositional language of love, marked by tears of not just repentance, but also of joy. In the churches that most formed me as a Pentecostal, there was no real discernible difference in the treatment of the poor or disenfranchised—they were my sisters and brothers and just might have the “word of the Lord” for any one of us in that congregation.[5] While the doctrinal statements and even the doctrinal preaching may not have linked Spirit baptism to divine love, what these Pentecostals were living and experiencing certainly did illustrate the Azusa St. claim that “Pentecost makes us love Jesus more and love our brothers [sic] more.  It brings us all into one common family.”[6] This points to what Vietnamese scholar Vince Le has called the “intuition of the Spirit,” evidenced at Azusa St.[7] Le demonstrates that testimonies and accounts recorded in the AF point to a spiritual intuition that is open and inclusive, resisting boundaries that exclude and restrict. 

Further, my own examination of early Pentecostal rhetoric as expressed in testimonies of sanctification, Spirit baptism, and healing, reveals a preference for what would have been understood as “feminine speech,” as opposed to the more concise “masculine speech” used to codify doctrine. This brings me to the next point—an appreciation for insights Rory gives me, further strengthening my own intuitive hunch that not only does Pentecostalism have a Wesleyan root, and an African one, as identified by Hollenweger, Dayton, Synan, and others, but there is also a feminine root to Pentecostal spirituality.

For a few years now, I have been captivated by an image of the Spirit as a nurturing mother; in fact, in my musing, she is quite like the mother in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath—more the book than the film—a mother in a migrant family, keeping the family connected to its roots, but gently and firmly, keeping them together on the journey, moving the family forward toward an unknown future of promise, seeing all that can be if the migrant family pushes forward, in the unity of divine love. Rory’s research reveals that the Pentecostal church, overwhelmed by the divine love given by the Spirit and experienced in the Spirit, is a place of nurturing and unifying love. Like the love of the migrant mother, the love of God shed abroad in the hearts of the Pentecostal family of faith, is self-sacrificial. And like Ma Joad, the Spirit raises daughters who are self-sacrificing and life-giving, feeding the abused and hungry poor in Spirit with the milk of kindness. Like all good mothers, the nurturing Spirit and embodied spirituality of Pentecostalism, open to possibilities, sees the potential in not only God’s power and ability, but in daughters and sons who are infused with the Spirit. Why? Because the loving heavenly father wants to give good gifts to his children. And the immanent mothering,  nurturing Spirit is all too happy to distribute those gifts. Like Mary, the Spirit says, through the mothers [and fathers] in the church, “Whatever He tells you to do, just do it.”

A few final thoughts. First, I have to hand it to my friend, Rory for succinctly summing up the limits of the compatibility Reformed theology and Pentecostalism when he says, “Reformed theology is like green wood. You can make it burn but it requires a lot more effort.” (174-175) I put that right up there with Mildred Wynkoop’s, “Calvinistic Christians usually live better than their theology….”[8] I have found both of these aphorisms to ring true.

       Second, I want to commend Rory on his open theist renewal praxis in which, in true Wesleyan fashion, he works out the implications of an open theist renewal theology for real problems faced in the world, inglobal Christianity and particularly in global Pentecostalism today. Rory examines and names the ever-present, but now prominently displayed challenges of nationalism, economic disparity, militarism, violence against women, and the neglect of care for creation. An open theist renewal theology is better prepared to address these and other forms of social in-justice and oppression, both in word and deed, than one with a pessimistic view of love and grace, and one tied to static views of God. Rory is driving the point home: theology has consequences. Apparently, we still need to be reminded of that—in spite of the too often revealed or exposed cases of the obvious ties between Reformed, Patriarchal, and Fundamentalist Christianities and the abuse of women.[9] How many more “Rise and Fall of Mars Hill,” “Gangster Capitalism,” or “In God We Lust” podcasts will it take? How many more stories of abuse tolerated and women shamed by the likes of John MacArthur have to be told? Theologies that begin and end with the sovereignty of God, and not a loving relational God, too often result in churches and “Christian” educational institutions with “sovereign leaders,” taskmasters rather than shepherds, justifying oppression “for the glory of God,” instead of Spirit-led and -empowered loving sisters and brothers in the family of faith, filled with the glory of God.

With my former student and, now, friend and collaborator, Rory Randall, I believe that “…open renewal theology—with its open-ended view of the future and optimism that God works synergistically—might inspire change.” Because I believe that my prayers may move God, for that change I pray.

[1] See Allan Anderson, Spreading Fires: The Missionary Nature of Early Pentecostalism. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007.

[2] The Apostolic Faith. 1:1 (September 1906), 1. 

[3] The Apostolic Faith. 1:1 (September 1906), 1.

[4] The Apostolic Faith vol. 1, no. 13 (May 1908), p. 3.

[5] Though I don’t recall ever witnessing discrimination based on race, the truth is that is likely the case because the “color line,” famously washed away at Azusa St., was still quite visible in the Southern US and few African American families ventured inside our white churches. The evidence of the short-lived effect of “Godly love” in my denomination of origin, the Church of God (Cleveland, TN) is overwhelming. See Kimberly Ervin Alexander and James P. Bowers, ‘Race and Gender Equality in a Classical Pentecostal Denomination: How Godly Love Flourished and Foundered’ in Skin Deep: Pentecostalism, Racism, and the Church, Clifton R. Clarke and Wayne C. Solomon, eds. Lanham, MD: Seymour Press, 2021.

[6] AF vol. 1, no. 13 (May 1908), p. 3.

[7] ‘Vince’ Le Hoang, Anh Vu, “Love and Power, Intuition and Ambiguity: Beliefs and Practices of Spirit Baptism in the Apostolic Faith(1906-1908), unpublished paper.

[8] Mildred Bangs Wynkoop, Foundations of Wesleyan-Arminian Theology (Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill Press, 1967), 72. 

[9] See Kevin Giles, The Headship of Men and the Abuse of Women: Are They Related in Any Way?

Videos about a Jesus-looking God

Videos related to Open Theism

Three books of interest:

The Death of Omnipotence and the Birth of Amipotence

Thomas Jay Oord

“God Is in Control” is a motto I hear friends say from time to time. I think they’re saying they are living their lives with a desire to follow God and have a sense of the Spirit of God in them and guiding them. The problem comes when I extrapolate from that sense of God’s presence and leading to the bigger world where people and the creation are not necessarily oriented to following Jesus and his teachings. To the extent that people and things are not aligned with God’s will, it’s not really true or helpful to say “God Is in Control.” Looking at the recent history of God’s interactions with the world it seems that God is reluctant to override human free will. If we look at the way Jesus went about his mission it’s clear that God works through love, not coercive power. Making the case for this claim is where Tom Oord’s new book is so helpful.

Through careful exegesis, Oord shows how Hebrew words like shadai and sabbaoth have been mistranslated as ‘almighty’. His term amipotence expresses the idea that God’s power comes not from its controlling everything that happens but rather from God’s love. God’s love derives its immense power from the fact that God is not confined to a locality but is everywhere exerting his loving influence.

John Sander’s friendly critique of the book is here: https://drjohnsanders.com/response-to-oords-death-of-omnipotence/ and Tom Oord’s response is here: https://thomasjayoord.com/index.php/blog/archives/my-response-to-john-sanders-on-omnipotence