One of the issues raised by our Uganda trip is the place of the Holy Spirit in Renewal. The issue is difficult in part because undisciplined Pentecostalism is making unwelcome advances in some parts of Uganda. Part of the problem is a prosperity gospel that is strongly reflected in our own area. It is amazing to watch overfed American evangelists on Ugandan television plugging for money and making promises to the poor that they can never keep. Both the best and the worst of the American Church is reflected in missionary outreach. There was an old missionary caution that referred to our propensity “to put pants on the natives.” That refers to an arrogant Western attitude that tries to stamp our culture and social attitudes on those to whom we carry the Gospel. (In a peculiar way that is precisely what The Episcopal Church attempts to do in making contemporary cultural morality the standard for the whole Anglican Communion.) Years ago, Bishop Adrian Caceres exhorted a short-term missionary team with these words, “I don’t want to hear any naïve Triumphalism.” He made it clear that the poor that you find on a short-term mission trip will still be poor after you leave. The only enduring standards are the biblical standards that have stood for centuries and we have to hear with clarity the caution of Jesus, “The poor you have with you always” (John 12:8).

One of the unfortunate side effects of undisciplined Pentecostalism is wariness over the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church. If what you see is a roll-on-the-ground-and-shout Holy Ghost Movement it makes it more difficult to embrace the simple fact that God does heal today and that all of the gifts of the Holy Spirit are, and should be, active in the Church today. When faced with difficult examples I retreat to Paul’s declaration in Romans 3:4, “Let God be true though every man were a liar.” The release of the power of the Holy Spirit in the Church today flows from His identity and personhood, not from any particular style of worship or ministry. The simple reality is that where the Spirit our Lord Jesus Christ is things happen.

On the surface, one of the responses Christian people have to an imbalanced presentation of the Holy Spirit and His work is to so emphasize the work of Christ, that the Holy Spirit becomes subordinate to the Father and the Son. My interior reaction is to return to the Athanasian Creed and say very carefully: Christianity is by nature Christocentric, but it is not Christocentric at the expense of a clear understanding of the Trinity. We worship God in Trinity of Persons, at once transcendent, and by the grace of the Holy Spirit immanent in personal experience. I know my God because he reveals Himself to me. St. John puts it this way, “The anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything—and is true and is no lie, just as it has taught you- abide in him.”¹ St. Athanasius makes the issues very clear and we do well to heed him:

“Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith. Which Faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly…

And the Catholic Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity,

neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one, the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal…

And in this Trinity none is afore, or after other; none is greater, or less than another;

But the whole three Persons are co-eternal together and co-equal. So that in all things, as is aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped.

He therefore that will be saved must thus think of the Trinity.²

What is at stake, according to St. Athanasius, is salvation itself. Athanasius makes this very clear both at the beginning, and at the end of his statement on the Trinity.

• Making the Holy Spirit and the Son subordinate to the Father results in a Unitarian view of God that ultimately denies personal salvation from sin and the real presence of the Holy Spirit active in the Church today.

• Making the Holy Spirit and the Father subordinate to the Son results in a “Jesus Only” theology that misses the riches of our relationship with God our Father, and tears apart the nature of the Trinity.

• Making the Holy Spirit subordinate to the Father and the Son results in a powerless and inadequate theology of both God and the Church, yet that is the effective theology of many in protestant evangelical traditions.

Instead of the Trinity you end up with Father, Son, and Holy Bible. The Church as I understand it is Biblical, Sacramental, and Growing in the Spirit, and needs a clear and balanced emphasis on the Holy Spirit for a full and healthy development.

By itself a creedal statement is dry, setting only the boundaries of faith, but saying nothing of the vitality and warmth of the experience of God. It is not a new idea that there is a ceaseless motion of love in God, love of the Father for the Son and the Spirit, love of the Son for the Father and the Spirit, and love of the Spirit for the Father and the Son. This ceaseless flow of love is superabundant and overflowing in creative generosity, spilling out into all creation in the self-revelation of the God Whom you and I adore, falling on our knees. On a simple level I know that I am loved by my God who created me, redeemed me, and through the office of the Spirit calls me to Himself. He says, “You are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you.”³ In awe we cry, “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him.”⁴

When we visit Uganda in a short-term mission the Ugandans want to know who we are. They want to know if we have a living relationship with Jesus. Do we in fact have a personal testimony? Do we believe in the authority of Holy Scripture? Do we believe in the physical resurrection of Christ? Do we accept biblical morality? The problems facing us in The Episcopal Church are not new in the history of the Church. We are faced with what is in effect a Marcionite theology. “Marcion (100-160 A.D.) taught a form of gnosticism where there were two gods; the Just God who was angry and punishes and is found in the Old Testament, and the Kind God who takes pity on man, is benevolent and is found in the New Testament. He taught that the Old Testament had no validity for Christians and that Judaism had corrupted what Jesus really taught. He selectively chose Paul's writings about a loving God and used the Gospel of Luke edited of any references to Old Testament legalism. He rejected the reality of Christ's physical resurrection. Tertullian opposed him and as did the church establishing the canon of the Bible.”⁵ That is in effect the working theology of the revisionist movement in The Episcopal Church as it struggles to make a humanist “faith” relevant to contemporary society.

This theology is a prescription for death on two levels: First. St. Paul says, “The wages of sin is death.”⁶ Second, unrestrained sexual freedom results often in lethal diseases. In Uganda this has taken savage embodiment both with the spread of HIV/AIDS and in history of Uganda with the record of faith left by the Ugandan Martyrs who were burnt alive in 1886. Mwanga the reigning king gave twenty-six new converts among his court pages the choice of being burnt alive, or of renouncing their faith and accepting his homosexual advances. They went to their deaths singing hymns, and in doing so lit the fires of faith for the century to come. The early Church theologian Tertullian observed quite correctly, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” There is no room in Uganda for a Marcionite Christology and Ugandan leaders mourn the effect that Episcopal Seminaries have had on some African clergy. The Ugandan Church sounds a clarion call for a New Anglican Reformation that is firmly grounded in Holy Scripture, in the ongoing tradition of the Church universal, and in personal faith and acceptance of the articles of the Creeds of the Church. In many part of Uganda the flames of the East African Revival burn brightly, but they are not at all naïve in their view of The Episcopal Church. We are the new mission ground.

Father Rob +

¹ ESV, I John 2:27

² Excerpts from The Book of Common Prayer, pp. 864-865

³ Isaiah 43:4a

⁴ Psalm 8:4

⁵ Online Encyclopedia Britannica

⁶ Romans 6:23

Click here to see archived articles and letters written by Father Rob Smith.