Pentecostal Canon of the Bible?

Abstract

Classical Pentecostalism is traditionally regarded as a restorationist movement that justified its origins and explained its new practices as a continuation of the early church, as a work of the Spirit. For that reason, the gifts of the Spirit (charismata) were purportedly restored to the twentieth-century Pentecostal movement. Early Pentecostalism also claimed that they followed the early church in its hermeneutical prerogatives of reading the Bible through the lens of their charismatic practices. The article poses the question whether Pentecostalism in its restorationist urge should not reconsider its canon, since it differs from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible used by the early church, to include the books found in the Septuagint, the translation used by early non-Jewish Christians. It suggests that Pentecostals reconsider their biblical canon in the light of their restorationist urge rather than groundlessly following the Protestant canon as their predecessors did by using the Apocrypha as deuterocanonical, implying that it is accepted for personal and ecclesial edification but not for judging the genuineness of gifts that come from the Spirit and those that do not (1 Cor. 12.10) and establishing the authority of ecclesiastical doctrines.