Review of Wolfgang Vondey’s Pentecostal Theology: Living the Full Gospel

Abstract

Wolfgang Vondey’s Pentecostal Theology is a creative, constructive, and far ranging contribution to the development of Pentecostal theology. Grounded in the Pentecostal experience of the full gospel, it provides both a fundamental Pentecostal theology and a Pentecostal perspective on major categories of systematic theology. The book marks a new phase of efforts to develop a comprehensive or systematic Pentecostal theology by starting with Pentecostal concerns and developing a theology in terms of them. This review focuses on Vondey’s discussions of creation (ch. 7) and theological anthropology (ch. 8), in which he argues that a Pentecostal theology of creation and eschatology does not conclude with God razing the world, but with the Spirit’s renewing creation. Furthermore, although Spirit baptism transforms the individual, the purpose of that individual transformation is to lead beyond the self and to create a community of sanctified life. Spirit baptism leads those who receive it into the world to live for all people.