Introduction
My contribution to this conference concerns the theological foundations from which we assess
a phenomenon like the Toronto Blessing. We are well aware that the bible tells us to `test all
things'. The question is HOW we test things.
Supporters of the Toronto Blessing frequently make two pleas to people who wish to assess
or criticize it. FIRST, we are urged to approach it with an open mind. We are told to attend
meetings for ourselves - and not critically, but asking God to bless US also if something real is
happening. SECOND, we are urged to judge the phenomenon by its fruits - to look at the
long-term results, not the immediate manifestations.
See for Yourself ...
However, it is far from an invariable biblical principle EITHER that we should assess claims
to God's activity personally and uncritically, OR that we must look at the fruits to make an
assessment. For example, claims that Christ has returned in secret are NOT to be assessed
personally: "So, if they say to you, `Lo, he is in the wilderness,' DO NOT GO OUT". Nor are
they to be assessed uncritically: "if they say, `Lo, he is in the inner rooms,' DO NOT BELIEVE
IT" (Matt 24:26).
If the claim had been made that Jesus was in Toronto we would be entitled not to go and not
to believe. Why should we then go if the claim is that the Spirit is moving in Toronto? Unbelief
can be a sign of faith!
Look at the Fruits ...
Similarly the challenge to assess the Toronto Blessing by its fruits can be met. We need to
take seriously Jesus' warning about the plausibility of false versions of Christianity: "For false
Christs and false prophets will arise and show great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if
possible, even the elect" (Matt 24:24).
But again, as one writer has already observed, it is difficult to assess a movement by its fruits
when the fruit is still green. How difficult can be seen in the case of the Quakers, who were
people of strong Christian conviction and powerful social witness in their day. Today, however,
Quakerism is the refuge of those who want not merely a religionless but a doctrine-less
Christianity.
And yet it could be argued that the long-term decline of Quakerism was inherent in its early
doctrine. We must recognize from history that a movement may have a powerful - even beneficial
- impact in the short term and yet be disastrous in the long term because of its fundamental
theological weaknesses.
A Question of Systematics
How then can we `test' the Toronto Blessing? If we cannot trust personal experience or short
term gains, what can we trust? The answer is basically a matter of systematic
theology.
Unfortunately, systematic theology has not been a particularly strong feature of the
Anglo-American scene for some time. In the English case there is hesitancy about theological
systems which seem to claim too much. But as Colin Gunton has observed, there is "an important
distinction between a systematic theology that aims at a SYSTEM, and one that more modestly
aims at being SYSTEMATIC." (`An English Systematic Theology?', The Scottish Journal of
Theology, Vol. 46, 1994, pp.479-496).
We need to recognize that systematic theology is a biblical concept. The reason Jesus gave
for not investigating claims that he had returned to the desert or the inner room is grounded in a
systematic theology about the second coming which links the SIGNIFICANCE of this event with
its NATURE: "For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be
the coming of the Son of man" (Matt 24:27).
But we also need to recognize WHAT IS the systematic theology contained in the bible. The
best key to this is, I would argue, the biblical theological approach pioneered by Donald Robinson
and developed by the likes of Graham Goldsworthy, Bill Dumbrell etc. The particular feature of
this approach is that it recognizes and identifies in the bible both CONTINUITY and
DEVELOPMENT. There is the continuity of ONE great theme, from start to finish and there is
the DEVELOPMENT of that theme through Scripture.
Only a systematic theology allows us to give coherence to our experience and expectation of
God. And more specifically, only a systematic theology allows us to recognize that whilst God
CAN do anything he DOESN'T do everything - and this is fundamental to our approach to the
Toronto Blessing.
A Necessary Limitation
Those who reject the Toronto Blessing are often accused of limiting the actions of God. Thus
Michael Green, writing in the CEN 23/6/95 asked, "IS IT SO REPREHENSIBLE ... if God should
determine in this day and age to offer a powerful experience of his
presence and his power?"
However, we could turn the same question round. Why SHOULD God should not speak in
this day and age as Abraham spoke to the rich man in the parable: "If they do not hear Moses and
the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise
from the dead"?
GOD'S activity IS limited - by God himself - but it is limited in a way which is not simply
arbitrary but consistent with the overall framework of the bible. Understanding that framework
will enable us to understand the limits of God's activity - not so that WE may limit it, but so that
we may limit what is CLAIMED for it. Thus when we test the Toronto Blessing, which makes
particularly claims about the activity of God through his Spirit in the life of the Christian, we need
to ask whether it is consistent with the TOTAL picture the bible presents, particularly in relation to
the work of the Spirit in the life of the believer.
Systematics and the Spirit
To answer this question we will consider what the bible says about blessing and how this is
connected with the Holy Spirit. Because of its clear presentation of this link we will start with
Gal 3:13-14.
The context here is the SUFFICIENCY of the gospel in terms of our relationship with God
and the PEDIGREE of the gospel in terms of its continuity with what went before. Vv 13-14
conclude:
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us - for it is written,
`Cursed be every one who hangs on a tree' - that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might
come upon the Gentiles, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit
through faith.
These verses link "the blessing of Abraham" and "the promise of the Spirit" with the curse
of the law, the death of Christ and faith. The task of the systematic theologian is to unravel the
connections.
Blessing and Curse
The first step is fairly obvious. The counterpoint of curse and blessing takes us back to the
beginning of the bible. The great theme of Gen 1 is blessing, and the great theme of Gen 3 is
cursing. God creates the world for blessing and the fall brings it under the curse. The story of
the bible from Gen 3 onwards is of how God reverses the curse and restores
the blessing.
Crucial to this story is, of course, God's calling of Abraham which
occurs in Gen 12:1-3:-
Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.
And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that
you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse;
and by you all the families of the earth shall be blessed (taking niphal as passive, see
D. Kidner Genesis - An Introduction and Commentary [Leicester: IVP,
1967) p 114).
It is this calling and promise to which Paul refers in Gal 3. The blessing of the human race
is thus focused in Abraham and in people's response to him. But part of Paul's insight is that the
relationship between God and Abraham is already a GOSPEL relationship. It depends on the
election of God and on HIS righteousness and faithfulness - not on these qualities in Abraham -
and thus there is CONTINUITY between him and us
So Paul can write in Gal 3:8 that "the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles
by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, `In you shall all the nations be
blessed.'"
At the same time, the relationship between God and Abraham is a DEVELOPING relationship.
The concept of blessing is further focused through the encounter in Gen 18 where, before he
destroys Sodom and Gomorrah, God reveals himself to Abraham as a God of moral justice and
righteousness. The purpose of this revelation is given in vv 17-19:-
The Lord said, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham
shall become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?
No, for I have chosen him, that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep
the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice; so that the Lord may bring to Abraham
what he has promised him."
The blessing promised to Abraham and his descendants is thus contingent on their keeping
the way of the Lord "by doing righteousness and justice".
The Dilemma of Holiness
But of course, "doing righteousness and justice" is precisely what eludes the descendants of
Abraham. As Isaiah 5:7 declares,
... the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are
his pleasant planting; and he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but
behold, a cry!
Thus is raised the biblical `dilemma of holiness'. God looks for and demands holiness from
his covenant people as a concomitant for blessing, but they are incapable of being holy. Hence
the effect of the Law which is itself "holy and just and good" is described
as "the curse".
The solution the OT proposes is necessarily radical and is, in fact, a New Covenant. Jer
31:31-34 sets it out in these terms:-
Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of
Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took
them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though
I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of
Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their
hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each man teach
his neighbour and each his brother, saying, `Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me, from the
least of them to the greatest, says the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember
their sin no more.
Notable features of this New Covenant are (a) the forgiveness of sins, (b) the general knowledge
of God and (c) the law written on the heart. However, as Bill Dumbrell observes, what makes it
truly `New' in relation to the Sinai covenant is that it is unbreakable. It will be "not like ... my
covenant which they broke". (W J Dumbrell The End of the Beginning: Revelation 21-22 and the
Old Testament [Homebush West: Lancer Books, 1985] p 90)
The newness of the New Covenant will be effected by a new availability of the Holy Spirit, as is
brought out in Ezek 36:26-27:-
A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your
flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you,
and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances.
The promises of the outpouring of God's Spirit are not many (as also God's encounters with
Abraham were limited) but they are significant and they are linked to the final salvation act of
God and the accompanying restoration of blessing. Thus Isaiah 44:3 promises: "I will pour water
on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon your descendants,
and my blessing on your offspring" - a sentiment which is very close to Paul's linking the Spirit
and the blessing promised to Abraham.
Gospel and Blessing
The giving of the Holy Spirit is thus not an additional bonus to the New Covenant but a necessary
condition of it, for it enables those who are called to be God's people to be faithful to the covenant
and hence to be in receipt of his blessing. The event which activates the New Covenant forms, of
course, the content of the gospel. However, great confusion is caused when Christians fail to
appreciate the absolute link between the gospel and the promises of God. The result is an
UNCERTAINTY about the extent to which those promises apply to the individual.
To an extent this reflects an inadequate appreciation of baptism. Baptism is to the Christian what
the marriage ceremony is to a husband and wife. The marriage ceremony allows a couple to say
to themselves "EVERYTHING which marriage entails applies to us, not because we have
appropriated to ourselves each thing individually, but because we have MARRIED ONE
ANOTHER."
In the same way, BAPTISM allows the Christian to say "EVERYTHING which being a
Christian entails applies to me personally, NOT because I have appropriated each thing
individually, but because I am BAPTIZED INTO CHRIST."
Thus Paul can ask baptized Christians if they are IGNORANT of what their baptism means, as he
does in Rom 6:3 with his characteristic "Do you not know?", but he does so in order to awaken
their appreciation of what is already a fact.
The means by which the benefits of baptism into Christ are received is, of course, faith. But
it is not `faith in the benefits' - rather, it is `faith in the gospel', and here we can close the circle
with the passage from Galatians where we began.
Faith in the Gospel
The theme of the bible is the restoration of blessing, and the focus of that theme is the promise to
Abraham and those descended from him. The fulfilment of that promise, however, may be
summed up as the outpouring of the Holy Spirit: "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law ...
that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith." (Gal
3:13-14).
And this is a NECESSARY fulfilment of the promise to Abraham, because only the Holy Spirit
enables us to have the holiness of the people of God which is the concomitant of blessing.
However, we need to be absolutely clear about the condition for receiving the Holy Spirit.
Paul says in 3:14 that the Spirit is given "through faith", but we need to ask "Faith in what?" The
answer, is "Faith in what was heard" - "Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by
hearing with faith?" (3:2).
If we then ask "Hearing WHAT with faith?" we are driven back to chapter 1 and the
SUFFICIENCY of the gospel. In Gal 1:6 Paul declares "I am astonished that you are so quickly
deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a
DIFFERENT gospel".
This `different' gospel differs from the one Paul outlines in Gal 1:3-4:- "Grace to you and peace
from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from
the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father". Paul clearly regards THIS
gospel, and hearing it with faith, as sufficient to bring people into the blessing promised to
Abraham.
The system of Paul's theology, then, is this: the saving acts of God (aimed at removing the curse
of sin) began with the promise of blessing to Abraham which was fulfilled by the outpouring
of the Spirit on Christians. The enabling event for this fulfilment is the death of Jesus for our sins,
which is proclaimed as the gospel, and the response which avails us of this is faith (ie trust) in the
gospel.
The Spirit and the Gospel
This, I would argue, is the fully developed theology of the New Covenant. It means that hearing
the gospel with faith is the NECESSARY and SUFFICIENT precondition for us to receive the
Holy Spirit because he is the embodiment of the blessing promised to Abraham. Positively, this
means the Spirit is certainly received by hearing the gospel with faith. Negatively, it means the
Holy Spirit is only received through hearing the gospel with faith.
This is important when we consider claims that the Toronto Blessing is a particular work of the
Holy Spirit, because we will expect the work of the Spirit and the blessing of God always to be
linked to our hearing, understanding and applying the gospel.
The Toronto Blessing and the Gospel
We need therefore to ask whether the Toronto Blessing is a blessing DERIVED FROM the gospel,
or a blessing ADDITIONAL TO the gospel. If it is a blessing DERIVED FROM the gospel it
belongs to every Christian already, `as of right'. Paul opens his letter to the Ephesians by blessing
"the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with EVERY spiritual
blessing in the heavenly places" (Eph 1:3). The Ephesians may not have known that was true.
They may not have known what all those blessings were, but they certainly had those blessings IN
AND THROUGH the gospel. They received them when they responded with faith to the message
that Christ "gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present
evil age" (Gal 1:4).
New Things from God's Word ...
If the Toronto Blessing is `a blessing of the gospel' of which we are unaware, we will expect it to
become ours when it is preached to us as a proper consequence of the gospel. This is not to
NARROW the scope of the Christian life to the justification of the sinner - though that is no small
thing. The gospel is the point of application of the WHOLE bible to our lives. With the gospel as
a key we can preach any part of the bible BIBLICALLY. Thus the scope for exploring the depths
of the gospel and bringing new insights to bear is immense.
This happens to most people in relation to suffering. At the start of our Christian lives we are
generally ignorant of the fact that suffering is a `blessing of the gospel'. It has to be preached to
us and explained from Scripture. It is usually only when this is done that we begin to realize
suffering is indeed a `gospel blessing' which we can incorporate into
our experience.
But I am not aware of this happening in relation to the Toronto Blessing. Indeed, Michael
Green himself says "The `Toronto phenomena' certainly form no part of Christian theology or
ethics ..." (op. cit.) Far from being derived from the preaching of the gospel, the Toronto Blessing
begins with its phenomena and attempts to work BACK from these to some aspect of biblical
phenomenology.
Moreover, there are clear examples where the phenomena of the Toronto Blessing are entirely
inappropriate responses to the gospel, even when it is preached. Rodney Howard-Browne himself
quotes the example of people laughing whilst he spoke about hell. It is difficult to claim that this
response was produced by "hearing with faith" - that is, trusting in
what was said.
And here is a difference from the phenomena of the American Camp meetings which are often
quoted in support of the Toronto Blessing. To scream with fear and to run around in terror whilst
someone preaches on hell is to show great faith - at least in the message of hell. To laugh
uncontrollably is inappropriate and bizarre, and suggests the attention of those laughing is focused
somewhere else than on the gospel.
I would challenge anyone to start from the bible and demonstrate that the Toronto Blessing is what
we would expect to see in the life of the believer today as a result of the outpouring of the Spirit
fulfilling God's promise to Abraham. The link between the Toronto Blessing and the gospel is
simply not established, and until it is we may reasonably assert that the Toronto Blessing is NOT
a gospel blessing.
A Blessing too Far
But could it not be claimed that the Toronto Blessing is a blessing BEYOND the simple blessings
of the gospel? Could it not be, as Michael Green has also suggested, God's way of by-passing our
rationalism and reaching the parts other approaches - such as gospel
preaching - haven't reached?
This is perhaps the hardest claim to answer in support of the Toronto Blessing. To deny it seems
to deny either the power or the sovereignty of God. And yet, as we said at the outset, one vital
function of systematic theology is to insist that, whilst God can do anything he doesn't do
everything. The blessing of which Paul speaks in Gal 3, the blessing which may be summed up as
the outpouring of the Holy Spirit even on the Gentiles, is the blessing God promised to Abraham
and it is received through hearing the gospel with faith. So we must say that any blessing which
goes BEYOND the blessing promised to Abraham, and any blessing which comes by some
OTHER means than hearing the gospel with faith, is a blessing too far because, as Paul points out
in Gal 1, it MUST come from "a different gospel".
The Alpha `Split'
Here I think it is legitimate to point out that, however, popular it may be, the Alpha course drives
a wedge between the gospel and the Spirit - which perhaps goes some way to explaining why the
Toronto Blessing found such a ready home in Holy Trinity Brompton.
In session 3 of the Alpha material there is a presentation of the gospel, concluding with a prayer
of commitment. But then six sessions later comes the question "How can I be filled with the Holy
Spirit?" The answer cannot, of course, be "by hearing the gospel with faith", since that was done
in week 3. So instead, there is a further purging from sin: "Ask God to forgive you for anything
that could be a barrier to receiving." (Nicky Gumbel Questions of Life (Eastbourne: Kingsway
Publications, 1993), p 146).
The next step is to "Turn from any area of your life that you know is wrong." (p 147). Then
"Ask God to fill you with his Holy Spirit and to give you the gift of tongues." and of course,
"Believe that what you receive is from God. Don't let anyone tell you that you made it up." In
other words, don't criticize!
Unfortunately, the inevitable effect of this is to undermine confidence in the gospel. When session
9 tells you that you will be filled with the Spirit when you "Seek God with all your heart" (p 147)
it must detract from trust in the message that "... we can be sure of God's forgiveness ... because of
what Jesus achieved for us on the cross by dying for us." (p.64, session
4).
Let me say, if you dropped session 9 out, the rest of the Alpha course would be unexceptionable -
but it is a serious problem as it stands since it inserts a note of UNCERTAINTY and
INCOMPLETENESS into the Christian life, laying up problems for the future and opening us to
false claims in the present.
Conclusion
We need to ask in conclusion not whether the Toronto Blessing might be something God is doing
nor whether it is changing peoples' lives, but whether it is consistent with the a biblical theology
of the blessing of God and the work of the Holy Spirit.
The essence of the work of the HOLY Spirit will be the HOLY life, and for this we do not have
to pass through the Toronto Blessing. Rather we need to immerse ourselves more and more in the
whole counsel of the gospel which is sufficient for our relationship with God. This is the teaching
of the rest of Galatians, and I would suggest it is the consistent teaching
of the whole of Scripture.
And if the preaching of the whole of Scripture on the basis that Christ gave himself for our sins to
deliver us from the present evil age is not adequate to bring the Toronto Blessing to those who
hear with faith, then whatever DOES bring the Toronto Blessing is another gospel and whatever it
brings is not the blessing promised Abraham, nor a result of receiving
the Holy Spirit.
John Richardson
September 1995
