Two Theological Battle Lines of Early Pentecostal Leaders, Charles F. Parham and William H. Durham

20/3/2016

   two theological front battle lines of Parham and Durham(Chang-soung Lee).pdf

 

Two Theological Battle Lines

of Early Pentecostal Leaders,

Charles F. Parham and William H. Durham

 

Chang-Soung Lee

 

 

 

I. Introduction

 

    As Douglas Jacobsen defined, it can be said that two early Pentecostal leaders, Charles F. Parham and William H. Durham were theologians. As theologians, they fought hard in two theologically important front lines in addition to the controversy on the evidence of the Spirit Baptism with Holiness groups ect.. The two front lines were formed on the one hand against Conservatism, on the other hand against Liberalism.

    On one side, Parham and Durham put a brake on Cessationism of Conservatism, and on the other side, they criticised and rejected Liberalism’s Higher Criticism of the Bible and adhered to pre-critical reading. The reason of their fighting was that for Parham and Durham, both Cessationism and Higher Criticism were Satan’s tricks to obstruct reexperiencing the experiences in the Bible. Cessationism had recognised all the charismatic occurrences recorded in the Bible, but had insisted that so called, the gifts of utterance and temporary gifts which produced new revelations, especially speaking in tongues and prophecy were ceased and could not occur in the present time. Higher Criticism, on the basis of Enlightenment, had asserted that no supernatural gift could not be occurred even in the Biblical ages besides present time. Cessationism and Higher criticism both had tried to exclude the possibility of the present charismatic occurrences. Raising and provoking Pentecostal Movement reexperiencing the experiences in the Bible at the present time, Parham and Durham fought against the results of such doctrine of the Cessationism of Conservatism and the method of Higher Criticism of Liberalism.

 

 

II. Front Line Against Cessationism

 

1. Commonness and Divergence between Pentecotalism and Fundamentalism

 

    Pentecostalism has a commonness with Fundamentalism which is the core of Conservatism. The common point is the method to approach the Bible. An Old Testament scholar, Gerald T. Sheppard, who had grown up in a Pentecostal church, and then taught at Union theological Seminary in New York and Emmanuel College, saw that the Statement of Fundamental Truths of Assemblies of God had employed fundamental languages especially for the Bible. A Neopentecostalist teaching New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, Russell P. Spittler also said that Pentecostalism and Fundamentalism had been both “virtually identical” in approaching the Bible pre-critically.

    But there is a conspicuous discrepancy between Pentecostalism and Fundamentalism. Although they share an intimate friendship in approaching method to the Bible, but they stand apart in discussing certain gifts whether they were ceased after the Bible time or have continued until today. A Pastor ordained by Assemblies of God and a professor of church history and library director at Wesley Theological Seminary, D. William Faupel said, “Rather, I have come to believe that Pentecostalism arose, in large part, as a critique directed at an emerging fundamentalism which was attaching itself to the Old Princeton Theology.” In 1924, Stanley H. Frodsham wrote that today pentecostalists should know the Bible, but they needed to know the Scripture “plus the power of God.” He saw that Pentecostalism was very similar to Fundamentalism, but Pentecostalism was different in just one point, “plus” to Fundamentalism. The one point should be added was “the power of God.” In 1925, J . Roswell Flower, who was baptized with the Holy Spirit in 1910 and then was elected the first general secretary of the General Council of the Assemblies of God at the young age of 25 in 1914, compared Fundamentalists to Pharisees and Modernists to Sadducees in the congratulatory address of the commencement of Central Bible Institute. According to him, Modernists were Sadducees because they did not believe the miracles themselves recorded in the Bible, and Fundamentalists were Pharisees because they believed miracles just only occurred in the past, recorded in the Bible. on the contrary, Pentecostalists were the Fundamentalists of Fundamentalists because they believed that God was demonstrating his power at the present time. As Spittler pointed out, Pentecostalism and Fundamentalism have been uttering different voices over speaking in tongues and physical healing etc.. At present,

    The “plus” of Pentecostalists was disagreeable to Fundamentalists. At last, in 1928, the World’s Christian Fundamentals Association judged Pentecostalism to be unscriptural, and declared separation. At present, Pentecostalism and Fundamentalism are similar with each other in the way to approach the Bible, but exhibit seriously different views over charismatic gifts such as speaking in tongues and prophecy.

 

2. Parham’s Objection Against Cessationism

 

    Cessationism had been raised already from the church fathers ages. Augustinus of Hippo recognized that in primitive church ages believers spoke in tongues as the Spirit gave to speak, and said that the reason was the Gospel should be proclaimed all over the earth. But, according to him, after such role was accomplished, speaking in tongues was ceased. During the Reformation era, Martin Luther admitted only coming of the Spirit through the word without visible signs, and rejected the visible and outer works of the Spirit because they were needed any more. Asserting that after the Church was established the visible coming of the Spirit was ceased, he put the basis of the Cessation on the establishment of the Church. John Calvin restricted some gifts to the original Apostles for confronting Roman Catholic. In the middle of 1700, Conyers Middleton applied historical criticism to the church fathers’ writings of miracles which had been said that they supported the doctrines after church fathers era, and insisted that those miracles did not occurred in fact.

    The opposition between the Continuationism of Pentecostalism and the Cessationism of fundamental Conservatism was not started in 1920’s. The conflict was emerged from early Pentecostalists, especially already from the father of Pentecostalism, Parham. In Parham’s time, dispensationalim insisting gifts were ceased after the Bible time was popularized by the Scofield Reference Bible. The first edition was published 1909. It is likely enough that Benjamin B. Warfield was the major opponent of Parham. They were both contemporaries. Warfield was born in 1851 and passed away in 1921, Parham came into this world in 1873 and left this world in 1929. Warfield worked as a professor of theology in Princeton Seminary from 1887 to 1921. Parham established Bethel Bible School in 1900, raised Pentecostal Movement in 1901. And he published his first book A Voice Crying in The Wilderness in 1902, and Everlasting Gospel in 1910. At about the same time, Warfield unfolded his Cessationism studying and lecturing at Princeton Theological Seminary. His Cessationism can be seen through one book issued in 1918. He published his Thomas Smyth Lectures done from 1917 to 1918 at Columbia Theological Seminary under the name, Counterfeit Miracles. The title of the first chapter of the book was “THE CESSATION OF THE CHARISMATA.” Warfield thought that because certain gifts were “the characterizing peculiarity of specifically the Apostolic Church,” so those were exclusively for “the Apostolic age.” To him, charismata were “the authentication of the Apostles” or “the credentials of the Apostles as the authoritative agents of God in founding the church.” Consequently, it was said that certain gifts were restricted to “the Apostolic Church,” and were stoped with the Apostolic Church.

    Parham fought against such Cessationism. Parham said, “We are not fighting men or churches but seeking to displace dead forms and creeds or wild-fanaticism, with living truths.” Pentecostal Movement led by Praham was a movement to struggle for substituting biblical ones for doctrines considered as unbiblical. He intensely suggested to lay manmade teachings, creeds and doctrines at Christ’s feet, and let every error, false teaching or unscriptural thought be cleansed by His blood as sins and sin were cleansed. Among such doctrines, Cessation doctrine was obviously included.

    Parhm criticized Cessation doctrine taking an example as a harmful result of Cessationism. According to Parham, a pious man who had been a member of a Baptist Church, Marshaltown, Iowa received the Spirit Baptism. However, the Baptist Church did not honor “the presence and power of the Holy Ghost in their midst.” In other words, the church was bound by cessation doctrine. The man was confronted and shaken by the stubborn cessation doctrine of the church and then came to doubt the genuineness of his own experience. Losing his place in the church, he came to be captured “by the Spiritualists who persuaded him that his Pentecostal power was but a manifestation of their nefarious mediumship.” As it were, he was abandoned by the cessational church, and then captivated by the Spiritualists. He gradually lost spiritual power, even came to doubt his own salvation, eventually relinquished his faith, became sick and tormented, and lost his mind. Saying “How many like cases there are in this world we know not, but we do know that the narrowness of modern church Christianity, by refusing to believe and receive true Bible doctrines has driven many thousands unto Spiritualism, Theosophy, Christian Science and infidelity,” he criticized Cessationism. “The narrowness of modern church” designated Cessation doctrine, and “true Bible doctrines” contained Continuation doctrine.

    Parhm did not only criticized Cessationism passively, but also asserted Continuationism actively. He wrote, “ . . . miracles were always a part of the Church.” And he said, “God has set miracles, healing and tongues in the Church along with apostles, pastors and teachers; as apostles, pastors and teachers have not ceased, why should miracles, healing and tongues (1 Cor. 12:28, 30).” Parham argued for Cessation doctrine through saying healing and speaking in tongues had been from the Bible time without cease in Church history.

 

3. Durham’s Opposition Against Cessationism

    Durham, who gave the turning point of Sanctification in Pentecostal Movement, on the one side made mention of the positive aspect of Conservatists. According to him, they defended excellently the Bible as the word of God against Liberalists who approached the Bible through Higher Criticism. In other words, they vindicated the inspiration of the Bible. According to him, they also contended that “Jesus Christ was in deed and in truth the Son of God, and that He shed His precious Blood to atone for the sins of the lost world, to obtain eternal redemption for all who would believe on His Name,” and “that all the wonderful things it records really occurred.”

    Perhaps such Durham’s evaluation was the result of his reading the writings of Conservatists published at that time. Durham was born in 1873, and departed this world in 1912. The time in which Durham worked and wrote vigorously as a Pentecostalist was from 1907 to 1912. After he attended the revival meetings led by Seymour and got the Spirit Baptism in 1907, he issued The Pentecostal Testimony. In 1910 when he worked most passionately as a Pentecostalist, The Fundamentals: A Testimony to The Truth was edited, published, and distributed across a wide range by A. C. Dixon and Reuben Archer Torrey and others. The writings recorded in the books contained the rejection against Dawinism and Higher Criticism, the defense of the Bible inspiration, and the assertion of Christ’s divinity. In the second volume, James Orr wrote about the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, Benjamin B. Warfield about the divinity of Christ, G. Campbell Morgan about the purpose of Incarnation, R. A. Torrey about the personality and divinity of Holy Spirit, and Arthur James T. Pierson about the organic unity of the Bible. In the third volume, James M. Gray wrote about Inspiration of the Bible and in the sixth, Franklin Johnson about the Atonement. And especially in the first volume, Dyson Hague wrote about the History of the Higher Criticism and Franklin Johnson wrote about Fallacies of the Higher Criticism and criticized and rejected Higher Criticism. At that time, as Durham evaluated, Fundamentalists tried to defend the inspiration of the Bible and the Diety of Christ and opposed Higher Criticism.

    Although Durham appreciated such points of Conservatists highly, on the contrary, he made their serious shortcoming an object of criticism. He felt sad at the fact that Warfield and others who so nobly defend the miracles in the Bible had opposed against all the modern miracles occurred by God. According to him, their teaching, in other words, Cessation doctrine was that, “although the Bible gives a correct history of God’s wonderful dealings with His people and of His wonderful works among them in days of old, for some reasons the days of miracles were past.” In the eyes of Durham, “none of them attempt to give, and without offering a single Scripture to sustain their belief,” so their Cessationism was not biblical.

Durham insisted that the purpose of Satan was to make people be convinced that “modern miracles are all a fake,” and “modern manifestations of power are either diabolical or fraudulent.” According to his such remarks, for Cessationists the gifts occurred in modern time had not be given by God, but were only the Devil’s deceiving. He asserted that by contraries against their wrong understanding, denying the modern manifestation of gifts was falling into Satan’s trick. He revealed his strong rejection against Cessationism saying,

 

it is sickening to read articles today, some of them by learned divines, declaring that God has changed His plans, and that we are living in an age when God is perfectly silent, and that any miraculous works that are done today, are done by Satan and his agents.

 

 

III. Front Line Against Higher Criticism

 

1. The Influx of Higher Criticism into America

 

    Around 1900-1902, when Parham launched Pentecostal Movement with experiencing speaking in tongues following the theological proposition: the Bible evidence of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit was peaking in tongues, Evolutionism and Higher Criticism, a brother of it which started in Europe landed in United States of America, and then were destroying Christianity. After in 1860 Charles Robert Dawin’s publication of The Origin of Species in America, the creation record of the Genesis had been ridiculed, in 1885 Henry Ward Beecher wrote Evolution and Religion based on Dawinism. In 1892 Lyman Abbot composed The Evolution of Christianity, in 1897 The Theology of an Evolutionist. And in 1866 Higher Criticism which was started in Germany was imported by Charles Briggs and Frederick W. Robertson ect. who studied in Europe. They taught Higher Criticism of Julius Wellhausen, Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, Ernst Troeltsch, and Adolf von Harnack learned in Europe. Briggs became a professor at Union Theological Seminary in 1876, and denied the authorship of Moses on Pentateuch and insisted the multiple authorship on Isaiah at the address of tenure inauguration ceremony in 1891. Before long, most of theological seminaries became tainted. For example, Andover Seminary a conservative Congregational school established in 1808 was conquered by Harvard Unitarians, and then in 1886 came to advocate “Progressive Orthodoxy.” Evolutionism and Higher Criticism had reduced the Bible at best to a production of culture changed according to the times, made it the object of criticism like other secular writings, and denied its speciality as the revelation.

 

2. Parham’s Critique and Rejection against Higher Criticism

 

    It has often been pointed out that except people who are called Pentecostal scholars in these days, most of Pentecostalists are conservative and anti-higher critical in approaching the Bible. In 1924, Fordsham said that Pentecostalists did not align themselves with the theories of Modernists who insisted the evolution of mankind, and ridiculed the supernatural events in the Bible, and believed “the verbal inspiration and the absolute inerrancy of Scripture.” Wonsuk, Ma saw that Higher Criticism was often an obstacle to Pentecostal Church To Pentecostalists, all the Biblical records are facts without doubt. As William Menzies and Russell Spittler penetrated well, Pentecostalists have read the Bible pre-critically like Fundamentalists According to James K. Bridges, the founders of schools under the Assembles of God USA resisted firmly against Evolutionism and Higher Criticism. The Bible interpretation of Pentecostalists has opposed against modernistic Higher Criticism.

    But there has been a few or no references to the point and to the ground that such resistance or opposition was the legacy of the founder of Pentecostal Movement, Parham. Worst of all, among so called Pentecostal scholars there is a man who insists that early Pentecostalism was no relationship with Liberalism. Faupel considered the identity of Pentecostalism for the future of the movement. He wrote that in his doctoral dissertation, he argued Pentecostalism sprang up against Liberalism, but latter, in opposition to his previous view, he insisted there was no consciousness of theological Liberalism in the minds of early Pentecostalists after further examination into Pentecostlaists’ materials. And he concluded that Pentecostalists began to be concious of Liberalism when the controversy between Fundamentalists and Liberalists became intense. But being different from his opinion, Pentecostalism had rejected Higher Criticism persistently from its beginning.

    The fact that Parham surely criticized and reject the Higher/historical Criticism emerges from his writings. For 3 years from 1891, he enrolled at South Kansas Conference College in Winfield, Kansas, a Methodist affiliated school and studied theology and medicine. He might met Higher Criticism during this time. In 1902, when one year passed after his giving rise to Pentecostal Movement, in his first book, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, he bitterly criticized Higher Criticism as the mouth of the Devil, and defined higher critics with scientists and infidels as “a trinity of the same species.” The basis of his criticism and rejection of higher criticism can be taken out from his writings. According to him, higher critics “recognize the unseen forces of electricity; gravitation; air; heat and cold; yet loudly denouncing the miraculous and supernatural” occurred by the intervention of God. Such Parham’s criticism was against the essential nature and presupposition of Higher Criticism which had reduced the supernatural records of the Bible to fictitious myth following I. Kant’s Enlightenmental agnosticism insisting the pure reason of man could not know noumena.

    Parham judged the Devil to ridicule the story of Jonah through “the mouth of higher criticism.” His such remark might be on higher criticism downgrading the records of Jonah to a fiction, not a fact, a invented literary production. Parham criticized Higher Criticism which in fact, through reducing Jonah to a fictitious literary work, made Jesus’ explanation of not only his death but also his resurrection taking the record of Jonah as the sign of Jonah, in other words, of his divine nature proven by his resurrection from the dead (cf. Matt. 12:39-40), fiction. Because for him the superstructural teaching, the diety of Jesus Christ, was established on the story of Jonah, to strike at the story was to destroy the chief corner stone. Parham portrayed such Higher Criticism as “the ante-room to infidelity.” This depiction pointed out the fact that Higher Criticism demolished transcendency and divinity of Jesus, and eventually led people to disbelief.

    According to him, Higher Criticism exercised its influence not only in a lecture room of theological institutions but also over preaching of the ministers and pastors who learned in such institutions tremendously. The influence was “to undermine the work of the Church.” To his eyes, “these agnostic imps of hell, in guise of higher criticism, filling the pulpit of the churches, work havoc among the Lord’s sheep, robbing them of every vestige of comfort and faith, if that were possible.” Such an evil influence made people deny not only past supernatural works of God of Bible time, but also present powerful supernatural works of God.

    Parham expected God would judge and punish higher critics before long. For him, higher critics were same as “the devilish cranks.” According to him, the second coming of Jesus is very imminent, and at the coming, God will “take care of all the devilish cranks and higher critics who dare oppose the everlasting gospel crusade.” He thought that reading the Bible through higher criticism was not helpful to the everlasting gospel, namely, pentecostal movement, but opposed pentecostal movement. His remark asserted that if someone read the Bible through the eyes of higher criticism, he or she can not take part in pentecostal movement, but only can participate in anti-pentecostal movement which is directed by the Devil. God will judge and punish such higher critic opposers.

 

3. Durham’s Rejection against Higher Criticism

 

    No less than Parham, Durham also criticized and rejected persistently Higher Criticism. For Durham, Higher Criticism tried to damage the inspiration of the Bible and to degrade the miracles in the Bible to empty myths. He criticized Higher Criticism for excluding God’s transcendental power and making “the stories of His wondrous works in the days of old to appear as myths and fables.” And for Durham, Higher Criticism had attempted to degrade Christianity to a group for cultivating morality instead delivering people from sin. He saw that Christ was being ruled out not only in the scientific world, but also in the higher education. He said that it was Satan that was destroying “the faith of the people in ancient miracles” through the educational and scientific world.

    Durham mentioned Charles William Elliot who was the president of Harvard University at that time as an example. According to him, Elliot suggested that Christianity “be called ‘morality’ instead of ‘New Religion’.” Such tendency is exposed in a his theological lecture which was established for summer semester of Harvard University in 22, July, 1909. He stated his “New Religion” plainly. Elliot insisted that because religion was not fixed, but a fluent thing, religious doctrines should be harmony with new tendencies in the intellectual world. He mentioned Herbert Spencer’s papers on evolution and Wellhausen’s developing Biblical criticism for examples of such tendencies. Elliot declared that the verbal inspiration of the Bible was already greatly impaired, in the future religion there would be nothing “supernatural,” all sacrifices for forgiveness of sins were unnecessary and injurious, and the religious life of the future would not be the personal welfare or salvation, but love and service to others and contributions to common good.

    Durham described vividly the evil effect of Higher Criticism as follows;

 

Men are spending years in seminaries, universities, and colleges, preparing for the ministry. In their eagerness to acquire intellectual knowledge, their spiritual life is many times sadly neglected. Many come out of these institutions, through which they have expected so much help, in a much worse condition spiritually, than when they enter them. many of these institutions are honey-combed with higher criticism, and instead of the young man’s faith in God and His word being strengthened, as he expected it would be, it is sadly weakened. . . . As is always the case when men seek in the wrong direction for a thing, more labor and pains was required, and in the end they fall short of receiving it. They go from one thing to another . . . until many give up in despair, or became infidels, or higher critics, which amounts to about the same thing.

 

    According to him, although many men who were standing in the pulpits pretending to preach and teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, in fact, they were full of higher criticism, and were denying all ancient miracles. Of course this leaved them on the friendliest terms with the world.

In such circumstances, Durham hoped that higher critics would soon become extinct, and that they would by replaced by “men called of God, equipped by the Lord, filled with the holy Ghost, who will fearlessly preach Christ and His blessed Gospel.” Having such wish, he presented a way through which ministers ruined by higher criticism could get out of the evil influence. He encouraged them saying,

 

If you have tried many things and failed to receive what your soul craves, get down and cry to God, till he comes and meets your soul, and satisfies you. If you have spent years in study [of higher criticism], and travel, and still feel a deep need in your own heart, cease to expect from any source except God. Read the Acts of the Apostles. Note well the experiences given there. Tell God you will never rest, till He has given you what they received. Humble your heart before Him. Set up an altar just where you are, and begin to pray and wait; claim His promise and honestly expect that He will meet you, and He will do so.

 

    He advised people bound by higher criticism that they should smash the glasses of higher criticism into pieces, read carefully the Bible, especially Acts with pure eyes, study the charismatic experiences: speaking in tongues accompanied with the Spirit Baptism, divine healing, and exorcism etc., and pray to God for experiencing such Holy Spirit’s works and receiving power for ministry.

    But in his eyes, the vigor of higher criticism should not easily be broken down. Being very different with his hope, higher criticism was building more and more strong fortresses. So, he lamented saying, “it seems that the coming of the Lord is the only relief for the situation, as unbelief and higher criticism are getting such a strong hold on many, that we fear their power will never be broken.”

 

 

IV. Conclusion

 

    The result of this research upholds the point of the argument: on the one hand, early pentecostal leaders Charles F. Parham and William H. Durham insisted Continuation of gifts against Cessationism, on the other hand, rejected persistently higher criticism, and read the Bible pre-critically. For Parham and Durham, the reason of such rejection was both Cessationism and higher criticism were a trick of the Devil to prevent reexperiencing the experiences in the Bible today.

    Cessationism was not acceptable to both Parham and Durham who had been reexperiencing the experiences in the Bible. Cessationism recognized the experiences recorded in the Bible were really occurred in history before they were written. But they insisted that certain experiences of that biblical experiences could not be re-occurred today any more. In such eyes of Cessationists, to reproduce the experiences in the Bible today seemed to be absurd. on the contrary, Parham and Durham wanted to reexperience the experience recorded in the Bible at the present time, and reexperienced. For such Parham and Durham, Cessationism was an obstacle which blocked the continuous works of God, so only a Babel Tower made by man himself, should be removed.

    For Parham and Durham, higher Criticism also could never be in the same boat. Higher Criticism degraded the experiences recorded in the Bible to fictitious myths which actually did not occurred in history, but only invented and added so called at the oral stage or editorial stage by many persons and communities. In the eyes of higher critics, pentecostalists such as Parham and Durham who asserted to reproduce and reexperience such fabricated myths today were savages. on the contrary, for Parham and Durham, the experiences in the Bible actually had occurred in Bible time, and they reexperienced actually the experiences in their lives. To Parham and Durham, Higher Criticism was an avata of the Devil who made biblical experiences merely a fictions against God.

   Because Parham and Durham eliminated Cessationism and Higher Criticism, and read the bible with Continuationism and pre-critical eyes, they could make the pentecostal experiences which occurred in history identical with the pentecostal experiences which were written into the Bible, and, further, revived the identified experiences as present pentecostal experiences. Everyone, who wants to reexperience the pentecostal experiences in the Bible, can not help but reject Cessationism and Higher Criticism. But, how is present situation after merely one hundred years from the passing away of Parham and Durham?

 

 

Bibliography

 

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Ma, Wonsuk. “The Spirit (Rûaḥ) of God in the Book of Isaiah and Its Eschatological Significance.” Ph.D. dissertation, Fuller Theological Seminary, 1996.

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Abstract

 

Two Theological Battle Lines

of Early Pentecostal Leaders,

Charles F. Parham and William H. Durham

 

Chang-Soung Lee

 

    Early Pentecostal leaders Charles F. Parham and William H. Durham fought in the two theological front lines: on the one hand resisting against Cessationism of conservatism and insisting on Continuationism, on the other hand criticising and rejecting Higher Criticism of Liberalism on the Bible and adhering to Pre-Critical Reading. For Parham and Durham, both of Cessationism and Higher Criticism were only the trick of Satan to prevent modern people re-experiencing the experiences of the Bible.

    Chapter II looks into the responses of Parham and Durham to the stimulus of Cessationism of Conservatism/Fundamentalism. Pentecostalism has difference as well as commonness with conservatism. The commonness is pre-critical approach to the Bible. The difference is on the point that whether some charismatic gifts were ceased or whole gifts are continued. Confrontation was already appeared in the works of Charles F. Parham, A Voice Crying in The Wilderness in 1902 and 1910. one of representative works of dispensational cessationism, Scofield Reference Bible was published in 1909 and the other, Counterfeit Miracles in 1918. Parham criticized cessationism as un-biblical and insisted the continuation of all the gifts.

    Durham who made a shift on sanctification in Penteceostalism mentioned the negative side as well as the positive side of conservatism. The Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth was distributed in 1910, when Durham was working most passionately as a Pentecostalist. According to him Fundamentalists defended the Bible as the word of God excellently against Liberalists who attacked the Bible through Higher Criticism. But, for him, Fundamentalists had a serious defect. The defect was that defending the miracles in the Bible, but they opposed modern miracles.

    Chapter III analyzes the writings of Parham and Durham against Higher Criticism. These works are undertaken mainly on the background of their time. It has been pointed very well that most of Pentecostalists are conservative and anti higher critic. But there has been no reference to the fact that the antipathy and resistance to higher criticism were the legacy of Parham. Around the time when Parham started Pentecostalism with the theological affirmation that the Bible evidence of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit was speaking in tongues, Higher Criticism of Europe landed and was occupying Christianity of America more and more.

    Parham criticized higher criticism as the mouth of the Devil, and evaluated higher critic as one member of trinity consisted of scientist and unbeliever. The reason why he rejected higher criticism was that they acknowledged unseen powers: electricity, gravity, and air etc., but they were strongly denying the supernatural inbreaking of God. Parham thought that the Devil ridiculed the real story of Jonah as a myth through his mouth, higher criticism. For Parham, the upper structure, the deity of Jesus Christ, was established on the story of Jonah. So, destroying the story was denying the deity. He described such higher criticism as an ante-room for the train of unbelief toward hell. He said that God would judge and punish higher critics soon.

    Durham also criticized and rejected higher criticism. For Durham, higher criticism destroyed the inspiration of the Bible and made the miracles written in the Bible myths. He mentioned Eliot's supporting higher criticism and suggesting to call Christianity "New Religion" and "Morality". Eliot did actually assert such thing in a summer lecture of Harvard University in July 22, 1909. Durham depicted the evil influences of higher criticism graphically. Many people spent several years preparing for ministry in seminaries, universities, and colleges. But, sadly, they became weak because of higher criticism, and, worst of all, became higher critics too. To his eyes, the vigor of higher criticism would not be broken down, and it was building its strong fortress. So, he lamented saying the only solution for such a situation would be the second coming of the Lord.

 

 

Keywords:

Pentecostalism, Charles F. Parham, William H. Durham, Cessationism, Continuationism, Higher Criticism, Pre-critical Bible Reading

 

 

 

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