On the Nature of Self-Edification

A part summary of Pastor Sam Oyeyinka's "All things work together for our Good(2); a part response to Revd Gideon Odoma

This straight-to-the-point-as-possible article (because there are too many things to address with little space) was necessitated by a summary done by Revd Rasine (which Revd Gideon has relied on) of Pastor Sam’s Sermon, “All things work together for our good(2)”. A clip from the sermon had been posted online which sparked various responses bordering on PSam speaking against tongues, calling tongues-speakers Gnostics, being secretly anti-charismatic or a misguided charismatic. Yikes.

Firstly, the attempt to give a fair representation of the sermon consists of six random singular sentences which he hardly gives breathing room to speak for themselves. To each is attached his personal inferences, which he expects to be universal:

There’s nobody who watches that sermon with a decision to take instruction from it that would keep praying in tongues afterwards (at least the way the Bible teaches it)

Bear in mind that this is a 76-minute long sermon that is the second part of a series. Not that an excerpt can never do justice to a larger content, but at least one would expect him to include the contextualizing information found in the sermon or quote multiple end-to-end sentences or a paragraph in order to establish a complete thought. Technology has even made things so easy that you can simply just open your Spotify app and screen-grab chunks of the sermon.

The transcript is auto-generated, hence some typos.

Three external contexts and three disclaimers before I speak of the internal context and content.

External Context

1. Pastor Sam and TEC have publicly affirmed several times that they are charismatic. There is a public article of faith on the Church’s website with a section on the continuation of the gifts of the spirit for anyone’s perusal.

   The church still maintains its old videos in public view where practices agreeable to Neo-Pentecostals can be seen featured. The reasons behind the change in praxis gleaned from interaction with the earliest interpretative witness of the early church and various contemporary scholars (including Pentecostals) have been explicitly detailed in several teachings that are publicly available.

2. We have classic Pentecostal congregants who do not derive the inference from the sermon in view or previous sermons that PSam or TEC teaches against tongues.

3. I would admit that PSam doesn’t define some of his terms, but this is because the sermon isn’t primarily focused on prayer or tongues. In “On The Nature of Edification”, PSam defines his operational terms (I shall detail some) which church members are assumed to be familiar with.

Disclaimers

1. I am a member of TEC, so perhaps I have some bias. However, judge this article on its merit. After all, a show of hands for anyone who believes he is without bias?

2. TEC allows agreeable differences about 2nd-tier issues, in so far as we are in substantial agreement about the core things. I state that to say that while I am not in agreement that every occasion of private tongues speaking requires a conscious operation of interpretation, I do agree that all edification must come with fruitfulness of the mind (whether immediately or distantly).

3. Now if Revd Rasine’s concern were merely homiletics concern, I may be tempted to yield some ground as it will be noble to point out instances one could have communicated better. But since his “six detached sentences with personal inferences” summary is a response to the preacher’s three long-tweet clarifications, he gives the impression that he is more interested in insisting his “lucid” inferences trump authorial intent.

All Things Work Together for Good—Including These Debates and Responses

The sermon’s theme is obviously sourced from Romans 8:28. While the sermon aims to show how both good times and bad times can be for the benefit of the believer, it is the surrounding texts that necessitates a foray into the nature of prayer and edification.

²⁶ Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. ²⁷ And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. ²⁸ And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. ²⁹ For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Vs 29 tells us exactly what the good that all things work for is: “to be conformed to the image of his son”.

Now Paul in other places tells us how this conformity to the son occurs:

Colossians 3:10: …which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him

Ephesians 4:13: …and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: 14: ²³ And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;²⁴ And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness

Romans 12:2: but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

2 Corinthians 3: ¹⁴ But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. ¹⁸ And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

All of Paul’s texts concerning sustained transformation involve operations of the mind. But not just Paul, Peter says that it is through the knowledge of things promised to us that we participate in divine nature¹.John says that: “the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true.”²

It would appear all are sourcing from the Lord Jesus who said:

“³ Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”³

The centrality of knowledge in Christian transformation is straight from the mouth of Jesus and the apostles.

Now this knowledge was not meant by PSam only intellectual assent or propositional knowledge.

He had in mind also non-propositional knowledge, the kind that is sometimes inarticulate, transcendental knowledge if you like. He even calls it a mystical Christian experience. Revd Gideon himself alludes to this when he talks about an inexpressible “heightened awareness of the here-ness of God”. That helps us see what Paul describes as strength in the inner man through a knowledge of things that surpasses knowledge⁴. That is his non-propositional “That I may know him⁵”. It is a koinonia with the truths of the death and resurrection.

It is this mention of a “Christian mystical experience” that prompts a contradistinction with eastern mysticism making inroads to the church through some unbiblical practices. But more of that later.

What is the Nature of Edification?

Definitions matter. And it is where we often talk past ourselves. Edification is from the root word “οἰκοδομέω(Oikodomeo)”. In its literal sense, it means to build a house, a stable structure. If you can picture how some of the magnificent edifices of the Old Roman world are still standing today, you get a sense of what the word means.

In its metaphoric usage, it means to build up, to cause to grow. Edification is not blowing hot air into balloons easily defused by the smallest needle. Edification is not getting electrons to occupy greater energy states that can easily return to ground state. It is in this sense that edification cannot mean “charging”, in so far as that refers to an energy state that can be used up.

Edification is the progressive constitution of a stable disposition that is oriented towards God. It is a stable habit of the soul. It is this constitution that intractably lays hold on God’s will. I know of no other description in the New Testament that describes this state other than all those “conforming us to his image through knowledge” text mentioned above. This is why all of the Pauline prayers are inextricably linked with insight, understanding, enlightenment, ascertainment etc.

Now if tongues will edify, it is because it has the potential to add to this edifice-in-making. The reason tongues can do so is because it intrinsically conveys information, though extrinsically unintelligible. That is, if tongues is mere babble, it can not edify. But if it is the utterance of the spirit, speaking mysteries (concealed information) to God, it edifies. That is, tongues instrumentally edifies because of its informational content (knowledge) which reaches God and is mystically applied to us. Devoid of this, there is no difference between tongues and pagan free vocalization. Now Revd Gideon agrees with this when he says

“prayer is communion, there is another party involved. That party is God…God has a part to play in the success, the effectiveness of this enterprise that is called prayer, and that part is integral in the conversation around prayer, because just merely muttering words or saying some words, may not be enough to edify you…”

So whenever we lose the sense of the ongoing communication, that there is someone on the other end, there is no edification. If tongues to you is just “ventilating”, “machine-gunning”, or “skabashing” all you will receive is psychosomatic.

The Gnostics are at the Gate

Revd Gideon will further say:

“In the realm of the spirit, you are not alone. That is, when you come to prayer, you are not the only person that is involved. Prayer is communion; that is, communication.”

“There’s a God on the other end of that equation…”

Now alluding to Hebrews 4:16: “Come boldly into the throne of grace…”, Revd describes a motion towards an omnipotent, sovereign (taboo word these days) God, a mystical entrance into his presence. He speaks about a sort of distance between you (the one praying) and the throne of grace, though he is careful not to call it a physical or geographical distance. I want to suggest to him that the word he was looking for was ontologic distance.

It is this ontologic distance PSam was flagging as essential to prayer when he raised the alarm of neo-Gnosticism. Once you start to interpret God being inside of you as you not being ontologically distinct from God, gnosticism is lurking. He tells us that Christians historically have avoided this temptation by emphasizing praying outward and not inward.

The somatic functions of lifting your eyes to heaven like David (even though he knew of the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit), or lifting holy hands like Paul says in 1 Timothy 2:9, or saying “Our Father who hath in heaven” as Jesus commanded are in fact noetic functions that reminds us of this ontologic distance. The sense that God is incommensurately ontologically higher than us is too essential to Christian prayer to be fiddling with unbiblical injunctions. We must always remember that there is a God metaphorically on the other end.

What Edification is Not

Revd Gideon pointed out many great dynamics to edification; but contra Revd Gideon, edification is not impartation, in so far as impartation refers to stirring up of operative power. That one has been endowed with giftings by impartation does not mean he has become spiritually mature. This is why in the list of what edifies, Paul does not list things like miracles, gifts of healing or discerning of spirits as tools of edification, at least not in themselves. The tools of edification (whether personally or corporately) are things having noetic operations—revelation, knowledge, prophecy, word of instruction, psalms, tongues (conveying concealed information) and its interpretation.

This is important because some people assume edification is dispossessing witches on the mission field or even ridiculously, slaying random strangers in the spirit. Edification is progressive conformity to the image of the son—deepened convictions, rooted understanding of God’s will, love abounding in wisdom and knowledge.

Understanding this, we can distinguish “being filled with the spirit” in an operative sense (acts of power) and “being filled with the spirit” in the stable dispositional sense. As Paul says⁶:

¹⁷ Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. ¹⁸ And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit;

The result of this stable disposition is instantiated by Paul as one’s Christlike behavior in various relationship dynamics—husbands and wife, father and children, masters and their workers. If the telos of your praying in tongues is just to stir up operative power to battle the demons of Nnewi, that is not in truth edification. You can do all that and still be a believer walking in the flesh.

So we can’t divorce edification from its teleology. When Jesus was strengthened at Gethsemane we understand both the instrumental prayer content (not my will but yours be done) and its teleology (steadiness to carry out God’s will despite difficulty). This is also what is described in the congregational prayer in Acts 4. A rootedness to do God’s will, a boldness to speak the word of God despite opposition.

Jude 20 says by building yourselves on your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourself in the love of God. Whether you argue it is two distinct acts (which I believe it is) or one act, the question is what is Jude’s operative definition of faith?

Jude 4: “…contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints”

Jude refers to the body of teaching given to us. So the telos of our prayer in the Holy Spirit is defined: to come into experiential, transcendental knowledge of Christian verities.

“⁹ For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives,^{[e] 10} so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, ¹¹ being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience,”⁷

In Conclusion

In PSam’s concluding remarks, he speaks about having encounters in prayer and a more efficient way to pray longer without being just an endurance match and test of stamina. Yet many have run with the agenda that PSam is discouraging long prayers and is only encouraging intellectual Christianity.

We simply cannot do service to the truth if we can’t make decent efforts to interact with a Steelman of people’s positions and converse in good faith. Such attitudes evince a desire for a cheap win over the other party rather than growing into the unity of the faith.

You, my good sir, have been a breath of fresh air and I hope we can elevate the discuss in order to hash out the actual places we substantially differ.

1. 2 Peter 1:3-4

2. 1 John 5:20

3. John 17:3

4. Ephesians 3:14-19

5. Philippians 3:10

6. Ephesians 5:17-18

7. Colossians 1:9-11