PROCESO ÚNICO DE EJECUCIÓN
B) Las excepciones procesales en el proceso único de ejecución en la modalidad de ejecución de garantías
2. Defensas previas
It is in worship that human beings are connected most significantly in communion with the divine, and it is through the Spirit that all worshippers are connected with each other to the glory of God.99 Johnathan E. Alvarado claims that Spirit-filled worship, of which a
predominant feature is spiritual connectedness, guides the community into an authentic and intimate relationship with God and with others.100 That is, the Spirit-filled worship connects participants to an intimate relationship not only with God in Christ but also with others in the community. In worship, believers evoke and express their love and gratitude
99 Johnathan E. Alvarado, ‘Worship in the Spirit: Pentecostal Perspectives on Liturgical Theology and
Praxis’, Journal of Pentecostal Theology 21, no.1 (Spring 2012): 140–1. See also, Land, Pentecostal
Spirituality, 93–4.
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to God by shouting, lifting hands, jumping, and so on; at the same time, they share the holy affections with one another in the community. In this respect, Alvarado asserts that ‘quality liturgy is at the very least a necessary component for the cultivation of relationship with God’, and that engagement of the community members with God and with each other cultivates the people’s spiritual formation.101 In worship, Pentecostals respond to one another as a communion in the Spirit.102 In the corporate and interactive worship, the people of God have an intimate relationship with God in Christ and are ‘bound together and united in the community of faith by the Spirit’.103 The communal experience in worship shapes Pentecostal identity as ‘the network of being’.104
Pentecostals have traditionally rejected the term ritual or rite to refer to worship and their liturgy, understanding it as having connotations of the formative, dogmatic and un-spiritual. For many Pentecostals, ritual or rite indicates something ‘dead, meaningless or even unscriptural, unspiritual and mechanical religion’.105 Ritual/rite has been
considered as being restrictive, routine and potentially inhibiting the movement of the Spirit.106 However, Pentecostal worship is far more liturgical and ritualized than worshippers recognize.107 Pentecostals have enthusiastically engaged in ‘worship
services’, ‘spiritual practices’, ‘Pentecostal distinctives’, ‘tarry meetings’, ‘altar calls’, and ‘laying on of hands’.108 Indeed, worshippers’ experience in the spiritual rituals or rites is a
101 Ibid., 141.
102 Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, 93. This communal experience of the corporate worship intensifies
their solidarity in the community as one body of Christ.
103 Alvarado, ‘Worship in the Spirit’, 140. See also, Albrecht, Rites in the Spirit, 204–8. Albrecht
highlights three main theological functions of liturgy, namely to worship God, to edify the members and to send out the ritualists into the society with a mission. These three functions express and cultivate an intimate relationship with God, others in the community and the world.
104 Wariboko, The Pentecostal Principle, 138. See Cartledge, The Mediation of the Spirit, 68–9.
Tomberlin, Encountering God at the Altar, 74.
105 Albrecht, Rites in the Spirit, 21.
106 Ibid., 21. See also, Angelo Ulisse Cettolin, Spirit, Freedom and Power: Changes in Pentecostal Spirituality (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2016), 37.
107 Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit, 247.
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distinctive strength of Pentecostalism,109 such that rituals or rites are indispensable elements of Pentecostal spirituality.110 Consequently, one cannot understand Pentecostal spirituality without taking into account the corporate and individual practices of worship and witness.111 This subsection seeks to show the relational characteristics of Pentecostal rites, with a particular focus on worship.
Before addressing specific practices, I must first define some terms in relation to Pentecostal practices. Practices generally include every deed, action, behaviour and performance that human beings understand, feel and do. However, Pentecostal practices are human activities that are embodied.112 Wolfgang Vondey asserts that: ‘Pentecostals resist “ritual” as the strict ecclesiastical performance of liturgical script within a fixed semiotic system of sacerdotal or sacramental regulations.’113 Then, he claims that ‘Pentecostal rituals are often playful, improvised and unstructured’.114 The embodied practices are not to be institutionalized or rigidly defined, but should be subject to
improvisation and imagination.115 Throughout this thesis, I illuminate relational practices in Pentecostal liturgy, which implies the holistic actions of humanity within the
relationship with God in Christ. In terms of etymology, the word liturgy derives from
leitourgia (Greek, λειτρουργια), which literally means ‘work (érgon) of the people
(laόs)’.116 Some scholars define liturgy as a pattern or a form of common worship
109 Walter J. Hollenweger, Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide (Peabody:
Hendrickson Publishers, 1997), 269–73.
110 Albrecht, Rites in the Spirit, 21, 23. See also, James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), 152.
111 Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, 91.
112 Vondey, Pentecostal Theology, 30–34. See also, Nancey Murphy, Brad J. Kallenberg and Mark
Thiessen Nation, eds., Virtues and Practices in the Christian Tradition: Christian Ethics after MacIntyre (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1997), 21.
113 Vondey, Pentecostal Theology, 32. 114 Ibid.
115 Ibid., 32–3.
116 James F. White, Introduction to Christian Worship (Nashville: Abingdon, 2000), 26. In ancient
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performed by a Christian community.117 Indeed, the word has been often used in the specific sense of ‘worship service’ of the church as the work of the people, or to refer to the Lord’s Supper specifically.118 With reference to Pentecostalism, liturgy can best be considered as ‘embodied worship’ evoked by a certain visible order or structure.119 This view is one aspect of Albrecht’s claim regarding worship. According to him, Pentecostals understand worship as having three main connotations: worship as a way of Christian life, worship as the entire liturgy, and worship as a specific portion, aspect or rite within the overall liturgy.120 In a broad sense, however, liturgy is all human responses or works to serve God, and includes all acts that people do while living for God.121 Pentecostal liturgy begins with being led by the Spirit to an encounter with God in Christ.122 Thus, I believe that Pentecostal liturgy means all human practices led by the Spirit for an intimate relationship with God in Christ.
Although ritual/rite has many definitions, Albrecht’s approach to ritual in the Spirit is significant and useful for the understanding of Pentecostal liturgy. He asserts that
ritual connotes those acts, actions, dramas and performances that a community creates, continues, recognizes and sanctions as ways of behaving that express appropriate attitudes, sensibilities, values, and beliefs within a given situation.123 Then, he applies ritual in the Spirit to speak of the ‘corporate worship service’. Ritual as a
macro worship service consists of a series of rites such as praise, sermon, laying on of
117 See Simon Chan, Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshiping Community (Downers Grove:
InterVarsity Press, 2006), 62.
118 White, Introduction to Christian Worship, 26. 119 Chan, Liturgical Theology, 62.
120 Daniel E. Albrecht, ‘Pentecostal Spirituality: Ecumenical Potential and Challenge’, Cyberjournal
for Pentecostal-Charismatic Research (http://www.pctii.org/cyberj/cyberj2/albrecht.html, accessed 11/07/2018), 4.
121 David Peterson, Engaging with God: Biblical Theology of Worship (Downers Grove: InterVarsity
Press, 1992), 55–63.
122 Neumann, Pentecostal Experience, 104–10. See also, Yong, The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh,
137.
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hands, offering, and various types of responses.124 These rituals and rites express, shape, nurture, transform and authenticate Pentecostal spirituality.125
Pentecostal worship is the heart of Pentecostal practices in spirituality, and the worship service during which believers encounter God is the central ritual of
Pentecostalism.126 Worship is the most crucial aspect of the church’s spiritual life.127 In worship, the church engages in an intimate relationship with God, because worship is the ‘primary act’ linking the community to God.128 Then, what makes Pentecostal worship distinctive? How does Pentecostal worship differ from mainstream Christian traditions? While Pentecostals have kept some of the worship elements, such as structure and order, from the mainstream denominations,129 the distinctive Pentecostal characteristic is an encounter with the Spirit; that is, Spirit baptism.130 Through encountering the Spirit,
Pentecostals expect to experience an intimate relationship with God in worship, because an
124 Ibid. For Albrecht, Pentecostal worship service is a macro ritual, while he applies rite as micro rite, which refers to ‘a portion or phase of the service (e.g. the sermon, the song service), a particular practice
or specific act or enactment (e.g. laying on of hands and prayer, taking an offering, receiving water or Spirit baptism) or a set of actions (e.g. various types of altar/responses) recognized by Pentecostals as a legitimate part of their overall ritual’.
He suggests three main types of Pentecostal worship: worship as a way of Christian life (particularly outside of the church service and activities); worship as the entire liturgy (the whole of Pentecostal service); and worship as a specific portion, aspect or rite within the overall liturgy. See Albrecht, ‘Pentecostal
Spirituality: Ecumenical Potential and Challenge’. Similar to Albrecht’s definition, James K. A. Smith asserts that there are different levels of practices: thin and thick. Some practices are thin or ordinary, while thick practices are meaning-full and play a distinctive role in shaping one’s identity. See Smith, Desiring the
Kingdom, 80–5.
125 Albrecht, Rites in the Spirit, 7, 13. According to him, ritology focuses most directly on enactment
or performance; that is, it gives priority to the acts, the actions and the gestural activities of people.
126 Robert Mapes Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism
(Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1979), 229–35. Albrecht, Rites in the Spirit, 22. Albrecht, ‘Pentecostal Spirituality: Ecumenical Potential and Challenge’, 4. Alvarado, ‘Pentecostal Worship and Creation of Meaning’, 221.
127 Chan, Pentecostal Theology and the Christian Spiritual Tradition, 36.
128 Ibid. See also, Andy Lord, ‘A theology of sung worship’, in Scripting Pentecost: A Study of Pentecostals, Worship and Liturgy, ed. Mark J. Cartledge and A. J. Swoboda (London/New York: Routledge,
2017), 92.
129 Alvarado, ‘Pentecostal Worship and Creation of Meaning’, 222.
130 Cecil B. Knight, ‘The Wonder of Worship’, in Pentecostal Worship, ed. Cecil B. Knight
(Cleveland: Pathway Press, 1974), 7–16. See also Alvarado, ‘Worship in the Spirit’, 135–51. Steven M. Studebaker, From Pentecost to the Triune God: A Pentecostal Trinitarian Theology (Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012), 6–9. Warrington, Pentecostal
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encounter with the Spirit of God is a sacramental encounter: ‘Believers are filled with the Spirit, and the Spirit is enfleshed in human beings. Just as Jesus Christ is God with us, the Holy Spirit is God in us.’131 In this sense, a theology of Pentecostal worship is a theology of encounter.132 In the worship service, Pentecostals experience an encounter with the Spirit in which they are directed to an intimate relationship with God in Christ.
Active participation of the worship community is another crucial characteristic of Pentecostal worship. Indeed, according to Walter J. Hollenweger, the total and active participation of every member in the worship community is the distinctive characteristic of Pentecostal worship.133 In worship service, Pentecostals’ spontaneous and enthusiastic participation to be unified with God is manifested in their oral liturgy, dancing, singing, praying and playing instruments.134 Pentecostals kneel down, sing, shout, clap, dance with joy and praise God in worship led by the Spirit.135 They become one in a variety of ways of worship not only with the Spirit of God but also with others in the worship community. According to Cheryl Bridges Johns:
Pentecostal liturgy is a liturgy in the making, constantly being shaped and reshaped by God’s people. The key element of such a liturgy is the full participation of every person. This participation may take a variety of forms, with the intention of
bestowing a capacity for action. Therefore, Pentecostal liturgy is revolutionary, serving for the conscientization of the people of God. Worship thus becomes the context for dialogue and the common ground on which everyone is equal.136
131 Tomberlin, Encountering God at the Altar, 73–4.
132 Warrington, Pentecostal Theology, 219–21. Two pertinent words that embrace Pentecostal
spirituality in his research are ‘expectancy’ and ‘encounter’.
133 Hollenweger, Pentecostalism, 269–73. He asserts that orality and participation are distinctive in
Pentecostal worship. See also, Alvarado, ‘Pentecostal Worship and Creation of Meaning’, 223–4.
134 Hollenweger, Pentecostalism, 269–79. 135 Tomberlin, Encountering God at the Altar, 74.
136 Cheryl Bridges Johns, Pentecostal Formation: A Pedagogy among the Oppressed (Eugene: Wipf
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Total participatory worship is a key component in developing a vibrant, transformative relationship with God.137 Moreover, the full participation of every person strengthens their solidarity of community as one body of Christ. Active engagement in the liturgical life of the church brings Pentecostals into ‘closer proximity and more vibrant relationship’ with God and with others in the community.138
Praise and worship, which play a crucial role in Pentecostal worship services, are efficient means for union with God.139 Pentecostals are known for a distinctive style of praise and worship, which consists mainly of exuberant and enthusiastic songs, often in contemporary music styles and employing many musical instruments. Pentecostals participate in singing and respond to ‘the moving of the sovereign Spirit’.140 The Spirit- filled songs include corporate expressions of ‘praise and testimony’,141 through which believers give voice to their love, gratitude, joy and hope to God. Often the singing is accompanied by motions such as raising hands.142 In turn, Pentecostal worshippers
encounter God’s love in praise and worship led by the Spirit, moving deep into union with God. Indeed, praise and worship is the ‘backbone of Pentecostal worship’ for union with God in Christ through the Spirit.143
Pentecostals, who share a communal identity, practice their passionate love, gratitude and hope towards God in worship. In praise and worship rites led by the Spirit, Pentecostals endeavour to become actively involved in expressing their love and gratitude by clapping to the beat, swaying with the rhythm, raising their hands, and hugging others,
137 Ibid., 13. 138 Ibid., 121.
139 Warrington, Pentecostal Theology, 224. 140 Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, 93–4.
141 Delton L. Alford, ‘Music, Pentecostal and Charismatic’, in The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, ed. Stanley Burgess and Eduard M. Van Der Maas (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 2002), 912.
142 Ibid. See also, Tomberlin, Encountering God at the Altar, 73–7. 143 Warrington, Pentecostal Theology, 223–4.
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so that they are absorbed into union with God and with others in the community.144 Land elucidates a total ‘body life’ of Pentecostal worship:
The whole body responded and each person presented his or her body in receptivity and yieldedness to the Lord. Hands would be raised in praise and longing for his coming as the clouds of heavenly glory descended upon them. Hands would reach out to touch Jesus and by his Spirit receive healing and help. Hands would clap for joy at the might and wonderful deeds and presence of God. Hands would clasp and clench as believers reverenced and ‘held on’ to God for a blessing.145
These rites are actions of love, gratitude, and hope towards God in Christ through the Spirit. Through their total activities led by the Spirit, Pentecostals communicate with the Spirit of Christ and share their love, gratitude, and hope with God. Some may speak words such as ‘Thank you Jesus’, ‘Glory to God’, ‘I love you’, or ‘Hallelujah’. Others pray their own prayers with tongues,146 and anticipate the kingdom of God in worship.147 Here, the use of various liturgical elements of worship is beneficial to foster intimate relationship with God in Christ.148 Thus, Pentecostal practices, which foster a total participation in worship, are relational because the Spirit supplies relational dynamism into practices and leads Pentecostals to union with God in Christ.
Pentecostal practices led by the Spirit in worship achieve union with others. Indeed, this intimate relationship with others is expressed from the very beginning of the worship service, when the congregation gathers in the ‘narthex’ to greet one another, and continues to the end.149 When early Christians had holy union with God in Christ through
144 Albrecht, Rites in the Spirit, 157–8. See also, Tomberlin, Encountering God at the Altar, 73–7. 145 Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, 108.
146 Hollenweger, Pentecostalism, 18–24, 269–73. 147 Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, 89–97.
148 Alvarado, ‘Worship in the Spirit’, 143. For example, the Lord’s Supper is a distinctive ritual to
confirm holy union with God in Christ. I will elucidate sacraments in the next subsection.
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encountering the Spirit in worship, they came to love others, help the poor, and pray for the weak.150 Land asserts that ‘the right hand of fellowship would be extended to all those coming into full membership in the church’;151 and that ‘hands would be laid upon those seeking healing, needing encouragement, or being set forth by the body for some particular ministry’.152 In worship, Pentecostals love, hug, embrace, and put hands upon others.153 They do not simply follow words and doctrine; rather they proclaim and practice what they believe, feel and experience from God, so that they share union with God within the
community.
For Pentecostals, worship is not just human actions; rather it involves a reciprocal relationship between God and human beings. In worship, God speaks to us, and we
respond. The mutual response between God and human beings is manifested particularly in the altar call, which is the culmination of Pentecostal worship.154 Wolfgang Vondey
articulates the altar as a ritual metaphor for the human encounter with God:
Although Pentecost as theological symbol exceeds an exclusively anthropocentric idea of salvation (which is arguably dominant in the history of Pentecostalism), and the altar has often been historically and conceptually identified with a particular space and time of corporate worship, liturgy, and ritual, the Pentecostal altar is a theological metaphor of the kingdom of God, which is ‘neither here nor there’ (see Luke 17:21) but which comes into existence, as on the day of Pentecost, through the
150 As shown in 3.1.1, people who experienced an encounter with the Spirit on the day of Pentecost
devoted their lives to gathering together and helping others.
151 Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, 108. 152 Ibid., 108–9.
153 Ibid., 108–12. See also Albrecht, Rites in the Spirit, 255.
154 Vondey, Pentecostal Theology, 31. Daniel Tomberlin, Pentecostal Sacraments: Encountering God at the Altar (Cleveland: Centre for Pentecostal Leadership and Care, 2010), 3. The altar is a place of worship
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unexpected outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the participation of creation in response to the divine presence.155
The altar call led by the Spirit has a mutual relationship between God in Christ and human beings. God invites believers to the altar, and believers respond.156 By responding to the call to come to the cross, believers encounter Christ, who died on the cross for human sins.157 An encounter with Christ at the altar leads the believer to union with God, which in turn transforms the believer’s life into ‘a life of union’. In worship, Pentecostals go to the altar with the expectation of union with God, and they leave the altar with the expectation of union with others.
Accordingly, the expectancy and experience of God’s presence through Pentecostal worship shapes the mutual union with God and with others. Regarding the communal relationship between divinity and humanity, Albrechts claims that:
Believers expect God to come and meet with his people. Pentecostals believe that God alone inaugurates the experience by God’s gracious acts and presence,
congregants can only prepare themselves. Ritualists cannot force God’s presence and movings. They can only prepare and wait for God’s actions in and among the
worshippers, and then respond to the ‘flow of the Spirit’ when God’s ‘promptings’ or ‘stirrings’ occur.158
In this sense, the Pentecostal attitude in worship is one of believing, expecting, waiting and preparing for, and experiencing an encounter with God. Pentecostals believe that God
155 Vondey, Pentecostal Theology, 41.
156 Ibid., 42. The altar calls believers from all places and times of life to an encounter with God. The