THE ENERGIES OF GOD

Fr. William De Arteaga

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 A huge gap remains in Western theology—in both Catholic and Protestant circles—about the biblical foundations for the “energies of God.”(1) These energies are sometimes confused with the presence or person of the Holy Spirit. In fact, there was no theology of the energies of God in Western Christianity until the advent of Agnes Sanford’s The Healing Light in 1947.(2) But because Mrs. Sanford’s “devotional” work wasn’t considered serious theology, her insights were not incorporated into mainline or academic theology. Sadly, the gap mostly continues.

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BIBLICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE ENERGIES OF GOD:

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Several scriptures suggest that the energies of God are distinct from the presence or personhood of God. A key passage comes from a scene described by the prophet Ezekiel during the reformed Temple service. He makes his comments as the priests come out of the sanctuary from offering sacrifice.

When they go out into the outer court, into the outer court to the people, they shall put off their garments in which they have been ministering and lay them in the holy chambers; then they shall put on other garments so that they will not transmit holiness to the people with their garments (Ezekiel 44:19-20).

Apparently, the priests’ clothing was radiant and full of the energies of God. Something similar was taking place with Jesus’ garment as it was touched by the woman with the issue of blood (Luke 8:43-48). The Gospel account is particularly clear that “power,” (Gk. dynamin), moved forth from Jesus’ garment to enact the healing work. That is energy at work. The Western theological tradition has been so deficient on this subject that the King James Version translated this passage with “virtue” for dynamin—a terrible translation.

Even in modern times translators have tended to downplay the word energy. For instance, the translation of the NAS Bible, which is known for its literalness, translates Colossians 1:29 in this way: “For this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me.” The word “power” in Greek is really energia, and should have been translated as “energy.” Also, we are informed in the book of Acts that Paul’s aprons and handkerchiefs were carried to the sick and demon possessed, and they were healed by contact with these items, just as Jesus’ clothing was energized. (Acts 19:11-13).

There is another scripture that is puzzling to many commentators 2 Kings 4. It recounts the incident of Elisha’s resuscitation of the Shunammite woman’s dead son. This biblical passage makes more sense if one reads it as if one were dealing with the energies of God.

Elisha said to Gehazi, “Tuck your cloak into your belt, take my staff in your hand and run. Don’t greet anyone you meet, and if anyone greets you, do not answer. Lay my staff on the boy’s face.” But the child’s mother said, “As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you.” So he got up and followed her. Gehazi went on ahead and laid the staff on the boy’s face, but there was no sound or response. So Gehazi went back to meet Elisha and told him, “The boy has not awakened.” When Elisha reached the house, there was the boy lying dead on his couch. He went in, shut the door on the two of them and prayed to the Lord. Then he got on the bed and lay on the boy, mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands. As he stretched himself out on him, the boy’s body grew warm. Elisha turned away and walked back and forth in the room and then got on the bed and stretched out on him once more. The boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes. (2 Kings 4:29-35 NIV)

Why this strange action about Elisha’s staff? Why would Gehazi inform Elisha that the “boy has not awakened”? It is understandable if we see that Elisha’s staff had, through contact with the great prophet, the energies of God, just as Jesus’ garments, and that Elisha believed that energy would possibly resuscitate the boy. It did not, so he did “plan B” to bring the boy back. He laid on him directly so that the energies of God in his body and clothing would complete the job. St. Paul would use Elisha’s method of resuscitation (body to body) when the young man Eutycus fell to his death (Acts 20:8-10).

Regarding the Ezekiel scripture cited above, note the warning: the energies on the priests’ clothing are ready to discharge, and can alight on a person who wanders in and is not ready to receive them. We are not given the “why?” for this. Perhaps that means that the person may not be ready because, unlike the priests, he is unclean, ritually and spiritually. Recall also Paul warned Timothy, “Do not lay hands upon anyone too hastily and thereby share responsibility for the sins of others; keep yourself free from sin” (1 Tim. 5:22, NASB). In summary, the Bible shows that the energies of God act semi-mechanically, and are capable of doing something inappropriate, or not for the best, if they are not prepared for properly.

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 FALLING UNDER THE “POWER”

The most common dramatic manifestation of God’s energy happens in Pentecostal/charismatic meeting when a person “falls under the power” either by the laying on of hands by a minister or because the energies of God are so strong at the meeting. The Bible has an example of this in the Old Testament in 2 Chronicles 5:13-14 when the priest offered a sacrifice at the dedication of Solomon’s Temple. In this case the energies of God manifested in the shekinah cloud:

In unison when the trumpeters and the singers were to make themselves heard with one voice to praise and to glorify the Lord, and when they lifted up their voice accompanied by trumpets and cymbals and instruments of music, and when they praised the Lord saying, “He indeed is good for His loving kindness is everlasting,” then the house, the house of the Lord, was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God. (NASB)

Observers have recorded “fallings” in practically every major revival. Some like the Welch revival included the shekinah. These reports often recorded that a person who “falls” often come up healed or transformed. Francis MacNutt, a disciple of Agnes Sanford and the dean of Catholic theologians on healing prayer, wrote a book on the fallings, and he gave the phenomenon a more elegant name, “resting in the Spirit.”(3) Falling under the power (energies) of God was common in the prayer life of Catholic mystics.(4) This was uncommon among Protestants who did not generally have a practice of contemplative prayer and were generally suspicious of any form of mysticism.

It was with the advent of large-scale revivals in Protestantism that the “fallings” happened among Protestants, beginning with the Scottish Communion revivals of the eighteenth century.(5) The fallings were very common during the Second Great Awakening (1797 1830). The Rev. John Lyle, a Presbyterian minister and participant in the famous Cane Ridge revival of 1801 (the major great event of the Second Great Awakening), wrote in his diary:

We began to talk and pray for those that were fallen down and—a deist fell, son to widow . . . He had said just before he would not fall so for a thousand dollars and that he did not believe in heaven, hell or the devil. Shortly after two of his cousins fell, he lay speechless for an hour or two and then spoke and said he had been ridiculing the work before he fell and said he wanted to seek Christ.(6)

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In the current worldwide Pentecostal and Charismatic Renewal, millions of persons have experienced such fallings. Millions could also testify to having experienced healings, or graces of spiritual comfort and growth in that experience (note below, the example of my wife’s experience). It is also true that many have fallen with little or no noticeable change. Perhaps a grace was present that did a work that was interior and not obvious. Also, some fall because others in a healing line have fallen and it is expected of them (a “courtesy drop”). In any case, the faking of a phenomenon in one person does not disprove its real manifestation in other persons.

To understand the confusion and gap about the energies of God, we need to know something of Early Church history. The overwhelming majority of Early Church theologians (the “Church Fathers”) followed and adhered to the philosophical system of Plato. This is also true of St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD), whose theology much inspired John Calvin and his Reformed Protestantism. Plato understood things that were permanent, as in his famous “forms,” but paid little attention to temporary things such as energy, which comes and goes. Aristotle, whose philosophy later became the basis of St. Thomas Aquinas’ theology (and became the official theology of Roman Catholicism), also had a prejudice for the permanent vs. the temporary. His philosophy favored “essences” which were permanent, as against “accidental” characteristics which were temporary.(7) The transitory nature of energy was not a focus of either Plato’s or Aristotle’s philosophical system. Thus, classical Christian theology, based on the Fathers, never gave sufficient attention to the “energies of God,” either in their scriptural examples, or their theological implications.(8) I believe that if the Early Church would have paid more attention to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, and less to Plato, a theology of the energies of God might well have developed early on.

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EASTERN ORTHODOXY AND THE ENERGIES OF GOD:

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It is a different story in Eastern Orthodoxy. There, the monastic tradition of contemplative prayer made the monks aware of the energies and light of God as a real phenomenon. This was elaborated in the theological writings of St. Symeon the “New Theologian” (945-1022 AD). St. Symeon had various mystical experiences in which he was enraptured in the light, love and energies of God. He went on to develop a theology of this. He believed, and Eastern orthodoxy had followed him here, that God in his essence is unknowable, but He chooses to make himself known to us through his “uncreated energies.” These energies permeate the entire universe, but are intensified and shown to the Christian during prayer.(9)​

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The energies of God have to be understood and respected—as Ezekiel warned. For instance, in practically every revival line where a healing evangelist is blessing persons and people are falling, there is a “catcher” that goes along to catch the person and bring him/her to the floor in a soft landing. That is a working understanding of being careful with the energies of God. If someone falls without a catcher doing their job, that is a human error, not God’s.

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Let me speculate on what happens in a charismatic “healing line” when someone “falls” using my wife’s example. Carolyn was born an underweight baby, and in addition her mother almost died giving her birth. As the newly born infant Carolyn was placed in an incubator and not expected to live, and her father focused on attending to his wife in the first critical days. In her life Carolyn often felt fears of abandonment for trivial reasons. For instance, one Saturday I left early in the morning while she was asleep to go to a church men’s breakfast. When she awoke, she thought I had left her for good (she forgot I told her about the breakfast the day before).(10)

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Sometime later Carolyn “fell” during a healing line, and during her “carpet time” on the floor had a vision of Jesus smiling at her and loving her as an infant in the incubator. This was a great healing to her. I believe what happened to her was that when the healing evangelist touched her forehead a jolt of the energies of God went into her which temporarily immobilized her neurological system. At that point the person of the Holy Spirit ministered to her in the vision she experienced. The falling was because of the energies of God – the vision was the work of the person of the Holy Spirit to give healing to her soul and glory to Jesus.

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ENERGIES OF GOD AND THE “JERUSALEM SYNDROME:

In recent decades there has been identified a temporary form of insanity, called the “Jerusalem Syndrome.” This strange mental state occurs only in Jerusalem. A person in its grips believes he is a Biblical character, a special prophet, or the Messiah, and acts out that belief, as in dressing as an ancient prophet, giving a Jeremiad type sermon, etc. This happens to about 100 or so of the tourists who come to Jerusalem every year.(11) By now the Jewish health services are well prepared to handle these temporarily deluded individuals. The syndrome was popularized by an episode in “The Simpsons” TV series, in which Homer Simpson believed himself to be the messiah. He preached a highly charged sermon to the crowds on “peace and chicken,” i.e, the meat that Christians, Muslims and Jews can eat together in peace!(12)

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One of the Israeli psychiatrists assigned to help persons with the Jerusalem syndrome is Dr. Yair Bar-el, who wrote an article on his work for the British Journal of Psychiatry.(13) Dr. Bar-el divides these deluded individuals into three broad categories. The first are those persons who have serious mental conditions when they arrive at Jerusalem. The second category is of those persons who are not mentally disturbed but have strange ideas, such as the specific time and sequence of the Second Coming, spiritual UFOs etc. The third category are persons who have no previous metal problems or strange ideas and come in with a normal tourist group. In this last category a certain pattern is common. The person begins to feel anxiety and distress. He or she then separates from the tourist group and wanders among the Holy Places in Jerusalem for a period. He or she then feels a compulsion to wash repeatedly and dress in religious (biblical type) dress, often merely a modified white sheet. This person then acts out some highly charged, garbled and irrational “message” as in Homer Simpson’s “peace and chicken.”

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The Jewish mental health professionals have trained tourist guides to identify such persons in the early stages of the syndrome. Persons under this syndrome are usually not dangerous, although one person thought he had the divine command to destroy the Muslim holy places and usher in the Second Coming. That led to rioting and destruction. Normally, left to themselves, these persons often recover. Significantly, Dr. Bar-el noticed that recovery is hastened by removing the person from the environs of Jerusalem. After a few days of rest and recovery the person feels embarrassed over what they have done and is reluctant to talk about it, but is otherwise normal. Dr. Bar-el also noted a strange fact: “The Jerusalem Syndrome is related to religious excitement induced by proximity to the holy places of Jerusalem.” (14) The Jerusalem Syndrome or any similar mental disturbance does not occur in other holy places or pilgrimage sites. There is, for instance, no “Medjugorje syndrome” in which persons who go to that site in Herzegovina (former Yugoslavia) believe themselves to be saints of old, etc.

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THE JERUSALEM SYNDROME AS A MANIFESTATION OF THE ENERGIES OF GOD:

Let me begin this speculative part by saying I have never had the pleasure of going to the Holy Land. I have had several of my Christian friends return from there and exclaim how blessed they were and how they felt the “presence” of God (energies?) in Jerusalem in a special way.

All of this leads me to conclude that the Jerusalem Syndrome is a manifestation of the energies of God on persons who are unprepared to receive them. Remember Ezekiel’s warning that the common person should not come into contact with the priest’s energized garments. I believe that cases of the Jerusalem Syndrome alight on persons of nominal or arrested spiritual development, and who come to too close or too many times in intimate contact with the energies of God as they flow down and are manifest in that Holy City.

The persons who come in with prior mental disorders may or may not be religious in inclination, but their mental illness has most likely short circuited serious spiritual growth and maturation. Similarly, the pilgrim with wild conspiracy theories or fantastic Biblical scenarios probably also has a truncated spiritual development. (Persons of this order usually have a deep streak of vanity, in which they believe they have figured out some profound spiritual mystery better than anyone else). I would wager that the “normal traveler” who gets this syndrome is a nominal believer who comes to Jerusalem as a tourist, not a real pilgrim. On all three types, the energies of God constantly shower on Jerusalem for its blessing and protection. That which mightily blesses the devout pilgrim has bizarre effects that are now identified as the Jerusalem Syndrome.

1. This chapter is based on one of the blog posts Google removed, “The Energies of God—From the Jerusalem Syndrome to the Fallings.” Fortunately Troy Day helped me salvage it and reposted it on Pentecostal Theology on December 21, 2020 The original article gave special attention to John MacArthur’s critique and disdain for the falling phenomenon.

2. Agnes Sanford, The Healing Light (St. Paul: MacAlester Park, 1947). Though still in print, the book is avis available in a free download at: https://pdfprodoc s.vip/download/4677773-agnes-sanford-the-healing-light

3. Francis MacNutt, Overcome by the Spirit (Terrytown: Chosen, 1988).

4. Ibid., chapter 6.

5. For a discussion of the Communion revivals and the role the “fallings” played in them see my work. Forgotten Power: The Significance of the Lord’s Supper in Revival (Zondervan, 2022), chapters 5-6.

6. Catherine C. Cleveland, The Great Revival in the West, 1797-1805 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1916), 187. This work includes many eyewitness accounts of revival phenomenon, including the fallings. The best single work on the great revival at Cane Ridge is, Paul K. Conkin’s, Cane Ridge: America’s Pentecost (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990). Again, I summarize the literature in chapter seven of my book, Forgotten Power: The significance of the Lord’s Supper in revival (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003) Chapter 6: The Second Great Awakening (1797-1805). Out of print.

7. I learned of this problem in classic Greek Philosophy from Karl R. Popper’s now classic work, The Open Society and its Enemies (London: G. Routledge & Sons, 1947) in which he traces the West’s totalitarian ideologies to Plato and Hegel. See especially vol. 1, “The spell of Plato.”

8. I believe that if the Early Church would have paid more attention to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, and less to Plato, a theology of the energies of God might well have developed early on.

9. There are several emerging studies on St. Symeon, as well as translations of his works. See: Symeon the New Theologian, trans. C. T. Catanzaro, The Discourses (New York: Paulist Press, 1980). Also, read the difficult but insightful article by Pachomios Penkett, “Symeon the New Theologian’s vision of the Godhead,” Phronema 15 (2000): 97-114. I also found useful the fourth chapter, “Uncreated energies,” in Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood; St. Valimir’s Seminary Press, 1976). St. Symeon and Agnes Sanford’s views on the energies of God coincide to an amazing degree. This would be an excellent topic for a scholarly paper or dissertation.

10. See Carolyn Koontz De Arteaga, Watching God Work: the Stuff of Miracles (Alachua; Bridge-Logos, 2013), 65-67.

11. A great description of this syndrome is found, surprisingly, in Wired Magazine. See Chris Nasawaty, “The Jerusalem Syndrome: Why Some Religious Tourists Believe They Are the Messiah,” Wired Magazine (March, 2012). https://www. wired.com/2012/02/ff-jerusalemsyndrome/

12. The Simpsons, ”The Greatest Story Ever D’ohed,” (March 28, 2010). The excerpt from this hilarious episode is available online. It skirts the real spiritual issue by having Homer go into the syndrome because he was dehydrated.

13. Yair Bar-el, et al., Jerusalem Syndrome,” British journal of Psychiatry, 1:75 (2000): 86-90.

14. Yair Bar-el, “Jerusalem,” 86.