© The Author(s) 2016 251
K.J. Archer, L.W. Oliverio, Jr. (eds.), Constructive
Pneumatological Hermeneutics in Pentecostal Christianity,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58561-5_15
CHAPTER 15
Locating the Spirit in Meaningful
Experience: Empirical Theology
and Pentecostal Hermeneutics
Mark J. Cartledge
M. J. Cartledge ( )
School of Divinity, Regent University , Virginia Beach , VA , USA
This chapter was fi rst written and presented as a Plenary address for the Society
for Pentecostal Studies conference, Springfi eld, MO in 2014.
INTRODUCTION: A PERSONAL TESTIMONY
I begin in true pentecostal fashion with a personal testimony. At the age of
twenty-three, I was a graduate student in Theology, training for ordained
ministry in the Church of England, having been infl uenced deeply by the
Charismatic Movement and indeed by the impact of John Wimber on
Anglicanism in the 1980s. Yet, I was training at probably the most conser-
vative of all the Evangelical Colleges and my director of studies and main
supervisor was a systematic theologian who was also a staunch Calvinist.
He disliked Pentecostals and Charismatics with some degree of passion.
He was also a cessationist and my topic was “prophecy today,” which,
of course, he thought was an impossibility. My other supervisor was
appointed externally. He was a liberal Baptist, who did not know anything
about empirical research or indeed Pentecostals and Charismatics, and
