ABSTRACT
In the concluding chapter the argument is summarised that early Pentecostalism lost its emphasis on pacifism due to changes in its hermeneutical viewpoint and that a new hermeneutic is necessary to regain inter alia the original emphasis on nonviolence. Early Pentecostals relegated the justification and validation of violence, the dark side of the Hebrew Bible, to a description of sinful human behaviour that does not suit Christians. The church’s involvement in violence is demonstrated at the hand of the South African church’s involvement in the development and establishment of the ideology of apartheid before 1994. The theory of just war preferred by many Christians is also criticised from the viewpoint of a Pentecostal hermeneutic and rejected because the ‘just cause’ serves only as a legal and moral pretext for war. Whether one believes that war is evil because violence is evil, because killing human beings is evil or because it necessarily involves the evil of killing innocent civilians including children and women, war is evil and should be uprooted by all committed Christians. Pentecostals should not only condemn war but propagate and promote peace in a proactive way by preaching the gospel of peace.
