Arguing in a vacuum

Henry does not go into great detail about the definitional possibilities for mysticism, assuming instead a very specific account and in turn generalizing it to the whole. Undoubtedly, one significant reason why Henry can do this is that he does not speak of the Spirit much, if at all, in his considerations of mysticism. And this critique could be extended even more so to the whole of Henry’s project in God, Revelation, and Authority: the work is pneumatologically anemic, especially in the way it sets up methodological concerns. Henry’s project is first and foremost a theology of the Word. or Logos. Without recourse to a pneumatological idiom at critical points along the way, Henry has constructed a theological epistemology that all too easily defaults to a modern, rationalist paradigm. No wonder, then, that mysticism cannot fit within such a program; the agenda has been constructed so as to exclude it from the very beginning.—Pentecostalism as a Christian Mystical Tradition, page 108