Toward a Theology of Spiritual Gifts
Reflections on Tongues, Miracles, and the Baptism in the Spirit in Acts
Acts 2
Acts 8
Acts 10–11
Acts 19
Miscellaneous Reflections on Acts
Reflections on Second-Blessing Theology
Reflections on Revelation
Reflections on the Evidence of History
Reflections on the Charismatic Movement
Reflections of a Pastoral Nature
IN MANY WAYS this chapter has been the most difficult to prepare. I am no longer constrained by a single, sustained text, but must pick and choose what seems most important to the topic; and I must articulate conclusions without adequate space to justify them. My only excuse is that this sort of preliminary synthesis seems preferable to leaving large numbers of loose strands dangling.
I hasten to add that the subtitle of this final chapter, “Toward a Theology of Spiritual Gifts,” is unforgivably presumptuous. The truth of the matter is that what you read will be long on the “toward” and short on the “theology.” What I propose to offer you are reflections on a variety of topics related to 1 Corinthians 12–14, in a final bid to bring integration to the four preceding chapters and to link the results to broader streams of biblical thought and contemporary experience.
Reflections on Tongues, Miracles, and the Baptism in the Spirit in Acts
I shall begin with some remarks on each of the four crucial passages in Acts, and then offer some observations of a more general kind.
Acts 2
It must be insisted that in Luke’s description of the utterances on the day of Pentecost we are dealing with xenoglossia—real, human languages never learned by the speakers. Williams’s summary of what went on cannot easily be squared with the text: he claims “that sounds uttered by the speakers seemed to some Jewish hearers as identifiable words in languages dimly recalled. It is even possible that interspersed among inarticulate utterances would be actual identifiable words. This occurs sometimes in modern glossolalia.”1 This will not do. We saw in the third chapter that the word for “tongue” (γλῶσσα, glōssa) cannot easily be reduced in meaning to free verbalization bearing no cognitive content; and Luke attests that the hearers on the day of Pentecost asked in amazement how they could hear distinctive utterances (lit.) in their own “dialects” (τῇ ἰδίᾳ διαλέκτῳ, tē idia dialektō, 2:8). What they heard was not an occasional word accidentally intruded into a stream of lexical gibberish, a mere statistical inevitability, but “the wonders of God” (2:11). These wonders were enunciated in the languages of recognized linguistic groups (Parthians, Medes, Elamites). It goes beyond the text to argue that this was a miracle of hearing rather than one of speech,2 for Luke’s purpose is to associate the descent of the Spirit with the Spirit’s activity among the believers, not to postulate a miracle of the Spirit among those who were still unbelievers.3
What, then, of the charge of drunkenness (2:13)? Does this not suggest that many people heard only gibberish, and not real languages at all? Is this not an implicit support of glossolalia, not xenoglossia?4 Such a conclusion would be premature. After all, if three thousand people repented and were baptized after Peter’s sermon (2:41), presumably the crowd before which the believers were speaking in tongues was many times larger. No one could hear every tongue; presumably no single person was so incredibly well-educated as to have been able to identify every tongue, even if each tongue had been heard in turn.5 Some may not have heard their own tongue, but someone else’s, and dismissed the entire episode without putting in the energy to walk around and see if there was a tongue that was recognizable. It has also been suggested, with some plausibility, that the charge of drunkenness may have emerged from the resident Aramaic-speaking Jews who did not recognize any of the languages being spoken and who thus found nothing intelligible in the utterances.6 Turner wisely comments, “Of course one should not try artificially to harmonize Luke’s details—but nor should one unnecessarily make a fool of him when one can plausibly explain how he may have viewed the scene.”7
Judging from the flow of the Book of Acts, one cannot seriously doubt that this experience of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost is presented by Luke as the fulfillment of the prophecy by John the Baptist: after him would come the one who would baptize in the Holy Spirit (Matt. 3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16; John 1:33). That promise is taken up by the resurrected Christ in Acts 1:5, where it serves as the basis for his injunction to remain in Jerusalem until the gift of the Spirit is given. Acts 2 must be read in that light. There are two entailments. First, it is gratuitous for Shallis to argue that what Luke describes in Acts 2 is not the baptism in the Spirit (since that language is not specifically used in Acts 2) but the filling of the Spirit.8 Shallis compounds an argument from silence with overspecification of the semantic range of “baptism in the Spirit” and “filling with the Spirit,” and with a failure to grasp the flow of Luke’s argument. Second, and more important, the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost is thus tightly tied to a redemptive-historical appointment. What further bearing it may have on individual Christian experience we shall shortly try to explore. There is, however, no basis in the command to wait for the gift of the Father (in Acts 1:4) to justify contemporary, postconversion tarrying experiences in anticipation of a personal Pentecost. It is striking that of the two dozen or more conversions mentioned in Acts after this point, there is no further exhortation to wait for the gift of the Spirit. In short, Pentecost in Luke’s perspective is first of all a climactic salvation-historical event.
Luke’s salvation-historical focus is also attested by his handling of the prophecy from Joel (Acts 2:16–21). Joel had predicted that “in the last days” certain things would take place in connection with the eschatological pouring out of the Spirit on all people (see Acts 2:17); and, says Peter, referring to the manifestations of the Spirit occurring all around him, “this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel” (2:16). There may or may not then be further implications about how believers continue to show the Spirit throughout these last days: that could be deduced only from a further examination of how Luke and other New Testament writers treat this theme. Certainly Luke’s emphasis in Acts 2 is not on paradigms for personal experience but on the fulfillment of prophecy. The salvation-historical argument that seeks to explain Pentecost in terms of what the prophets said, and therefore in terms of identifying Jesus as the promised Messiah (2:22ff.), receives the major part of the stress.9 Indeed, Evans has drawn attention to numerous parallels between Joel and Acts 2 (compare Joel 1:2, 3, 5 and Acts 2:14b, 15a, 22a, 37a, 39a, 40c), suggesting that Luke grasped a very tight connection between their Pentecost experience and the “prophetic narrative” of the prophet.10
It is most striking, as Guy points out,11 that Peter understands the tongues phenomena to be the fulfillment of what Joel says regarding prophecy:
“‘Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.
Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
and they will prophesy.’” [2:17b–18]
In other words, prophecy is an expression that embraces tongues; or, put more generally, prophecy, tongues, revelatory dreams, and visions are all lumped together in a single category as the expected attestation that the Spirit has been poured out. So far as the New Testament evidence is concerned, the only one to make a sharp distinction between prophecy and tongues is Paul; and for him, the crucial factor in that distinction is not the source of the gift or the nature of the gift, but the intelligibility and corresponding public usefulness of the gift. That factor could not have been introduced in Acts 2, precisely because these tongues were understood; that is, they were intelligible without some further gift of interpretation.
What this does is again attest the broad semantic range of “prophecy,” a point I shall develop further. Moreover, if this judgment is right, it suggests that Luke was not particularly interested in identifying tongues, as opposed to prophecy, as the crucial, identifying sign of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. It may even be that Luke understood several manifestations of the Holy Spirit to be appropriate fulfillments of Joel, each attesting in its own way that the blessed Holy Spirit, the Spirit of prophecy, had been poured out.
There is no evidence that the three thousand converts (2:41) who accepted Peter’s message and were baptized actually spoke in tongues. The “all of them” (2:4) who did were either the apostles (1:26) or, more likely, all the first believers who were gathered together in one place (2:1) when the Spirit descended.
Of these, it appears that all spoke in tongues, for 2:4 reads (in the NIV), “All of them [i.e., those believers gathered at the one place—presumably the 120 or so?] were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.” On this basis, even the more cautious charismatics tend to infer too much. For example, one popular writer, referring to this verse, comments: “I believe, although there is no specific teaching on this, that it would be considered the norm in the New Testament experience for the candidate for Baptism of the Holy Spirit to speak another language when this blessing came upon him.”12
The reasons this inference does not stand up are several. First, as a friend has pointed out to me,13 it is just possible that verse 4 is not saying quite so much. We may compare 2:44ff.: there we are told that “all the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods . . .”—which might lead the unwary to think that every believer sold everything, even though by verse 44 we are told that they met in their homes, and in Acts 5 Peter assumes that each believer has the right to give or not give as much or as little as he or she wished. This presumably means that not everyone sold everything after all, even if those who retained their homes (for instance) were very generous with them. In other words, the “all” in 2:44 may not be exhaustive and distributed to the second verb. Similarly in 2:4: it is possible that the “all” who were filled with the Holy Spirit did not all begin to speak in tongues: rather, they—all of them comprehensively, but not necessarily individually—began to speak in tongues, as the Holy Spirit enabled them. Nevertheless in my judgment it is considerably more likely that all who were filled with the Spirit also spoke in tongues on that first Christian Pentecost: note the distributive “each” in the preceding verse. I mention this first point simply to warn against milking texts for what may not be there.
Second, even if this text affirms that all who were filled with the Spirit spoke in tongues (as I think it does), it does not follow that this is the normative New Testament stance. We have already seen that Paul flatly denied that all speak in tongues (1 Cor. 12; see discussion in the first chapter).
Third, if this verse is made normative for all Christian experience, even though it stands without close parallel in the New Testament, it seems extraordinarily arbitrary not to see verses 2–3 as equally normative: there ought to be the sound of a mighty, rushing wind, and separated tongues of fire resting on each Spirit-filled person.
Fourth, and of greater importance, this individualistic interpretation fails to wrestle with the centrality of Luke’s focus on salvation history. Put another way, we must ask if Luke saw in the experience of these verses a paradigm for attesting what it means to be filled with the Spirit. That must be argued from his treatment of this and related themes, not merely presupposed.
Although these tongues were real, human languages and communicated cognitive messages, it is by no means clear that such messages were essentially evangelistic. We are told the crowds heard the tongues-speakers declaring “the wonders of God” (2:11; τὰ μεγαλεῖα τοῦ θεοῦ, ta megaleia tou theou). The verbal form of the same expression occurs in 10:46 (καὶ μεγαλυνόντων τόν θεόν, kai megalynontōn ton theon) and 19:17 (καὶ ἐμεγαλύνετο τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ, kai emegalyneto to onoma tou kuriou Iēsou), where praise is in view, not evangelism per se. Similarly in chapter 2 the people hear praise, and in their own languages, but this generates questions (sympathetic and otherwise), not conversions. It is Peter’s preaching, presumably in Aramaic, that brings about the thousands of conversions;14 the tongues themselves, I suppose, constitute what modern jargon would call preevangelism.
This is in line with one feature of tongues in 1 Corinthians 12–14, and out of step with another characteristic of tongues in those chapters. It is in line with the fact that tongues in 1 Corinthians 14 are understood to be first and foremost address to God (1 Cor. 14:2), a gift used in prayer (14:14). The crowds hear the believers on the day of Pentecost praising God: the church needs to learn afresh the compelling power of uninhibited praise, even as a kind of indirect witness to unbelievers who are looking on. But tongues in Acts 2 are unlike those in 1 Corinthians 12–14 in that unbelievers understand them, even without any display of the gift of interpretation. But this is the only place in the New Testament where they serve that function. What is clear, I think, is that noncharismatics who attempt to make the evangelistic use of tongues their normative and exclusive purpose are doubly wrong: tongues are not primarily evangelistic even in Acts 2, and in any case this is the only passage where uninterpreted tongues are even understood by unbelievers
If only the initial circle of believers actually spoke in tongues on that first Christian Pentecost, then there is no direct evidence that establishes the connection between water baptism and Spirit baptism. Acts 2:41, on any interpretation of it,15 is simply irrelevant, as it has to do with the three thousand, not with the original group. The reception of the Holy Spirit promised by Peter (2:38) and presumably received by the three thousand was not, so far as we are told, attested by tongues. Presumably the initial group had already undergone baptism; but there is no explicit evidence. One might reasonably conclude that Luke is not particularly concerned to establish a proper order among baptism, faith, and baptism in the Holy Spirit.
Acts 8
This passage is remarkable in that the Samaritans are said to believe the gospel of the kingdom that Philip preaches, and then they are baptized (8:12); yet they do not receive the Holy Spirit until Peter and John travel to Samaria and lay their hands on them (8:17). The text does not explicitly say that this reception of the Spirit was attested by tongues, but it seems likely, since Simon must have witnessed some kind of powerful phenomenon to prompt him to offer money to the apostles. The crucial question, in the context of the contemporary debate between charismatics and noncharismatics, is whether the Samaritans were Christians once they had believed Philip’s message and been baptized. If so, a prima facie case can be made for the reception of the Spirit as a second stage experience, at least potentially paradigmatic.
Some noncharismatics, including Dunn and Hoekema, strongly urge that the Samaritans were not converted until the Holy Spirit came upon them.16 Indeed, they say, that is precisely Luke’s point: no one is genuinely saved until the Holy Spirit is received. But it has been ably pointed out, in some detail, that the language of belief and baptism, applicable to the Samaritans before the Holy Spirit descends on them, is regular Lukan terminology for becoming a Christian. There is not space to offer a detailed report of the debate;17 but in my judgment the attempt to make Luke say the Samaritans were not believers until they received the Holy Spirit is not true to Luke’s purposes.
There is nevertheless considerable difficulty with the typology that treats Acts 8 as normative for individualizing Christian experience: first faith and baptism, and subsequently a special enduement of the Holy Spirit. The problem in part is that the debate has been cast in simple antitheses: either the charismatic insistence that the Samaritans were converted immediately upon hearing is correct, or the noncharismatic insistence that the Samaritans were not converted until after they had received the Spirit is correct. But we are not limited to those alternatives. It is far from clear, judging from the diversity of his approaches (see Acts 2:38ff.; 8:12ff.; 10:44–48) that Luke is particularly interested in the question of normative order of faith, water rite, experience of the Holy Spirit, and the like.
Suppose then we back off and list the places where Luke either explicitly mentions tongues in connection with the Spirit or at least (as here) hints at them. We find four passages: the initial experience of the Spirit at Pentecost, where the Spirit was poured out on Jews (Acts 2); this chapter, where the Spirit comes upon Samaritans, roughly half-breeds racially and operating with only the Pentateuch from the Jewish canon (Acts 8); the episode with Cornelius, certainly used by Luke, as we shall see, to mark the recognition of Gentiles as full Christians by the Jewish believers in Jerusalem (Acts 10–11); and the disciples of John the Baptist in Ephesus, who as we shall see fall into a kind of salvation-historical warp (Acts 19). In each case Luke is introducing a new group, until as the gospel expands throughout the empire there are no new groups left. And in each case the manifestation of the Spirit’s presence in tongues is part of a corporate experience. Never in Acts is this the experience of an individual convert, even though Luke has many opportunities for reducing the scale from the group to the individual (e.g., Lydia [Acts 16:11–15]; the Philippian jailer [16:16–40]; and about twenty others).
It appears, then, that in Acts 8 the gift of the Holy Spirit is withheld to draw the connection between the Samaritans and the Jerusalem church through the apostles, Peter and John. Judging from what we know of relations between Jews and Samaritans, if this connecting link had not been forged, the Samaritans may well have wished to preserve an autonomy that would have divided the church from its inception, and which became principally impossible once their reception of the Holy Spirit was so publicly dependent on the Jerusalem apostles. For their part, the Christian Jews may well have been less than eager to accept the Samaritans as full Christian brothers and sisters unless such a link had been forged. Certainly that is an essential motif in the conversion of Gentiles in Acts 10–11.
Indeed, there is a deeper theme that Luke has been developing. I do not have space to enlarge upon it, but I may summarize it this way. Throughout the Book of Acts, Luke carefully records the early church’s rising struggle to understand the precise relationship it has to the law of Moses. As the church increasingly grasped the atoning significance of Jesus’s death and the eschatological significance of Jesus’s resurrection, it could no longer view the law and its institutions in exactly the same way. Stephen casts doubt on the finality of the temple; Peter learns not only that the food laws no longer apply but also that whatever God declares clean is to be treated as clean, irrespective of antecedent law. Part of this debate develops into the question of how Gentiles are to be related to the Messiah. Those who want to uphold the finality of the Mosaic legislation as a covenant insist that Gentiles must first become Jewish proselytes, pledging themselves by circumcision to obey Moses—and only then are they eligible to accept Jesus, the Jewish Messiah. The alternative view prevails at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15); and one of the decisive arguments turns on Peter’s experiences with Cornelius and his kin (Acts 15:8; see Acts 10–11, about which I will say more in a moment). Now all of this constitutes a major theme in Acts; and it is relatively easy to integrate the four dramatic displays of the Spirit’s outpouring with that and related salvation-historical themes. It is not easy to relate them to anything else.
In this light, Hunter’s suggestion that the bestowal of the Spirit in Acts 8 cannot have anything to do with Jerusalem authentication since no similar authentication appears to be necessary for the Ethiopian eunuch (8:26–39) misses the point.18 Not only is the eunuch an individual, and therefore not a threat to early corporate division, but, more important, since he had gone up to Jerusalem to worship (8:27) he was most likely a proselyte. Within the constraints imposed by the law on eunuchs, he worshiped as a Jew. He therefore cannot serve as an adequate counterexample to the interpretation of Acts being sketched out here.
Some have suggested that Peter’s handling of Simon, including the frightening “May your money perish with you,” proves that conversion did not take place when he, along with the other Samaritans, believed and were baptized. But the argument, if valid, proves too much, for Peter’s stern words are uttered not only after the Samaritans have come to faith, but even after the Spirit has fallen. The difficult questions that Simon raises for us lie not in the realm of the existence or otherwise of a postconversion enduement of the Holy Spirit, but in the realm of the nature of apostasy. That subject would take us too far afield to warrant even brief exploration here.
It is worth noting that in this instance the Spirit falls on Cornelius and his family and friends while Peter is still preaching his sermon; and this enduement of the Spirit, attested by tongues, is then followed by water baptism, the rite intimately associated with conversion. But Luke makes nothing of this particular sequence. By itself, it is no more normative than the sequences in Acts 2 and Acts 8. Yet clearly the entire episode is extremely important to Luke, for not only does he tell it to us with painstaking detail in chapter 10, but the salient points are all repeated in chapter 11. This profligacy in the use of space can only mean that Luke understands the points he is making to be crucial to the development of his chosen themes—so crucial he does not want anyone to miss them.
When we press a little closer, we observe that the tongues uttered in this instance do not communicate anything to unbelievers; at this point there are no unbelievers present. On this score the situation is like that in Acts 8 (on the assumption tongues were spoken in Samaria), but unlike the situation in Acts 2. The Jewish believers with Peter are astonished that the Holy Spirit is poured out even on the Gentiles (10:45), apparently thinking up to this point that Gentiles would surely have to become Jewish proselytes before they could become eligible for this gift. The reason why they know that the Spirit has fallen on the Gentiles is given in verse 46: “they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God.” From this it is not entirely certain whether the praise constituted the content of the tongues-speaking, or was parallel to it; but the former is marginally more likely. The Jewish believers draw the appropriate conclusion: there is nothing to prevent Cornelius and the rest from being baptized as Christians; for (they argued), “They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have” (10:47). It is going beyond the text to conclude, with Millon, that the Jewish believers actually understood the content of the tongues.19 That would presuppose either some unmentioned use of the gift of interpretation or some unmentioned knowledge of languages unknown to the tongues-speakers. It is more likely that they heard the tongues and recognized them to be of a piece with their own Pentecost experience; and therefore they drew the appropriate conclusions.
More telling yet is the flow of the narrative in chapter 11. Once back in Jerusalem, Peter finds himself challenged by the Jerusalem church, still steeped in the presupposition that to be a believer in Jesus Messiah it is necessary first to be a Jew (or, equivalently, a Jewish proselyte). Peter recounts the entire episode, climaxing with the words, “As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came on them as he had come on us at the beginning. Then I remembered what the Lord had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ So if God gave them the same gift as he gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could oppose God!” (11:15–17). The explicit references to Acts 2 are obvious, but as in chapter 10, it is unnecessary to conclude that Peter actually understood the tongues that were spoken, or that they were exactly the same languages, or that the noise of rushing wind was heard, or that tongues of fire appeared on each believer. All that is necessary is that Peter heard the tongues and, associating this with Pentecost, concluded that the same blessed Holy Spirit who had been poured out on Jewish believers had also been poured out by God on Gentiles—by God who, as the triple vision of the sheet made clear, can make all things clean. The conclusion, embraced both by Peter and by the Jerusalem church, was that these Gentile believers were fellow believers: repentance unto life had been granted even to those who had not come under the Mosaic covenant.
In short, tongues in Acts 10–11 serve not to communicate God’s wonderful works to unbelievers, but primarily to attest to the Jerusalem church (and thus to Jewish believers) that Gentiles may be admitted to the messianic community without first coming under pledged commitment to the law of Moses.
Acts 19 20
This rather strange account has in the past sometimes been used to justify a postconversion experience of the Spirit, on the basis of the King James Version’s rendering of verse 2: “Have you received the Holy Spirit since you believed?” Today, almost all sides accept the rendering of the New International Version: “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”21 Contemporary debate focuses much more on the meaning of “disciples” in verse 1, whether or not there is a delay between the water baptism of verse 5 and the descent of the Spirit in verse 6, and the like.
But usually too little attention is placed on the unique anomaly the group represents. In Luke’s narrative the event follows the somewhat parallel situation of Apollos: he “was a learned man, with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor and taught about Jesus accurately, though he knew only the baptism of John” (18:24–25).
It is very difficult to know exactly where Apollos, and for that matter the Ephesians of Acts 19, stood. But I would be prepared to defend a reconstruction along the following lines. They had apparently become followers of John the Baptist, had received his baptism (whether personally or conceivably from one of John’s converts), and had followed the Baptist’s ministry long enough to know that he had pointed beyond himself to Jesus, the one whose sandals he was not worthy to loosen. Apollos at least (and probably the Ephesians) had also learned enough about Jesus to be described as one who “taught about Jesus accurately” (18:25). This probably suggests knowledge not only of Jesus’s public ministry and teaching, but also of his death and resurrection. But apparently they knew nothing of Pentecost and what it signified of eschatological transformation. This ignorance could have developed because they (or the people who taught them) left Jerusalem (like tens of thousands of other diaspora Jews) shortly after the Passover feast—that is, they learned of Jesus’s death and resurrection, but not of the coming of the Spirit. This placed them in exactly the same situation as the believers in Acts 1, except that Pentecost had already taken place. To put it another way, these “disciples”22 in Acts 19 are living one dispensation earlier than the actual state of play in the unfolding sweep of redemptive history.
We may imagine, then, that when Paul found these Ephesian disciples, he sensed something was lacking and began to probe them with questions. At the risk of overdramatization, we might imagine an exchange like this:
“Are you believers?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe in Jesus?”
“Oh, yes!”
“What do you believe about Jesus?”
“Well, among other things, that he was announced by John the Baptist, that he was the Messiah who went around doing good and preaching the kingdom of God, and that he was crucified and rose again on the third day.”
“And you have come to believe in him?”
“Oh, yes!”
“Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”
(Pause) “No, we have not even heard there is a Holy Spirit” (which may simply mean “that there is a Holy Spirit to be received,” not necessarily that they had not even heard the words Holy Spirit before).
“But you were baptized as believers?”
“Of course!”
“Then what baptism did you receive?”
“John’s baptism, of course.”
The penny drops: Paul understands what has happened, and the rest of the narrative follows easily enough.
It is important to recognize that if this is anything like what happened, there are two entailments: Paul presupposes by this line of questioning that reception of the Spirit at conversion is normal and expected; the distinctive abnormality of the Ephesians’ experience could not be repeated today, since it is inconceivable that someone could be found who was a baptized follower of the Baptist, an enthusiastic supporter of the Baptist’s witness to Jesus, apparently also a believer in Jesus’s death and resurrection, but ignorant of Pentecost.
In the context of Acts 19, then, unlike the situation in Acts 2, tongues do not communicate the praise of God to unbelievers; and unlike in Acts 8 and Acts 10–11, they have nothing to do with accrediting new groups to the Jerusalem Jewish Christians. Rather, they serve as the attestation to the Ephesian believers themselves of the gift of the Spirit that transfers them as a group from the old era to the one in which they should be living.
The words “they spoke in tongues and prophesied” (19:6) may refer to two separate phenomena; but, like “speaking in tongues and praising God” in 10:46, the two verbs may be referring to the same reality. I am uncertain.
Miscellaneous Reflections on Acts
The essentially salvation-historical structure of the Book of Acts is too often overlooked. Therefore, as Fee laments, the exegesis of Acts in most charismatic circles is hermeneutically uncontrolled.23 The way Luke tells the story, Acts provides not a paradigm for individual Christian experience, but the account of the gospel’s outward movement, geographically, racially, and above all theologically. The “tarrying” or “waiting” for the Spirit is tied to Pentecost: in the subsequent accounts of tongues-speaking, the gift of the Spirit comes through apostles to entire groups who are not waiting for him. Meanwhile Luke repeatedly records instances where individuals are said to be filled with or full of the Holy Spirit, with no reference to speaking in tongues (e.g., Acts 4:8, 31; 6:3, 5; 7:55; 9:17; 11:24; 13:9, 52). If being Spirit-filled without speaking in tongues was God’s path for some of them, it is hard to see why tongues-speaking should be made the criterion for proper obedience to God today.24
Not much more appealing is the thesis of Stronstad.25 He adopts a charismatic exegesis of numerous passages in Acts, and argues that his interpretations are most natural provided one does not read Paul into Luke. Paul, he admits, allows no second-blessing theology; but Luke does. If redaction criticism has taught us anything, it is to let individual authors speak on their own terms without premature harmonization or systematization.
The problem with Stronstad’s thesis is twofold. First, I disagree with his exegesis of Luke-Acts at numerous critical junctures, so I do not find the particular antithesis between Luke and Paul that shapes his entire thesis. But second, the antithesis itself is not well conceived. If Luke and Paul develop complementary theologies, that is one thing (e.g., if Paul stresses only one conversion, but does not rule out some kind of postconversion spiritual enduement, while Luke stresses the latter); but if Luke and Paul develop contradictory theologies, that is another (e.g., if Paul will not permit any form of second-blessing theology, while Luke insists upon it). The polarity may please that part of the modern mood that finds in the New Testament a diverse and even mutually contradictory array of theologies, with the canon providing the range of allowable options, but the price is high. One can no longer speak of canonical theology in any wholistic sense. Worse, mutually contradictory theologies cannot both be true, and one cannot even speak of the canon establishing the allowable range of theologies, since one or more must be false. Stronstad’s thesis generates more problems than it solves.
Nothing I have said should be taken to mean that for Luke tongues-speaking, because it has primarily salvation-historical functions, is necessarily forever past. Charismatics have erred in trying to read an individualizing paradigm into material not concerned to provide one. But noncharismatics have often been content to delineate the function of tongues where they appear in Acts, without adequate reflection on the fact that for Luke the Spirit does not simply inaugurate the new age and then disappear; rather, he characterizes the new age.
Under the old covenant, God dealt with his people in what we might call a tribal fashion. Despite remnant themes, the Scriptures picture God working with his people as a tribal grouping whose knowledge of God and whose relations with God were peculiarly dependent on specially endowed leaders. The Spirit of God was poured out, not on each believer, but distinctively on prophet, priest, king, and a few designated special leaders such as Bezalel. When these leaders stooped to sin (e.g., David’s affair with Bathsheba and consequent murder of Uriah) the people were plunged into the distress of divine judgment.
But Jeremiah foresaw a time when this essentially tribal structure would change.
“In those days people will no longer say,
‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes,
And the children’s teeth are set on edge.’
Instead, everyone will die for his own sin; whoever eats sour grapes—his own teeth will be set on edge.”
“The time is coming,” declares the LORD,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah
It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers. . . .
This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel
after that time,” declares the LORD
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
No longer will a man teach his neighbor,
or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the LORD.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.” [Jer. 31:29–34]
In short, Jeremiah understood that the new covenant would bring some dramatic changes. The tribal nature of the people of God would end, and the new covenant would bring with it a new emphasis on the distribution of the knowledge of God down to the level of each member of the covenant community. Knowledge of God would no longer be mediated through specially endowed leaders, for all of God’s covenant people would know him, from the least to the greatest. Jeremiah is not concerned to say there would be no teachers under the new covenant, but to remove from leaders that distinctive mediatorial role that made the knowledge of God among the people at large a secondary knowledge, a mediated knowledge. Under the new covenant, the people of God would find not only that their sins were forgiven but that they too would know God in a more immediate way.
The same kind of hope is set forth by Ezekiel, who quotes the sovereign Lord in these terms:
“I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” [Ezek. 36:25–27, italics added; see 11:19–20]
Elsewhere, we read:
“I will pour water on the thirsty land,
and streams on the dry ground;
I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring,
and my blessing on your descendants.
They will spring up like grass in a meadow,
like poplar trees by flowing streams.
One will say, ‘I belong to the LORD’;
another will call himself by the name of Jacob;
still another will write on his hand, ‘The LORD’s,’
and will take the name of Israel.” [Isa. 44:3–5]
The same theme pervades many Old Testament texts that anticipate what we might generically label the messianic age. Moses himself recognizes that the desideratum was a universal distribution of the Spirit; for when Joshua complains to him that Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp and indignantly demands that they be stopped, the aged leader responds, “Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all the LORD’s people were prophets and that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!” (Num. 11:27–29).
It is of this that Joel prophesies (Joel 2:28–32 in English versions); and according to Peter, it is this that is fulfilled on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2). But that means Joel’s concern is not simply with a picky point—more people will prophesy some day—but with a massive, eschatological worldview. What was anticipated was an entirely new age, a new relationship between God and his people, a new covenant; and experientially this turns on the gift of the Spirit. Put more generically, what the prophets foresaw was what some have labeled “the prophetic Spirit.”26 All who live under this new covenant enjoy the gift of this prophetic Spirit; and this is no mere creedal datum, but a lived, transforming, charismatic (in the broad, New Testament sense of that word identified in my first chapter), vital experience. It is in that sense that all who live under the new covenant are prophets: they enjoy this enduement of the Spirit, with various rich and humbling manifestations distributed among them.27
It is the dawning of the new age that was signaled by Pentecost, and that is why Peter’s quotation of Joel’s prophecy is so significant. According to all four Gospels, John the Baptist predicted that Jesus Messiah would usher in that age: he would baptize his people in the Holy Spirit. Jesus, especially in the Gospel of John, explicitly connects his death, resurrection, and exaltation with the coming of the Spirit. His return to the Father via the cross and the empty tomb is the necessary condition for the Spirit’s coming (e.g., John 7:39; 16:7). Indeed, the Holy Spirit, that “other Counselor,” is in certain respects Jesus’s replacement during this period between the “already” and the “not yet” so characteristic of New Testament eschatology; he is the means by which the Father and the Son continue to manifest themselves to believers (e.g., John 14:23).28 The same theme is picked up by Peter on the day of Pentecost: “Exalted to the right hand of God, [Jesus] has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear” (Acts 2:33). It has been shown in some detail that for Luke the coming of the Spirit is not associated merely with the dawning of the new age but with its presence, not merely with Pentecost but with the entire period from Pentecost to the return of Jesus the Messiah.29
Certainly the Spirit’s purposes are Christocentric. Some gifts, notably tongues, function in Acts in ways particularly related to the inception of the messianic age. But it does not follow that Luke expects them to cease once the period of inception has passed and the new age is under way, for the manifestations of the Spirit are tied to the Spirit, to the new age, fulfilling Old Testament prophecy, and not merely to their inception. On the one hand, granted Luke’s interest in the salvation-historical inception or inauguration of the messianic age, we shall abuse his text if we force it into a Procrustean bed to make it tell us that a particular manifestation of the Spirit attests the Spirit’s presence or filling or baptism in every believer this side of Pentecost: Luke simply does not set out such guidelines. Yet on the other hand, there is no exegetical warrant for thinking certain classes of the Spirit’s manifestations cease once the crucial points of redemptive history have passed. Throughout this age, the Christian personally knows the Lord by the Spirit; the believer senses him, enjoys his presence, communes with him. The Spirit in a Christocentric fashion manifests himself in and to the believer; the believer in turn shows the Spirit. The wide range of χαρίσματα (charismata) that show the Spirit is much broader, as Paul insists, than the few over which so much fuss has erupted today, but they certainly include these few. The only χάρισμα (charisma) bound up with obsolescence is apostleship in the tightly defined sense. The reason for the obsolescence of this χάρισμα (charisma) lies not in its connection with the resurrected and exalted Christ, who now no more appears to human beings as the personal, resurrected Lord. Until his return, he manifests himself to us only by his Spirit; and therefore the peculiar commission and authority of the first apostles, which turned on personal contact with the resurrected Jesus, cannot be duplicated today.
It is the failure to recognize this essentially eschatological structure that mars Warfield’s insistence that miracles ceased.30 The heart of his argument is that miracles of various kinds served primarily as attestation first of Jesus and then of the apostles. Since Jesus and the apostles have passed from the scene, and the deposit of truth they conveyed is bound up in the canon, the need for attestation has also passed. All claims to miracles, including tongues, healings, prophecies, and the like must therefore be deemed spurious.
But this argument stands up only if such miraculous gifts are theologically tied exclusively to a role of attestation; and that is demonstrably not so. Perhaps Turner is slightly reductionistic on the other side, when he denies any link between miracles and attestation. The expression signs of an apostle or the like occurs in a few crucial passages (Acts 2:43; 5:12; 2 Cor. 12:12), and it teaches us not to avoid the link altogether. Even in Jesus’s ministry, miraculous signs do attest who Jesus is, even if they never ensure faith: “Believe me for the works’ sake,” the Master declares, if not for the teaching itself (John 10:38).31 But because miraculous signs have a distinctively attesting role in some instances, it does not follow that this is the only role they play.
The healing and other miracles of Jesus are explicitly connected not only with the person of Jesus, but also with the new age he is inaugurating. The evidence is neatly summarized by Turner,32 building on the works of Richardson, Kallas, and van der Loos.33 Indeed, as I have argued elsewhere, Matthew 8:16–17 explicitly connects Jesus’s miracles of healing and exorcism with the atonement that had not yet taken place.34 They serve as foretastes of and are predicated on the cross-work that is their foundation and justification. When a charismatic insists that there is healing in the atonement, he or she is of course right. Biblically speaking, the question is not whether there is healing in the atonement, but what blessings secured by the atonement one can expect to receive between the first advent of the Messiah and the second. But of that I shall say more.
Within the biblical-theological framework I have sketched out, the curious differences between tongues in Acts and tongues in 1 Corinthians 12–14 can be more or less happily accommodated. Thus we observe that tongues in Acts occur only in groups, are not said to recur, are public, and may serve various purposes of attestation; while tongues in 1 Corinthians fall to the individual, may be used in private, must be translated if in public, and serve no purpose of attestation. Much of the debate over such differences has proved exceedingly sterile because each position, like each of the “six blind men of Hindustan” who undertook to describe an elephant, not only uses one part of the evidence as a grid to define the other parts, but also actually tends to overlook the whole. So one party tells us tongues must attest the inception of the new age, and therefore they are now obsolete; another advises us they are the criterion of a second definitive enduement of the Spirit, when Luke does not say that and Paul forbids such a view; another makes public edification so central that the attesting role of tongues in Acts 10–11 and the private use of tongues in 1 Corinthians 14 are both consigned to oblivion; and so on. Meanwhile we have lost sight of the centrality of the Spirit as the guarantee of the full inheritance yet to come, the first fruits of the harvest we are yet to enjoy, the way in which or by which we are to walk.35 The diverse manifestations of the Spirit outlined in my first chapter are all ways by which God’s people manifest the Spirit’s presence. As the χαρίσματα (charismata) as a group have often been overschematized, and as the purpose of miracles has often been overschematized, so this or that particular χάρισμα (charisma) has often been overschematized—not least the χάρισμα (charisma) of tongues. Why should not tongues serve a diversity of functions? There are, of course, as I argued in my third chapter, some important commonalities in the nature of tongues described in Scripture; but the differences in purpose or role should be embraced, not constrained by the dictates of a reductionistic grid.
Reflections on Second-Blessing Theology
Despite Hollenweger’s sixfold typology of the charismatic movement,36 most of the debates between charismatic Protestants and noncharismatic Protestants revolve around his first type—those who teach a two-stage way of salvation, the first essential to eternal life, the second to Christian victory and effective service. This second-blessing theology, as I shall call it, has a long history in the so-called holiness traditions. The distinctive contribution of much of the charismatic movement to that tradition, however, is the insistence on tongues as the criterion that one has received this second blessing, the blessing itself customarily labeled the “baptism of [or “in” or “with”] the Holy Spirit.”
By now it should be clear where at least my superficial difficulties with the charismatic movement lie. First, it is not clear from the biblical texts that we have examined that “baptism in the Holy Spirit” is a technical term referring to a postconversion enduement of the Spirit to be pursued by each believer. Luke’s evidence can be made to fit that grid only if it is misapplied, and Paul stands positively against it. Second, even if that grid is adopted, it is hard to see on what basis the gift of tongues is made a criterion of the Spirit’s baptism. Even if the charismatic exegesis of, say, Acts 8 were right (and in my view it is not), one would still have to integrate that exegesis with other texts. Therefore, it would be necessary to distinguish, as Wiebe points out, a view that makes tongues-speaking evidence that one has been baptized in the Spirit, from a view that makes tongues-speaking the only evidence that one has been baptized in the Spirit, from a view that makes tongues-speaking the conclusive evidence that one has been baptized in the Spirit, and so forth.37 The constraints needed for a criterion are extremely tight, and the exegetical support is simply not there. I remain persuaded that at this point the majority of modern charismatics are profoundly unbiblical.
But the question of second-blessing theology itself, apart from the question of tongues-speaking, is more difficult, for it extends beyond the purpose of tongues and even beyond the “holiness tradition.” One stream of Reformed thought has also embraced it, perhaps best known in the modern world through the writings of Lloyd-Jones. He argues, for instance, that the sealing of the Spirit in Ephesians 1:13 is a distinct, postconversion experience of the Spirit;38 and in his posthumously published series of sermons entitled Joy Unspeakable,39 the doctor seeks to establish the same general point in a variety of ways. Partly as a result, the Reformed movement in Britain is currently somewhat split between those who are sympathetic to certain aspects of the charismatic movement and those who are not—both sides claiming support from Lloyd-Jones, who, unfortunately, can no longer tell us which side is misinterpreting him. More broadly, many charismatics seek to establish their particular brand of second-blessing theology partly on an array of texts I have not mentioned, including John 20:22, Galatians 3:1–5, 14, Hebrews 2:2–3, and a number of others.
I cannot here enter the lists on these texts, but in my judgment, the exegetical evidence does not in any of these passages support any form of structured second-blessing theology.40
On the other hand, I am persuaded that Lloyd-Jones and many others both within and without the charismatic movement have put their fingers on something extremely important, even if they have not always developed the point in accord with a firm exegesis of the text. We may sense their point when we remember that many noncharismatics, reacting against the excesses of second-blessing theology, have so resolutely set themselves to be open only to the one enduement connected with their conversion that no further pursuit of the Lord or of profound spiritual experience is thought wise or necessary. But there is firm, biblical evidence of New Testament believers who seek the Lord in disciplined, self-abased prayer and who consequently come into a distinct, further experience of the Spirit. Paul can exhort believers to be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18); and after noncharismatics have said all they wish about the present imperative meaning “be being filled with the Spirit” or the like, in order to avoid any hint of a climactic second filling, the fact remains that the command is empty if Paul does not think it dangerously possible for Christians to be too “empty” of the Spirit. Or again, when the believers in Acts 4 utter their moving prayer (vv. 24–30), Luke reports the result: “After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly” (4:31, italics added).
In short, I see biblical support for the thesis that although all true believers have received the Holy Spirit and have been baptized in the Holy Spirit, nevertheless the Holy Spirit is not necessarily poured out on each individual Christian in precisely equivalent quantities (if I may use the language of quantity inherent in the metaphor of “filling”). How else can we explain the peculiar unction that characterizes the service of some relatively unprepossessing ministers? Although I find no biblical support for a second-blessing theology, I do find support for a second-, third-, fourth-, or fifth-blessing theology. Although I find no χάρισμα (charisma) biblically established as the criterion of a second enduement of the Spirit, I do find that there are degrees of unction, blessing, service, and holy joy, along with some more currently celebrated gifts, associated with those whose hearts have been specially touched by the sovereign God. Although I think it extremely dangerous to pursue a second blessing attested by tongues, I think it no less dangerous not to pant after God at all, and to be satisfied with a merely creedal Christianity that is kosher but complacent, orthodox but ossified, sound but soundly asleep.41
Doubtless you will recall that in the treatment of prophecy in my third chapter, I largely followed Grudem’s excellent study, but expressed dissatisfaction at a couple of crucial points. One of these deserves further exploration. Some take Grudem to be distinguishing between the authority of prophets (such as the Old Testament writing prophets) whose revelation from God extended to the very words and the authority of prophets whose revelation from God consisted in general ideas only. Grudem himself disavows this formulation: but as he has been misunderstood along these lines, we need to probe the cause of the misunderstanding and seek a way out of the dilemma.
This misunderstanding is unwittingly injurious to the doctrine of Scripture. It is true that Scripture insists that God’s superintending inspiration of Scripture extends right down to Scripture’s words (as Grudem himself elsewhere argues);42 but thoughtful expositors of the doctrine have carefully distinguished between the mode of inspiration and the result of inspiration in order to avoid all mechanical theories of dictation. The result of inspiration is a text truly from God, right down to the words, while also being in the words of the human author; but that does not mean the mode of inspiration required God to dictate the text. However, by referring to the revelation that the prophet receives as either in conceptual categories or in words, this view pushes back from the resulting message or text to the mode of inspiration. There is too little evidence that much of Scripture was revealed by this mode, and the problems such a formulation raises are real and intractable.43
This raises the possibility, at least, that revelation, whatever the mode, might well not be communicated accurately unless the results are guaranteed. In that case the prophecy that has actually come by revelation might well have to be evaluated, without reflection on the quality of the revelation itself.
Some of the debate is hampered by a view of revelation that is narrower than that employed in Scripture. Consider, for instance, these words from Vos:
The question may be raised, whether within the limits of the principles here laid down, there can be expected still further revelation entitled to a place in the scheme of N[ew] T[estament] Revelation. Unless we adopt the mystical standpoint, which cuts loose the subjective from the objective, the only proper answer to this question is, that new revelation can be added only, in case new objective events of a supernatural character take place, needing for their understanding a new body of interpretation supplied by God. This will actually be the case in the eschatological issue of things. What then occurs will constitute a new epoch in redemption worthy to be placed by the side of the great epochs in the Mosaic age and the age of the first Advent. Hence the Apocalypse mingles with the pictures of the final events transpiring the word of prophecy and of interpretation. We may say, then, that a third epoch of revelation is still outstanding. Strictly speaking, however, this will form less a group by itself than a consummation of the second group. It will belong to N[ew] T[estament] revelation as a final division. Mystical revelation claimed by many in the interim as a personal privilege is out of keeping with the genius of Biblical religion. Mysticism in this detached form is not specifically Christian. It occurs in all types of religion, better or worse. At best it is a manifestation of the religion of nature, subject to all the defects and faults of the latter. As to its content and inherent value it is unverifiable, except on the principle of submitting it to the test of harmony with Scripture. And submitting it to this it ceases to be a separate source of revelation concerning God.44
Here we find the neat antithesis, objective revelation or uncontrolled mysticism. But the Bible’s use of “revelation” (ἀποκάλυψις, apokalypsis) and “to reveal” (ἀποκαλύπτω, apokalyptō) reflects a wider range of possibilities. In all of the occurrences, the revelation is granted by God, Jesus Christ, or the Holy Spirit, or brought about directly by them or in connection with them. Especially frequent are the references to the revelation of Jesus Christ at the parousia, or to the gospel itself, including the space-time manifestation of Jesus Messiah. Normally these terms are not used when some more specific term is available (such as dream or vision); and, as Grudem himself rightly points out, “revelation” can take place in some surprising contexts.45
For instance, when Peter makes his confession at Caesarea Philippi, he has to be told that the Father had revealed this truth to him (Matt. 16:17 par.): apparently revelation can take place without the individual knowing that it is taking place or has taken place. In Galatians 1:16, it pleased God to reveal his Son, Paul says, ἐν ἐμοί (en emoi)—literally, “in me,” presumably “to me” or even “with reference to me.” This of course has reference to Paul’s conversion: we are not dealing here with the objective self-disclosure of the Son of God in space-time history, a revelation witnessed widely and now attested by the public record of Scripture, but with the private disclosure of the Son to and in Paul.46 If someone objects that Paul’s conversion is unique, involving as it did the appearance of the resurrected Christ after his ascension, we may nevertheless compare Matthew 11:27 and 1 Corinthians 2:10. In the former, we are told. “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him”; in the latter, after being told that God’s wisdom has been hidden in the past, and from the rulers of this age, we are assured that “God has revealed it to us by his Spirit”—and the contrast with the rulers of the age makes it clear that the referent of this “revelation” is not simply the appearance of Jesus Messiah, but the conversion of some people over against other people. This too is called “revelation,” even though unveiling of the Son to the inward eye of faith in a particular individual is not itself either the public revelation of the Son in history or the parousia—the two alternatives offered by Vos.
This does not mean that from the point of conversion on, the believer understands all of the Son that has thus been revealed to him or her, or could verbalize the experiences with infallible assertions. More revelation takes place in the believer’s life as he or she grows in grace and understanding. Paul can write to converts and explain some foundational Christian truth, and then add, “All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear [lit., “will reveal”] to you” (Phil. 3:15). A similar understanding of revelation lies behind Ephesians 1:17, and probably also behind some passages where the terms revelation and to reveal are not actually used (e.g., Eph. 3:14–19). There is no hint in any of these contexts that the “revelation” involved falls into one of Vos’s two categories. Apparently, at least some of this revelation came through a quiet (possibly even unrecognized but no less gracious) divine disclosure, part of the Christian’s growing grasp of spiritual realities—a growing grasp that can come only revelation, which is to say it comes by grace.
Thus, when Paul presupposes in 1 Corinthians 14:30 that the gift of prophecy depends on revelation, we are not limited to a form of authoritative revelation that threatens the finality of the canon. To argue in such a way is to confuse the terminology of Protestant systematic theology with the terminology of the Scripture writers. The prophecy Paul has in mind is revelatory and Spirit-prompted, and it may, as Turner and others suggest,47 deal largely with questions of application of gospel truth (though there is no biblical restriction along such lines). None of this means it is necessarily authoritative, infallible, or canon-threatening. Such prophecies must still be evaluated, and they are principally submissive to the apostle and his gospel. To bring such a prophecy “to the test of the harmony of Scripture,” to use the language of Vos, may dismiss it as a separate source of revelation on an authority scale at par with that of Scripture; but it is difficult to see how such a test dismisses the claim to revelation in the attenuated sense sometimes found within Scripture itself and argued for here.
Not all visions or revelations mediated even by apostles were necessarily above thoughtful examination. The Macedonian call (Acts 16:9), as Bowers has pointed out, took place while Paul had already started the move toward Europe;48 and once Paul had related the vision to the others in his team, they collectively concluded (συμβιβάζοντες, symbibazontes)49 that it meant they should press on for Macedonia. An apostle was not kept free from error or sin just because he was an apostle. These specially appointed men, however, did recognize their own peculiar authority under the gospel (Gal. 1:8–9) and over the church (e.g., 1 Cor. 4; 14:37–38; 2 Cor. 10–13). How they themselves distinguished binding truth would take us too far afield to explore here; my only purpose in raising these points is to stress that revelation and authority in the New Testament are more nuanced concepts than is sometimes recognized.
Among those who closely observe the phenomenon of alleged contemporary prophecy, there is widespread agreement that the person uttering such prophecy remains in control of his or her own language. Those who have command of two or more languages can switch from one to the other at will, depending on the language of the congregation. As one charismatic explains:
The language we use in prophecy is under our control. Prophecy comes through a particular human being, and it will be expressed in the language of that person. When a highly educated man speaks in prophecy, he will very likely use a different vocabulary than a poorly educated person would use.50
The conclusion to be drawn from such observations is that not much can be concluded, so far as the authority status of the contemporary phenomenon is concerned. After all, conservative noncharismatics will be the first to insist that even the Scripture writers use the language, style, and vocabulary native to them; so the fact that the modern “prophet’s” language remains under his or her personal control cannot be used to discredit the phenomenon. Neither can it be taken as evidence that the result is as authoritative as Scripture, for after all, such control is the common experience of almost all human communication.
Before we attempt any summarizing evaluations, perhaps we should cast a cursory eye at the somewhat ambiguous evidence provided by church history.
Reflections on the Evidence of History
There is a considerable historiography that argues that the phenomenon of tongues and other “charismatic” gifts died out fairly early in the history of the church. This varies from Knox’s amusing and sometimes savage denunciation of what he calls “enthusiasm”51 to more pedestrian studies that may admit strange phenomena do recur, but insist that such aberrations are found only in fringe groups, among sectarian heretics.52 Thus one noncharismatic ends his study of both the Bible and church history with these words: “We conclude by quoting Paul, who said: ‘Tongues shall cease’ (I Cor. 13:8). They have.”53 There are enough loose pieces to make us fearful that the historical records are being handled (or mishandled) on the basis of a strong commitment to a predetermined conclusion.
Scarcely less committed are the rising number of historical studies by charismatics who appeal to the same evidence to prove that the gift of tongues has always been operative in one wing or another of the church.54 These works tend to ignore the major doctrinal and other variations that frequently mar the witness of the relatively small numbers who have espoused “charismatic” positions and practices; they tend to milk what evidence there is without evenhanded weighing of the proportion, frequency, theology, and influence of the groups they examine. They rightly point out that, after all, the distinctives of Protestant theology had to be formulated in the face of a “mother church” that largely opposed them; so why should not a new reformation take place today, a charismatic reformation? Popularity or frequency in the history of the church is no necessary criterion of faithful exegesis and of spiritual vitality. Indeed, at the popular level this stance can become virulent enough to produce the following:
For the church’s early rejection of the genuine Baptism With The Holy Spirit, with the visible and audible Biblical evidence of “speaking in other tongues,” as the initial and only evidence authenticating reception of this Baptism, IS WITHOUT POSSIBIITY OF CONTRADICTION, THE MOST MONUMENTAL, THE MOST AWESOME, AND THE MOST SINFUL BLUNDER IN ALL OF THE ALMOST TWO MILLENNIA OF CHURCH HISTORY!!55
It is not possible in this context to pass the evidence in review. There are, however, some remarkably careful and evenhanded studies now available, and a student is well advised to begin with them.56 So far as the early church is concerned, it appears as if tongues were extremely rare after the beginning of the second century, but prophecy was known and cherished in the church until the rise of Montanism. Forms of “charismatic” behavior recur in various small minorities. These recurring displays are common enough both in Christendom and beyond that an anthropologist such as Christie-Murray can conclude, “It can be stated with some confidence that if an anthropologist were to work systematically through the literature on his subject, he would find glossolalia in one form or another to be almost universal.”57
What can be safely concluded from the historical evidence? First, there is enough evidence that some form of “charismatic” gifts continued sporadically across the centuries of church history that it is futile to insist on doctrinaire grounds that every report is spurious or the fruit of demonic activity or psychological aberration. Second, from the death of Montanism until the turn of the present century, such phenomena were never part of a major movement. In each instance, the group involved was small and generally on the fringe of Christianity. Third, the great movements of piety and reformation that have in God’s mercy occasionally refreshed and renewed the church were not demonstrably crippled because their leaders did not, say, speak in tongues. Those who have thoughtfully read the devotional and theological literature of the English Puritans will not be easily convinced that their spirituality was less deep, holy, powerful, Spirit-prompted than what obtains in the contemporary charismatic movement. The transformation of society under the Spirit-anointed preaching of Howell Harris, George Whitefield, John and Charles Wesley, and others finds no parallel in the contemporary charismatic movement.58 It would be a strange calculus which concluded that a modern charismatic lives on a higher spiritual plane than did, say, Augustine, Balthasar Hubmaier, Jonathan Edwards, Count von Zinzendorf, or Charles Spurgeon, since none of these spoke in tongues. Fourth, very often the groups that did emphasize what today would be called charismatic gifts were either heretical or quickly pushed their “gifts” to such extremes that their praxis proved dangerous to the church. For instance, with varying degrees of rapidity, the leaders of the Evangelical Awakening came to warn people against the dangers of the so-called French Prophets. Even those leaders who at first hoped that they displayed the Spirit’s presence eventually concluded that at very least they were so unbalanced in their views, so desperately fixated on their cherished experiences, so profoundly unteachable, that young believers had to be diverted from them. Even Edward Irving (often judged the forerunner of the charismatic movement) despite his immense strengths and gifts adopted a strange Christology, an extraordinarily subjective understanding of the leading of the Lord, a decidedly arrogant posture toward his colleagues. He ultimately fell into a black despair occasioned by his false views on healing. To argue, with one recent charismatic writer, that this man was “the Scottish John the Baptist of the Charismatic Movement” who swept away “the unscriptural hypothetical basis” of the truncation of the Spirit’s gifts, and who “produced a coherent theological understanding of the person and power of the Holy Spirit and the operation of His gifts, resulting in a more complete recapture of apostolic patterns,”59 is simultaneously to misread and falsely assess both the modern charismatic movement and Edward Irving, and perhaps also the apostolic patterns and John the Baptist.
Although to my knowledge the theory has not been worked out anywhere in great detail, it is probable that prophecy waned with the rise of Montanism because the church was seeking to protect herself from the extravagant claims of the Montanists. The more the latter claimed to enjoy Spirit-given, prophetic gifts of superlative authority—so sterling an authority, in fact, that much of Scripture could be confidently dismissed—the more the church was bound to respond by stressing the stability and immutability of the apostolic deposit. If prophecy was to be abused in the fashion of the Montanists, prophecy itself would ultimately become suspect. But it must be remembered that this theological stance was an ecclesiastical reaction. The fact that the church made room for prophecy until the Montanist abuse strongly suggests that what the church understood by “prophecy” up to that time did not in any way jeopardize the apostolic deposit. It was the authority claim of Montanism that was so profoundly dangerous, ultimately threatening numerous cardinal doctrines of the church. Contemporary charismatics and noncharismatics alike ought to recognize that when Montanism first arose, its view of the authority status of prophecy was at that point an aberration—even though something very like that view (though without its entailments) seems to predominate in both charismatic and noncharismatic circles today.
If this historical assessment is correct, then there may be reason to suppose that noncharismatic wings of the contemporary church may still enjoy some use of “prophecy” without calling it that. Calvin seems to be open to this possibility. Commenting on “prophets” in Ephesians 4:11, he suggests they are “those who excelled by special revelation”; and then he adds, “none such now exist, or they are less manifest” (italics added).60 In his commentary on 1 Corinthians 12:28–31, he suggests that “prophets” refers to those who are skillful at making known God’s will, primarily by applying prophecies, threats, promises, and the teaching of Scripture. He then goes on to acknowledge he may be wrong, for it is difficult to be certain when such gifts or offices have been kept from the church for so long a time, except for traces or shades of them still to be found.61
One begins to suspect, then, that prophecy may occur more often than is recognized in noncharismatic circles, and less often than is recognized in charismatic circles. We may happily agree that preaching cannot be identified with prophecy, but what preacher has not had the experience, after detailed preparation for public ministry, of being interrupted in the full flow of his delivery with a new thought, fresh and powerful, interrupting him and insinuating itself upon his mind, until he makes room for it and incorporates it into his message—only to find after the service that the insertion was the very bit that seemed to touch the most people, and meet their needs? Most charismatics would label the same experience a “prophecy.”
Similar things could be said for many of the other “charismatic” gifts. Healing is not restricted to charismatic circles. (I could mention some remarkable answers to prayers for healing among other groups.) I have myself experienced what would in other circles be called “the gift of faith,” in which I was given utter assurance that certain things would take place, even though the prospect flew in the face of normal prognostications and stood removed from the kinds of promises normally associated with the gospel and its demand for faith. The wife of a Baptist minister, a close friend who serves in a noncharismatic environment, has been praying in tongues in her private devotions for years—ever since as a teen-ager she found herself able to do so, without any contact with (what was then) Pentecostalism. With little effort, I could provide many interesting examples of the utilization of “charismatic” gifts in decidedly noncharismatic groups. The words of Turner are wise:
Worse, the exaggerated personal experiential dualism tends to be projected onto the Charismatic/evangelical divide to create a claimed experiential dualism between relatively powerless evangelicals, lacking charismata, and Charismatics living in victory, power and the plenitude of charismata. It is this last dualism which popularly undergirds the ‘practical argument’ for pursuing a post-conversion ‘Spirit baptism.’
But the problem for the practical argument is that the dualism breaks down when examined. Healing is not a gift confined to ‘Charismatics’; even if practiced more often by them. Similarly . . . ‘words of the Lord’ or ‘revelations’ (in the general New Testament sense, not in the technical Systematic-Theological one) are not just imparted to neo-Pentecostalists. They are widely reported (albeit in other language) in the evangelical literature too. In other words, on closer examination there is no sharp dividing line between evangelical experience and the new-Pentecostalist one. There is no question of ‘leaving the realm of natural Christianity’ and entering, by the gateway of Spirit-baptism, into ‘supernatural Christianity,’ as it is popularly put; nor of leaving a charismaless Christianity for a charismatic one. The basic difference is one of degree and not of kind; one of emphasis, and not absolute.62
Reflections on the Charismatic Movement
I do not propose to attempt a grand synthesis, but to offer a few personal assessments of the modern charismatic movement, arising out of the study of both Scripture and the contemporary movement itself. The movement is so diverse that it may prove helpful to enumerate negative and positive reflections separately.
At its worst, the charismatic movement needs to rethink several issues.
One such issue is the appeal to tongues as a criterion of anything. The abuse is particularly strong in Protestant charismatic circles; Roman Catholic forms of the charismatic movement have tended to depreciate the criterion value of tongues.63 That some form of “tongues” is found in every major religious heritage does not disqualify its potential as a God-given gift in the Christian heritage, but it should warn us that for the same reason speaking in tongues is not a reliable indicator of anything—not even of being a Christian. If my exegesis is even approximately correct, there is no biblical warrant for treating tongues-speaking as the critical and normative evidence of a certain level of spiritual experience or vitality. This is not to return surreptitiously to an anticharismatic position and automatically rule out every instance of alleged tongues-speaking without further examination or reflection. Rather, assuming the authenticity of some tongues-speaking today, all Christians should insist “the same emphasis should be given it that the Bible does. We should not neglect what the Bible teaches, nor should we exalt what the Bible does not.”64 That means we must agree that tongues do not constitute essential evidence of Spirit baptism; they are not intended for every believer; in public they must edify the church, and follow the two or three rules Paul laid down to achieve this end; and in private they are of little concern to the church, provided the individual Christian who is thus exercising his or her gift of tongues is not blowing it out of proportion, using it as a substitute for other forms of piety, or proselytizing fellow believers with it.
Especially naïve is the view of tongues that treats the gift as the great unifying point amongst the various branches of Christendom. Certainly much of the division is pointless. Where there are responsible reasons for division, there has often grown remarkable ignorance of the points of continuity, and not a little animosity directed toward the other camps. One must register a mild protest at this testimony from a Protestant charismatic leader whose experience of the “baptism” and of “speaking in tongues” led to a dramatic breach in the walls of partition:
I now loved those whom I had previously rejected. Only when such personal prejudices are removed are we free to see Christ in our brothers. Then the Holy Spirit is able to teach us what he wants to through them. Oh, what an enrichment it has been to meet with Catholics and be introduced to some of the treasures of Catholic life! The Virgin Mary has come alive and I feel I know her now, in the same way as my evangelical heritage helped me to know St. Paul. . . . The sacraments have come alive, too. Not as lifeless mechanical rites, but as “effectual signs,” to use the language of the Reformers, as signs that work when there is faith. Holy Communion is for me like an oasis in a parched desert.65
This reminds me of certain ecumenical documents where the aim is to phrase all doctrinal matters with such sophisticated ambiguity that no one can disagree, even when there is no real agreement in substance. Even when we recognize the immense pluralism in contemporary Roman Catholicism, it is disconcerting to find Catholicism credited with introducing Mary to this believer, and placing her on a par with Paul. This is strange not only because there is so much less reliable information about her than about Paul, but because traditional Roman Catholicism, Tridentine Catholicism, elevates Mary above Paul, making her a co-redemptrix with Christ. Paul is never credited with an immaculate conception, nor has he undergone bodily assumption to heaven. Can it be that this testimony is hiding points of real difference in order to win sympathy, among evangelical and Catholic readers alike, for the charismatic movement and for the phenomenon of tongues? The same questions must be asked regarding this witness’s experience of the “sacraments.” Why must his antecedent experience be stigmatized as “lifeless mechanical rites,” and what he has now learned from the Catholic church turn out, mirabile dictu, to be what the Reformers taught? Would the witness want to distance himself from the conservative wing of Catholicism that still holds to transubstantiation? Or would he say that such things do not matter, provided one speaks in tongues? Will either a thoughtful Catholic or a thoughtful Protestant be easily convinced that the only test for unity is tongues-speaking? On what biblical basis can tongues become the supreme arbiter, the universal criterion, of all theological and interpretative disputes?
Another issue is the thoughtless justification of tongues utterances, prophecies, and visions that are extraordinarily trite, sometimes heretical, rarely examined, only occasionally controlled, or pastorally stupid. Calling an inanity a prophecy does not stop it from being an inanity.
A colleague once told me of a charismatic preacher in a Latin American country who told his audience, “God has told me that all people here should have refrigerators. How many of you need them?” Naturally, most of the hands went up—despite the fact that half those who had gathered did not even have electricity in their homes, nor access to the fuel that could run gas refrigerators. The appeal was to crass materialism, and in any case did not even analyze the physical needs of the people very astutely. One might well ask if any outsiders fell down on their faces and testified that God was surely present. The same question might be posed of the meeting where a “prophet” got up and announced that someone in the back left-hand corner had a pain in his big toe and needed to be healed.
When I hear a popular charismatic leader on television (who is revered by millions) telling an emotionally and spiritually troubled woman that her problems would have been solved if only she had prayed more frequently in tongues, I am listening to spiritual humbug without a scrap of biblical warrant or a shred of pastoral responsibility. And when a publication offers to give me, free (not counting the “contribution” of $12 that I am expected to make), audio tapes of the testimony of a returned medical missionary who alleges he was caught up into heaven for five and a half days, conversed with Jesus, Paul, Abraham, Elijah, and others, saw “his” mansion seven hundred miles up from the city’s foundation, toured the buildings NOW (sic) under construction, and heard Jesus talk about the rapture, Armageddon, and related matters, the kindest interpretation I can offer is that the sponsors of such stuff combine exegetical ignorance and immense gullibility. Have any of them wondered what μονή (monē) in John 14—the word the King James Version renders “mansion”—really means? Or whether apocalyptic literature might require a little more subtlety in the expositor who attempts to interpret it?
Once again, I must insist that these frequent failings cannot legitimately be used by the noncharismatic to invalidate all putative tongues, say, today. But if the charismatic movement wishes to establish more credibility, it could begin by exercising more biblical discernment and discretion.
A third issue is the abuse of authority. This failure is far from being universal: some charismatic believers are among the most humble and thoughtful Christians I know. Unfortunately, they are not, by and large, the ones most likely to be in the public eye. I have heard with my own ears enough preachers within charismatic traditions claim for themselves, their interpretations, and their prophecies an authority only barely less than divine. Driving along with one of them some time ago, I was informed that a certain passage in Matthew meant such and such, because the Lord had revealed the meaning to the brother in question. Having recently studied that passage at some length, I perceived that the brother was relying on an extension of a faulty translation. I tried to suggest, as gently as possible, that the Greek original (of which the brother in question was entirely ignorant) could not be taken to support his interpretation. My rebuttal carried no weight: the Lord had told him what the passage meant, and that was the end of the matter so far as he was concerned. His wife reminded me that spiritual things are spiritually discerned—which I could only assume to be their polite way of telling me what they thought of my spiritual status. There was no trace of concern to weigh or test this alleged revelation. Fascinated, I played devil’s advocate and said that I was equally convinced that my interpretation was correct, because the Lord had told me so. We drove on for many silent blocks while my colleague, a clergyman, wrestled with that one. He finally replied, “Well, I guess that means the Bible means different things to different people.” Of course, he had no idea how he had just invaded the turf of the most liberal exponents of the new hermeneutic, and had abandoned not only the authority of Scripture but also the basis of all rational communication in favor of epistemological solipsism. From all such “revelations,” dear Lord, deliver us.
From the point of view of the manipulated, of course, there is an inevitable transfer of biblical authority to that of the interpreter or “prophet.” This must lead in time to a spiritual state not even perceived by the manipulated, in which allegiance has been so transferred to particularly loved human authorities that there is no possibility left for the Bible to perform its continuously needed reforming work.
Yet another issue is a deeply ingrained love of sensationalism and triumphalism, and little knowledge of taking up one’s cross daily. I do not mean to suggest that any gift of tongues, say, or any “prophecy” as defined here, or any miraculous healing, should be ruled out because it might be thought “sensational.” To denigrate the “sensational” in so sweeping a way, a fairly common ploy among noncharismatics, would surely be to indict Jesus and Paul. Rather, the problem lies in love for sensationalism, in the unbiblical and unhealthy focus upon it. Not only in Latin American countries, but elsewhere as well, this fixation on the sensational soon confuses prophecy and pagan divination, miracle and magic, charismatic and spiritistic. It magnifies the importance of what is, biblically speaking, relatively incidental, while ignoring the weightier matters: righteousness, holiness, justice, love, truth, mercy. It is constantly in danger of sacrificing integrity as the rush towards the sensational pelts on: stories of healings are blown out of proportion, so that the genuine instances are lost in exaggeration and distortion; evangelism loses out to manipulated outbursts of emotion (“Let’s clap for the Father for a whole minute! Now for the Son! Now for the Holy Spirit! Now Jesus wants to see all of you wave your handkerchiefs back and forth!”); the straightforward and impassioned message of the cross, proclaimed by a Whitefield, is displaced by endless promises to solve personal problems; and only the Christian whose problems have all evaporated and who enjoys perfect health has entered into the fullness of the riches Jesus promises. In the more extreme cases, the triumphalism is carried so far as to promise wealth as well: give your “seed money” to God (i.e., our organization), and watch God multiply it; you are the child of a king—do you not think your heavenly Father wants you to live in royal splendor? Believers who have meditated long on Matthew 10 or John 15:18–16:4, let alone believers in China, will not be impressed by this argument.
Of course, triumphalism is not restricted to charismatic circles and not all charismatic circles stoop to this malevolent evil. But the association is a common one.
The abuse of authority, a love of the sensational, and a fundamental misapprehension of the Bible’s restrictions on tongues all come together in the following advice from a charismatic manual:
A person should claim this gift [tongues] in confidence when he is prayed with to be baptized in the Spirit. . . . Yielding to tongues is an important first step, and it is worth putting effort into encouraging a person to yield to tongues, even to run the risk of being labelled “imbalanced.” . . . Often people can be helped to yield to tongues rather easily. . . . After praying with a person to be baptized in the Spirit, the team member should lean over or kneel down and ask the person if he would like to pray in tongues. When he says yes, he should encourage him to speak out, making sounds that are not English. . . . He should then pray with him again. When the person begins to speak in tongues, he should encourage him. . . . After you ask to be baptized in the Holy Spirit and ask for the gift of tongues, then yield to it. Begin by speaking out, if necessary beginning by just making meaningless sounds. The Holy Spirit will form them.66
Another issue is that of immense abuses in healing practices. These abuses are often nothing more than a corollary of the last problem, the love of sensationalism. But the two are differentiable; and either one can be found without the other.
The most common form of abuse is the view that since all illness is directly or indirectly attributable to the devil and his works, and since Christ by his cross has defeated the devil, and by his Spirit has given us the power to overcome him, healing is the inheritance right of all true Christians who call upon the Lord with genuine faith. The entailment, of course, is that if someone is not healed, the failure reflects inadequate faith, since the promises of the Lord are not to be called into doubt. The toll in shattered lives, deeply wounded and defeated Christians, and immense burdens of false guilt is simply incalculable. Almost as distressing is the fact that so much religious energy is expended on the relatively peripheral, at the expense of what is central and focal in all Christian godliness.
Evenhanded biblical exegesis will not support the view that all sickness among Christians will be removed unless there is a personal failure in faith. Some of the argumentation used to advance this position is tortured. No one who approached Jesus for physical healing went away without a cure, we are told; and since Jesus “is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8), the same must be true today, unless we approach him the wrong way. Observe two failures in the reasoning. First, Hebrews 13:8 is not in context talking about Jesus’s healing ministry, and its alleged continuity into the present age. One cannot legitimately conclude that the verse covers every facet and feature of Jesus’s life, for counterexamples are easy to come by (e.g., Jesus’s determined commitment was to obey his Father by going to the cross, and since he is the same yesterday and today and forever it is still his determined commitment to go to the cross). I am not of course arguing that Jesus does not heal today, only that the argument as stated is false. And second, if Jesus healed everyone who approached him in the days of his flesh, but not all who call on his name are healed today owing to their false approach, are we therefore to assume that everyone who approached him two thousand years ago had the right approach, but that somehow this right approach was lost to the generations after Pentecost who enjoy the Spirit?
It is also argued that because “there is healing in the atonement,” as the slogan puts it, every believer has the right to avail himself or herself of the healing benefit secured by the cross.67 Sadly, noncharismatics have sometimes responded to this by denying that there is healing in the atonement—a position that can be defended only by the most strained exegesis. Of course there is healing in the atonement. In exactly the same sense, the resurrection body is also in the atonement—even though neither charismatic nor noncharismatic argues that any Christian has the right to demand a resurrection body right now. The issue is not “what is in the atonement,” for surely all Christians would want to say that every blessing that comes to us, now and in the hereafter, ultimately flows from the redemptive work of Christ. The issue, rather, is what blessings we have a right to expect as universally given endowments right now, what blessings we may expect only hereafter, and what blessings we may partially or occasionally enjoy now and in fullness only in the hereafter. As Packer puts it, “That total healing of the body, with total sinless perfection, are ‘in the atonement,’ in the sense that entire personal renewal in Christ’s image flows from the cross (see Rom. 8:23; Phil. 3:20, 21), is true, but it is a potentially disastrous mistake to expect on earth what will only be given in heaven.”68 In other words, this is another form of the overrealized eschatology so rampant in the church in Corinth.
The apostle Paul experienced illness, illness that was prolonged enough for him to change his venue (Gal. 4:13–14). This illness may have been malaria, contracted in the swampy lowlands and prompting a move north to the high country around Pisidian Antioch (about thirty-six hundred feet above sea level).69 But whatever the disease,70 Paul does not reflect any guilt because he was not instantly healed: far from it, he saw it as a providential arrangement to bring him into the Galatian region where he proceeded to plant churches. Illness could also afflict members of the apostle’s team: according to the Pastoral Epistles, Paul had to leave Trophimus behind in Troas to recuperate from an illness. One must suppose that Paul prayed for Trophimus; but his prayer was not answered with healing, at least of the instant variety (2 Tim. 4:20). Timothy apparently faced frequent bouts of illness, for which Paul prescribes a little wine, not a healing miracle (1 Tim. 5:23).71
Certainly healing was a part of the early church’s experience; certainly some illness was connected not merely with the entanglements of a fallen world, but with specific sin (e.g.,1 Cor. 11:30; James 5:15; cf. John 5:14). But as we have seen, not all illness was perceived in this way; and it is not even clear that all healing was instantaneous (do 1 Cor. 12:10; James 5:15; 1 John 5:16–17 require this?).
Occasionally one now finds respected charismatic leaders making the same points, and in language more emotional and more telling than what I am using. For instance, one thinks of the strong protest of Farah,72 who insists properly that far too many charismatics not only have a defective theology in these areas, but also that this defective theology fosters a fundamental refusal to face facts: people who are not healed even when all the “conditions” have been met. He writes:
Bad theology is a cruel taskmaster. As a pastor-shepherd of twenty-eight years [sic] experience, it seems to me that one of our primary responsibilities is to nurse our wounded sheep back to health by a true liberation theology. Shepherds have to bind up the wounds after the traveling teachers and evangelists are gone and the ravaged sheep are left behind. We cannot therefore, do without an adequate Biblical theology of healing. We need a theology that squarely faces facts; I frequently tell my students, “If your theology doesn’t fit the facts, change your theology.” Jesus is not, after all, a Christian Scientist.73
And to this we must add the need for a truly biblical theology of suffering—a subject too vast and complex to be broached here, even though it is obviously related to the subject. But the silence of most charismatics on the subject must be greeted with some dismay.
More difficult to assess is the movement identified with John Wimber and his associated “Vineyard” ministries, sometimes called the “signs and wonders” movement. Assessment is difficult because documentation is sparse and mostly partisan (both for and against); but because the movement is currently generating considerable discussion, a few tentative remarks may not be out of place.
By all accounts, John Wimber, who self-deprecatingly refers to himself as an ex-hippie, is an engaging, humble, bright, and responsible leader. In the movement that has grown up around him, tongues is simply not an issue. He has been influenced by the view that understands Jesus’s ministry to be an inbreaking of the kingdom in advance of its consummation, so that Jesus’s work can rightly be interpreted, in large part, as a confrontation of powers or authorities. The ruler of this world brings about “natural” catastrophes, illness, demonic attacks, bondage to sin, death; Jesus responded by stilling storms, healing the sick, casting out demons, freeing people from the tyranny of sin, raising the dead. Christ’s followers have received Christ’s authority, and must proclaim the kingdom and exercise that authority in his name. In this context, sickness and suffering (with the notable exception of the aging process) are to be resisted as evil and rebuked.
Wimber himself operates out of a largely Reformed framework. He attempts to honor divine sovereignty, insists that Christians receive the Holy Spirit fully at conversion (in other words, he rejects classical “second-blessing” theology), and by all accounts has weathered the international fame (not to say adulation) that has come his way during the last five or six years. Invited by Peter Wagner of the School of World Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary to teach a course, he did so with such integrity and disarming appeal that his course became the most popular in the seminary. The last third of each three-hour class session was a “laboratory session” in which not only were there healings and various “manifestations,” but in which students were also encouraged to observe closely what was going on, and to question closely those who were thus involved in this “charismatic” ministry.
Many students began the course either for or against, either very open or somewhat skeptical. The majority came away far more open than they had been at the beginning. Even if some “healings” could be dismissed on psychological or other grounds, at least some were so transparently miraculous as to convince most critics who were present. Eventually, however, things got out of hand, at least in the opinion of the Board; and the course was cancelled. Some deep divisions continue; Wimber himself, by all accounts, has responded without malice.
This movement clearly stands apart from the charismatic movement, classically considered, and must be evaluated separately. At the risk of premature judgments, my impression is that it is hard to fault the broad sweep of the theology of the movement (at least as it has been reported to me). Moreover, as I shall say in offering a list of the positive contributions of the charismatic movement, Wimber’s ministry and the charismatic movement alike have contributed to a certain “consciousness raising,” challenging the evangelical world to expect a little more divine intervention than customary wisdom allows. Nevertheless, a few cautions must be articulated.
First, Wimber himself may be unusually endowed, and may serve with maturity and good judgment—I am too far away to want to suggest otherwise. But the same cannot be said for some of his protégés. For instance, at a seminary near Chicago (not the one at which I teach), one such speaker interrupted his address, which was an explanation of the “signs and wonders” movement and theology, to offer an authoritative “word from the Lord”: “There is someone here by the name of Bill74 with a backache, and you need healing. Stand up, for the Lord is going to heal you!” When this authoritative word elicited no response, it was repeated with even greater gusto, and then repeated again. Finally, a student stood up and confessed he had a backache, but said that his name was Mike. “Close enough,” the speaker judged, and proceeded with the “healing.” Such nonsense ought to be dismissed for what it is.
Second, the movement at Fuller apparently became exploitative and uncontrolled. Some of the students set out to raise from the dead a recently deceased evangelical leader who had died prematurely; and some of the more bizarre features of this failed endeavor constituted some of the final straws that broke the back of the proverbial camel, and brought about the cancellation of Wimber’s course.
Third, there is an important lesson to be learned both from 1 Corinthians 12–14 and from certain major movements in the history of the church. In the early days of the Evangelical Awakening, as I have mentioned, both Wesley and (to a lesser extent) Whitefield were open to the contribution of the “French Prophets.” But it was not long before both leaders found it necessary to restrain the more uncontrolled manifestations, and to distance themselves from the movement. Paul’s approach in 1 Corinthians is similar: he does not want to stifle the Spirit, but the burden of his appeal is to control the extremes and to focus attention where it properly belongs. From this and many other examples, we may distill some advice. When God graciously manifests himself in abnormal and even spectacular ways, the wisest step that the leaders participating in such a movement may take is to curb the excesses, focus attention on the center—on Christ, on loving discipleship, on self-sacrificing service and obedience, on God himself—and not on the phenomena themselves, and still less on a theology or course that attempts to institutionalize the phenomena. Such discipline will prove far more convincing to noncharismatics (to use a generic expression) than anything else. But where those involved focus on what is distinctive, either they or their less mature followers will quickly distort the movement, sending it careening into irresponsible extremes fundamentally corrosive of mature Christian experience. Sadly, at that point the noncharismatics will respond with a self-justifying theology of their own.
A final issue is profound misunderstanding of the nature of God’s sovereignty. The subject is too complex to be treated here; but it is related to Paul’s insistence that although the best gifts are to be sought, the Lord is the one who sovereignly dispenses his grace gifts as he sees fit. How those two perspectives are simultaneously true, and how each is to be applied to our lives, are complex questions; but it is a wholly inadequate approach that treats God as the great potential benefactor whose lavish bounty is held up only by our refusal to go through certain formulaic steps. At the practical level, we must ask if God may be more pleased when we are deeply interested in him and not in certain manifestations; when we learn, like Paul, to live with a “thorn in the flesh” if only it will abase us and enable us to drink deeply from his enabling grace; when we grow in confidence in the wisdom of our God, wisdom that sometimes withholds blessings or decides to work with a modern Job.
At its best, however, the charismatic movement has been a blessing to the church. It is unfair to assess the movement and its fruit only at its worst, as if the prolonged recitation of evils vitiates the need to weigh evenhandedly the immense blessings that have come to us through this means.
Above all, the charismatic movement has challenged the church to expect more from God, to expect God to pour out his Spirit upon us in ways that break our traditional molds, to call into question a theology that without sufficient exegetical warrant rejects all possibility of the miraculous except for regeneration.75 Of course, this is not the case with respect to all noncharismatics. On one hand, we are familiar with spiritual leaders outside the charismatic tradition whose gift of faith, say, was thoroughly exceptional, such as George Müller of Bristol.76 On the other hand, we are also familiar with those who have been repulsed by the charismatic movement’s excesses. But it is surely no misjudgment to say that in general Christians have become more open to the possibility of divine, supernatural intervention in their lives than they were before.
Part of the problem in making such an assessment is that positions have in many quarters become so polarized that a sympathetic weighing of the evidence is very difficult My noncharismatic brother in Christ may hear this assessment, and in consternation inquire as to whether I have taken leave of my senses. Close examination of the reasons for this reaction often reveals that he or she is comparing the worst of the charismatic movement, which can be very bad indeed, with the best of noncharismatic witness, which can be very good indeed. But this, of course, is not quite fair. My charismatic brother or sister in Christ may proceed along precisely opposite lines of comparison. But in this first assessment, I am not suggesting simply that the best be compared with the best and the worst with the worst, for in my experience at least, the resulting comparisons yield very little difference. Rather, I am giving my perceptions of the charismatic movement as a whole versus the noncharismatic evangelical world as a whole; and in such a comparison, my experience has been that the former group is in general more commonly characterized by a greater openness to God’s intervention in their lives than I find in the latter group. This witness is spilling out beyond the borders of the charismatic movement itself; and that can only be a good thing. Wimber is right at the principal level: the kingdom has dawned, and all authority has already been given to Christ to reign in the church and over the entire cosmos.
The charismatic movement has been aggressively evangelistic. It is no response to cite the instances where the movement’s growth has been due to sheep stealing, for in the first place there are too many counterexamples, and in the second place many noncharismatic congregations boast of many members who abandoned the charismatic circles in which they were converted but in which they were not being fed. I know of no accurate figures, but I suspect that the exchange of members and adherents between charismatic and noncharismatic traditions has in many parts of the world been characterized by fair reciprocity. Meanwhile, however, the charismatic movement has been growing. Anyone familiar with the church in Latin America knows how much of the evangelistic outreach has been borne by the charismatics. In North America and in Britain evangelical groups are by and large holding their own percentage of the population, give or take a bit; the charismatic wing exceeds that rate dramatically.77 The numbers alone demonstrate that the growth of the movement cannot be derided as mere sheep stealing.
Nor will it do to question how many of the converts are Christians at all, for that is a factor that has to be faced by all movements where rapid growth takes place. My own experiences of ministering in charismatic circles do not encourage me to think there is a higher proportion of spurious conversions in charismatic groups than in other groups in the same society. But the reasons for their more rapid growth are complex. The growth is not because they have been endued with the Spirit and very few others have been, as charismatics seem to think. I suspect it is more connected with the fact that charismatics are, in general, quicker to talk about their experiences with God, their faith, the way God has worked in their lives. Effective evangelism depends on many people gossiping the gospel.
It is wholly inadequate to complain that the gospel preached by many charismatics is too self-oriented, or too individualistic, or too unbalanced, or too anything else for that matter, if the critics can in turn be charged with a gospel that is too cerebral, too restrictively theoretical, insufficiently evangelistic, and so forth. There are countless exceptions that break both stereotypes; but meanwhile, in more places than not, it is the charismatic wing that is growing. Noncharismatics would be better served by recognizing that an open enthusiasm for Christ, a frank willingness to talk about the Lord anywhere, is the matrix out of which effective evangelism is born.
Related to this, but distinguishable from it, is the fact that the charismatic movement has by and large done better at mobilizing laypeople than have most other segments of evangelical witness. In part this is a reflection of the movement’s youth, vitality, shortage of academically trained leaders, and triumphalism; in part it is a reflection of the movement’s insistence that all believers ought to be displaying the power of the Spirit. In too many noncharismatic circles, the latter point is creedally observed and related to the priesthood of all believers, but not integrated into life, thought, structure, and witness.
At the exegetical level, the charismatic movement is surely right to argue that the χαρίσματα (charismata), including the more spectacular of them, have not been permanently withdrawn.78 Critics may rightly insist that in many (though certainly not all) charismatic circles, too much attention is devoted to too few gifts, and almost always the spectacular ones. Critics may also rightly question the linkage that is often made between tongues and second-blessing theology. But in my judgment there is no substantial exegetical or theological impediment to recognizing the continued existence of the gift of, say, tongues. Some of the gifts need to be carefully circumscribed so far as their authority status is concerned, and all need to be tested. Moreover, in a thoroughly mature church, it is doubtful that much attention would be focused on such matters. Nor is it necessary to argue that, say, the gift of tongues must be present in every church for that church to be complete: there is no warrant for that, either, and ample evidence that the Lord of the church dispenses and withdraws some of his gracious gifts at various times and for various purposes. But when all the caveats are in, there is no biblical warrant for ruling out all manifestations of contemporary tongues, on the ground that the gift was withdrawn in the subapostolic period. And it is the charismatic movement that has stimulated the church to rethink these issues and to study afresh the biblical passages on which so many of these issues turn.79
Reflections of a Pastoral Nature
Despite some protestations to the contrary,80 there is no solid evidence that speaking in tongues is characteristically psychologically damaging. Up until about 1966 it was common for psychological studies to treat the phenomenon as fundamentally escapist;81 but in retrospect one suspects that such judgments were made because the majority of participants belonged to various minority groups—usually the underprivileged. Once Pentecostalism blossomed into the charismatic movement, however, and virtually every stratum of society was affected in some way or other, the old analysis was exposed as inadequate.
Today other approaches predominate. Some have suggested that the tongues movement is a kind of antidote to the influences of an increasingly secular society.82 Some of the studies are more interested in physiological and cultural rather than psychological factors: “I want to propose,” writes one author, “that glossolalia should be defined as a vocalization pattern, a speech automatism, that is produced on the substratum of hyperarousal dissociation, reflecting directly, in its segmental and suprasegmental structure, neurophysiologic processes present in this mental state.”83 But most studies recognize that tongues speaking, which is usually recognized as learned behavior, often conveys a mild sense of well-being, integration, and power. It is not dangerous in itself, but can be psychologically damaging in some of the uses to which it is put (for instance, when it is used as the battering ram that disrupts a community). Tongues-speakers are not demonstrably less well-adjusted than others. They have a slightly greater tendency to follow models, whether leaders or groups; and their experience tends to be for most of them somewhat liberating.84
Not a little pastoral concern arises from the perceived tension between institutional office and spiritual gift. How, we may ask, does Christ operate in his church? Does he work primarily through the official teachers, structures, and patterns, or primarily through unexpected disclosures, primarily through “gifted” people?85
The literature on the subject is large, and takes us far beyond the confines of debate over the charismatic movement. We cannot probe these questions here, but largely following Fung,86 perhaps this much may be said. First, there is ample evidence that the church recognized certain offices/functions at a very early period, notably elders/overseers (bishops)/pastors on the one hand, and deacons on the other; but those who performed in such posts were expected to be endowed by the Spirit to do so. After all, there is no intrinsic incongruity or incompatibility between structure and giftedness, between office and spiritual gift. But second, the early church by no means confined spiritual gift to ecclesiastical office. After all, every Christian was believed to have some gift, and some gifts associated with a particular office (e.g., teaching and the eldership) were doubtless discharged in some contexts on an informal and ecclesiastically unrecognized fashion. Office without appropriate grace-gift is sterile and even dangerous; but grace-gift without office is merely commonplace. Third, the more public the gift, the more the church must discharge its responsibility to test the gift and, where appropriate, confirm the person so gifted in office. And it is precisely this corporate responsibility that should, ideally, limit the right of the person who feels gifted to challenge the office without the sanction of the church. But the ideal breaks down when the office is held by those who have not been endowed with the requisite grace-gifts, or when the church fails to discharge its responsibility to test and hold accountable those who serve as leaders. Fourth, the majority of grace-gifts, so far as we can tell, were never associated with a particular office. This is true not only for such χαρίσματα (charismata) as encouraging, giving, and speaking in tongues, but also for prophecy. Interestingly, some African denominations today recognize a place for prophets in the life of the church who have no necessary connection with the church leadership. These prophets commonly convey messages of encouragement, rebuke, or exhortation.
Perhaps I should end on a more personal note. For many young clergy from noncharismatic traditions, one of their first major crises will develop when some strong voices in the church call for freedom to speak in tongues in public services, or start to proselytize members in home Bible studies. Precisely this situation has generated the polarizations that have split countless churches. What should be done?
In some instances, of course, the split may be unavoidable. But as I faced precisely this situation, in a fairly mild form, when I was in pastoral ministry sixteen years ago, perhaps I can pass on some lessons I learned at that time.
Our church was divided between a few procharismatics and several anticharismatics, with the majority fairly confused between the two, and asking for leadership. Neither of the extremes was virulent, but it was obvious the situation could have rapidly degenerated. I asked for prayer and time: prayer to hold us together and do what was right, and time to survey in weekly meetings what the Bible had to say about the Holy Spirit. I asked for six months, and the last two months or so of that Wednesday night series were devoted to much the same sort of material here put together in more sophisticated fashion. I have changed my mind on a number of minor points since then, and on several issues where I was less clear about what the Scripture said, I acknowledged my confusion and ignorance and tried to convey what I thought was being said, while still surveying other interpretative options.
Toward the end of the series, I tried to summarize what I judged to be true points that fair, biblical exegesis could affirm with confidence. The first and most important of these was that tongues cannot possibly serve as a criterion of anything; the second was that I could not find any unequivocal criterion for ruling out all contemporary tongues-speaking, even though I thought much of what I had seen was suspect or was manifested outside the stipulations Paul had laid down. I think everyone in the church came to accept these two points, and as a result, 80 percent of our problem was solved. So much of the divisiveness of tongues-speaking turns very little on the tongues phenomenon itself, but on what it allegedly attests. It so easily promotes pride in those who think that it confirms they have a measure of the Spirit not enjoyed by others; and for the same reason it evokes resentment, jealousy, and defensiveness among many noncharismatics who feel they are being relegated to second-class status in the church. Moreover, because we did not conclude that all contemporary tongues must automatically be dismissed as illegitimate, the few who were practicing tongues in private did not feel threatened or begin to hurl accusations that the leadership did not really believe the Bible and was not open to the Spirit.
We then took two more steps. The first was to invite anyone who had attended the series of addresses to testify as to his or her experience on these matters, and to seek to evaluate that experience on the basis of what had been learned from the series. This proved fascinating. In the mercy of God, enough trust had been established to allow us to listen to remarkably diverse points of view, and without rancor. A few testified how they felt they had been helped by their gift of tongues, but were quite willing to admit that they had unwittingly elevated it to the level of criterion, a step they were prepared to abandon. One person, a highly respected deacon, told of his own experiences in the charismatic movement, and how he had left it because he had come to think that its claims were commonly false. Another deacon who, I knew, had been converted in Pentecostal circles, at first said nothing. I did not know what he would say, but I elicited from him his own testimony, not wanting anything to be bottled up. He cheerfully acknowledged, with gratitude to God, the context of his conversion as a young patrolman in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. In the long watches of the night, when he sat in his car by the hour in a fairly remote part of the Rocky Mountains, he used some of his time praying in tongues, and he felt that the experience had made him profoundly aware of God’s presence and had helped to ground his fledgling faith. I asked him if he still, twenty years later, spoke in tongues, and he replied, “No, I don’t.” I asked him why not; and he answered, with innocent candor, “I guess it’s because I don’t need it now. I think that was for when I was a baby Christian.”
That judgment, of course, needed to be assessed against the testimony of Paul, who, certainly no baby Christian, could testify that he spoke in tongues more than any of the Corinthians. But the direction of the discussion, including the witness of that police officer, was profoundly right in another sense: without suggesting that all experiences of tongues-speaking are spurious, the general effect was to downplay the importance of the phenomenon. That is surely in line with one of Paul’s aims in 1 Corinthians 12–14, and the effect in our church was to draw the sting out of further discussion.
I took one more step. I asked for another week to survey New Testament teaching on church discipline before offering any recommendation; and the congregation kindly agreed. At that last Wednesday evening, I tried to outline the three areas that could lead to the supreme sanction, excommunication: flagrantly immoral life, major doctrinal aberration, and a loveless, fundamentally divisive spirit. It was the last one, of course, that was so important in our context: “Warn a divisive person once, and then warn him a second time. After that, have nothing to do with him” (Titus 3:10). This strong response is a reflection of the New Testament’s profound commitment to the unity of the church. The question, then, was this: In the light of what we had learned of tongues and related gifts in the New Testament, and in the light of the emphasis on loving unity in the body, what stance should we as a church adopt?
The conclusion was that we would not foster tongues-speaking in public meetings, but we would not oppose them if they occurred, provided they fell within the Pauline stipulations. However, those who felt they had the gift were encouraged to practice it in private, rather than in public assembly where those who were still suspicious of all instances of the phenomenon would have been more than a little uncomfortable. We also agreed in the strongest terms that if a charismatic began to use his or her gift to proselytize, or if a noncharismatic began to agitate to squeeze the charismatics out, action would immediately be taken by the church leaders to warn against the divisiveness bound up with such conduct.
In the Lord’s mercy, we did not lose anyone, and in six months, the issue was dead. In retrospect, it is clearer to me now than it was then that many things could have gone much worse than they did, if we had not enjoyed the mix of people who were there. Doubtless in a slightly different mix, or in a difference ecclesiastical tradition, exactly the same sorts of arguments might have led to occasional use of tongues in public assembly But of the thrust of the steps taken, and of the relative valuation of church unity and the place of tongues-speaking, I would not change one iota if placed in a similar situation today.
In short, the church must hunger for personal and corporate submission to the lordship of Christ. We must desire to know more of God’s presence in our lives, and pray for a display of unleashed, reforming, revivifying power among us, dreading all steps that aim to domesticate God. But such prayer and hunger must always be tempered with joyful submission to the constraints of biblical discipline.
1. Cyril G. Williams, Tongues of the Spirit: A Study of Pentecostal Glossolalia and Related Phenomena (Cardiff: University of Wales, 1981), 36.
2. See M. M. B. Turner, “Spiritual Gifts Then and Now,” Vox Evangelica 15 (1985): 17; J. Kremer, Pfingstbericht und Pfingstgeschehen: Eine exegetische Untersuchung zu Apg.2.1–13 (Stuttgart: KBW, 1973): 120–26.
3. I cannot here discuss the position of those who argue that regardless of what Luke means, he is so removed from the historical reality that his report cannot seriously be taken as a reliable record of what took place. For the most recent reflection on this stance, see Christopher Forbes, “Glossolalia in Early Christianity” (unpublished paper, Macquarie University, 1985), 6–8.
4. See Charles R. Smith, Tongues in Biblical Perspective, 2d ed. (Winona Lake, Ind.: BMH, 1973), 25–40.
5. See I. Howard Marshall, Acts (Leicester: Inter-Varsity, 1980), 70–71.
6. E.g., R. H. Gundry, “‘Ecstatic Utterance’ (N.E.B.)?,” Journal of Theological Studies 17 (1966): 304; Thomas R. Edgar, Miraculous Gifts: Are They for Today? (Neptune, N.J.: Loizeaux, 1983), 126; Klaus Haacker, “Das Pfingstwunder als exegetisches Problem,” in Verborum Veritas: Festschrift für G. Stälin, ed. Otto Böcher and Klaus Haacker (Wuppertal: Brockhaus, 1970), 125–31.
7. Turner, “Spiritual Gifts Then and Now,” 17.
8. Ralph Shallis, Le miracle de l’Esprit (Fontenay-sous-Bois, France: Editions Telos, 1977), 250–51.
9. See J. I. Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit (Leicester: Inter-Varsity; Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, 1984), 205ff.; and more generally, Robert Banks and Geoffrey Moon, “Speaking in Tongues: A Survey of the New Testament Evidence,” Churchman 80 (1966): 278–94.
10. Craig A. Evans, “The Prophetic Setting of the Pentecost Sermon,” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 74 (1983): 148–50.
11. H. A. Guy, New Testament Prophecy: Its Origin and Significance (London: Epworth, 1947), 91. See also Forbes, “Glossolalia in Early Christianity,” 9–11; David E. Aune, Prophecy in Early Christianity and the Ancient Mediterranean World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 199.
12. Pat Robertson, My Prayer for You (Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, 1977), 32.
13. Rev. Ken Hall, in private correspondence, dated 21 June 1985.
14. See H. Horton, The Gifts of the Spirit (Springfield, Mo.: Gospel Publishing, 1975), 152; Michael Green, I Believe in the Holy Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 164–65.
15. Exercising considerable restraint, I shall refrain from commenting here on the exact nature and significance of Christian baptism; for my sole purpose in this and related discussions farther on is to demonstrate that Luke does not attempt to lay out a programmatic order among baptism, faith, and baptism in the Holy Spirit.
16. James D. G. Dunn, Baptism in the Holy Spirit, Studies in Biblical Theology 15 (London: SCM, 1970), 55–68; Anthony A. Hoekema, Holy Spirit Baptism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), 36–37.
17. See especially M. M. B. Turner, “Luke and the Spirit: Studies in the Significance of Receiving the Spirit in Luke-Acts” (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 1980), 161ff. See also the discussion by David Ewert, The Holy Spirit in the New Testament (Scottdale, Penn.: Herald, 1983); Green, I Believe in the Holy Spirit; Howard M. Ervin, Conversion-Initiation and the Baptism of the Holy Spirit: A Critique of James D. G. Dunn, “Baptism in the Holy Spirit” (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1984), 25–28; Harold D. Hunter, Spirit-Baptism: A Pentecostal Alternative (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1983), 83–84.
18. Hunter, Spirit-Baptism, 71ff.
19. G. Millon, Les grâces de service. La manifestation de l’Esprit pour l’utilité: charismes, diaconies et operations selon 1 Corinthiens 12:4–7 (Mulhouse: Centre de Culture Chrétienne, 1976), 78.
20. For discussion of the way in which Apollos (Acts 18) is to be related to this narrative of “disciples” in Ephesus (Acts 19), see C. K. Barrett, “Apollos and the Twelve Disciples of Ephesus,” in The New Testament Age: Studies in Honor of Bo Reicke, ed. William C. Wenrich, 2 vols. (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1984), 1:29–39.
21. εἰ πνεῦμα ἅγιον ἐλάβετε πιστεύσαντες. Apparently the Western text also tried to smooth out the difficulties surrounding the Ephesians’ response to Paul’s question by exchanging ἔστιν for λαμβάνουσιν τινες.
22. Only here in Acts is the plural noun disciples anarthrous.
23. Gordon D. Fee, “Hermeneutics and Historical Precedent—a Major Problem in Pentecostal Hermeneutics,” in Perspectives on the New Pentecostalism, ed. Russell P. Spittler (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1976), 118–32.
24. Millon, Les grâces, 82, rightly points out that when Paul writes his epistles he certainly does not distinguish between Christians baptized in the Holy Spirit and otherwise. See further Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit, 205–6.
25. Roger Stronstad, The Charismatic Theology of Luke (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1984).
26. See especially Turner, “Luke and the Spirit.”
27. This analysis is profoundly tied up with another question recently brought to the forefront of debate by Aune (Prophecy). Much contemporary scholarship holds that first-century Judaism believed the age of prophecy had passed with the last of the writing prophets. If God continued to speak it was only indirectly, via the בַּת־קוֹל . Prophecy would not be resumed until the messianic age, or just prior to it. Aune disputes this. Contrary to repeated statements, Josephus twice speaks of prophecy in reference to his contemporary situation; and prophecy, studied historically instead of theologically, continues right through the disputed period (see David E. Aune, “The Use of προφήτης in Josephus,” Journal of Biblical Literature 101 [1982]: 419–21). Despite his protestations, however, Aune’s appeal to historical (as opposed to theological) categories offers no escape; for he himself is repeatedly forced by the evidence to draw out the many distinctions between Old Testament canonical prophecy and prophecy in the later period (see Aune, Prophecy, especially 106ff., 139, 153, 195). The failure to integrate these distinctions into Aune’s broader thesis also has some bearing on his treatment of the relative degrees of authority in Old Testament prophecy, Josephus, New Testament prophets, apostles, and so forth; for the “prophets” of the late Second Temple period saw themselves in a different light from that of their canonical forebears, and gave utterances that were formally and materially different from them. The truth of the matter is that in the first century “prophecy” is a rubric so vast in semantic range that it can include phenomena with no significant relation to canonical prophecy. This semantic range, as we have seen, is attested in the New Testament: e.g., one of the Cretan “prophets” said, “Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons” (Titus 1:12), which certainly does not place Epimenides on a par with Isaiah, so far as the writer of the Pastorals is concerned. Similarly, the principal distribution of what I have called “the prophetic Spirit,” characteristic of Christian experience after Pentecost, does not require that each Christian prophet have precisely the same authority status as the prophet Isaiah, or even that the nature of the prophecy delivered be substantially similar. The spread of the categories is too large, and the range of qualifying circumstances too complex, to sanction such brutal reductionism.
28. See further M. M. B. Turner, “The Concept of Receiving the Spirit in John’s Gospel,” Vox Evangelica 10 (1977): 26–28.
29. See especially Turner, “Luke and the Spirit”; idem, “Spiritual Gifts Then and Now,” especially 41ff. For a similar reading of the Old Testament evidence, see W. J. Dumbrell, Covenant and Creation: An Old Testament Covenantal Theology (Exeter: Paternoster, 1984). Conservatives from both the Reformed and the charismatic camps have frequently argued that there is no difference between the experience of Old Testament and New Testament believers, but only between their respective understandings of God’s salvific purposes. To put it another way, Old Testament and New Testament believers are equally regenerate (a decidedly New Testament term). So, for instance, John Rea, “The Personal Relationship of Old Testament Believers to the Holy Spirit,” in Essays on Apostolic Themes: Studies in Honor of Howard M. Ervin, ed. Paul Elbert (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1985), 92–103. But the evidence adduced inevitably pertains to special leaders, such as David or one of the prophets or priests. It ignores not only the Old Testament passages, already cited, that anticipate a new and more widely distributed experience of the Spirit, but also the pulsating New Testament stance, especially strong in Paul, that sees the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian and the church as the decisive evidence that the new age has dawned and the messianic reign has begun. The structure of New Testament eschatology is jeopardized by the failure to discern such distinctions.
30. B. B. Warfield, Counterfeit Miracles (1918; reprint ed., London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1972). See similarly John F. MacArthur, Jr., The Charismatics: A Doctrinal Perspective (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978), 73ff.; John F. Walvoord, The Holy Spirit (Findlay, Ohio: Dunham, 1958), 173ff.; and many others.
31. On this point, see the firm critique of Colin Brown, Miracles and the Modern Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), by William Lane Craig, “Colin Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind: A Review Article,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 27 (1984): 473–85.
32. Turner, “Spiritual Gifts Then and Now,” 24–26.
33. A. Richardson, The Miracle Stories of the Gospels (London: SCM, 1941); J. Kallas, The Significance of the Synoptic Miracles (London: SPCK, 1961); H. van der Loos, The Miracles of Jesus (Leiden: Brill, 1965).
34. D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, 12 vols. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), 8:204–7.
35. See also the stress on “way,” camino, to be lived, walked, as traced out by M. A. Barriola, El Espiritu Santo y la Praxis Cristiana: El tema del camino en la teologia de San Pablo (Montevideo: Instituto teologico des Uruguay, 1977).
36. See Walter J. Hollenweger, “Charismatic and Pentecostal Movements: A Challenge to the Churches,” in The Holy Spirit, ed. D. Kirkpatrick (Nashville: Tidings, 1974).
37. Phillip H. Wiebe, “The Pentecostal Initial Evidence Doctrine,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 27 (1984): 465–72.
38. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, God’s Ultimate Purpose: An Exposition of Ephesians 1 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979), 243–378.
39. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Joy Unspeakable: The Baptism of the Holy Spirit (Eastbourne: Kingsway, 1984).
40. For example, to appeal to the aorist participle πιστεύσαντες (pisteusantes) in Eph. 1:13 as if in itself it provides any support for the view that the exercise of faith is anterior to the sealing of the Spirit displays ignorance not only of the Greek verbal system, but also of the fact that adverbial participles modifying finite verbs refer, in many occurrences, to action that is concurrent with that of the finite verb.
41. Moreover, within this framework it is possible to provide a coherent theological explanation of the charismatic’s actual experience: see especially Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit, 219–28. Here, too, we might mention that the Puritans, who saw in the expression Baptism in the Holy Spirit neither a necessary reference to conversion nor to a postconversion enduement, could use it in prayer for revival: “Baptize us afresh with thy Holy Spirit!” or the like. See Iain Murray, “Baptism with the Spirit: What Is the Scriptural Meaning?,” Banner of Truth 127 (April 1974): 5–22.
42. Wayne A. Grudem, “Scripture’s Self-Attestation and the Problem of Formulating a Doctrine of Scripture,” in Scripture and Truth, ed. D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983), 19–39, 359–68.
43. An attempt has been made to discuss the contemporary questions surrounding the doctrine of Scripture espoused by the main streams of historic Christianity in D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge, eds., Scripture and Truth (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983); idem, Hermeneutics, Authority, and Canon (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986); D. A. Carson, “Three Books on the Bible: A Critical Review,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 26 (1983): 337–67.
44. Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948), 326–27.
45. Wayne A. Grudem, The Gift of Prophecy in 1 Corinthians (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982), 69–70, 119–36.
46. See further William Baird, “Visions, Revelation, and Ministry: Reflections on 2 Cor 12:1–5 and Gal 1:11–17,” Journal of Biblical Literature 104 (1985): 651–62.
47. Turner, “Spiritual Gifts Then and Now,” 46–48.
48. W. Paul Bowers, “Paul’s Route through Mysia: A Note on Acts xiv.8,” Journal of Theological Studies 30 (1979): 507–11.
49. I am grateful to Dr. Peter T. O’Brien for reminding me of this.
50. See Bruce Yocum, Prophecy: Exercising the Prophetic Gifts of the Spirit in the Church Today (Ann Arbor: Servant, 1976), 82.
51. Ronald Knox, Enthusiasm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950).
52. E.g., George W. Dollar, “Church History and the Tongues Movement,” Bibliotheca Sacra 120 (1963): 309–11; Cleon L. Rogers, Jr., “The Gift of Tongues in the Post Apostolic Church,” Bibliotheca Sacra 122 (1965): 134–43.
53. Robert G. Gromacki, The Modern Tongues Movement (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1967), 143.
54. E.g., Stanley M. Burgess, The Spirit and the Church: Aniquity (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1984); Ronald A. N. Kydd, Charismatic Gifts in the Early Church (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1984).
55. From an unsolicited pamphlet sent to me by an organization called Pentecostal Christian Evangelism.
56. E.g., Louis Bouyer, “Some Charismatic Movements in the History of the Church,” in Perspectives on Charismatic Renewal, ed. Edward D. O’Connor (Notre Dame: University Press, 1975), 113–31; George H. Williams and Edith Waldvogel, “A History of Speaking in Tongues and Related Gifts,” in The Charismatic Movement, ed. Michael P. Hamilton (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 61–113; W. J. Samarin, Tongues of Men and Angels: The Religious Language of Pentecostalism (New York: Macmillan, 1972).
57. David Christie-Murray, Voices from the Gods: Speaking with Tongues (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979).
58. One thinks, for instance, of the evidence chronicled by John Wesley Bready, This Freedom—Whence? (New York: American Tract Society, 1942—the American edition of England: Before and After Wesley); Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1970, 1979).
59. Paul Elbert, “Calvin and the Spiritual Gifts,” in Essays on Apostolic Themes: Studies in Honor of Howard M. Ervin, ed. Paul Elbert (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1985), 142–43. A more negative though generally evenhanded treatment of Irving is provided by his most recent biographer: Arnold Dallimore, Forerunner of the Charismatic Movement: The Life of Edward Irving (Chicago: Moody, 1983).
60. Institutes 4.3.4.
61. Calvin, in loc.
62. Turner, “Spiritual Gifts Then and Now,” 53.
63. See Francis A. Sullivan, “Speaking in Tongues,” Lumen Vitae 31 (1976): 145–70.
64. Edwin H. Palmer, The Holy Spirit: His Person and Ministry (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1974), 112.
65. Michael Harper, Three Sisters: A Provocative Look at Evangelicals, Charismatics and Catholic Charismatics and Their Relationship to One Another (Wheaton: Tyndale, 1979), 49–50. Or does he think that all Catholic charismatics have abandoned some of the traditional distinctives of conservative Catholicism?
66. The Life in the Spirit Seminars Team Manual (Notre Dame, Ind.: Charismatic Renewal Services, 1973), 146–51.
67. See the references in Walter J. Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, trans. R. A. Wilson (London: SCM, 1972), 515, 517.
68. Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit, 277 n. 12.
69. See W. M. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveller and the Roman Citizen, 9th ed. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1907), 94–97.
70. For other suggestions, see F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 208–9.
71. Some have argued that ἀσθένεια (astheneia) here refers to “weakness” rather than “illness.” The word’s semantic range certainly includes both; but in this context it is hard to believe that something other than illness, perhaps a weakening or debilitating illness, is meant. In any case, rendering the word weaknesses does not remove the problem, for if the “weaknesses” are physical and frequent, it is hard to imagine how they differ from illnesses; and if they are moral or spiritual, it is hard to imagine why Paul would prescribe wine.
72. Charles Farah, Jr., “A Critical Analysis: The ‘Roots and Fruits’ of Faith-Formula Theology,” Pneuma 3/1 (1981): 3–21.
73. Ibid., 4–5.
74. The names and one or two details have been changed to protect the guilty.
75. One of the weakest arguments advanced in favor of the view that the more spectacular χαρίσματα (charismata) were withdrawn at the end of the apostolic age depends on the observation that when the lists of the grace gifts (mentioned in the first chapter) are arranged in the chronological order in which they were given there is a decreasing emphasis on the supernatural members. See Ronald E. Baxter, Gifts of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1983), 83–84; Gromacki, The Modern Tongues Movement, 125ff. To establish theology on trajectories plotted out in occasional documents, when the documents themselves do not reflect such a theological conclusion in the text itself, is always a hermeneutically dubious endeavor—as witness not a few discussions on Christology or on Frükatholizismus.
76. See Arthur T. Pierson, George Müller of Bristol (Westwood, N.J.: Revell, n.d.).
77. There are of course exceptional pockets—on both sides. For instance, in French Canada numerous branches of evangelicalism are growing rapidly, not just the charismatic wing.
78. Again, I would make an exception of the gift of apostleship in the narrow sense defined in the third chapter—not because it is a peculiar χάρισμα (charisma), but on the ground that this gift is so bound up with personal acquaintance of the resurrected Lord, in his resurrection body (and for the Twelve further bound up with knowing Jesus in the days of his flesh), that it cannot be thought to continue.
79. See most recently Watson E. Mills, A Theological/Exegetical Approach to Glossolalia (Lanham, Md. University Press of America, 1985), 114ff.
80. E.g., W. M. Horn, “Speaking in Tongues: A Retrospective Appraisal,” Lutheran Quarterly 17 (1965): 316–29. See also Richard A. Hutch, The Personal Ritual of Glossolalia,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 19 (1980): 255–66.
81. See the observations of Kilian McDonnell, Charismatic Renewal and the Churches (New York: Seabury, 1976); Yves M. J. Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, trans. David Smit, 3 vols. (New York: Seabury; London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1983), 2:176–77.
82. E.g., Flora M. J. Pierce, “Glossolalia,” Journal of Religion and Psychical Research 4 (1981): 168–78.
83. Felicitas D. Goodman, Speaking in Tongues: A Cross-Cultural Study of Glossolalia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 124.
84. See further John P. Kildahl, “Psychological Observations,” in The Charismatic Movement, ed. Michael P. Hamilton (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 124–42; Christie-Murray, Voices, 199–228; Gerd Thiessen, Psychologische Aspecte paulinischer Theologie (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1983), 66–112, 269–340; and especially H. Newton Malony and A. Adams Lorekin, Jr., Glossolalia: Behavioral Science Perspectives on Speaking in Tongues (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). Their typology, however (260ff.), borrowed from Ernst Troeltsch, is impossibly reductionistic.
85. The problem is nicely set out by Avery Dulles, “Earthen Vessels: Institution and Charism in the Church,” in Above Every Name: The Lordship of Christ and Social Systems, ed. Thomas E. Clark (New York: Paulist, 1980), 156ff.
86. See Ronald Y. K. Fung, especially his “Ministry in the New Testament,” in The Church in the Bible and the World, ed. D. A. Carson (Exeter: Paternoster, 1987).