Unleashed Power and the Constraints of Discipline

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of spiritual gifts from 1 Corinthians 12-14.

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In many ways, this lecture 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. I must articulate conclusions without adequate space to justify them. My only excuse is the sort of preliminary synthesis I am proposing seems preferable to leaving large numbers of loose strands dangling in Sydney’s spring breezes.

I hasten to add the subtitle of this final lecture, Toward a Theology of Spiritual Gifts, is unforgivably presumptuous. The truth of the matter is what you hear will be long on the toward and short on the theology. What I propose to offer you is a number of reflections on a variety of topics related to 1 Corinthians 12–14 in a final bid to bring integration to the four preceding lectures and to link the results with broader streams of biblical thought and contemporary experience.

By far the greatest part of what I have to say has to do with the book of Acts. We turn, then, to reflections on tongues, miracles, and the baptism of 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.

1. Acts, chapter 2

A) It must be insisted 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’ summary of what went on cannot easily be squared with the text. He claims sounds uttered by the speakers “… seemed to some Jewish hearers as identifiable words in languages dimly recalled.” He says, “It is even possible that interspersed among inarticulate utterances would be actual, identifiable words. This occurs, sometimes, in modern glossolalia.”

This will not do. We saw in the third lecture the word for tongue, glossa, cannot easily be reduced in meaning to free-verbalization bearing no cognitive content. Luke attests the hearers, on the day of Pentecost, asked in amazement how they could hear distinctive utterances, literally, in their own dialects, another word, yet, for language. (Chapter 2, verse 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. (Chapter 2, verse 11)

These wonders were enunciated in the languages recognized by linguistic peers, Parthians, Medes, Elamites. It even goes beyond the text to argue this was a miracle of hearing rather than one of speech, for Luke’s purpose is to associate the descent of the Spirit with his activity amongst the believers, not to postulate a miracle of the Spirit amongst those who were still unbelievers.

What, then, of the charge of drunkenness? (Verse 13) Does this not suggest many people heard only gibberish and not real languages at all? Is this not an implicit support of glossolalia, not xenoglossia? Such a conclusion is premature. After all, if 3,000 repented and were baptized after Peter’s sermon (verse 41) presumably the crowd before which the believers were speaking in tongues was much greater. 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 some particular one did manage to get about and hear every tongue in turn. 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 this was a tongue that was recognizable.

It has also been suggested, with some plausibility, the charge of drunkenness may have emerged especially 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. 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.”

B) Judging from the flow of the book of Acts, one cannot seriously doubt the 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. A prophecy reported in all four of the Gospels.

That promise is then taken up by the resurrected Christ in Acts 1:5, where it serves as the basis for Christ’s 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 what Luke describes in Acts 2 is not the baptism in the Spirit, since that actual term is not specifically used in Acts 2, but the filling of the spirit, the term that is used. Shallis compounds an argument from silence with over-specification of the semantic range of baptism of the Spirit and filling with the Spirit and with a failure to grasp the flow of Luke’s argument.

Secondly, 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 Christian experience we shall shortly try to explore. But there can be no basis in the command to wait for the gift of the Father (in Acts 1:4) to justify contemporary, post-conversion 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.

C) Luke’s salvation-historical focus is also attested by his handling of the Joel prophecy (Acts 2:16–21).

Joel had predicted in the last days certain things would take place in connection with the eschatological pouring out of the Spirit on all people. Peter says, referring to the manifestations of the Spirit occurring all around him, “This is what was spoken by the prophet Joel.” Chapter 2, verse 16.

There may or may not be some further implications about how believers continue to show the Spirit throughout these last days. That could only be deduced from a further examination of how Luke and other writers treat this theme. I’ll pick it up shortly. Certainly Luke’s emphasis in Acts 2 is not on paradigm for personal experience, but on the fulfillment of prophecy.

The salvation-historical argument that seeks to explain Pentecost in terms of what the prophet said and, therefore, in terms of identifying Jesus as the promised Messiah (verses 22 and following) receives all the stress. Indeed, Craig Evans has drawn attention to numerous parallels between Joel and Acts 2, suggesting the New Testament believers grasped a very tight connection between their Pentecostal experiences and the prophetic narrative of the prophet.

D) It is most striking, as Guy points out, 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.”

In other words, prophecy is an expression that embraces tongues, in Luke’s terminology. Put more generally, prophecy, tongues, revelatory dreams, and visions are all lumped together in a single category as the expected attestation 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.

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. 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 in a few minutes. Moreover, if this judgment is right, it suggests 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 Luke understood several manifestations of the Holy Spirit to be appropriate fulfillments of Joel, each attesting, in its own way, the blessed Holy Spirit, the Spirit of prophecy, had been poured out.

E) There is no evidence the 3,000 converts who accepted Peter’s message and were baptized actually spoke in tongues (Acts 2:41).

The “all of them” in chapter 2, verse 4, who did were either the apostles (chapter 1, verse 26) or, more likely, all the first believers who were gathered together in one place (chapter 2, verse 1) when the Spirit descended.

Of these, it appears all spoke in tongues, for 2:4 in the NIV reads, “All of them …” That is, presumably the believers gathered at the one place, perhaps 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 the blessing came upon him.” Then this verse is quoted. The reasons why this inference does not stand up are several:

First, it is possible verse 4 is not saying quite so much, as a friend has pointed out to me. We may compare Acts 2:44 and following. There we are told, “All the believers were together and had everything in common,” selling their possessions and goods and so forth, which might lead the unwary to think every believer sold everything, even though by verse 44 we are told they met in their homes, which presumably suggests not everyone sold everything, even if those who retained their homes were very generous with them. In other words, the all in 2:44 may not be exhaustive and may not be distributed to the second verb.

Similarly, in 2:4, it is possible 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 more likely 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 the point simply to warn against milking texts for what may not be there.

Secondly, even if the text affirms all who were filled with the Spirit spoke in tongues (as I think it does), it does not follow this is the normative New Testament stance. We have already seen that Paul flatly denies all speak in tongues. (1 Corinthians 12)

Thirdly, if the 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 and 3 as equally normative. There ought, then, to be the sound of a mighty rushing wind and separated tongues of fire resting on each Spirit-filled person as part of the normative Christian attestation.

Fourthly, 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.

Fifthly, although these tongues were real human languages and communicated cognitive messages, it is by no means clear that such messages were actually essentially evangelistic. What the crowds heard the tongues speakers declaring, we are told (verse 11), was the “wonders of God.” The verbal form of the same expression occurs in 10:46 and 19:17, where praise is in view, not evangelism. There were no unbelievers present.

Similarly, in chapter 2. The people here praise, and in their own languages, but this generated questions, sympathetic and otherwise, not conversions. It is Peter’s preaching, presumably in Aramaic, that brings about the thousands of conversions. Thus, what modern jargon would call pre-evangelism is what the tongues themselves actually constitute. 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 tongues in 1 Corinthians 14 are understood to be, first and foremost, addressed to God (1 Corinthians 14:2) and a gift used in prayer (14:4). It appears the crowds hear the believers on the day of Pentecost praising God. The church needs to learn afresh the telling power of undiluted praise, even as a kind of indirect witness to unbelievers who are looking on. 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 quite clear, I think, is non-charismatics who attempt to make the evangelistic use of tongues their normative and exclusive purpose in order to eliminate all valid gift of tongues today are simply wrong. Tongues are not primarily evangelistic, even in Acts 2. In any case, this is the only passage where uninterpreted tongues are even understood by unbelievers.

Sixthly, 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, is simply irrelevant, as it has to do with the 3,000 who, so far as we know, did not speak in tongues. Not the original group.

The reception of the Holy Spirit promised by Peter and presumably received by the 3,000 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 at least reasonably conclude Luke is not particularly concerned to establish a proper order amongst baptism, faith, and baptism in the Holy Spirit. That just is not his focus of concern.

2. Acts, chapter 8

A) This passage is remarkable in that the Samaritans are said to believe the gospel of the kingdom Philip preaches, and then they are baptized, including Simon the sorcerer. Yet they do not receive the Holy Spirit until Peter and John travel to Samaria and lay their hands on them (Acts 8:12–13; 8:17.

The text does not explicitly say this reception of the Spirit was attested by tongues, but it seems likely since Simon must have witnessed some kind of powerful external phenomenon to prompt him to offer money to the apostles.

The crucial question in the context of the contemporary debate between charismatics and non-charismatics 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.

B) Some non-charismatics, including Jimmy Dunn and Anthony Hoekema, strongly urge the Samaritans were not converted until the Holy Spirit came upon them.

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 considerable detail, 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 detailed report of the debate, 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 purpose.

C) Similarly, I have trouble with the typology that treats Acts 8 as normative for individualizing Christian personal experience.

First, faith and baptism and, subsequently, a special enduement of the Holy Spirit. The problem, in part, is the debate has been cast in simple antitheses. Either the charismatic two-step exegesis is correct, or the non-charismatic insistence the Samaritans were not converted until after they had received the Spirit is correct.

But we are not shut up to those alternatives. It is far from clear, judging from the diversity of his approaches Luke is particularly interested in the question of the normative order of faith, water rite, Holy Spirit experience. In fact, if you go from account to account, he mixes up the order constantly. 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 Cornelius episode, certainly used by Luke to make the recognition of Gentiles as full Christians by the Jewish believers in Jerusalem (Acts 10–11); and finally, the disciples of John the Baptist in Ephesus, who, as we shall see, fall into a kind of salvation-historical warp.

In each case, Luke is introducing a new group until there are no new groups left as the gospel expands throughout the empire. In each case, the manifestation of the Spirit’s presence in tongues is part of a corporate experience. Never in Acts is the experience of an individual convert, even though Luke has many opportunities for such accounts, actually recorded as receiving the Spirit subsequent to becoming a Christian. For example, Lydia, the Philippian jailor, and about 20 others.

It appears, then, 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 Gentiles, if the 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 principially impossible once their reception of the Holy Spirit was so publicly dependent on the Jerusalem apostles.

For their part, the Christian Jews in Jerusalem may well have been less than eager to accept the Samaritans as full brothers and sisters unless such a link had been forged. Certainly that is the essential motif in connection with the conversion of the Gentiles in Acts 10 and 11, to which we now turn.

D) There is, in fact, a deeper theme 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’ death and the eschatological significance of Jesus’ 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 the food laws no longer apply and whatever God declares clean is to be treated as clean, irrespective of antecedent law. Part of this debate develops 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 Gentiles must first become Jewish proselytes, pledging themselves by circumcision to obey Moses and to live under the old covenant. Only then are they eligible to accept Jesus, the Jewish Messiah.

The alternative view prevails at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15. One of the decisive arguments turns on Peter’s experience with Cornelius and his kin. See Acts 15:8. 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.

E) 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 in the next verses rather misses the point. Acts 8:26 and following.

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, (Acts 8:29) he was most likely a Jewish proselyte. Within the constraints imposed by the law on eunuchs, he worshipped as a Jew. He, therefore, cannot serve as an adequate counter-example to the interpretation of Acts being sketched out here.

F) Some have suggested Peter’s handling of Simon, including the frightening, “May your money perish with you,” (That is, quite literally in Greek, “To hell with you and your money.” The trouble is that has different overtones in our ears and so we can’t say it that way, but that’s literally what it means. “May you and your money go to hell,” so it’s a very frightening curse) proves the 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 Samaritans have come to faith, including Simon, but even after the Spirit has fallen. The difficult questions Simon raises for us lie not in the realm of the existence or otherwise of a post-conversion 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’s in the footnotes.)

3. Acts 10-11

A) It is worth noting, in this instance, the Spirit falls on Cornelius and his family and friends while Peter is still preaching his sermon.

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 then all repeated in chapter 11. The profligacy in the use of space can only mean Luke understands the points he is making to be absolutely crucial to the development of his chosen themes. So crucial he does not want to have his readers miss any of them.

B) When we press a little closer, we observe 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 (Acts 10:45), apparently thinking up to this point the Gentiles would surely have to become Jewish proselytes before they could be eligible for this gift.

The reasons why they know the Spirit has fallen on the Gentiles are summarized 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 probably 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.” (Acts 10:47)

It is going beyond the text to conclude, with Millon, the Jewish believers actually understood the content of the tongues. That would presuppose either some unmentioned use of the gift of interpretation or some unmentioned knowledge of languages unknown to the tongue-speakers. It is more likely they simply heard the tongues and recognized them to be of a piece with their own Pentecost experience. Therefore, they drew the appropriate conclusion.

C) 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 was 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 he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could oppose God?” (Acts 11:15–17) The explicit references to Acts 2 are obvious, but as in chapter 10, it is unnecessary to conclude Peter actually understood the tongues that were spoken or that they were exactly the same languages as those spoken in Acts 2 or that the noise of rushing wind was heard or that tongues of fire appeared on each believer.

For all that is necessary is Peter heard the tongues and associated them with Pentecost, thereby concluding 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 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 and 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.

4. Acts chapter 19

A) This rather strange account has, in the past, sometimes been used to justify a post-conversion 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’ve believed?”

Today, almost all sides accept the rendering of the NIV, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” 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.

B) 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.

In chapter 18 we are told, “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.”

It is very difficult to know exactly where Apollos, and, for that matter, the Ephesians of Acts 19 actually stood, but I would be prepared to defend a reconstruction along the following lines: They had apparently become followers of John the Baptist and received his baptism, either personally or, conceivably, from one of John’s converts. They had followed the Baptist’s ministry long enough to know he himself had pointed beyond himself to Jesus, the One whose sandals the Baptist 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.” (Acts 18:25) This probably suggests knowledge not only of his 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 there were various people who left Jerusalem, like thousands of other Diaspora Jews, shortly after the Passover feast. That is, they learned of Jesus’ death and resurrection but not of the coming of the Spirit. This placed them in exactly the same situation then, as the believers in Acts 1, except Pentecost had already taken place.

To put it another way, these disciples in Acts 19 are living in one dispensation earlier than the actual state of play in the unfolding sweep of redemptive history. We may imagine, then, when Paul found these Ephesian believers, he sensed something was lacking and began to probe them with questions. At the risk of over-dramatization, 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?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” Pause.

“No. We have not so much as heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” Which may simply mean that there is a Holy Spirit to be received, not necessarily that they had never heard the words before.

“But you were baptized as believers.”

“Of course.”

“Then what baptism did you receive?”

“Well, John’s baptism, of course.”

The penny drops. Paul understands what has happened, and the rest of the narrative flows easily enough. It is important to recognize if this is anything like what happened, there are two entailments:

First, Paul presupposes by this line of questioning reception of the Spirit at conversion is normal and expected and, secondly, the distinctive abnormality of the Ephesians experience could not be repeated today since it is, initially, inconceivable someone could be found alive today who was a baptized follower of John the Baptist, an enthusiastic supporter of the Baptist’s witness to Jesus, and apparently also a believer in Jesus’ death and resurrection but quite ignorant of Pentecost.

D) In the context of Acts 19, then, tongues, unlike Acts 2, do not communicate the praise of God to unbelievers, and unlike Acts 8 and Acts 10 and 11 have nothing to do with accrediting new groups to the Jerusalem Jewish Christians.

Rather, here they served as the attestation to the Ephesian believers themselves of the gift of the Spirit that transfers them from one dispensation to the one in which they should be living.

E) The words, “They spoke in tongues and prophesied,” (Acts 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.

5. Miscellaneous reflections on Acts

We come, then, to miscellaneous reflections on Acts that will try to pull all of these observations together.

A) The essentially salvation-historical structure of the book of Acts is too often overlooked.

As a result, as Fee (himself a charismatic) laments, the exegesis of Acts in most charismatic circles is hermeneutically uncontrolled. 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, about nine of them. If being Spirit filled without speaking in tongues was God’s path for some them, it is hard to see why tongues-speaking should be made the criterion for proper obedience to God today.

B) Not much more appealing is the thesis of Stronstad.

He adopts a charismatic exegesis of numerous passages in Acts and argues his interpretations are the most natural, provided one does not read Paul into Luke. Paul, he admits, allows no second-blessing theology. But Luke does, he says. If redaction criticism has taught us anything, it is to let individual authors speak on their own terms without premature harmonization and systematization. My problem with Stronstad’s thesis is twofold:

First, I disagree with his exegesis of Luke/Acts at so many numerous and critical junctures, so I do not find the antithesis between Luke and Paul that shapes his entire thesis and, secondly, the antithesis between Luke and Paul is not well conceived. If Luke and Paul develop complementary theologies, that is one thing. For example, if Paul stresses only conversion but does not rule out some kind of post-conversion Spirit enduement, while Luke stresses the latter.

But if Luke and Paul develop contradictory theologies, that is another matter. For example, if Paul will not permit any form of second-blessing theology, while Luke insists upon it. This 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 merely the range of allowed options, but the price is high.

One can no longer speak of canonical theology in any holistic sense. Worse, mutually contradictory theologies cannot both be true. In that sense, 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.

C) Nothing I have said should be taken to mean for Luke tongues-speaking, because it has primarily a salvation-historical set of functions, is necessarily forever past.

Charismatics have erred in trying to read an individualizing paradigm into material not concerned to provide one, but non-charismatics 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 might be called a tribal fashion. Despite remnant themes, the Scriptures picture of God working with his people as a tribal grouping whose knowledge of God and whose relations with God were peculiarly dependant on specially-endowed leaders. The Spirit of God was poured out, not on each believer in the Old Testament, but distinctively on prophet, priest, king, and a few designated special leaders such as Bezalel.

When these leaders stoop to sin, as, for instance, in 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 the 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 their 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 people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers.… This is the covenant I will make with the people 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.’ ” (Jeremiah 31:29 and following)

In short, Jeremiah understood the new covenant would bring some dramatic changes. The tribal nature of the people of God would end. The new covenant would bring with it a new emphasis on the individual’s knowledge of God. 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 amongst the people at large a secondary knowledge, a mediated knowledge, a tribal knowledge. Under the new covenant, the people of God would find not only that their sins would be 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 God 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.” (Ezekiel 36)

The same theme prevails amongst many Old Testament texts that anticipate what we might generically call the messianic age. Moses himself recognized the desideratum was a universal distribution of the Spirit, for when Joshua complains to Moses that Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp and indignantly demands 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.” (Numbers 11)

It is of this that Joel prophecies. (Joel 2:28) 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.

Experientially, this turns on the gift of the Spirit. Put more generically, what the prophets foresaw was what some have labeled the prophetic Spirit. All who live under this new covenant enjoy the gift of this prophetic Spirit. This is no mere creedal datum but a lived, transforming, charismatic (in the broad New Testament sense of that term outlined in the first lecture), vital experience. It is precisely 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 amongst them. It is the dawning of that new age that was signaled by Pentecost. That is why Peter’s quotation of the Joel prophecy is so significant. More broadly, according to all four gospels, John the Baptist predicted the Jesus Messiah would usher in that age. He would baptize his people in Holy Spirit.

Jesus himself, 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. Indeed, that Holy Spirit, that other Counselor, is, in certain respects, Jesus’ 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. 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, elsewhere, 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. Certainly, the Spirit’s purposes are Christocentric.

Certainly 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, therefore, expects them to cease once the period of inception has passed and the new age is well and truly underway. 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, in the inauguration of the messianic age, we shall abuse his text if we force it into a procrustean bed to make it tell us a particular manifestation of the Spirit attest the Spirit’s presence or filling or baptism in every believer this side of Pentecost. Luke simply does not set out to set such guidelines for it.

Yet on the other hand, there is no exegetical warrant for thinking certain classes of the Spirit’s manifestations cease once the crucial turning points of redemptive history are passed. Throughout this age, the Christian knows the Lord, personally, 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 charismata that show the Spirit are much broader (as Paul insists) than the few over which so much fuss has erupted today, but they certainly include these few.

The only charisma bound up with obsolescence is apostleship in the tightly defined sense. The reason for the obsolescence for this charisma lies not in its connection with the Spirit but in its connection with the resurrected and exalted Christ, who now no more appears to human beings as the personal, resurrected Lord until he returns at the parousia. Until his return, in other words, Jesus manifests himself now only by his Spirit. Therefore, the peculiar commission and authority of the first apostles cannot be duplicated today.

D) It is the failure to recognize this essentially eschatological structure that mars Warfield’s insistence that miracles ceased.

The heart of his argument is 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 now bound up in the Canon, the need for attestation has also passed.

All claims to miracles, including tongues, healings, prophecies must, therefore, be deemed spurious. But this argument stands up only if such miraculous gifts are theologically tied exclusively to a role of attestation. That is demonstrably not so. On the other hand, perhaps Turner is slightly reductionistic on the other side when he denies any link between miracles and attestation.

The expression signs of the apostles appears in too many crucial passages to avoid the link. Even in Jesus’ ministry, miracles and signs do attest to Jesus, even if they never ensure faith. “ ‘Believe me for the works’ sake,’ the Master declares, ‘if not for the teaching itself.’ ” But because miraculous signs have a distinctively attesting role in some instances, it does not follow that is the only role they play.

More broadly, 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, building on works by Richardson, Kallas, and van der Loos. Indeed as I have argued elsewhere, Matthew 8:16 and 17 explicitly connects Jesus’ miracles of healing and exorcism with the atonement that had not yet taken place.

They serve as foretastes of, and are predicated on, the cross work that is their foundation and justification. When a charismatic insists 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 gained by the atonement you can expect to receive between the first advent and the second advent. But of that I shall say more in a few moments. There’s still an eschaton, if you see what I mean.

E) Within the biblical theological framework I have just 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 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.

So, much of the debate over such differences has proved exceedingly sterile because each position, like each of the six blind men of Hindustan who undertake to describe an elephant, not only uses one part of the evidence as a grid to define the other parts, but actually tends to overlook the whole. 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 and 11 and of private use of tongues in 1 Corinthians 14 are both consigned to oblivion. Meanwhile, we have lost sight of the centrality of the Spirit as the down payment of the full inheritance yet to come, the first fruits of the harvest we are yet to enjoy, the way in which and by which we walk.

The diverse manifestations of the Spirit outlined in the first lecture are all ways by which God’s people manifest the Spirit’s presence. As the charismata themselves have often been over-schematized and as the purposes of miracles have often been over-schematized, so also this particular charisma’s functions have been over-schematized. Why should not tongues serve a diversity of functions?

There are, of course, as I argued in the third lecture, 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. That’s the longest set of reflections. Now we come to much briefer sections.

6. Reflections on second-blessing theology

A) Despite Hollenweger’s sixfold typology of the charismatic movement, most of the debates between charismatic Protestants and non-charismatic Protestants revolve around his first type.

Namely, those who teach a two-step way of salvation, the first essential to eternal life, the second to Christian victory and effective service. The second-blessing theology has a long history in the so-called holiness traditions.

But the distinctive contributions of much of the charismatic movement to that tradition is the insistence on tongues as the criterion one has received this second blessing, 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 all clear from the biblical texts we have looked at so far, at least, that baptism in the Holy Spirit is a technical term referring to a post-conversion 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.

Secondly, 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 one has been baptized in the Spirit, from a view that makes tongues-speaking the only evidence one has been baptized in the Spirit, from a view that makes tongues-speaking the conclusive evidence one has been baptized in the Holy Spirit.

The constraints needed for a criterion, as this criterion functions in the charismatic movement, 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.

B) The question of second-blessing theology 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 Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Lloyd-Jones argues the sealing of the Spirit in Ephesians 1:13 is a distinct post-conversion experience of the Spirit.

In his posthumously published series of sermons entitled Joy Unspeakable, the good doctor seeks to establish the same point in a variety of ways. Partly as a result, the Reformed movement in Britain is somewhat split at the moment 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 so much as mentioned in these lectures, including Galatians 3:1–5; John 20:22; Hebrews 2, and so forth. I cannot, here, enter into the lists over these texts, but in my judgment, the exegetical evidence does not support any form of a structured second-blessing theology.

C) On the other hand, I am persuaded 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 many non-charismatics, reacting against the excesses of second-blessing theology, have so resolutely set themselves to be open to one enduement connected with their conversion that further pursuit of the Lord or a profound spiritual experience is therefore thought not only unnecessary, but dangerous.

But surely there is firm, biblical evidence of 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.” After non-charismatics 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 the command is empty if Paul does not think it dangerously possible for Christians to be far too empty of the Spirit.

Again, when the believers in Acts 4 utter their moving prayer (verses 24 and following) 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.” (Acts 4:31) In short, I see biblical support for the thesis that although all true believers have received the Holy Spirit and 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-, fifth-blessing theology. Although I find no charisma biblically established as the criterion of a second enduement of the Spirit, I do find there are degrees of unction, blessing, service, and holy joy, along with some more currently overrated gifts associated with those whose hearts have been especially 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 at best complacent, orthodox but ossified, sound but soundly asleep.

7. Reflections on revelation

A) Doubtless, you will recall that in the treatment of prophecy in the third lecture, I largely followed Grudem’s excellent study but distanced myself from him at a couple of crucial points.

One, in particular, deserves further exploration. Grudem, we saw distinguished 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.

I expressed dissatisfaction with this antithesis on a number of grounds. I wish to add more weakness which may, in turn, help to point us out of the dilemma. Grudem’s formulation is unwittingly injurious to the doctrine of Scripture. It is true Scripture insists God’s super-intending inspiration of Scripture extends right down to Scripture’s words. So Jesus, for example, in Matthew 5:17 and following.

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. In other words, 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.

By referring to the revelation the prophet receives as either in conceptual categories or in words, Grudem is pushing back from the result to the mode, from the resulting message or text to the mode of inspiration. There is far too little evidence much of Scripture was revealed by this mode. The problem such a formula raises are real and intractable.

B) That 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 a revelation might well have to be evaluated without reflection on the quality of the revelation itself. An extremely important point.

C) 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 Geerhardus Vos in his Biblical Theology. “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 New Testament 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 be the case in the eschatological issue of things. What then occurs will constitute a new epic in redemption, worthy to be placed by the side of the great epochs in the Mosaic age and in 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 a second group. It will belong to New Testament 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 revelation. Mysticism in its 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. Submitting it to this, it ceases to be a separate source of revelation concerning God.”

Do you see what he has done? He said there is revelation in connection with the first coming of Christ and revelation concerning Christ’s second coming at the end but nothing in between. Here we find the neat antithesis: objective revelation or uncontrolled mysticism. But the Bible’s use of revelation (apokalypsis) to reveal (apokalyptō) reveals a wider range. Although most of the occurrences have to do with the revelation of Jesus Christ at the parousia or with the revelation of the objective gospel in space-time history, there are several instances where the word group has a different cast.

When Peter makes his confession at Caesarea Philippi he has to be told the Father had revealed this to him. “Blessed are you, Simon son of John, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father which is in heaven.” Apparently, revelation can take place without the individual knowing it takes place.

In Galatians 1:16 Paul says, “It pleased God to reveal his Son en emoi.” Literally, in me. Presumably to me or in my case, possibly even suggesting the life and character of the Son begin to shape Paul. 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 at his conversion.

That, too, is called revelation. Even though unveiling of the Son to the inward eye of this one individual is not itself either the public revelation of the Son in history or the parousia, the two alternatives offered by Vos. Nor does it mean from that point on, the believer understands all of the Son that has thus become revealed to him or her or could verbalize the experience with infallible assertions.

To take one more example, Paul can write to some 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 reveal to you,” as the text actually puts it. (Philippians 3:15) There is no hint in the context that this revelation falls into one of Vos’ two categories.

This extra revelation may have come through a prophecy. Alternatively, it may have come through some quiet, 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 by revelation and, thus, only by grace.

Thus when Paul presupposes, in 1 Corinthians 14:30, the gift of prophecy depends on revelation, we are not shut up to a form of authoritative revelation that threatens the finality of the Canon, the prophecy Paul has in mind is revelatory, it is Spirit-prompted, and it may, as Turner and others suggest, deal largely with questions of application of gospel truth or other things.

There is no biblical restriction along such lines. But none of this means it is necessarily authoritative, infallible, Canon-threatening. Such prophecies must still be evaluated, and they are principially submissive to the apostle and his gospel.

D) In the third lecture, I followed Grudem’s lead in distinguishing the prophesying of New Testament prophets from the prophesying of New Testament apostles.

This was done partly to deal fairly with Ephesians 2:20. Grudem has made an excellent case for taking the foundation of the apostles and prophets to mean the foundation of the apostles who are prophets.

Be that as it may, it is as methodologically unsound for Gaffin to elevate these two texts above the great array of New Testament evidence on prophecy with the aim of establishing New Testament prophecy as restrictively foundational to the church and, therefore, now obsolete as to build something else from Titus 1:12. There, Paul says, “Even one of their own prophets has said, ‘Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.’ ” Shall we then build from this one text the hypothesis all New Testament prophets are pagan poets?

E) There is a strange contradiction in contemporary claims to prophecy.

Much of it is cast in the authoritative “I” form that purports to give direct quotations from God. Yet, as one charismatic points out, admitting contemporary prophets with command of two languages (Spanish and English, for example) can switch from one to the other depending on the language of the congregation, he says, “The language we use in prophecy is under our control. Prophecy comes through a particular human being and 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.”

Now this latter perspective, I judge, is more in line with the dominant emphasis in New Testament prophecy than the common charismatic attempt to use the “I” form and thus quote God directly.

8. Reflections on the ambiguous use of history.

Considerable historiography says charismatic gifts have stopped. This is, then, often fed back into the interpretation of 1 Corinthians 13 to say that text says they’ll stop, they have stopped, so that’s the end of it. Why, then, are they being resurrected in a modern generation? But there is also a rising Pentecostal historiography that says they haven’t stopped.

Both sides in this historiography, it seems to me, often read way beyond the evidence. There are some immensely amusing examples. I received a pamphlet in the mail the other day by a very warm-hearted Pentecostal evangelist who says, after he surveys the historical evidence to the best of his ability, “For the church’s early rejection of the genuine baptism with the Holy Spirit, with the visible and audible biblical evidence of speaking with tongues as the initial and only evidence authenticating reception of this baptism is …”

From here on everything’s in capital letters and underlined so I wouldn’t miss it. “… WITHOUT POSSIBILITY OF CONTRADICTION, THE MOST MONUMENTAL, THE MOST AWESOME, AND THE MOST SINFUL BLUNDER IN THE ALMOST TWO MILLENNIA OF CHURCH HISTORY.” Well, I judge that to be an exaggeration. I’m not quite prepared, you see, to write off Calvin and Whitefield, and so on, so easily. It is monumental historical naivety.

But there is some work by very sober historians who indicate prophecy was quite common in the church to the third century. Tongues had pretty well died out so far as we can see in the church, probably by the beginning of the second. Moreover, prophecy and some tongues phenomena continued to recur in the church in a variety of minority groups. This is not surprising since anthropologists have often told us there is no major cultural grouping without some form of glossolalia.

There are glossolalic Islamic groups, and Hindu groups, and other groups. So it’s not surprising if there are glossolalic Christian groups. What I suspect, however, is one of the reasons prophecy declines dramatically in the fourth century is the rise of Montanism. You see, at that point, Montanism was claiming a gift of prophecy with the authority of the Old Testament prophets. How did the church react? The gift of prophecy has ceased.

Up to that time, so far as I can make out, the church is functioning with the gift of prophecy that is in line with the view of prophecy I am espousing in these lectures. It was not set in authority in conjunction with the apostolic gospel or the like. But because of the false claims of Montanism, the church, thus, in effect, abolished prophecy as a category.

I think that could be sustained, but you who are church historians may wish to do a lot more work on it. I would then further argue, in the light of these kinds of things, there are many so-called charismatic gifts that have continued to the present day but without being recognized for what they are.

If, for example, prophecy is anything like what I’ve said it is, it may occur unrecognized in the preacher, who prepares his sermon diligently, who studies valiantly, who then gets up to preach after having prayed, who is filled with the Spirit and begins to declaim his sermon and then somewhere along the line there passes through his mind a whole different way of presenting things, of shaping things, of applying things, and so on, which turns out, then, to be the most powerful part of the entire sermon that blesses every third person in the congregation.

It seems to me that fits right in with the New Testament category of prophecy. It is revealed by God, it is revelatory, it does not have authoritative stance, it is not simply the prepared sermon preparation of normal preaching or the like, and it is used by God for the edification of hearers. I cannot see how that falls outside the parameters of New Testament prophecy.

The only difference is is when it happens to non-charismatics they don’t call it that. Likewise, the word of wisdom, I think, has many parallels without disclaiming these are revelatory events. Healing takes place both within and without charismatic circles.

9. Reflections on the modern charismatic movement.

I have some good news and some bad news for the charismatic movement. In fact, just before I left someone told me a terrible good news/bad news joke. This will add a minute, but it’s worth it.

A doctor phones one of his patients and says, “Well, the results from your lab tests are back. I have some good news and some bad news. Which do you want first?” The fellow pauses a minute and he says, “Well, let me have the good news. Then I’ll be in a better frame to accept the bad news.”

The doctor says, “All right. The good news is the lab tests show you have only 24 hours to live.” The fellow almost drops the phone. He says, “That is the good news?! What on earth is the bad news?” The doctor says, “The bad news is I forgot to phone you yesterday.” So I don’t fall into the same trap, I’ll begin with the bad news.

A) Areas in which I find the charismatic movement to be profoundly troubling.

I do not have time to develop them. Let me simply list them, and then you may wish to tease some of them out in discussion.

First, tongues, as far as I can see, are not a criterion of anything. Not of anything. They are not even a criterion that you’re saved. They occur in too many pagan groups. We must stop the notion that tongues are a criterion of anything. This is still an immensely abused aspect of a great deal of the charismatic life … not of all of it, but a great deal of it.

I have some texts here, for example, that reveal charismatics telling you how to get the gift: what to say, how to let your jaw hang slack and utter some nonsense syllables in order that the flow will start, and this sort of thing. That sort of manipulation of people is so incredibly far removed from the New Testament it ought to be reprobated by all sides.

Secondly, there is, I think, in much of the charismatic movement an abuse of authority that sometimes is related to triumphalism, a kind of one-upmanship. There is a kind of encouraged authority that is bound up with certain of the gifts, not in all circles but especially in some of the house group movements, dominantly in Britain, where some of the leaders claim virtually apostolic authority and woe betide you if you question anything they do.

Thirdly, there is too much love of the more sensational gifts without a recognition of the real sweep of the charismata I outlined in the first lecture.

Fourthly, tongues utterances and prophecies are, in my experience of the charismatic movement, sometimes extraordinarily trite, sometimes heretical, rarely examined, only occasionally controlled, and sometimes pastorally stupid.

I can think of one television program, for example, where I heard the charismatic leader (we have many of these on American television) telling this particular woman who had a whole host of marital and emotional and moral problems simply to practice her gift of tongues a little more and her problems would go away.

I have heard prophecies myself that are reducible to the banal, “There is someone here present with a pain in his side,” as if that kind of prophecy is going to get anybody to fall down and worship God. Moreover, there are too many example of tongues, for example, that are given conflicting interpretations to make honest people within the movement and without question whether a great deal of what is going on has any necessary links with the Scripture at all.

Fifthly, there is an immense abuse still, I think, in healing practices. Sometimes the language of healing is simply abused so it is applied only in psychosomatic cases. Then it’s hard to be proved wrong, but it’s important to not the gift of healing in the New Testament was not restricted to psychosomatic cases. It included some very dramatic organic restorations. To my great delight, I point out there is now a move within the charismatic circle to correct some of these abuses, though they are still very common.

You cannot serve long as a pastor in the charismatic community without discovering all kinds of people laboring under enormous guilt because they have not been healed. But I recommend to you an article by Charles Farah, who is a charismatic pastor, an Assemblies of God pastor in the United States, now in bad repute with some of his peers, called “A Critical Analysis: The ‘Roots and Fruits’ of Faith-Formula Theology.”

I know of no more devastating critique of the faith-healing formula anywhere in the world. It is published in Pneuma, Volume 3, 1981. He says some things I wouldn’t dare say and gets away with it because he is an Assemblies of God minister. I think, also, there is an elevation of tongues and the baptism of the Spirit at the expense of doctrinal control.

By this I mean, you can be any brand of Roman Catholic, in some instances you may even be a non-Trinitarian tongues-speaker, and it doesn’t really matter so long as you have the gift of Spirit as attested by tongues. So the gift of tongues becomes the great basis on which to breed a new kind of ecumenical movement. I am profoundly troubled by that. The kind of issues the Reformers raised about what makes a Christian will not go away simply because both sides speak in tongues.

Lastly, I think there is, in this movement, a profound misunderstanding of the nature of God’s sovereignty.

B) Commendable things I find the charismatic movement.

There are many commendable things in the charismatic movement, but I shall list just three.

First, the charismatic movement has challenged the church to rethink its expectations about spiritual power and invading miracles. There are far too many of us who have been, in the past, content to sit back and simply disbelieve God will in any statistical likelihood do anything miraculous. The only miraculous thing he does, we are prone to assume, is convert people.

I think the charismatic movement has rightly and wisely challenged that in the West. This is the fruit of far too much submission to the closed universe, scientific worldview that permeates here. It is not characteristic of much of the third-world church. We are, in some sense, being restored to a more holistic view of the invading spirit by the challenge of the charismatic movement. More power to them.

Secondly, moreover, the charismatic movement at its best has challenged the church by its aggressive evangelism, by its opposition to dead religion, by its pursuit of the common man. All things that too often mainstream evangelicalism has sometimes overlooked.

Finally, the charismatic movement at its best has involved lay people and taught them to live with eternity’s values in view.

Let me conclude, if I may, with a personal story. Personal stories are always dangerous ways to conclude academic lectures, but this one taught me a few things and I pass it on to you as part of pastoral reflections. In the book, the pastoral reflections will also include some ways of integrating thoughts about charismata with office, but I’ll escape that here.

Fifteen years ago, I became pastor of a church in western Canada, where, after I was installed, I discovered the previous two ministers had left rather early after very brief ministries, partly because of the sensitivity of the charismatic issue. There were some people in the church (not many and not boisterous; they were courteous) who were challenging the standard, traditional interpretation of many non-charismatics that all tongues had ceased.

As they tried to expound Scripture defending that view, in fact, what they did was raise hackles. The people could see that’s not what Scripture seemed to be saying. Eventually, those series were always dropped and then there was an uneasy peace, a kind of tension period, and then eventually the dear brother moved on.

I went in there with youthful oblivion to these kinds of concerns and then raised all the same sparks. Again, without a great deal of sense: Fools rush in, and young ministers rush in where angels fear to tread. I embarked on a series on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Eventually, we went through all of the passages we have been dealing with here and a great many more beside, but at a much lighter level.

It was at that time I worked out approximately the kinds of things I have been saying during these lectures, though I hope I have said them a little better and with a little more justification than I did then. At the end of that series, we drew together the things we could be certain of, in our view, in Scripture, and the things that were not quite so clear.

The things we could be certain of were these (amongst others): Tongues are not a criterion of anything. Now that takes about 90 percent of the sting away. If all sides will agree to that, there goes 90 percent of the sting. They’re not a criterion of anything. On the other hand, there is no biblical warrant for saying there is no valid gift of tongues today. Further, in the church the entire emphasis is on intelligibility.

Whether tongues are actually practiced in the church is neither here nor there so long as tongues are not forbidden. Tongues may be practiced in private. All of those things, it seems to me, are eminently justified by the text. Then at the end of that time, so nobody would feel squelched.… I had asked them for no questions about the whole matter until we got to the end of the series. (It was partly self-defense, you understand.)

Then I said, “Now it’s a free-for-all. Anybody can say anything. If you want to tell us your experience, fine. If you want to challenge the interpretation, fine. Raise anything you like.” In that context, we had some charismatics who told how greatly they were helped when they spoke in tongues and how they were exalted in the presence of the Lord and were helped in their piety, and so on.

We also had a couple of interesting ex-charismatics who felt the whole thing had been a farce in their life and it was a time immense shallowness. Now the very fact it was an open discussion at that point, in the context of the exposition, meant each side was beginning to reexamine his or her own ways of relating their experiences to the text. Do you see? Because it was an open discussion, nobody felt left out.

I recall asking one particular gentleman, a lovely Christian fellow, a deacon, who was an RCM policeman, actually. I knew he had been converted in a Pentecostal environment, and I said to him, “Well, Frank, tell us of your experience, because you have been very quiet and you’re much respected in the congregation.” He said when he was converted he very quickly began speaking in tongues and it was an immense help to him.

He would drive a patrol car, at the age of 20 or 21, up in some back road in the Mounties with a radar beam out the back. He’d be on overnight patrol duty, and he might have to wait four hours before a car came by. The Rocky Mountains, in some areas, are pretty desolate places, and that’s where he was stationed.

He said, at that time, the Lord seemed to come upon him by his Spirit, and he prayed by the hour and was exalted into heaven. It was almost a kind of confirming thing for his young faith. It was immensely helpful to him. So I said, “Do you still speak in tongues?”

I didn’t know the answer to what he was going to say to any of this. He looked sort of surprised, and he said, “No. I guess I don’t. I haven’t done that for years. I think it was sort of for when I was a baby Christian. I don’t seem to need it any more now. I want to enunciate intelligent requests to God.”

Now again, I’m not trying to justify his theology on the basis of his experience. What I am trying to say is when you start getting a free and open discussion on all sides on these issues, you sometimes discover quite different and competing perceptions of what tongues are. To come from so transparently a godly man in the congregation, that was an immensely image-shattering kind of thing, as it turned out.

Then we agreed, as a church, for the sake of peace in the church, we would not speak in tongues in public meetings and there would be no proselytizing to that end. On the other hand, we also agreed the anti-charismatics would not try to squeeze the others out. If they wanted to pray in the privacy of their homes, if they felt they were being exalted in the third heaven that way, if they were enabled to be more spiritual, if they were not embracing a divisive second-blessing theology with it, more power to them. May the Lord multiply his gifts on the church.

The church agreed that was a biblical stance, precisely because the stress on unity is everywhere in Scripture. The breaking of the unity of the church is one of the three excommunicable offenses in the New Testament. The whole issue died in six months; it just wasn’t there.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, I am persuaded the heart of the issue is this: We need to recognize in the New Testament God has poured out his Spirit upon us so we know him and his unleashed power operates in us and within us. We should expect great and wonderful things from God. Our horizons are too small. Our experiences of God are too beggared.

We need to pursue God with whole hearts, but the pursuit of God must operate within the constraints of discipline, the discipline of Scripture, the discipline of biblical truth, the discipline of Pauline regulations in order that we may not unwittingly open ourselves to a great array of psychological and even some demonic counterfeits. May God help us so to live.