1 Corinthians 12-14

[John Reece]

From Showing the Spirit (Baker Book House, 1987), by D. A. Carson (page 143); continued from this post:

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 Corinthians 14:2), a gift used in prayer (1 Corinthians 14:14). The crowds hear the believers on the day of Pentecost praising God: the church needs to hear 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 understood 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.

[John Reece]

From Showing the Spirit (Baker Book House, 1987), by D. A. Carson (page 143); continued from this post:

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 three thousand, not the original group. The reception of the Holy Spirit promised by Peter (Acts 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.

[John Reece]

From Showing the Spirit (Baker Book House, 1987), by D. A. Carson (page 143); continued from this post:

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 (Acts 8:12); yet they do not receive the Holy Spirit until Peter and John travel to Samaria and lay their hands on them (Acts 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.

To be continued in the next post...

[John Reece]

From Showing the Spirit (Baker Book House, 1987), by D. A. Carson (page 144); continued from this post:

Some noncharismatics, including Dunn and Hoekema, strongly urge that 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 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; 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.

To be continued...

[John Reece]

From Showing the Spirit (Baker Book House, 1987), by D. A. Carson (page 144); continued from this post:

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 Spirit, and the like.

To be continued...

[John Reece]

From Showing the Spirit (Baker Book House, 1987), by D. A. Carson (page 144); continued from this post:

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 [Acts 16:16-40]; and about twenty others).

To be continued...

[John Reece]

From Showing the Spirit (Baker Book House, 1987), by D. A. Carson (page 145); continued from this post:

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 the Gentiles in Acts 10-11.

To be continued...

[John Reece]

From Showing the Spirit (Baker Book House, 1987), by D. A. Carson (pages 145-146); continued from this post:

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' 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 not only that the food laws no longer apply but 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.

To be continued...

[John Reece]

From Showing the Spirit (Baker Book House, 1987), by D. A. Carson (page 146); continued from this post:

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 (Acts 8:26-39) misses the point. 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 8:27) 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.

To be continued...

[John Reece]

From Showing the Spirit (Baker Book House, 1987), by D. A. Carson (page 146); continued from this post:

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 were 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.

To be continued...

[John Reece]

From Showing the Spirit (Baker Book House, 1987), by D. A. Carson (pages 146-147); continued from this post:

Acts 10-11. 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 then 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.

To be continued...

[John Reece]

From Showing the Spirit (Baker Book House, 1987), by D. A. Carson (page 147); continued from this post:

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 were astonished that the Holy Spirit is poured out even on the Gentiles (Acts 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" (Acts 10:47). It is going beyond the text to conclude, with Millon, that the Jewish believers actually understood the content of the tongues. That would presuppose either 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.

To be continued...

[John Reece]

From Showing the Spirit (Baker Book House, 1987), by D. A. Carson (pages 147-148); continued from this post:

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!" (Acts 11:15-17). The explicit references to Acts 2 are obvious, but 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 by both 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.

To be continued...

[John Reece]

From Showing the Spirit (Baker Book House, 1987), by D. A. Carson (page 148); continued from this post:

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.

To be continued...

[John Reece]

From Showing the Spirit (Baker Book House, 1987), by D. A. Carson (page 148); continued from this post:

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 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?"* 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.

*εἰ πνεῦμα ἅγιον ἐλάβετε πιστεύσαντες. Apparently the Western text also tried to smooth out the difficulties surrounding the Ephesians' response to to Paul's question by exchanging ἔστιν for λαμβάνουσίν τινες.

To be continued...