III. The classical Protestant view

Now I will explain what I shall call the classical Protestant position (though, of course, it is not really common to all Protestants). In particular, I will consider alternative explanations of the passages used to support the Pentecostal position.

A. The meaning of Pentecost

First of all, according to the Protestant view, the events of the Day of Pentecost did not properly concern only the disciples, those in the upper room. It was rather a matter of the inauguration of a new age, brought about by the giving of the Holy Spirit once and for all to the church. God poured out the Spirit in fullness upon the church, in contrast to the not-so-fun and not-so-universal work of the Spirit in Old Testament times. In this sense, under the Old Testament dispensation, the Spirit may be said to be with the disciples (John 14:17), as we have seen, and even to all his servants on occasion (Luke 1:15, 41, 67). But on the Day of Pentecost he was given to all Christians continually. He has been given to the church and to all believers; no second experience is necessary. John R. W. Stott has given an admirable exposition of the distinctiveness of the new age in The Baptism and Fullness of the Holy Spirit, pp. 4ff.

Thus the baptism with the Holy Spirit may not, after the Day of Pentecost, be separated from a man’s entrance into the church which has received the Spirit (Eph. 1:23). There is one baptism (Eph. 4:5), the baptism of the believer by Jesus Christ with (or in) the Holy Spirit into Jesus Christ (or the body of Christ). It is quite proper to call Jesus Christ the baptizer in one place (John 1:33) and the person into whom we are baptized in another (Gal. 3:27) because it is indeed Jesus Christ who moves us to himself, and a single figure is not really rich enough to contain the mystery. We will return to this point in making a final decision between the two positions.

Speaking in tongues, in particular, is to be regarded as a gift of the Spirit, which we should not expect everyone to possess (I Cor. 12:30). According to the Protestant view the distinction between sign and gift does not exist, and is an imposition on Scripture to extricate Pentecostals from an untenable position. Be that as it may, a Protestant may not use this excuse to justify what, to Pentecostal eyes, is a very dire lack of spiritual gifts among the churches. In pointing out all the evidences of speaking in tongues in Acts, the Pentecostal is making a very real point, that the paucity of spiritual gifts today is cause for real soul-searching and re-evaluation. However, the dispute at hand is a matter of exegesis, not of the spiritual state of the churches.

B. The events of Acts 8 and 19

Briefly, the Protestant interpretation of Acts 8 and 19 is that in both cases there were special circumstances. In Acts 19 the disciples were not Christians at all: they had still to be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, a water baptism (Acts 19:5). Apollos knew “the way of the Lord” in the sense that John preached it, the announcement of n coming Messiah; but from the text of Acts we cannot tell whether he even knew about the crucifixion and the resurrection. In Acts 8 the situation was one with Christians. God, through circumstances, caused the Apostles themselves to confirm and authorize the believers. That gave them status, so to speak, before the congregation of Jerusalem.

John Stott has given a more thorough exposition of these matters in The Baptism and Fullness of the Holy Spirit, pp. 9·12. His conclusion: “We must insist that both the timing and the means of the gift were atypical; neither a two-stage experience, nor the laying-on of hands is the norm for receiving the Spirit today” (p. 12). Here is the conversation that might follow between a Pentecostal and a Protestant of the classical view:

“But,” says the Pentecostal, “this is not altogether satisfactory. How can one be so sure that these things in Acts are not indeed ‘the norm for receiving the Spirit today’?”

The Protestant might reply, “On the basis of doctrinal passages in the epistles. The doctrinal teaching is that one receives the Holy Spirit when one receives Christ.”

“Very well. But if experience can depart from the norm then, why not indeed all the more now? There are special circumstances today, as there were then—namely, that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit has not been clearly and forcefully taught and lived out in the churches. Is this special circumstance reason enough for departure from the norm? How can we tell? Only by looking at what is actually going on in the churches.

“The ‘norm’ is, indeed, for every Christian to receive the Holy Spirit at conversion, and this took place almost universally in the New Testament Days, which is why there is, in the epistles, no mark of controversy over the question of baptism with the Holy Spirit. But we have fallen away from this norm. Protestants may still argue that the Holy Spirit is present in their churches, but they must show, by evidence today, that He is present in a way that He was not present at Samaria before the Apostles came.”

The Protestant might reply as follows: “The ‘extraordinary circumstances’ in Acts were of a different kind than the ‘extraordinary circumstances’ today in the churches. In Acts, it was a matter of a first-time event, the first conversion of the Samaritans, which called, according to God’s own plan, for special dealing. But now, it is certainly not in Cod’s plan to delay the giving of the Holy Spirit. Can the Spirit really be delayed by man’s ignorance? In Acts the Holy Spirit was certainly given to people who did not know very much about Him (e.g., Cornelius and his friends). He was given by grace, not because of anything they, the believers, had done or learned.

“This principle, the principle of the complete sovereignty of God in giving the Holy Spirit, is never contradicted in the New Testament. And it is because of this principle that I take the stand that the Holy Spirit is given today to every believer. In other words, it is never the inadequacy of the believers, today any more than in Samaria, that determines whether the Holy Spirit is given (though the spiritual state of believers may well influence the exercise of spiritual gifts). We can expect that, the extraordinary ‘firsts’ of the New Testament times having passed, God will now give the Spirit in the normative way, i.e., at conversion. Another possible explanation is that there occurred a sort of overlap between the New Testament and Old Testament dispensations, so that we have, in effect, Old Testament-type believers appearing here and there in the first few years after Pentecost, but not after, say, 40 A.D.”

Thus each side has its particular way of looking at Acts 8 and 19. There is yet another possible position, one which 1 incline to. It seems to me that, if the doctrinal passages are truly normative, a separation between conversion and baptism with the Holy Spirit simply cannot occur after the inauguration of the New Testament Age, and therefore did not occur in Acts 8 and 19. The problem is resolved if we consider the fact that Luke was not thinking of the events at Samaria in terms of the Pentecostal-Protestant controversy, but from an unproblematic viewpoint. And, as F. F. Bruce observes in his Commentary of the Book of Acts, p. 77,

We must distinguish the gift of the Spirit from the gifts of the Spirit. The gift of the Spirit is the Spirit Himself, bestowed by the Father through the Messiah; the gifts of the Spirit are those spiritual faculties which the Spirit imparts, “dividing to each one severally even as he will” (I Cor. 12:11). Now it is true, as has frequently been printed out, that Luke thinks of the receiving a the Spirit in particular relation to the impressive outward manifestations which so commonly accompanied that inward experience in the apostolic age; but the free gift which is promised in v. 38 [of Acts 2] to those who repent and are baptized is the Holy Spirit Himself.

Therefore, in Acts 8 Luke may well have described the receiving of gifts of the Spirit as “receiving the Holy Spirit” and have said simply, “It had not yet fallen on any of them [before the apostles came].” In fact, the believers already possessed the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:9), and had already been baptized with the Holy Spirit in the sense of I Cor. 12:13. Still, to the external eye, and the eye of Luke, He “had not yet fallen on any of them,” for they exhibited no miraculous signs. When Peter and John came, the Samaritans received spiritual gifts, and were perhaps filled with the Holy Spirit, but not baptized with the Holy Spirit. So much for Acts 8.

Generally, according to the Protestant view, a post-conversion experience with the Holy Spirit is a “filling with the Holy Spirit.” One may be filled with the Holy Spirit several times:

“And they were all filled (Gr. eplesthdsan) with the Holy Spirit…” (Acts 2:4) “Then Peter, filled (phestheis) with the Holy Spirit,…” (Acts 4:8) “And when they [the church] had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled (eplesthdsan) with the Holy Spirit…” (Acts 4:31).

All three are cases where there was, so to speak, a spiritual intensity: in Acts 2:4, Pentecost; in Acts 4:8, the crucial situation of Peter’s answering to the Sanhedrin; in Acts 4:31, the church at prayer. Looking at the work of the Holy Spirit from a different point of view, Paul commanded us to be filled constantly: “…but he filled (plerousthe) with the Holy Spirit” (Eph. 5:18). The present imperative “be filled” indicates that we are to be filled not as a once-for-all, complete act, but continually.

Mr. Vern S. Poythress is a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University. A member of the Baptist Church, he was converted to the Reformed faith through reading Calvin’s INSTITUTES. In this se,;e” of articles, lie presents the baptism of the Holy Spirit first from the Pentecostal position, Illen from tile Reformed position, and finally he gives cogent reasosns from Scripture why the Reformed position for to be preferred.