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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780310252368 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Zondervan |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2006 |
| Pages: | 304 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.88(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
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Read an Excerpt
Baptized in the Spirit
A global Pentecostal theologyBy Frank D. Macchia
Zondervan
Copyright © 2006 Frank MacchiaAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0-310-25236-9
Chapter One
Introduction: FRAMING THE ISSUEI suppose I was a typical eighteen-year-old, except I was perhaps more confused than most about the direction in which my life was going. It was the year 1970, so my state of mind seemed to be shared by many I knew at the time. I had spent most of my teen years trying to run from God and was attempting to figure out where I might possibly run without meeting God when I arrived. I experimented with drugs and lived as though God were nothing more than a distant thought. There were moments when I felt drawn away from my illusionary existence toward the ultimate reality. But I resisted.
Then came that decisive evening shortly after my high school graduation. I woke my father, an Assemblies of God minister, from a sound sleep at about midnight to let him know that I wanted to leave home to find myself. I had always admired him. He was strict but fair. His down-to- earth humility appealed to me. I especially liked the way the church members affectionately called him "Brother Mike." He seemed to relate to them more as a brother than an authoritative pastor, though many took him without question as a lifelong spiritual father. My mother, Elizabeth, besides her crazy sense of humor, had conveyed her deep faith to me by teaching me church choruses as a child. She persuaded me to sing them in church before the congregation. My tenor voice made me a favored choice for singing solos at our local church, an early experience of ministry that was formative to my early spiritual development.
When I woke my father that night, I was far from the faith of my childhood. But telling my father that I wanted to leave home gave him an opportunity to reach out to me. What followed was an all-night conversation that I will never forget. He spoke to me from the Bible and from many stories of faith from my family's history. I was moved deeply. It made me feel that I could not possibly run from God. To do so would cause me to run from something that was deep inside of me, something I could not deny without denying an essential part of who I was.
Hours passed like minutes, but I held out. I would not yet give my heart to Christ, so we both ended up going to bed exhausted. It was near dawn as I entered my bedroom. I knelt next to my bed and wondered what I should pray. I remember telling God that I did not know what to say. I said something simple like, "I only know that I need you, Lord. I give you my life." With that brief prayer, I lay down to the most peaceful sleep I had enjoyed in a long time.
The following day I told my parents what had happened and that I wanted to leave for a Bible college in order to discover my future in God. Yes, I would get my wish to leave home in order to find myself, but in a way that I had not planned. Their joy was tempered by my felt need to leave the neighborhood as soon as possible. There was a network of friends that was sure to tear away at my fledgling faith. I needed time away with God to be grounded in the faith. My father arranged for me to attend Central Bible College in Springfield, Missouri. My first day on campus contained all of the anxieties of a new experience. I was not sure I wanted to stay. My father persuaded me to give it a month and left me there with high hopes early in the afternoon of the second day. Moments later I purchased a Bible at the bookstore and sat down to read from it in my sparsely-furnished dorm room. The Bible was a large, plain study Bible that I had bought for my classes. I remember turning to the book of Acts. I began reading. Though I was familiar with several of the stories in that book, they seemed to come alive before my eyes as never before. The text drew me in. I was there when the disciples gathered around the risen Christ, and at Pentecost when the Spirit fell on the disciples as they prayed in tongues surrounded by flames of God's holy presence. I was also there when Peter and John were beaten for their faith but rejoiced at the privilege of suffering for Christ, and when Peter witnessed the Gentiles being filled with the Spirit. I accompanied Paul on his journeys and participated in his numerous adventures.
I read the entire book of Acts without moving from my chair. I was awe struck. I opened the shade covering the window next to me and beheld the sun setting. I saw shades of red and yellow across the sky and I could feel the tears roll off of my cheeks. I remember thinking that I could not possibly be the kind of Christian who merely "played church." That certainly was not how the Christians lived in the book of Acts. God was so real to them. They lived daily in the awareness of God's presence and guidance. Life was an adventure in the Lord's service and there were moments when God visited them with undeniable signs of divine favor and power. They had a fire burning in their hearts.
I determined in that moment that I wanted to be a Christian like them. I felt a calling from God grip me-God was calling me to lifelong ministry. My presence at that small Bible college in southwest Missouri was no accident. At that very moment, a few of the new students I had met earlier came to my room and invited me to pray with them at the dorm chapel. What timing! The chapel was located on the third floor of the dorm, a small room with benches along the walls and a plain wooden cross at the center of the wall facing the door. No sooner had I entered the room that I fell to my knees and began to pray. I began to cry and to search for words that I could not find. Meanwhile, my schoolmates began to pray for me. I felt a fountain well up within me. It grew stronger and stronger until it burst forth with great strength. I began to pray in tongues. It was not forced, neither from me nor from God. In fact, it seemed at the moment to be the most natural thing to do. By now I lay there on the floor with my eyes fixed on that cross. I felt God's powerful presence embrace me, and while accepting my calling to the ministry, I made promises to God that have accompanied me throughout my life.
I left that room and ran to the pay phone down the hall. I was still so moved that it took all of my strength to tell my parents what had happened. We cried and rejoiced together over the phone. I was certainly going to stay at the college, I explained. I needed to prepare for the ministry that God had for me. They no longer needed to worry about me. I was on a journey with God that would last forever. I had found myself much sooner than I had anticipated. I found myself overwhelmed by the love of God and committed to a life of Christian service.
My testimony may be different in detail but not in spirit from countless others throughout the world. I came to cherish most from my Pentecostal heritage its strong sense of calling from God toward some form of gifted ministry, not just for ordained ministry but for Christian service in general. I came to cherish the awareness of God's presence, on occasion to change us, fill us with the divine presence anew, and move us toward meaningful experiences of self-giving and ministry in the power of the Spirit.
That such testimonies bear witness to genuine experiences of "Spirit baptism" is for me a given. I find that such language is justifiably taken from the book of Acts. Luke makes Spirit baptism a "clothing" with power by which we bear witness to Christ and further the work of the kingdom of God in the world: "Stay in the city," Jesus said to his disciples before ascending, "until you have been clothed with power from on high" (Luke 24:49). They were also told that they would receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon them (Acts 1:8). This clothing with power is used as a functional equivalent by Luke of Spirit baptism.
Though a divine act not dependent on human standards of experience, this clothing with power certainly involves experience. Both Luke and Paul liken the state of someone gripped by the Spirit in this way to a kind of "God intoxication" (Acts 2:13; Eph. 5:18). I do not refer here to a drunken state but rather a consciousness wholly taken up with God so that one feels especially inspired to give of oneself to others in whatever gifting God has created within. It is essentially an experience of self-transcendence motivated by the love of God. Experience is certainly culturally mediated and will vary in nature from person to person, from context to context. But I simply cannot imagine this clothing with power unless some kind of powerful experience of the divine presence, love, and calling is involved, one that loosens our tongues and our hands to function under the inspiration of the Spirit.
On the other hand, in the broader context of the New Testament, Spirit baptism is a fluid metaphor surrounded by ambiguous imagery that suggests broader boundaries pneumatologically than Spirit empowerment. In general, it seems fair to say that Luke's theology of Spirit baptism has a certain "charismatic" and missiological focus (empowerment for gifted service). Indeed, Luke is also concerned with reconciliation between peoples and the quality of community life through Spirit baptism. In all of these effects of life in the Spirit, Luke is concerned with power for witness (Acts 1:8). The church is empowered for living witness in its community life, its inspired proclamation, and its multiple ministries in the Spirit. For Luke, the accent is not on being in Christ as it is in Paul, but rather functioning in Christ in the power of the Spirit.
Broadly conceived, one may use the term "charismatic" to describe Luke's understanding of Spirit baptism. Life in the kingdom as a sanctified people is certainly in the background for Luke (Acts 1:3-8; 15:9), but it is the arrival of the kingdom in power through the living witness of the church that grabs Luke in his effort to describe Spirit baptism. Luke does not explicitly integrate for us how the arrivals of the Spirit in power to inspire the living witness of the church in its communal life, speech, and deeds, relate to the church's deeper existence by faith and baptism in the life of the kingdom. The relationship between the life of the Spirit and faith/baptism seems fluid and loose in Acts-connected for sure (Acts 2:38), but one is not entirely certain how. One needs help from Paul and other canonical voices to negotiate a broader and more integrated conception of Spirit baptism as an eschatological event that is complex in nature.
Paul is also charismatic in his pneumatology, but his understanding of Spirit baptism is more intimately connected to faith, confession, and sealing through water baptism. Paul is prominently concerned with incorporation into Christ, by which believers become members of Christ's body and of one another (e.g., 1 Cor. 12:13). Moreover, the outpouring of the Spirit has vast ecclesiological and even cosmic significance for Paul. As we will note, it has to do with all aspects of life in the Spirit, including the new creation to come. It has its essence in divine love (Rom. 5:5). Luke's Spirit baptism doctrine is "charismatic," having to do with the divine empowerment of the church as a living witness, while Paul's is primarily soteriological, having fundamentally to do with being in Christ.
Noting this difference between Luke and Paul is not a novel idea for Pentecostals but one affirmed at least similarly by some of the most effective defenders today of the classical Pentecostal doctrine of Spirit baptism as distinct from regeneration or Christian initiation. Roger Stronstad's The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke notes that Paul's understanding of Spirit baptism in the context of his pneumatology is "always initiatory and incorporative," being different from Luke's charismatic use of the metaphor. Stronstad does not deny that Paul's theology of Spirit baptism is soteriological, he only wishes to avoid reading this Pauline meaning into Luke. Similarly, Robert Menzies notes that Paul in his pneumatology (presumably including texts like 1 Cor. 12:13) "does not explicitly speak of a gateway experience distinct from conversion." Menzies thus seeks to base the Pentecostal theology of Spirit baptism as a charismatic experience distinct from Christian initiation solely on Luke.
I essentially agree with Stronstad's and Menzies' characterizations of Luke's and Paul's understandings of Spirit baptism, although I think Paul's broader soteriological understanding is implied in Acts, functioning at least as a background to Spirit baptism as empowerment for living witness. I would also define Luke's empowerment for witness more broadly and deeply than mere prophetic speech (Menzies) or charismatic gifting (Stronstad). I think power for witness also involves for Luke a certain quality of communal life that is reconciling and rich in praise and acts of self-giving. But this is a technical point. I really want to ask a further question here: How does one integrate Luke's "charismatic" and Paul's broadly soteriological understandings of Spirit baptism, and how may other canonical voices, such as Matthew and John, be used to enhance the conversation?
Perhaps we should speak of a theology of Spirit baptism that is soteriologically and charismatically defined, an event that has more than one dimension because it is eschatological in nature and not wholly defined by notions of Christian initiation.
Since Luke's definition of Spirit baptism is so profoundly functional and experiential, I have also found helpful the popular charismatic distinction between Spirit baptism theologically defined as a divine act of redemption and initiation into the life of the kingdom involving faith and baptismal sealing, and Spirit baptism as empowerment for Christian life and service that involves an experience (and experiences) of Spirit baptism and filling in life. This distinction between Spirit baptism theologically and experientially defined should not imply that the latter is not essential to the church. I would never say that Luke's depiction of the winds of the Spirit that set the church aflame with the love of God and propelled them outward are a super additum or a luxury item with regard to the nature of the church. The church without this clothing with power, without this enrichment of life in the Spirit that enhances the living witness of the church to the kingdom of God, is somewhat defective (and we are all to some extent defective!).
This distinction, however, still begs a number of questions. For one thing, we still lack a broader framework in which to integrate these dimensions of Spirit baptism. The church helps to provide this. But that context, as helpful as it is, tends to entangle us in competing notions of Christian initiation and of the church in general. Though there is no way of escaping these issues, a broader eschatological framework for Spirit baptism as a Trinitarian act can open up some interesting possibilities for fresh insights and newly discovered common ground. It is a framework suggested by early Pentecostalism's vision of a "latter-day rain" of the Spirit to prepare the world for Christ's coming.
An eschatological interpretation of Spirit baptism can help us to mend the rift between Spirit baptism as a soteriological and as a charismatic category. Yet, even here, more is needed. We need to explore the nature of God's reign. I am assuming throughout this book a Pentecost/kingdom of God correlation. As a pneumatological concept, the kingdom is inaugurated and fulfilled as a "Spirit baptism." God's kingdom is not an oppressive rule but the reign of divine love. Paul thus calls Pentecost an outpouring of divine love (Rom. 5:5). Before the book is finished, I will be saying that the highest description possible of the substance of Spirit baptism as an eschatological gift is that it functions as an outpouring of divine love. This is the final integration of the soteriological and the charismatic. No higher or deeper integration is possible.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Baptized in the Spirit by Frank D. Macchia Copyright © 2006 by Frank Macchia. Excerpted by permission.
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Table of Contents
CONTENTSAcknowledgments..... 9
1 INTRODUCTION:
FRAMING THE ISSUE..... 11
2 SPIRIT BAPTISM AND PENTECOSTAL THEOLOGY:
RETURNING TO OUR CENTRAL DISTINCTIVE..... 19
Is Spirit Baptism the Central Pentecostal Distinctive?..... 20
From Sanctification to Spirit Baptism: Early Fragmentation..... 28
Spirit Baptism and Doctrinal Diversity: The Developing
Challenge..... 33
From Spirit Baptism to Eschatology: Towards Coherence..... 38
From Spirit Baptism to Oral Theology: The Challenge of Theological Method..... 49
Postscript: The Unfinished Business of Pentecostal Theology..... 57
3 THE KINGDOM AND THE POWER:
EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF SPIRIT BAPTISM..... 61
Spirit Baptism and Regeneration..... 64
Spirit Baptism and Water Baptism..... 72
Spirit Baptism and Empowerment..... 75
Eschatological Framework..... 85
4 CHRIST AS THE KING AND THE SPIRIT AS THE KINGDOM:
SPIRIT BAPTISM IN TRINITARIAN PERSPECTIVE..... 89
The Pentecost-Kingdom Connection..... 91
Spirit Baptism and the Church’s Faith in Jesus..... 107
Spirit Baptism as a Trinitarian Act..... 113
Spirit Baptism and Elements of Life in the Kingdom..... 129
- Spirit-Baptized Justification..... 129
- Spirit-Baptized Sanctification..... 140
- Spirit-Baptized Witness..... 145
In Sum..... 153
5 SIGNS OF GRACE IN A GRACELESS WORLD:
TOWARD A SPIRIT-BAPTIZED ECCLESIOLOGY..... 155
Spirit Baptism and Koinonia..... 156
Toward a Spirit-Baptized Anthropology..... 168
The Spirit-Baptized Church: The Pluralist Challenge..... 178
The Spirit-Baptized Church: Toward a Critical Dialectic..... 190
The Spirit-Baptized Church: Biblical Models..... 199
- People of God..... 200
- Body of Christ..... 201
- Temple of the Spirit..... 203
The Marks of the Spirit-Baptized Church..... 204
- Unity..... 211
- Holiness..... 222
- Catholicity..... 224
- Apostolicity..... 229
“Marks” of Preaching, Sacraments, and Charismatic Fullness..... 241
- Preaching..... 244
- Sacraments..... 247
In Sum..... 256
6 BAPTIZED IN LOVE:
THE SPIRIT-BAPTIZED LIFE..... 257
Importance of Divine Love..... 259
Toward a Theology of Love..... 261
Faith and Love..... 265
Hope and Love..... 269
Spirit Baptism as Love’s “Second Conversion”..... 280
Scripture Index..... 283
Subject Index..... 291
Author Index..... 293