Seminary -- Baptism in the Spirit 4

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18. Probably the most formative role Dr. Lyon played in my development didn't have anything to do with the one class I took with him. He did technically supervise me as a Teaching Fellow, but he pretty much let us do our thing. [1] Rather, Bob published an infamous 1979 article in the Wesleyan Theological Journal entitled, "Baptism and Spirit-Baptism in the New Testament."

It would embody a transition within the holiness movement. Mel Dieter once remarked that the decline of teaching on entire sanctification followed directly from the detachment of sanctification from the Spirit-fillings of Acts. Lyon's paper was central to that detachment. I tend to agree with Dieter.

However, I agree with Lyon's paper too. Not too long into my time at IWU, I guardedly inquired of the New Testament scholars in the Wesleyan Church at that time. I did not find one who thought the Spirit-fillings of Acts were instances of entire sanctification. You might find a theology professor here or there, but even that is rare.

Outside the Wesleyan tradition, I don't think you would find any original meaning New Testament scholar who would equate the Spirit-fillings of Acts with the experience we Wesleyans call entire sanctification. [2] Certainly no one in church history prior to the 1700s seems to have interpreted it that way. It would seem that, to draw such a conclusion, you have to be wearing Wesleyan glasses.

I am not questioning here the doctrine of entire sanctification. I am simply pointing out how difficult it is to base it in Acts. See more below.

19. Let me backtrack. In 1977, James Dunn published a book called, Baptism of the Holy Spirit. At the height of interest in tongues, Dunn did an exegetical study of what it means in Acts to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. His work is careful, "scientific," and tends toward objectivity. [3] Indeed, it was this characteristic of his work in general that would eventually make me want to do my doctoral work with him.

He concludes that the expressions "receiving," "being baptized with," "being filled with" the Spirit are all roughly equivalent expressions in Acts and that they all refer to a threshold experience that ideally would take place around the same time as water baptism. [4] This is the consensus position. It is, in my opinion, the conclusion that an objective person will reach. Lyon's article simply channeled Dunn's book.

I did not come to agree with this conclusion lightly. It was a difficult conclusion that went against the conclusions I had made in my college honor's project. But the honor's project had prepared the way. I had finished it with the gnawing feeling inside that my conclusion could easily be flipped.

The fact that the Samaritans did not receive the Spirit in Acts 8 when they are baptized is not treated as normal in Acts. It seems problematic. Peter and John have to come up to fix the problem. Cornelius in Acts 10 is not a Christian yet--he had not yet heard the gospel. He receives the Spirit before he is baptized.

Even more significantly, Acts never articulates a doctrine of entire sanctification. To infer it, we have to bring it to the definition of "filled with the Spirit." Acts never says, "and their hearts were cleansed of the sinful nature." The closest it comes is Acts 15:9 which says Cornelius' heart was purified by faith. But, again, to say this is entire sanctification you have to infer a lot of theology that the text doesn't actually say.

The book of Acts itself focuses on the power of the Spirit as the main consequence of being filled with the Spirit--power to speak boldly, power to heal, power to speak in other languages. A side comment, overloaded with outside theological meaning, comes to take precedence over the inductive priorities of the text.

This is a great example of unreflective, "pre-modern" interpretation. There are some dots from the text here--water baptisms, filling with Spirit, hearts purified. But the structure into which those dots are placed has at its core material that is not based on dots in the text of Acts. This includes not only a theology of the sinful nature (based on an Augustinian reading of Paul) but also the equation of it with the "heart" here. It also involves making primary what is secondary or not articulated at all.

By the way, I had a great EB class in a J-term on Acts with Bauer. It was there that I did an extensive assignment on the filling with the Spirit in Acts. I believe it was there that my transition of interpretation took place. I received very favorable remarks from Bauer and, who knows, that assignment may have played a key role in me later becoming teaching fellow.

20. I might also mention that once I understood that receiving the Spirit was a threshold experience, it unlocked a whole layer of New Testament theology. Indeed, it uncovered a major blind spot in my theology of the Holy Spirit. In James Bross' college systematic theology class I had first learned that Wesleyans did believe in an initial sanctification upon conversion, something I don't remember hearing in the preaching of my youth. Now I began to realize that receiving the Holy Spirit is the defining moment of conversion, the experience that defines who is in Christ.

This is not a minor point. The preaching of my youth had obscured the central role of the Holy Spirit in defining the people of God. It had misinterpreted statements like being "sealed with the Holy Spirit" in 2 Corinthians 1:22. The old timers thought of this as sealing a jar, a final act. It was actually about a seal of ownership, an identity-defining act.  Meanwhile, I had not been able to see the richness of verses like Ephesians 1:14, which speak of the Spirit as the down payment and guarantee of our inheritance.

21. My friend Scott Key used to argue that the breathing of John 20:22 was the disciples getting saved, so that the Day of Pentecost was when they were sanctified. But this is mixing two different books with two different narrative worlds. In the story of Luke-Acts, the Day of Pentecost is the fulfillment of the promise of Luke 3:16 (cf. Acts 1:5).

Blurring together the narrative worlds of the Gospels is an example of unreflective, "pre-modern" interpretation. I would eventually be exposed to the work of Hans Frei, who helped express the unreflective situation. To put it in my words, the "pre-modern interpreter" blindly equates the story with history. He or she does not realize that they are reading distinct presentations of the story.

The Gospels are not exactly video tapes or transcripts. Most people are good with the illustration of four people on four corners of an intersection who see an accident and each describe the same event in a distinct way. We are reading about Matthew's Jesus and Mark's Jesus and Luke's Jesus and John's Jesus. They all are about the same historical Jesus, but in each Gospel we are getting a presentation of Jesus from a distinct point of view.  More on such things to come.

The unreflective reader jumps into the text and sees it as the same kind of history as what they did this morning. The reflective reader realizes he or she is reading a book written by someone at a particular place and time. They are inspired, yes, but they were inspired in a particular situation separate and distinct from the situation of Jesus in history. [4]

Even though we jump into the story, prior to reflectivity, we tend to interpret the story through the interpretive lens of our theological tribes. As a Wesleyan, I read Acts with special glasses on. I would later come to think that our exegesis is most subject to skew when we are dealing with the key verses of our sect. Our competitors are usually able to see our special pleading better than ourselves. A Republican can often see the blind spots of a Democrat better than a Democrat, and a Democrat can often see the blind spots of a Republican better than a Republican.

The network that tends to resist your party is often a great place to uncover your blind spots.

22. So on what subjects and passages are the Seventh Day Adventists most likely to be unreflective about? Why on the ones that have to do with the Sabbath, the ones they care the most about. An old time Wesleyan is most likely to be unreflective on the exegesis of passages having to do with holiness. A Baptist is most likely to be unreflective about passages they think teach eternal security.

Before I knew what to call it, I began to develop what Paul Ricoeur called a "hermeneutics of suspicion." If my interpretation comes out the way my tribe wants it to be, then I should double check myself. What am I missing? If my interpretation is a little too convenient, I get nervous. If you're not willing to change your position, given enough evidence to the contrary, then you're not really a lover of truth.

Now I am still Wesleyan. I have tried to be reflective about my inherited beliefs. They have passed through the fire. I have tweaked them in the light of study. I still get nervous when I am teaching Romans 9 that I am Wesleyanizing it, but I have tried to be objective. One of the most exciting conclusions of my scholarly life is to find that the best of current scholarship, especially the "new perspective on Paul," has tipped interpretation in the Wesleyan direction.

I hope I have moved in many areas into what Ricoeur called a "second naivete." The first naivete is our unreflective phase on an issue when we don't even realize we are wearing glasses or that an issue might be interpreted a different way. Then we go through the fires of examination and emerge at least partially reflective.

I might add here that there is a tradition in town that most do not realize is a tradition. Let me call it generic evangelicalism. The hermeneutical irony of this tribe is that it doesn't think it's a tribe. It might call itself "non-denominational" or a community church. It thinks it has transcended denominations and traditions not realizing that it is basically Baptist with some charismatic highlights. In the past it has been somewhat free will Baptist.

In the internet age, there is increasing blurring of the classic traditions into each other. Because the resulting mix is not limited geographically or denominationally, it is easy to think it has transcended tribe. But it is a tradition nonetheless, a new pre-modernism, a new unreflectivity.

There are scholarly tribes too. I'm sure I will talk more about that later.

23. As Lyon opened my eyes to read Acts in context, I found solace in the fact that John Wesley himself did not formulate Christian perfection in terms of Acts. Let me say that as a Wesleyan, I grew up knowing precious little about John Wesley. John Wesley had nothing directly to do with the holiness tradition of my youth.

This is an interesting fact. When they find this fact out, many Wesleyans react with a clarion call, "Back to Wesley!" It seemed to me that there were a fair number of Wesleyans who attended Asbury who ended up something else. They became United Methodist or maybe Free Methodist. Nazarenes largely attended their own seminaries.

Let me be descriptive. After Asbury, I believe many Wesleyans found the Wesleyan Church to be woefully unreflective. Now, don't get me wrong, sometimes they were simply finding a new level of unreflectivity. But it seems to me that, as their learning took them to a higher level in some area, they found it hard to go back to the Wesleyan Church.

For some it was in the area of worship. I'll talk about Don Boyd soon enough, whom I think was still technically Wesleyan but who really had become a United Methodist. For others it was in the area of biblical studies. God led me back to the Wesleyan Church after my doctoral work but I would have been fine with becoming a Methodist or Anglican. For others it was Wesley as they realized that the Wesleyan Church was part of a holiness tradition that knew little of the forces that had shaped it to be what it had become.

I never got the "Back to Wesley" bug. Wesley was not inspired. I believe he was deeper than Phoebe Palmer, but he was not Scripture. At IWU I was sympathetic to Keith Drury's push back here. Wesley is not our father. He is more like our grandfather or great grandfather. We are free to move beyond him.

I believe theology has to be "constructive" to engage new areas of context and new areas of insight. This is not the Tom Oden approach, who didn't want to have a single new thought in his theology. He is backward facing. Ken Collins as a Wesley scholar is backwards facing. You can tell from comments scattered here and there that I am more a fan of Randy Maddox than Collins' approach.

Wesley was great, but he lived in the 1700s. We are not doing God justice if we don't stand on the shoulders of those who stood on the shoulders of those who stood on the shoulders of Wesley.

24. So I would learn about Wesley in Steve Harper's Wesley's Theology for Today. Harper's little book The Way to Heaven is still a quick entree into Wesley's thought, not to mention my A Horse Strangely Warmed, Wesley's life through the eyes of his horses. :-)

I also had Larry Wood for contemporary theology. I wish I could take the course over now. I would get much more from it.

Wood would push back as hard as he could on the impact of Lyon. Wood did not challenge him on the exegesis, as I recall. But Wood pushed back on the thing that gave me solace--the fact that Wesley did not formulate Christian perfection in terms of Acts.

Wesley looked to verses like Matthew 5:48--"Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." Take Hebrews 6:1--"Let us go on into perfection." To be sure, Wesley as an unreflective interpreter did not quite get the interpretation of these verses right either. There was a period of time where, one by one, I realized, "Well, that verse isn't really about entire sanctification. Well, that verse isn't exactly about entire sanctification."

I reconstructed the doctrine on a logical and experiential basis. God cannot be anything less than total Lord of your life. It is obvious that we must give everything to God. "If Jesus isn't Lord of all then he isn't Lord at all." This is the goal. In a perfect world, it should be true from the first moment of our Christian walk.

But it usually isn't. Most people experience a process of first realizing that they have not given an area to God. Then they come to a moment of surrender in that area. Eventually, we come to a point of crisis where we need to determine that we are going to give everything to God. Usually there is one hold out, one thing that we have the last battle over.

When we surrender all to God, only then does he take all of us. We consecrate on the altar. He sanctifies and consumes the offering. We become fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.

New things will of course enter our lives. We may at some point have to re-surrender something we had once surrendered. But it seems to me that our sense of entire sanctification as Wesleyans fits human experience and is a logical inference from biblical theology.

We can still use the same key verses, especially if we realize that we are using them with a broader sense than they might have originally had. Same basic thrust but a broader application. The disciples were filled with the Spirit more than once. Acts 4:31 seems to me very appropriate to preach entire sanctification. How can you be truly "full" of the Spirit if you haven't given the whole vessel to God? 1 Thessalonians 5:23 can be used similarly.

25. Perhaps Wood's most significant contribution to the debate is his work showing that Wesley had no problem with John Fletcher's equation of sanctification with the Spirit-fillings of Acts. Fletcher was an Anglican priest and part of the Methodist movement in England. Apart from Wesley, he was Methodism's first real theologian.

Fletcher was apparently the first person in all of history to equate entire sanctification with Acts. What Larry Wood has done is to show that Wesley was not in disagreement with him on this point. I will say, however, that this is potentially a point where we can get so focused on the trees of detail that we miss the big picture. It is simply undeniable that Wesley's works do not build the case for sanctification in this way.

Wood was fun as a professor. I love it when professors are quirky intellectuals. I used to say there should be faculty trading cards with the superpowers of each one on them. At IWU I would joke that a faculty is like a zoo and each animal has its own exciting feature you want to see.

Wood almost seemed to be in some Platonic realm when he taught. I heard about a time once that he was confused about what class he was in and gave the lecture for a different class without realizing it. He would pull a chair to the front of the classroom, sit down, and just start talking about whatever, not really looking at us but looking up now to the left, now to the right. By the way, I think Chris Bounds once gave the wrong final lecture to a class at IWU.

26. I was a co-editor of The Short Circuit my final year at Asbury, along with Ross Taylor and Chris Fisher. It was the student paper. That was a fun experience. My job was mainly to write/gather articles and/or make the occasional cartoon. We also had faculty quotes.

I think it was Chris Fisher who had the idea of a cartoon of Moses receiving his Myers-Briggs letters... JEDP. I think I drew it. Chris didn't like Myers-Briggs. He thought it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I said he only felt that way because he was a "P" personality. :-)

I wrote up a piece once on the Spirit-fillings in Acts. Somehow some people in Florida found out about it. That was an uncomfortable and somewhat painful discussion. I was not trying to be rebellious. Sometimes the evidence just doesn't seem to go your way and you have a choice. Am I going to go with my tribe or with what seems to be truth?

In the end, truth is what God thinks. More to come.

[1] Frankly, the only time I remember doing anything with him during that time was once Bill Patrick, he, and I went to Fazoli's in Nicholasville for lunch. He ordered a "Freddie" to the puzzlement of the cashier. A Fettuccine Alfredo.

[2] By an original meaning New Testament scholar, I mean someone who 1) can read the New Testament competently in Greek, 2) knows the content of the New Testament text thoroughly, 3) knows the history of interpretation of the New Testament, and 4) understands and follows competently exegetical methods. From this description, it is clear that a person can be a scholar in one area of the Bible and not another. Similarly, there are biblical scholars who follow other methods.

[3] I say tends toward objectivity because none of us can be completely objective. However, it is clear that there are varying degrees of objectivity and, some, like those who pursue theological interpretation hard core have almost seemed to throw it out the window. If we can use the word objective in biblical studies, James Dunn is one of the most objective scholars I know. That doesn't mean he is right. It probably means he is more likely to be right.

[4] Form critics coined the phrase, Sitz im Leben, situation in life. They realized that a saying of Jesus may have had one Sitz im Leben in the ministry of Jesus, another in oral tradition, yet another when the saying made its way into the Gospel. Then of course there is my Sitz im Leben as a reader. All these contexts tweak the meaning of the saying, because the meaning of words is a function of context.