Abstract
This book is written expressly for the author’s fellow Pentecostals. Its aim is to review the reaction to Dunn’s Baptism in the Holy Spirit (SCM 1970) by Pentecostals and to reassure them that the Pentecostal position, on Luke-Acts at least, is both cogent and attractive.
The book is broadly eirenic, recognizing Dunn’s respect for many aspects of Pentecostalism, and is as robust in its critique of some of the Pentecostal criticisms of Dunn as it is of Dunn’s thesis. It is fully informed of the debate within Pentecostal scholarship that Dunn’s Baptism thesis has occasioned.
The main critique of Dunn is that whereas his exposition of Paul is sound, he has read Acts through Pauline spectacles. So Luke does not focus on the soteriological reception of the Spirit, but on the Spirit’s coming to empower (Acts 1.8). Atkinson acknowledges that Acts 2.38 is equally important as signifying an initiatory reception of the Spirit. But he insists that the reception of the Spirit in Acts 8 cannot be soteriological, even though the urgency of Peter and John’s mission assuredly indicates that something had gone wrong; but what? – that the Samaritans had not been empowered for mission?
As for Acts 10-11, Atkinson insists that the gift of the Spirit to Cornelius and his friends was simply evidence that they had (also) been granted forgiveness. He seems unwilling to recognize what seems to be an obvious cause and effect sequence: a preaching which promises forgiveness and salvation (Acts 10.43; 11.14), an outpouring of the Spirit on the hearers (10.44-45; 11.15-17), and the conclusion drawn by skeptical Jews that the Gentiles had been granted repentance into life (11.18).
And the question of Acts 19.2, ‘Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?’ Should we infer, with Atkinson, that the Lukan Paul conceived that belief was possible without reception of the Spirit, or that he was astounded that there could be believers who had not received the Spirit? Is Luke any less insistent that reception of the Spirit is integral to being Christian than Paul?
Atkinson’s further attempt to argue that Luke envisaged a soteriological activity of the Spirit in lives prior to what he describes as reception of the Spirit, begs the question whether for Luke any such activity of the Spirit on and in a life can properly be described as soteriological. At least in Acts, while Luke recognizes that individuals can be ‘filled with the Spirit’ several times, he talks of only one coming upon, or reception or gift of the Spirit.
In his treatment of John’s Gospel Atkinson insists that John envisaged the first disciples receiving the Spirit twice (John 20.22; 15.26). But does 15.26 envisage a reception of the Spirit? And Atkinson does not address the fact that John 20.22 portrays the breathing of Jesus as the new creation equivalent of Gen. 2.7 (Ezek. 37.9), or that 20.23 portrays this reception of the Spirit as also commissioning.
All told, a welcome and positive contribution to an ongoing discussion.