The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke

Trajectories from the Old Testament to Luke-Acts

Stronstad, Roger

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781441240330
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

Winner of the 2013 Book Award of Excellence, The Foundation for Pentecostal Scholarship What is the meaning of the Holy Spirit's activity in Luke-Acts, and what are its implications for today? Roger Stronstad offers a cogent and thought-provoking study of Luke as a charismatic theologian whose understanding of the Spirit was shaped wholly by his understanding of Jesus and the nature of the early church. Stronstad locates Luke's pneumatology in the historical background of Judaism and views Luke as an independent theologian who makes a unique contribution to the pneumatology of the New Testament. This work challenges traditional Protestants to reexamine the impact of Pentecost and explores the Spirit's role in equipping God's people for the unfinished task of mission. The second edition has been revised and updated throughout and includes a new foreword by Mark Allan Powell.

1

The Holy Spirit in Luke-Acts

A Challenge in Methodology

For his lead essay in the Festschrift presented to Paul Schubert, W. C. van Unnik chose the title, “Luke-Acts, a Storm Center in Contemporary Scholarship.”[3] As van Unnik chronicles Lukan scholarship in the 1950s and 1960s, this storm center includes, among others, the following subjects: (1) the relationship between the historical and theological aspects of Luke-Acts, (2) Luke’s alleged shift from the expectation of an imminent Parousia in the theology of the primitive church to a history-of-salvation theology, and (3) the differences between the Paul of the Acts and the Paul of the Epistles.[4] Richard I. Pervo’s commentary on Acts in the Hermeneia series identifies numerous ongoing controversial issues in Lukan studies. These controversial issues are as fundamental as (1) the date when Acts was written, (2) the identity of the author, (3) the unity of Luke and Acts, and (4) the genre of Luke and Acts.[5] The publication of two benchmark books in 1970, A Theology of the Holy Spirit by Frederick Dale Bruner and Baptism in the Holy Spirit by James D. G. Dunn, added new winds of controversy to the storm center of Lukan scholarship—namely, over the meaning of the activity of the Holy Spirit recorded in Luke-Acts.[6] Of the two books, Dunn’s has proven to be the more significant. It has also sparked a number of responses from biblical scholars in the pentecostal tradition.[7]

These winds of controversy rage most strongly over the interpretation of the “baptism in the Holy Spirit” that happened on the day of Pentecost and throughout the book of Acts. Traditionally, the church has associated the baptism in the Holy Spirit with conversion and has identified it with incorporation into the body of Christ.[8] However, beginning primarily with John Wesley’s seminal teaching on sanctification, Christians have increasingly challenged this interpretation. For example, holiness groups, emerging out of Methodism, “came to speak of entire sanctification as a ‘baptism of the Holy Spirit.’”[9] Moreover, Pentecostalism, the synthesis of late nineteenth-century fundamentalist, dispensational, and holiness theology with camp-meeting and revival methodology,[10] identified “baptism in the Holy Spirit” as an empowering for service. The sole distinctive element in Pentecostalism is its insistence that glossolalia is the essential evidence for the baptism in the Spirit.[11] Most recently, charismatics, children of the marriage between pentecostal experience and traditional Lutheran, Reformed, or Catholic theology, often interpret the baptism in the Holy Spirit to be a subsequent experiential actualization of the Spirit who was given earlier in conversion/confirmation.[12] Thus winds of division and controversy now sweep across current interpretations of the gift of the Holy Spirit in Luke-Acts.

This division is not simply theological. Fundamental hermeneutical or methodological differences lie at the heart of the matter. These methodological differences arise out of and are coextensive with the diverse literary genres of the New Testament. For example, Luke’s theology of the Holy Spirit must be inferred from a two-volume “history” of the founding and growth of Christianity—of which volume 1 is classified as a gospel and volume 2 is classified as the Acts.[13] In contrast, Paul’s theology of the Holy Spirit must be derived from his letters, which he addressed to geographically separated churches at different times in his missionary career. These letters are circumstantial; that is, they are addressed to particular circumstances: for example, news of controversy (Galatians), answers to specific questions (1 Corinthians), or plans for a forthcoming visit (Romans). Thus while Luke narrates the role of the Holy Spirit in the history of the early church, Paul teaches his readers concerning the person and ministry of the Spirit.

It is this difference between narration and theology in the New Testament literature that raises the fundamental methodological issues for the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Consequently, the experiential and theological tensions over the doctrine of the Holy Spirit will be resolved only when the methodological issues have first been resolved. Therefore, the following discussion focuses upon the methodological issues of the crux interpretum in the current debate: the meaning of the Holy Spirit in Luke-Acts.

In order to correctly interpret Luke’s record of the Holy Spirit we must resolve three fundamental methodological problems: (1) the literary and theological homogeneity of Luke-Acts, (2) the theological character of Lukan historiography, and (3) the theological independence of Luke.

The Literary and Theological Homogeneity of Luke-Acts

Though the canon of the New Testament separates them, Luke and Acts are a single two-volume composition (Luke 1:1–4; Acts 1:1). Ending several decades of skepticism concerning the literary unity of these two books, W. C. van Unnik reports:

We speak of it [Luke-Acts] as a unit. . . . It is generally accepted that both books have a common author; the possibility that the Gospel and the Acts, contrary to Acts 1.1, do not belong together is not seriously discussed. By almost unanimous consent they are considered to be two volumes of a single work.[14]

This scholarly consensus on the literary unity of Luke-Acts has remained without serious challenge.[15] In spite of this consensus concerning the literary unity, interpreters often assume that Luke-Acts reflects a theological discontinuity between its two parts.

Since the publication of The Theology of St. Luke (English translation) in 1961, Hans Conzelmann has cast a long shadow across Lukan studies. The central feature of his theology is his peculiar, though popular, division of Lukan history into three epochs:

1. The period of Israel, of the Law and the Prophets;
2. The period of Jesus, which gives a foretaste of future salvation; and
3. The period between the coming of Jesus and his Parousia, in other words, the period of the church and of the Spirit. This is the last age. We are not told that it will be short.[16]

According to Conzelmann’s interpretation, “There is continuity linking the three periods, and the essence of the one is carried through into the next.”[17] Nevertheless, Conzelmann emphasizes that in Luke’s theology there is “emphasis on the separation between the epochs.”[18] Thus, as he interprets Luke-Acts, Conzelmann emphasizes the theological discontinuity between John the Baptist (the period of Israel), Jesus (the middle of time), and the epoch of the Spirit (the church).[19]

The theological homogeneity of Luke-Acts is also denied on grounds other than the epochs of redemptive history. For example, in “The Holy Spirit in the Acts and the Fourth Gospel,” W. F. Lofthouse asserts that the record of the Spirit in the Synoptic Gospels is “unable to act as a basis [for the Spirit] in Acts 1–15.”[20] Rather, the basis for the portrayal of the Holy Spirit in Acts 1–15 is to be found in the teaching on the Spirit recorded in John 14–16.[21] Thus, according to Lofthouse’s perspective, Luke’s record of the activity of the Holy Spirit in Luke-Acts is influenced by two distinct traditions: (1) the Synoptic tradition for the Gospel and (2) the Johannine tradition for the Acts of the Apostles. Amazingly, the Synoptic tradition about the Holy Spirit has no influence on the record of the Spirit in the Acts.

Not only is it commonplace to assert discontinuity between the successive pictures of the Holy Spirit in Luke-Acts; it is also commonplace to assert discontinuity for the identical terminology that describes the Holy Spirit in Luke-Acts. For example, concerning the phrase “filled with the Holy Spirit,” J. H. E. Hull writes:

Elizabeth and Zechariah were, in Luke’s view, momentarily filled with the Spirit. In other words, they could only be aware of His (seemingly) fleeting presence and His (seemingly) fitful and necessarily limited activity. The disciples, on the other hand, were permanently filled with the Spirit.[22]

To undergird his exegetically baseless affirmation that the phrase “filled with the Holy Spirit” has a different (and superior?) meaning in Acts than it does in Luke, he changes the Lukan metaphor, writing:

As there is no indication that Elizabeth and Zechariah permanently possessed the gift of prophecy, we may say . . . that their experience of the Spirit was a momentary flash, illuminating them solely on the occasions referred to in the first chapter of Luke. As Acts suggests, however, the disciples’ experience of the Spirit was, and continued to be, an all-consuming flame.[23]

The answer to Hull’s distinction between the alleged temporary gift of the Spirit of prophecy to Elizabeth and Zechariah and the permanent gift of the Spirit of prophecy to the disciples is that there is evidence to the contrary on both counts. For John the gift of the Spirit of prophecy was certainly permanent (Luke 1:15, 76, 80; 20:6), and for the disciples it was demonstrably repetitive (Acts 2:4; 4:8, 31).

Conzelmann, Lofthouse, and Hull are three examples of the widespread tendency to emphasize the theological discontinuity between Luke and Acts. However, since Luke and Acts are a single work, it would be far more natural to stress their theological continuity or homogeneity. In fact, their homogeneity proves to be the case. In Luke: Historian and Theologian, I. Howard Marshall demonstrates that important Lukan themes such as salvation, forgiveness, witness, and the Holy Spirit bind Luke-Acts together as one—albeit a two-volume story.[24] He rightly observes:

What is significant is his [Luke’s] combination of the story of Jesus and the story of the early church in one account. Thereby he testified that the two stories are really one, and that the break between them is not of such decisive importance as that between the period of the law and the prophets and the period in which the gospel of the kingdom is preached.[25]

On this issue of continuity and discontinuity between Luke and Acts, as the above examples illustrate, the balance is too often arbitrarily tipped in favor of discontinuity. Except where the evidence clearly leads elsewhere, the literary unity of Luke-Acts must compel the interpreter to recognize a theological homogeneity of the two books. This homogeneity is no less true for the charismatic theology of St. Luke than it is for his other distinctive doctrines and motifs.

The Theological Character of Lukan Historiography

Pentecostalism, and to a lesser extent its younger sibling, the charismatic movement, has not only presented an experiential and theological challenge to contemporary Christianity, but it has also offered a fundamental methodological challenge. This challenge raises the question of the theological significance of Luke’s narrative “history” of the activity of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts. In interpreting the book of Acts, Pentecostals, on the one hand, tend to emphasize the theological character of the narratives and de-emphasize their historical uniqueness. On the other hand, those who respond to their methodological challenge maximize the historical character of the narratives and minimize their theological character.

Pentecostals build their distinctive theology on five episodes in Acts regarding the gift of the Spirit to the following: (1) the disciples on the day of Pentecost (2:1–13), (2) the believers at Samaria (8:14–19), (3) Saul of Tarsus (9:17–18), (4) Cornelius and his household (10:44–46), and (5) the disciples at Ephesus (19:1–7). In general terms, these “five events in the Book of Acts become the Biblical precedents of Spirit Baptism.”[26] More specifically, “the events that occurred on the day of Pentecost are held to be the pattern for centuries to come,”[27] and the Pentecost narrative established “the Scriptural pattern for believers of the whole church age.”[28] As a natural corollary to their methodology, Pentecostals conclude:

On Biblical grounds, tongues are a necessary and essential evidence of baptism in the Spirit. . . . God promised that the Biblical pattern was the standard for future times: “The promise is to you and to your children, and to all that are afar off” (Acts 2.38). What was true at the Day of Pentecost, and on subsequent occasions in Scripture, must continue to be true throughout the ages.[29]

Clearly Pentecostals emphasize the normative theological intent of Luke’s historical record of the gift of the Spirit for contemporary Christian experience.

Many interpreters, however, believe that this “Pentecost-as-Pattern” methodology violates the narrative or historical character of the book of Acts. For example, in his Christianity Today article, “Outburst of Tongues: The New Penetration,” Frank Farrell writes:

The few historical accounts of tongues in Acts, in comparison with the other Scriptures, provide a flimsy foundation indeed upon which to erect a doctrine of the Christian life; no directives for normative Christian experience are contain...