The Spirit-Baptized Church

A Dogmatic Inquiry

Frank D. Macchia

• Editorial: T&T Clark
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780567680686
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Teología y religión
• Categoría: Teología

Frank D. Macchia argues that the Son of God baptized (and continues to baptize) humanity in the Spirit by pouring forth the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. All four Gospels and the book of Acts describe how the Son is sent of the Father and empowered by the Spirit to fulfil this mission; Macchia in turn claims that Christ succeeds by incorporating others into himself and into the love of the Father. The Spirit-Baptized Church proposes a richly pneumatological ecclesiology that is dominated by a Pentecostal confessional concern, while also open to a larger ecumenical conversation. The volume focuses not only on the dogmatic (Trinitarian) foundations and election processes of the Spirit-baptized church, but also on its marks and witnessing practices. As an exceptionally detailed study of the Spirit-baptismal metaphor, this volume is a valuable resource for scholars of ecclesiology, Pentecostalism, and systematic theology.

1

The Spirit-Baptized Church

The church is the Spirit-baptized people of God. In saying this, I agree with Simon Chan: “To call the church Pentecostal is to recognize the definitiveness of the Pentecostal event, i.e., of the baptism in the Holy Spirit in shaping the church’s identity.”¹ This means that the church is at its core the people united to Christ and incorporated by the Spirit into communion for a vocational purpose. Incorporation is the point of emphasis here. Incorporation is the meeting place between the divine outpouring and human communal and individual participation by grace in its embrace. This communion is not a closed circle, nor is it enjoyed only for our own benefit. This divine communion extended to us is extended to those beyond us. It is extended through Christ and the outpoured Spirit. So participation in the embrace of divine communion conforms us more and more into the image of the Christ who gave himself for the sake of mediating divine love to the world. This accent on Spirit-baptismal incorporation means that the church is both the central environment in and through which the Triune God self-imparts in the world and the central locus of the response of faith. The ultimate goal of Spirit baptism is described well by William Seymore’s paper, The Apostolic Faith: “We shall be living in the new heavens and the new Jerusalem and Jesus will return the kingdom into his Father’s hand and sit down among the brethren, and we shall have the same glory that Jesus had before the foundation of the world. God will be all in all and we shall be swallowed up in immortality.”²

Spirit Baptism as the Point of Departure

The conviction expressed in highlighting Spirit baptism as God’s overflow and incorporation of others is that theologies of the church often focus on communion or mission without adequate appreciation for how each necessarily involves the other. Pneumatology is the key to this link, but this emphasis on a pneumatological ecclesiology requires Trinitarian breadth and specificity. I wish to suggest here that the grace of incorporation into the communion and mission of the Triune God through Spirit baptism can provide us with this kind of specificity. As I noted in my Introduction, I define Spirit baptism more broadly than what happens at Christian “initiation” through faith (the typical evangelical view) or the rites of initiation, principally water baptism (the typical sacramental view). I also interpret Spirit baptism more broadly than a post-conversion empowerment for service (the majority Pentecostal view). Spirit baptism as developed here involves all of these things but is ultimately eschatological in its realization, encompassing all of these insights.

It is descriptive of the very nature of the church itself as the ever-more deeply incorporated and ever-more expansively incorporating people. Spirit baptism has its decisive moment at one’s initiation by faith into Christ and his body, but it is confirmed and deepened under the signs of water baptism and the sacred meal and it is experientially realized in one’s opening up to deeper dimensions of the sanctified embodiment of the gospel and to both charismatic and missional empowerment. Spirit baptism reaches for eschatological fulfillment, which will occur when mortality is “swallowed up by life” in the coming fullness of the kingdom of God (2 Cor. 5:4). I thus follow Donald Gelpi in saying that it is not Spirit baptism that occurs in faith or water baptism; rather, it is faith and water baptism that occur in Spirit baptism, which is the more encompassing reality.³

This chapter will seek to expand on the idea that the baptism in the Holy Spirit could be explored fruitfully as the core idea of our understanding of the church. A pneumatological ecclesiology depends on it. More specifically, the church is birthed and flourishes in the baptism in the Holy Spirit. In making this argument, I will attempt to highlight as foundational the divine action at the base of the church’s origin and ongoing life. It is possible to focus on a favored core practice that constitutes the church and then make it the center from which the other practices are understood (such as proclamation, eucharist, charismatic ministry, and mission) without adequately appreciating first the outpouring and incorporating work of the Triune God abundantly at work throughout all of these practices. It is also possible to play a communion ecclesiology over against a vocational or missional ecclesiology and vice versa. The two meet in the Triune God, who is an open communion of persons that overflows longing to take others into the divine embrace.

Communion and vocation occur within Spirit baptism understood as the act of divine outpouring and the consequent incorporation of the other as other. Spirit baptism grants both communion and vocation their substance and direction, and vice versa. As an abundant outpouring (Rom. 5:5) Spirit baptism opens a journey into the depths of divine love that exceeds one’s comprehension, to grasp together “how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” (Eph. 3:19). That will be an ocean of love into which we will be swallowed up in eternity (2 Cor. 5:4). Spirit baptism as overflowing love is also directed by God to embrace the other. The outward movement of this outpouring prevents communion from institutional confinement. Driven by the freedom of the Spirit and informed by the faithfulness of the Son, Spirit-baptized communion cannot be self-enclosed or self-serving institutionally. It is thus vocational, meaning charismatic and missional. Spirit-baptized communion creates space for the other, and their God-given otherness is not just tolerated; it’s welcomed and cherished. Indeed, “church” is not fundamentally our project; it’s God’s. God alone is the Spirit Baptizer, the One who overflows and embraces the other, as other. We live from the overflowing and incorporating life of the Triune God and seek in our corporate life to embody and further it.

The gift of the Spirit is individually received, but it also may be said to be that which accounts for the inception of the church. My assumption throughout my discussion will be that the church does not administer Spirit baptism (Spirit outpouring and incorporation); Spirit baptism administers the church and all of its practices. The church merely celebrates, embodies, and extends it to others. As Moltmann wrote:

It is not the church that administers the Spirit as the Spirit of preaching, the Spirit of sacraments, the Spirit of ministry or the Spirit of tradition. The Spirit “administers” the church with the events of word and faith, sacrament and grace, offices and tradition.⁴

It is time to drill deeper. We turn to a biblical and theological description of the baptism in the Holy Spirit as a fruitful point of departure for a theology of the church.

Toward a Theology of Spirit Baptism

In focusing on this theme of Spirit baptism as the key to understanding the doctrine of the church, I am taking my point of departure from my Pentecostal setting. Spirit baptism is the crown jewel of Pentecostal spirituality. It may be said that the Pentecostals have put this theme on the table of ecumenical discussion. It is our chief distinctive. But as the reader knows by now, I am using the term more broadly than is the case among the majority of voices within the history of classical Pentecostalism.

Briefly put, the term “baptizing in the Holy Spirit” (only the verb is used in the New Testament) is taken from John the Baptist’s announcement that the coming Messiah will “baptize” others in the Holy Spirit. All four Gospels and the book of Acts, the narrative foundation of the New Testament, make this announcement of the coming Spirit Baptizer programmatic for understanding Jesus’s messianic mission (Mt. 3:11; Mk 1:8; Lk. 3:16; Jn 1:33; Acts 1:5). John will baptize those who repent in water, but the Messiah will baptize them in the Spirit by way of fulfillment. The Messiah will occasion a “river” of the Spirit into which he will “baptize” those who repent and believe. Those who reject will be “baptized” in the fire of judgment (cf., Lk. 3:17). Shortly after this announcement, all four Gospels report that Jesus comes as the awaited figure. John’s Gospel records that John the Baptist knew Jesus was the awaited Messiah, because John saw the Spirit descend on him (Jn 1:33). Jesus is publicly revealed as the favored and beloved Son of the Father (e.g., Lk. 3:22). This is a turning point in God’s dealings with humanity. The Son is shown to be the Chosen One (Jn 3:33-34) to fulfill the messianic mission for all of humanity, indeed, for all of creation.

As we will note, little did John the Baptist know that Jesus would fulfill his messianic mission by suffering the dreaded baptism in fire in order to open a path for humanity to the baptism in the Spirit. In Acts, Jesus quotes from John’s announcement of the coming baptism in the Spirit (Acts 1:5), which conspicuously excludes Luke’s earlier reference to the baptism in fire. Jesus bore that for humanity on the cross, the baptism of his death (Lk. 12:49-50). His announcement concerning the coming Spirit baptism caused his disciples to ask the question about the eschatological restoration of Israel (1:6), implying a link between the two. Spirit baptism was understood to have an eschatological fulfillment. John the Baptist spoke of it in the context of his preaching concerning the coming kingdom (Mt. 3:2), and Jesus told the disciples about it in the context of his discourse on the coming kingdom as well (1:1-5). The fact that they were to wait in Jerusalem for it had eschatological significance, since this is the city thought to be the key location of end-time salvation. After the Spirit falls, Peter’s quote from Joel 2 makes a connection with end-time salvation (Acts 2:17-18). Spirit baptism leads not only to the birth but also to the eschatological fulfillment of the people of God. Jesus notes that Israel’s restoration is in the Father’s timing but then adds that their Spirit-baptized witness will reach “to the ends of the earth” (1:8). Only then can the ends of the earth become the possession of God’s anointed (Ps. 2:8), when the witnessing church by his grace makes it so. The Spirit-baptized communion of God’s people finds its telos in the ultimate fulfillment of this mission, for it brings about the final gathering (incorporation) of all of the saints in God. The eschatological fulfillment of the baptism in the Spirit for Luke occurs when the communion of saints reaches its diversely global expanse in a way that includes “the ends of the earth.”

Paul mentions Christ’s baptizing others in the Spirit and also connects it to the incorporation of an ever-expanding diversity of believers into Christ’s body. “For we were all baptized in one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink” (1 Cor. 12:13). Spirit baptism has an eschatological reach in this ever deeper, ever-more expansive drinking together of the Spirit. Only when the church is exalted by the Spirit and attains final communion in Christ can we say that mortality is “swallowed up by life” (2 Cor. 5:4). Such implicitly is the baptism in the Holy Spirit ultimately fulfilled. Does this mean that Spirit baptism is not our initiation to Christ? It is initiatory, but initiation is to be eschatologically defined, both as a “now” and as a “not yet” reality. We are initiated to Christ and incorporated into his body by faith under the sign of water baptism, but that initiation has an eschatological point of reference, pointing to a spiritual fulfillment that is not yet. Paul’s writes of baptism: “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Rom. 6:5). Our current drinking of the Spirit is a foretaste, a journey into deeper union with Christ that is fulfilled at the point of resurrection.

We will be exploring all of this more thoroughly under the sections on Spirit baptism in the Old and New Testaments. Suffice it to say here that theologians from different church families have interpreted the biblical doctrine of Spirit baptism differently depending on their ecclesiology. Those from a primarily evangelical word ecclesiology (in which the church is the people of the Word of God) will tend to view Spirit baptism as regeneration by faith in the gospel. The church then focuses on the ongoing hearing and obedience together of the Word of God. Those of a more sacramental ecclesiology will view Spirit baptism as the gift of the Spirit given in the rites of initiation, especially water baptism. The church then becomes the place where initiated (water-baptized) Christians commune together with the Lord at the Lord’s table. Those who hold to a Pentecostal ecclesiology will be prone to view Spirit baptism as that which empowers the witness and expands the charismatic life of the church. The church is then the place where the people of the Spirit minister through various spiritual gifts, overcome together the powers of darkness, and missionize in Christ’s name.

Among them all, the baptism in the Holy Spirit as a doctrine rightly highlights the gift of the Spirit. How this gift is received and actualized is the key point of difference. In each Christian family, Spirit baptism becomes functionally supportive of that communion’s particular understanding of Christian initiation, and this understanding then serves to describe the core of its entire ecclesiology. But what if one defines the gift of the Spi rit eschatologically or in a way that fulfills and transcends the church? Spirit baptism would be viewed as belonging first to the kingdom of God or to the Triune God’s self-giving in service to the final communion of saints in conformity to the risen Christ. And what if one then locates the nature and purpose of the church within that project? It would not be the church or its practices of initiation that determine the nature of Spirit baptism. Spirit baptism would be too expansive and all determining to function as that which legitimates a confessional family’s understanding of Christian initiation and its concomitant ecclesiological accent. As an eschatological concept, Spirit baptism would accommodate all biblically responsive understandings of Christian initiation ...