Babel, Pentecost, and Political Theology (The Baptism in the Holy Spirit: Part III)

I want to continue exploring what Frank Macchia calls the crown jewel of Pentecostal theology.‡

Historically speaking, one of the dominant interpretations of the outpouring of the Spirit in Acts 2 has been that it represents the reversal of the confusion of languages and the scattering of the nations following the incident with the tower of Babel in Genesis 11. Against some recent creative readings that see the scattering of the nations as positive rather than reflective of God’s judgment (or at least displeasure), I would argue that such readings work against the explicit narrative flow of the event. A full engagement with the story is beyond the scope of this post. I would merely point out that the passage drips with echoes of the expulsion of Adam and Eve—and later, Cain—from the garden of Eden. God’s observation about the unlimited possibilities open to a humanity united in rebellion against God (Gen. 11:6) is a reframing of His elimination of the possibility of Adam and Eve eating from the tree of life after incurring the death of their spirits and the corruption of their nature (Gen. 3:22). The pattern established by the earlier story sets the interpretive disposition for the later one: the consequences are parallel, at least to a meaningful degree.

So when on Pentecost, rather than a scattering of people to a regionally representative list of nations from the site of an idolatrous human effort to dwell with God in the heavens, you have a gathering of people from a histocially current list of nations representing an almost identical geographical area to an event of divine origin that involves the dwelling of God within people here on earth, the traditional (and natural) way of reading the Babel event is reinforced. The blessing and unifying that God effects through the Spirit’s outpouring in Acts 2 is the proportionally opposite (but redemptively more expansive) action to the one God takes on the plain of Shinar in Genesis 11.

I want to bring in Galatians as a perhaps surprising conversation partner here, where, in 3:14, Paul ends a sentence dealing with the fulfillment of God’s multi-millenially unfolding promise to Abraham in an unanticipated way. According to Paul, Abraham becomes the father of many nations and the one in whom all nations are blessed, through the non-Jewish peoples being positioned to receive the Holy Spirit. In today’s intensely polarized context, the verse bears quoting in full: ‘He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Holy Spirit.’ However you interpret this verse, it either explicitly or implicitly equates the reception of the Spirit with God’s original purpose in blessing Abraham.

I mentioned earlier that I was not convinced by readings of the Babel story that see God’s scattering as something other than judgment. What Pentecost does show us—in agreement with those who read Babel as a positive in the lives of those scattered by God—is that God unequivocally affirms diversity. Yes, God gives the gift of a unifying spiritual meta-language in order to signify that He has drawn all nations together into a worldwide family for Abraham and in Christ. But what He does not do is wipe out the diverse languages of those to whom He gives the gift of the Spirit. Acts 2 does not relate how people from all over the Ancient Near East were miraculously given the gift of interpretation, so that they understood the proclamation of the Gospel in the apostles’ native Aramaic. Even if one reads the church’s first Pentecost as a miracle of hearing rather than of speaking, the result is the same: people from all over the region heard the Gospel in their own language.

I think by holding this truth displayed at the inception of the church with the scenes in Revelation which provide us a glimpse of the consummation of the Kingdom, we get a powerful prescription for the life of the church ‘in between the times,’ for us upon whom the ends of the ages have overlapped (1 Cor. 10:11).° Revelation 5:9-10 and 7:9 both describe worship around the throne of God being offered by people from every tribe, nation, and language. If we take this at face value, the polyphony of human languages is not swallowed up by a universal, heavenly language. Neither are national identity and ethnic heritage blurred in favor of a new, otherworldly, mono-people.

The question this raises for me is: if God so values the nations that at the initial installment of His pouring out of His Spirit on all people He indicates that He is drawing all the scattered nations to Himself into a single transnational family; if God uses the gift of the Spirit to prove He ‘accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right’ (Acts 10:35); and yet if in the worldwide family that He creates for Himself there is no longer any ethnic, gender, or status division (Acts 2:17-18, Gal. 3:28, Col. 3:11); and if in the New Heavens and New Earth this multi-ethnic (and multi-lingual) family of God, each tribe in some sense retaining its earthly identity, gathers as one around God to praise Him for the gift of entrance into His eternal presence through the self-sacrifice of the Son; how can the church, whose task it is to image in its life now the life of the future consummated Kingdom, sponsor in any way the dividing of one people group and another, or the privileging of one nation over another? The sphere of loyalty of Jesus’ followers extends to Christians across every ethnic, ideological-political, national, and geographic border. That loyalty cuts across every other loyalty I might have with a group of people who share any other identifying characteristic with me. This is the only Biblically-defensible Christian nationalism. The only nation that can claim to be one under God is Abraham’s family in the Messiah, Jesus—and this family straddles every earthly border.

To spell out what might otherwise get missed: when we cheer as bombs fall on Iran, where the persecuted church is reportedly growing, when get desensitized to Russians and Ukrainians who may speak different local dialects but share a heavenly one slaughter each other each day, when we consider China—which has more Christians than the United States—primarily in terms of its threat to American geopolitical dominance rather than a place where our family ties are more numerous than the ones we have within our own national borders, then we are thinking according to a mindset that has absolutely no basis or potential justification in the Gospel. We do not have to make up our minds about every potential example of why an ethic of non-violence is impractical ‘in the real world’ before we can adopt a posture toward every person according to which the most important thing about them is either that they are related to us by the blood of Jesus and by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, or that we earnestly desire that they be related to us in these ways in the future.

My prayer is that these reflections would increase your resolve to view all of humanity through the lens of the Son of Man, who came to seek and save that which is lost (Luke 19:10). You may have to de-partisanize your Gospel—not depoliticize, because no Gospel of a Kingdom can be non-political. But hear the Gospel afresh through the echo-chamber of God’s grand redemptive narrative. If, as C.S. Lewis puts it, every square inch of the universe is claimed by God, and counter-claimed by Satan, I hope we’re clear about just whose goal it is that Christians would categorize groups as enemies and hope for a future for them that ends in judgment, and whose will it is that none should perish (2 Pet. 3:9), but that all should be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. 2:4).

‡ See, for example, Frank S. Macchia. Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), 3, 29. Kindle Edition.

° A translation from Richard B. Hays that I find extremely helpful in communicating Paul’s understanding of the eschatological situation within which the church finds itself living.