The Baptism in the Holy Spirit (Part I): Evidence and Experience

As of this writing, I have read 112 volumes of academic pentecostal theology. Other than eccelsiology (the theology of the church), the area of pentecostal theological reflection that has been most surprising to me on account of its lack is the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Perhaps this is unsurprising because Spirit baptism is such a staple of pentecostal spirituality and practice. Perhaps it is not explored because it is so taken for granted. (This is decidedly not the case when it comes to the doctrine of initial evidence—in fact, contemporary pentecostals seem to be fleeing from this position in considerable numbers.) But when it comes to fresh articulations of Spirit baptism itself, there have been few, at least at the book level. Notable exceptions to this lack of engagement are Frank Macchia, Amos Yong, and—to a slightly lesser extent—Simon Chan. It’s possible that Macchia’s and Yong’s statures within the pentecostal theological tradition have dissuaded others from contributing their own ideas to the conversation. As they say in academic literature, this post seeks to address the lacuna (gap) in the dialogue.

Like many pentecostals, my starting point with Spirit baptism is my experience. In spaces that are dominated by Evangelical voices, experience is not viewed as a viable source of authority. This is a leftover of the Enlightenment myth that human reason is able to provide an objective viewpoint that is uninfluenced by experience—that reason can grant direct, unmediated access to reality. As many have pointed out,° this is based on a circular argument. For example, sense experience is required for interpreting the data gathered by observation and provided by scientific instruments. Put simply: you have to trust that your eyes are giving you a reliable reading of the numbers on the scale, the data on the page, the behavior of the object under the microscope. It is simply not possible for human beings to interact with the world in a non-experiential way. Back to Spirit baptism…

One of the unique things about my experience with Spirit baptism, is that I did not know what it was before it happened to me. I had heard what I later learned were prophecies given in tongues, but I was that guy who thought the sister shouting out the prophecy in church was so serious about knowing God that she had learned His native language (Hebrew). I had not been attending church for very long. I don’t recall having heard any teaching on Spirit baptism. I was not responding to an altar call for people desiring to receive the gift of the Spirit. At the time I was baptized in the Spirit, no one was even praying for me. The experience was incredible, and I could write at length about it. But for the sake of space, I’ll simply say that, as I worshiped that Sunday morning, my heart was so filled with the love and presence of God that as I attempted to express my gratitude to God for His goodness, the words came too fast for my mouth to keep up. It was like they were being driven by a power source that exceeded all of my natural capacities. Within moments, the sounds coming out of my mouth didn’t belong (as far as I know) to any human language. For a few minutes, it would have been difficult for me to stop, even if I’d wanted to. It was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard. I had to ask the friend who had initially invited me to church for an explanation of what had happened to me. That was the first time I’m aware of ever having heard the term baptism in the Holy Spirit.

My limited goal in this first post is to stake out my position on the reality of Spirit baptism and the contested doctrine of initial evidence. And I’m staking it out unapologetically on the basis of my experience. I realize the number of issues that various readers might have is stacking up, so let me address a couple of the main ones.

First, is Spirit baptism something that happens in the twenty-first century? For those who would answer ‘no’, the challenging fact is that 25% of the world’s Christians are pentecostal or charismatic.‡ This doesn’t mean that they all speak in tongues, but it does mean that they at least believe it’s possible. For perspective, this is about one out of every twelve people on the planet. (Try to imagine another characteristic that holds true for that many people.) So if you do not believe that speaking in tongues is ‘for today’, I think it’s fair to say that the burden of responsibility rests on you to provide a satisfactory explanation for all of us who speak in tongues—whether you inherited the derogatory stereotype that speaking in tongues is demonic in origin or rooted in mental instability, or a sophisticated redemptive-historical schema that puts the cessation of charismatic manifestations and empowerment at the death of the apostles. This latter strategy, it should be noted, requires the imposition of a framework that is alien to the Bible, the authority of such which comes from… experience. Or, more accurately, the lack of experience. Better still? The lack of an experience that is presented in the New Testament as the normal Christian experience.

But before anyone thinks that I’ve given cessationism† a definitive smackdown (for those committed to it, no evidence against it will be sufficient), I want to say that contemporary pentecostals have become vulnerable to the very same logic that we have historically leveled against cessationists. Stick with me here. What pentecostals have said to cessationists is, in effect: our theology and experience are consistent with what is described in the New Testament, whereas you have had to make theological claims that match your lack of biblical experience. I think my question for pentecostals who want to be rid of the doctrine of initial evidence is: how are we any different? Aren’t we advocating for a theological position that accounts for a lack of the experience of speaking in tongues? After all, the historical event that ultimately resulted in 8% of the global population belonging to a pentecostal/charismatic spiritual tradition was a revival in 1906, to which the vast majority came expecting—based on the reports of those who’d been there—to have encounters with God that eventuated in… speaking in tongues.

Permit me to return to my own experience. It has been 27 years since I was Spirit baptized. I cannot think of another experience in those 27 years that I could point to and say: That could serve as an alternative or additional indicator that I was baptized in the Holy Spirit. I have had the privilege of many powerful encounters with God. But not one of them differentiated me before the encounter from me after the encounter in any identifiable way.◊ And let’s put aside for a moment the issue some people have with the scientific/modernist character of the language of initial evidence. Wanting to know the answer to the question How can I know something happened? is not a uniquely modernist question the mere asking of which turns me into an early twentieth-century fundamentalist who is anxious to prove that the Bible’s authority is perfectly compatible with the emerging scientific worldview. We vastly underestimate how chaotic our existence would be if we were to stop trying to verify whether anything had happened because of a chronological snobbery that sneers, ‘Verification is so modernistic.’ Our legal system would completely collapse if we collectively decided the entire concept of evidence is too bound up in the quest for a certain type of scientific certainty to be useful anymore. My wife and I have been buying items from online sellers. So far, when I’ve sent one of them payment via an app, not one of them has skipped the part where she/he looks at the app for evidence that the money has been received.

I plan to take up more of the theological dimensions of Spirit baptism in future posts (What is it for? Is it different than the gift of tongues in 1 Corinthians 12? What does it mean when John the Baptist says of Jesus that ‘He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire’? How does it relate to water baptism? etc.) For now, I mostly want to propose to pentecostals that we not give up on our expectation of biblical experience simply because we’re not seeing it happen as often as we once did. I think there are better responses to the diminishing frequency of pentecostal manifestations than suggesting a change in our theology. Because the problem isn’t a theological one, it’s an experiential one. And in case you’re thinking, ‘Of course it’s a theological issue,’ I would reply: once you’ve had the experience, it’s no longer a theological issue. Rather, it’s an intensely personal and powerful experience that’s consistent with what we see in the New Testament church on the pages of our authoritative Scriptures and with the overwhelming testimony of those who experienced the birth of the pentecostal movement.

° On this point, and on the idea that the structure of religious experience is essentially the same as experiences that we perceive through our senses, see William P. Alston, Experiencing God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience. And while you’re at it, read Paul K. Moser’s The Elusive God: Reorienting Religious Epistemology because it’s incredible.

‡ According to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity (CSGC) at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and the World Christian Database.

† Cessationism refers to the belief that supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit were limited to a specific period in history. This period is often said to have ended either with the end of the apostolic era or with the early church councils that determined which books of the Bible would be considered Scripture.

◊ Smith Wigglesworth, a prominent early Pentecostal revivalist, said that he’d met many people who could not tell him the exact day of their salvation, but he’d never met anyone who couldn’t tell him the day of their baptism in the Holy Spirit. This is my experience as well.

 See Randal Ackland, Toward a Pentecostal Theology of Glossolalia, for an in-depth review and analysis of the linkage between the Baptism in the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues in the earliest pentecostal publications. Robert P. Menzies, Speaking in Tongues: Jesus and the Apostolic Church as Models for the Church Today is another helpful resource.