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What’s Worse? This Kind of Bad or That Kind of Bad

October 1, 2012 / Leave a comment

Our book, A Pure Church, which you can order here (no longer pre-publication price) by clicking on either of the BUY NOW buttons, or use the link in the sidebar on the right, arrived and we already sent out the pre-publication copies. If you ordered and you haven’t gotten them already, they are definitely in the mail. It looks beautiful inside and out. Order yours now.

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When I was growing up (yes, I’ve grown up), my brother would show me the yearbook and then ask which girl I “liked,” offering any one of three bad choices. I know, everybody is beautiful in their own way. When you’ve got whatever number of bad choices, you’re best off with none-of-the-above.

It’s a good thing to agree that something is bad that is bad. I like reading articles that do a good job of exposing bad things. They’re helpful. Dan Phillips has written some of these about a particular kind of continuationism, especially focusing on the continuationist contradiction to the sufficiency of Scripture and preference for ongoing special revelation.

The headline of one of Phillips’ articles reads: “What we confess as our sufficient, complete Bible: what’s missing?” The addition to Scripture that occurs with the continuationists Phillips targets is bad. Scripture was complete. We shouldn’t add anything. We should just trust the completion, the sufficiency. Right? If you’re given the choice of that alteration of Scripture, you don’t take it. You trust God instead. The very bad thing that Phillips smacks, I have also pounded as it applies to independent Baptist revivalists—it’s always bad—no matter who it is that believes it.

Phillips would argue, as would I, that the canon is closed. We should keep it closed. Opening it is bad. God closed it. What God has brought together, let no man put asunder, so to speak.

Enter textual criticism and modern versions. Evangelical cessationists fiddle with Scripture. They play with the closed canon, rearranging the furniture, repainting a wall, putting in a different oven. Does the Holy Spirit make these decisions to alter a settled text? No. On a given Sunday, a pastor decides for the congregation what Scripture is. So the Bible becomes gumby in his hands. Phillips would have no problem with this. He thinks you’re stupid of you don’t. Why? Well, you just are!! And don’t argue with me, because you’re just stupid if you do! How do I know this is Phillips’ kind of reaction. I’ve read it, and here is an example:

Anytime I’m tempted to think that professed Bible-believing Christianity in America is in good shape — which, actually, is never — all I have to do is remind myself that there are still snake-handlers, and there are still people who would doggedly argue with the title of this post.

The post was an argument for shucking the King James for a modern version in your church. Phillips’ statement was essentially directed toward me. By the way, they talk like this, so disrespectfully and mean, because that’s the best they got—they don’t have anything else than scoffing. Ironically, the kind of mocking that Phillips would reserve for this, his continuationist targets would aim at him.

Historial bibliology treats the text, the very Words, of Scripture as settled. It wasn’t just the books that were canonized. The Words were. You can’t add or take away from a text that isn’t settled. And adding and taking away have become the norm of the eclectic text folk.

Phillips is presented with the two bad choices and rather than rejecting both of them, and really for the same reasons, he chooses one (falling in right into my brother’s trap). He does. Both choices have a lot in common.

1. They add or take away from Scripture.
2. They contradict historical biblical bibliology.
3. They are subjective.
4. They change doctrine.
5. They take the Bible into your own hands.
6. They don’t have a biblical basis for them.
7. They both end with different words of a text received by the churches.
8. They both ignore centuries of the church.

To be absolutely clear, I’m talking about the original text of Scripture, the Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. Phillips is fine with his “scholarly” tweaks of textual criticism, which really amount to at least 7% of the New Testament by itself, but he isn’t OK with what he sees as emotional ones of these continuationists God continues “speaking to.” Instead of listening to an Elmer Gantry like figure slabber out something he’s heard from above, we get a Mr. Chips like character asservate his best guesses. Both of them harm the biblical doctrine of the Bible. Both of them are bad choices. Neither of them should be taken.

I mentioned bad choices. Let’s talk about another one soon.

Updated Music Resources at the “Theological Compositions” website

September 14, 2012 / 6 Comments on Updated Music Resources at the “Theological Compositions” website

I wanted to make you aware that here, in the “Ecclesiology” section of my website, I have relatively recently added a goodly number of valuable resources relating to godly worship and music. These include:

1.) The Scottish and Genevan Psalters. Do you prefer e-resources, or do you feel like you too poor to pay the $15 or so to purchase a psalter so you can obey the explicit command to sing “psalms” (Ephesians 5:19; James 5:13), and not just hymns alone? You can now download two free, quite literal, historic psalters–with free audio files of the tunes, so any unfamiliar ones can be learned easily. Obey God’s command. Start singing the psalms personally, in your family, and in your church, for the glory of God. As part of our family devotions, we sing a psalm each day, singing the same psalm each day for a week (the psalms are very rich, so you will understand more of what you sing as you sing the same psalm a few times), and then going to the next psalm the next week. In this way, we have sung through the entire psalter as a family. The various PDF files of the 150 psalms in the Genevan psalter would also make great choir numbers. Does your choir sing the inspired songs of God? Hymns are wonderful, but the psalms are perfect–they are inspired! I have also posted all the tunes to the Trinity Baptist hymnal, a hymnal that has at least parts of all 150 of the psalms in it, as well as a lot of rich, Biblical hymns. It is the best hymnal I am aware of.

2.) Two e-videos by David Cloud exposing CCM. They are worth watching, and they are free.

3.) A link to Music Education Ministries, which has tremendous DVD material on music, put together by the pastor of a Baptist church in Australia that, before his conversion, was an accomplished secular musician. Do you want to know exactly what makes some music worldly, and other music acceptable, in its beat pattern, style, etc.? What exactly are the features that make CCM sound different from every single hymn in a classic Baptist or Protestant hymnal? Learn the details with these DVD presentations. The pastor is also an adjunct professor working with the music curriculum at the Sydney Baptist Bible College.

Are you excited that these works are all available free? Does it make you merry? “Is any merry? Let him sing psalms” (James 5:13). How can you do that? Download a free psalter in the “Ecclesiology” section, right now, here.

-TDR

Repentance Defended Against Antinomian Heresy: A Brief Defense of the Indubitable Biblical Fact that Repentance is a Change of Mind that Always Results in a Change of Action, part 3

August 31, 2012 / 2 Comments on Repentance Defended Against Antinomian Heresy: A Brief Defense of the Indubitable Biblical Fact that Repentance is a Change of Mind that Always Results in a Change of Action, part 3

Advocates
of the RNC (the view that repentance
does not always result in a change of action), in light of the overwhelming
case against them from the lexica and from the uses of metanoeo and metanoia in the New Testament, make several arguments for their position that
they hope will overturn the crushing weight of Biblical usage. First, they argue that the RAC (the view that repentance always results in a change
of action) is an affirmation of justification by works. Only on the RNC position is salvation allegedly by faith alone. Faith is affirmed to be an absolute
synonym with repentance, and faith is said to exclude any trust in Jesus Christ
to make one different; one trusts
Christ only to escape from hell, not to get a new heart and life. Christ is divided; He is not received as the Mediator who
is at once Prophet, Priest, and King, one undivided Person who is both Savior
and Lord. Rather, faith allegedly
picks and chooses among Christ’s offices and roles and receives only those of
them that promise escape from hell, not those that promise freedom from the
dominion of sin. However, such a RNC argument is nonsense. The RAC does
not affirm that the sinner is justified through the instrumentality of a
“repentance” that is actually some sort of process of doing good deeds. On the contrary, the RAC affirms that repentance is not good works, but that
repentance results in good works.
The RAC recognizes the
Biblical fact that repentance and faith take place at the same moment in time,
so that a sinner cannot savingly repent without repenting of his sin of
unbelief, and a sinner cannot believe in Jesus Christ without trusting Christ
for both deliverance from hell and a new heart. The New Covenant or Testament promises both the forgiveness
of sin and freedom from sin’s dominion:
“I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and
I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: and they shall not
teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord:
for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. For I will be merciful
to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember
no more” (Hebrews 8:10-12). The
New Covenant privilege of forgiveness of sins and the New Covenant privilege of
having God’s laws in one’s mind and heart are indissolubly connected. Justification is certainly by faith
alone (Romans 3:20-28), but saving faith will always lead to a change of heart
and action (James 2:14-26). The RAC is salvation by works only if Paul taught salvation
by works when he included Ephesians 2:10 after Ephesians 2:8-9, Titus 3:8 after
Titus 3:5-7, Romans 6-8 after Romans 3-5, or 2 Timothy 1:9a before 2 Timothy
1:9b. The RNC must not only ignore the New Testament usage of metanoeo and metanoia but also cut out of the Bible the context of many of the precious
declarations in the New Testament that salvation is not based on works. Indeed, the RNC even needs to purge the very promises of the New
Covenant itself (Hebrews 8:10-12).
The RAC is not salvation
by works, but a glorious salvation by faith alone that does not leave the
sinner in his sin but actually saves the sinner from sin by shattering sin’s
dominion. On the other hand, the RNC actually is antinomianism.

Second,
the RNC points out that the word repentance does not appear in the gospel of John. Since, the RNC affirms, John promises salvation simply to belief, and belief does not involve trusting in Christ for deliverance from the dominion
of sin, but only for freedom from hell, the RAC must be an erroneous definition of repentance, all
the lexical and Biblical evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. However, John’s gospel is filled with
evidence that saving faith always results in a changed life. For example, the classic presentation
of salvation by faith in John 3:1-3:21 indicates both that salvation is by
faith alone (3:15-18) and that saving faith and regeneration lead to a changed
life (John 3:8, 19-21). When Christ
won to Himself the Samaritan woman (John 4:4-42), He explained to her that
salvation leads one to true worship of the Father (John 4:23-24). Her life also became strikingly
different, as evidenced by her actions (John 4:28-29). In chapter five, John recorded Christ’s
preaching both “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and
believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into
condemnation; but is passed from death unto life” (John 5:24) and “Marvel not
at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall
hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the
resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of
damnation” (John 5:28-29), almost in the same breath. In John six, Christ preached: “This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he
hath sent. . . . Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath
everlasting life” (6:29, 47), and the chapter concludes with the fact that
those who go back and turn away from Christ (6:66) are people who have not
really believed (6:64, 69). One
could go through practically every chapter and discourse of Christ in John’s
gospel and see both the fact that eternal life is received by the
instrumentality of faith alone and the fact that faith receives Christ both for
salvation from sin’s penalty and salvation from sin’s power, that Christ is
received as a Savior both from sin’s eternal consequences and sin’s inward
corruption. The gospel of John is
filled with the doctrine of the RAC,
and contains no evidence whatsoever for the RNC.

Third,
the RNC advocate will mention that
various Biblical texts speak of God’s repentance (e. g., Genesis 6:6). Since God is sinless and does not need
to turn from sin, the RNC avers,
the RAC view is an error and
repentance is simply a change of mind that may not result in any change of
action. However, the fact is that
just as God has no sin to turn from, so He never changes His mind; He is immutable (Malachi 3:6; 1 Samuel
15:29). Texts that speak of God’s
repentance are examples of the many verses where anthropomorphic language, or
other similar sorts of language from the created order, are employed to
figuratively describe God. When
the prayer of a believer enters into God’s ears (Psalm 18:6), Scripture means
that God hears the prayer of His own, just like a man hears when sounds enter
into his ears. When a believer is
hidden under the shadow of God’s wings (Psalm 17:8; 36:7), the believer is
protected by God, just as baby birds are protected under the wings of a mother
bird. When God rides upon a cherub to deliver His people (Psalm 18:10), he
provides help for His own like a man or an army that ride upon horses to come
to the aid of their friends. When
God is said to repent, He does not cease being immutable, literally change His
mind, or turn from sin, but He people are treated differently as a result of
His repentance—His figurative change of mind results in people experiencing His
acting differently towards them, just as a man who repents acts differently as
a result. When God repented of
making the human race, He changed His gracious ways towards humanity and
destroyed mankind with a flood (Genesis 6:6-7). When the Lord repented of the bondage to foreign powers He
had laid upon Israel for the nation’s sins, He delivered Israel by raising up
judges (Judges 2:18-19). When God
repented of making Saul king, He changed His actions toward Saul, deposed him,
and set up David (1 Samuel 15:35-16:1).
There are no examples in Scripture where God repented and nothing
changed. The anthropomorphic
language predicating repentance in God supports the RAC, not the RNC.

The
theological, non-grammatical and non-lexical arguments for the RNC are entirely unconvincing. Indeed, they actually provide further support for the RAC. The
overwhelming grammatical and lexical evidence for the RAC remains untouched, and is actually strongly
supplemented by theological support from invalid RNC argumentation.

Advocates
of the RNC also frequently abuse or
misuse Greek lexica to support their heresy on repentance.[i] The kind of shallow abuse of lexica
that is sadly characteristic of “Baptist” advocates of the RNC heresy could appear were a RNC to note BDAG definition 1 for metanoeo, “change one’s mind,” and the fact that, while metanoia is defined as “repentance, turning about,
conversion,” the words “primarily a change of mind” are also present in the
lexicon. The RNC, assuming that the lexical definition of the word as
“change of mind” proves that the word means only a change of mind, and a particular kind of change of
mind, one that may result in nothing, could then pretend to have support from
BDAG for the RNC position. Such a conclusion represents an extreme
misreading of the lexicon, for:
1.) The lexicon places none—not a single one—of the 34 New Testament
uses of metanoeo underneath the
definition in question. It gives
no indication that this is a use that is found in the New Testament at
all. 2.) References listed under
definition #1 in BDAG in extrabiblical Greek, whether to the Shepherd
of Hermas, Diodorus Siculus, Appian,
Josephus, and so on, actually refer to a change of mind that results in a
change of action—the RAC
position—as is evident if one actually looks at the passages. The RNC needs to demonstrate that at least one of the texts
referenced in BDAG actually is a clear instance of its doctrine—which has not
been done.

The
RNC could also appeal to the
Liddell-Scott lexicon of classical or pre-Koiné Greek for alleged evidence,
noting the definition in the lexicon of “perceive afterwards or too late.” Here again the entire lack of any
evidence for this meaning in the New Testament must be ignored. It is also noteworthy that, with one
exception, the listed examples of this definition are from the Greek of the 5^th
century B. C. (Epicharmus, Democritus).
Similarly, the examples for “change one’s mind or purpose,” which, in
any case, suit the RAC position,
as one who changes his purpose will actually act differently, are all from the
5^th or 4^th century B. C., while the definition “repent,”
which the lexicon presents as that of the “NT,” and which includes a good
number of examples from Koiné Greek that is contemporary with the New
Testament, is certainly an affirmation of the RAC position.
Liddell-Scott defines metanoia as “change of mind or heart, repentance, regret,” placing the New
Testament examples in this category, and categorizing the meaning
“afterthought, correction” as one restricted to rhetoric and cited as present
only in an extrabiblical rhetorical treatise. The history of the development of metanoeo and metanoia is traced in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Kittel;
cf. also Metanoeo and metamelei in Greek Literature until 100
A. D., Including Discussion of Their Cognates and of their Hebrew Equivalents, Effie Freeman Thompson, pgs. 358-377 of Historical
and Linguistic Studies in Literature Related to the New Testament Issued Under
the Direction of the Department of Biblical and Patristic Greek, 2^nd series, vol. 1. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 1908. Thompson, who made a “[d]iligent search . . . for all the
instances of the words under consideration, with a view to including all the
works of all the known authors in each period” (pg. 353), noted that metanoeo and metanoia moved away from a purely intellectual sense that was present, although
not exclusively so, in early Greek.
In relation to Greek that is contemporary with the New Testament, he
notes: “[In] non-Jewish
post-Aristotelian writers to about 100 A. D. . . . passages continaing metanoeo show that . . . there is no instance of . . . purely
intellectual action. The change is that of feeling or will . . . In the Old
Testament Apocrypha and other Jewish writings to about 100 A. D. . . . metanoia means change of purpose . . . this change is (a)
moral; (b) from worse to better; (c) internal; (d) necessarily accompanied by
change of conduct” (pgs. 362, 368-9).
Philo is cited as affirming:
“[T]he man has lost his reason who, by speaking falsely of the truth,
says that he has changed his purpose
(metanenohkenai [a form of metanoeo,
“to repent,” in this tense and sentence, “says that he has repented”] when he
is still doing wrong” (pg. 369)—the RAC exactly. In contemporary
“Palestinian writers, there is no instance of the intellectual simply; but
there are abundant instances of both the emotional and volitional action” (pg.
375). Coming to the New Testament
usage, Thompson writes: “An
examination of the instances of metanoeo shows that . . . the verb is always used of a change of purpose which
the context clearly indicates to be moral . . . this change is from evil to
good purpose . . . is never used when the reference is to change of opinion
merely . . . is always internal, and . . . results in external conduct . . . metanoia reveal[s] a meaning analogous to that of the verb .
. . metanoia does not strictly
include outward conduct or reform of life . . . [but] this is the product of metanoia . . . lupe [sorrow] is not inherent in metanoia, but . . . it produces the latter[.] . . . The New
Testament writers in no instance employ [repentance] to express the action
solely of either the intellect or of the sensibility, but use it exclusively to
indicate the action of the will” (pgs. 372-373). Thompson concludes:
“In the New Testament, metanoeo and metanoia . . . are
never used to indicate merely intellectual action. . . . [T]hey are always used
to express volitional action . . . the change of purpose . . . from evil to
good. . . . [T]hey always express internal change . . . [and] they require
change in the outward expression of life as a necessary consequent . . . [t]he
fullest content [is] found in the . . . radical change in the primary choice by
which the whole soul is turned away from evil to good” (pgs. 376-377). The RAC is obviously validated by a historical study of the
development of the meaning of metanoeo and metanoia, while the RNC is obliterated.

Conclusion

The
Bible clearly teaches that repentance is a change of mind that always results
in a change of action (the RAC
position). The idea that
repentance is a change of mind that may or may not result in a change of
action, the RNC position, is
totally unbiblical. The RNC is a very serious, very dangerous, and Satanic
corruption of the saving gospel of Jesus Christ. Its advocates should consider the warning of Galatians
1:8-9, and tremble: “But though
we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which
we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. 9 As we said before, so say I now again, If any
man preach any other gospel unto you than
that ye have received, let him be accursed.” Anyone who seeks to bring the RNC heresy into one of Christ’s churches should be
immediately confronted. Believers
should not give place to such false teachers, “no, not for an hour; that the truth of the gospel might
continue” (Galatians 2:5).
Christians who are being led astray and confused by attacks on the gospel
such as the RNC should be
immediately confronted, and those who are making room for such error by their
teaching should be immediately, specifically, strongly, pointedly, publicly,
and directly confronted by name (Galatians 2:4-14; Acts 15:1-2). True churches must warn against
assaults on the gospel such as the RNC and maintain strict and total ecclesiastical separation from its
advocates (Romans 16:17; Ephesians 5:11; Titus 3:10; 2 John 7-11). They must also boldly preach repentance
and faith to every creature, so that they not only negatively oppose error, but
by their true doctrine and practice adorn the truth (Matthew 28:18-20; Mark
16:15; Luke 24:47).

-TDR

[i]
The
following paragraph appeared in a footnote in part #1 of this series, but it
was important enough to reproduce in the text here.

Repentance Defended Against Antinomian Heresy: A Brief Defense of the Indubitable Biblical Fact that Repentance is a Change of Mind that Always Results in a Change of Action, part 2

August 24, 2012 / 3 Comments on Repentance Defended Against Antinomian Heresy: A Brief Defense of the Indubitable Biblical Fact that Repentance is a Change of Mind that Always Results in a Change of Action, part 2

New
Testament usage provides crystal-clear evidence for repentance as a change of
mind that results in a change of action.
Consider the following representative texts with metanoeo:

Matthew 12:41 The men of Nineveh
shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they
repented at the preaching of Jonas;
and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.

Christ refers to what took place
in Jonah 3:5-10:

So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed
a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of
them. For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and
he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the
decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor
flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: but let man and
beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn
every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his
fierce anger, that we perish not? And God saw their works, that they turned
from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he
would do unto them; and he did it
not.

When the Lord Jesus spoke of repentance, he spoke of the kind of change of mind or heart of
the kind that took place at Nineveh, when the Ninevites “believed God . . . and
. . . turn[ed] every one from his evil way,” where “their works” were evidence
that they had “turned.” Christ’s
doctrine of repentance was the RAC (the
view that Repentance Always results in Change), not the RNC (the view that Repentance may Not result in Change).

Luke 15:7, 10: I say unto you, that likewise joy shall
be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance. . . . Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in
the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.

In
the single parable (Luke 15:3) of Luke 15, Christ illustrates the conversion of
publicans and sinners (15:1-2) by the restoration of a lost sheep, coin, and
son, while the unconverted and self-righteous Pharisees who thought they did
not need to repent (Luke 15:2; cf. 5:31-32; 19:7-10) are illustrated by another
son (cf. Exodus 4:22; Hosea 11:1; Romans 9:4) who was not willing to enter his
father’s house but greatly dishonored his father because of his perceived
superiority to the restored lost son (15:25-32). When Christ spoke of repentance, he spoke of the attitude
expressed by the words of the son that was lost but then found: “I have sinned against heaven, and
before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy
hired servants” (Luke 15:18-19).
Such an attitude expresses the RAC
doctrine of repentance.

Acts 26:20 But shewed first unto
them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judaea,
and then to the Gentiles, that they
should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance [metanoia].

When
the Apostles preached repentance, they preached that repentance results in
“works meet for repentance.” They
also connected repentance with turning
or being converted; cf. Acts 3:19, “Repent ye therefore,
and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out.” To turn or be converted is to “change direction, turn around . . . to change
belief or course of conduct . . . to change one’s mind or course of action . .
. turn, return.”[i] Paul explains what takes place when men
repent, are converted, and are born again: “For they themselves shew of us what manner of entering in
we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and
true God; and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come” (1
Thessalonians 1:9-10). Conversion
is to turn to God and to turn away from idolatry and other sins. It is to turn to God from sin with the
purpose of serving the living and true God and waiting for the return of His
Son. Such a doctrine is plainly
the RAC.

Revelation 2:5 Remember therefore
from whence thou art fallen, and repent,
and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove
thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.

The
Apostle John recorded Christ’s message that when one repented he would “do . .
. works” as a result. Christ
commanded that one “repent of her fornication” (Revelation 2:21) and warned
that those who do not “repent of their deeds” would enter “into great
tribulation” (Revelation 2:22).
That is, those unsaved people who do not “repent of their deeds” will
miss the Rapture and enter into the “great tribulation” (Revelation 7:14;
Matthew 24:21) with the rest of the unsaved, those who “repented not of the
works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold,
and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear,
nor walk: neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor
of their fornication, nor of their thefts” (Revelation 9:20-21), those who
“blasphemed the name of God . . . and . . . repented not to give him glory. . .
. blasphemed the God of heaven . . . and repented not of their deeds”
(Revelation 16:9, 11). The Apostle
John taught, through the inspiration of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit, the RAC position on repentance, not the RNC.

The
noun metanoia likewise provides clear
evidence for the RAC. Matthew 3:1-12 records the preaching of
John the Baptist on repentance:

1 In those days came John the Baptist,
preaching in the wilderness of Judaea,
2 And saying, Repent [metanoeo] ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. 3 For this is he that was spoken of by
the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare
ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. 4 And the same John had his raiment of camel’s hair, and a
leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey. 5 Then went out to him Jerusalem, and
all Judaea, and all the region round about Jordan, 6 And were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins.
7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his
baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee
from the wrath to come? 8 Bring
forth therefore fruits meet for repentance [metanoia]: 9 And think not to say within
yourselves, We have Abraham to our
father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up
children unto Abraham. 10 And now
also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which
bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 11 I indeed baptize you with water unto
repentance [metanoia]: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I,
whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost,
and with fire: 12 Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor,
and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with
unquenchable fire.

The first Baptist preacher taught
that repentance resulted in visible “fruit” (v. 8) without which there was no
evidence that conversion had taken place and therefore without which baptism
should not be administered, as baptism was on account of (eis, “unto”) repentance (v. 10). Repentance results in “mak[ing] straight
paths for your feet . . . [and] follow[ing] . . . holiness, without which no
man shall see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:13-14; Matthew 3:3; Isaiah 35:8;
40:1-3). Repentance results in
fruit, because everyone that has not repented and received a new heart so that
he is a good tree that brings forth good fruit will be cast into hell fire (v.
10). Such teaching was the
repentance preached by the first Baptist and also by Christ (Matthew 3:2;
4:17), and all Baptists today should preach—indeed, are commanded to preach
(Luke 24:47), the same message as Christ and John—the RAC doctrine.

The
Apostle Paul wrote:

9 Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that
ye sorrowed to repentance [metanoia] for ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye
might receive damage by us in nothing.
10 For godly sorrow worketh repentance [metanoia]
to salvation not to be repented[ii]
of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death. 11 For behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a
godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what
zeal, yea, what revenge! In all
things ye have approved yourselves to
be clear in this matter.

Paul taught that repentance, a
result of godly sorrow over sin, leads to people being careful to avoid sin,
clearing themselves from it, having indignation against it, being afraid of it,
being indignant against it, being afraid to commit it, having vehement desire
to avoid it, being zealous for righteousness, and a desire to revenge
themselves upon it.[iii] Paul clearly taught that repentance
leads to a change of action—the RAC
position.

Many
texts with metanoeo and metanoia in the New Testament fit the RAC position.
Thus, the burden of proof is on the RNC position to prove that one can repent without a
change of action following.
However, not a single text in the New Testament speaks of a “repentance”
that does not result in a change of action.[iv] The RNC position is completely absent from the pages of the
New Testament.

-TDR

[i]
Epistrepho, in A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament
and other early Christian Literature
(3rd ed.), W. Arndt, F. Danker, & W. Bauer. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 2000. The complete
list of epistrepho texts is: Matt
9:22; 10:13; 12:44; 13:15; 24:18; Mark 4:12; 5:30; 8:33; 13:16; Luke 1:16–17;
2:20, 39; 8:55; 17:4, 31; 22:32; John 12:40; 21:20; Acts 3:19; 9:35, 40; 11:21;
14:15; 15:19, 36; 16:18; 26:18, 20; 28:27; 2 Cor 3:16; Gal 4:9; 1 Th 1:9; James
5:19–20; 1 Pet 2:25; 2 Pet 2:21–22; Rev 1:12.

[ii]
The
adjective ametameletos, related to
the verb metamelomai (not metanoeo) for repentance in the sense of regret or remorse; cf. 2 Corinthians 7:7, where
“repent” is metamelomai.

[iii]
The
context is the individual who was under church discipline for immorality; the desires to oppose sin mentioned in
the passage are connected to the concrete manifestations of sin in persons
involved in it.

[iv]
Note the
complete list of metanoeo texts: Matt
3:2; 4:17; 11:20–21; 12:41; Mark 1:15; 6:12; Luke 10:13; 11:32; 13:3, 5; 15:7,
10; 16:30; 17:3–4; Acts 2:38; 3:19; 8:22; 17:30; 26:20; 2 Cor 12:21; Rev 2:5,
16, 21–22; 3:3, 19; 9:20–21; 16:9, 11.
Also note the complete list of metanoia texts: Matt
3:8, 11; 9:13; Mark 1:4; 2:17; Luke 3:3, 8; 5:32; 15:7; 24:47; Acts 5:31;
11:18; 13:24; 19:4; 20:21; 26:20; Rom 2:4; 2 Cor 7:9–10; 2 Tim 2:25; Heb 6:1,
6; 12:17; 2 Pet 3:9.

Local Only Ecclesiology, Baptist History, and Landmarkism

June 13, 2012 / 3 Comments on Local Only Ecclesiology, Baptist History, and Landmarkism

Sometimes I get spam email from a character in an African country, who wants to help me out financially. Maybe you’ve deleted some of these letters too, knowing they’re a fraud. And then I get these letters from parachurch organizations or representatives who want to help me and my church. I like the scriptural analogy I first heard from Bobby Mitchell—they’re just another oxcart. The oxcart was there to help Uzzah and his group of workers carry the ark. A big help that provided, huh?

My alma mater, another parachurch organization, wants to help pastors and churches with a new online theological journal. I’m not saying you can’t find anything good there if you leave the bones and gristle. However, in Maranatha’s second only edition, I’ve got to call foul on a bit of propaganda in the form of The Landmark Controversy: A Study in Baptist History and Polity by Fred Moritz. Early Maranatha, the Cedarholm and Weeks years, from the late 60s to the mid 80s, was local only in its ecclesiology. Dr. Weeks taught every course associated with the church: Baptist history, Baptist polity, Acts, and Revelation. He savaged the universal church concept. There wasn’t anything close to acceptance of that belief. For Baptist history, we used John T. Christian’s A History of the Baptists, which is a Baptist successionism text. I should also inform that Dr. Cedarholm would preach annually an anti-landmarkism sermon. That sermon (usually ten points) was always curious to me. Why? I had never met one of these people he was preaching about. I knew if I ever did, that I shouldn’t be one, but I was still waiting for that.

In hindsight, I think that Dr. Cedarholm’s anti-landmark sermon was because of criticism that Maranatha was a landmark school, a typical pejorative used against someone local only in his ecclesiology. They didn’t have actual proof against the ecclesiology, so they did the name calling that was typical of fundamentalism. The landmark sermon wasn’t for the students. It was for the people out there, giving Maranatha deniability, that it was not “Baptist bride.” I also believe that Dr. Cedarholm’s treatment of landmarkism was dealing with a strawman. What stuck out in his sermon was not to be a “chain-linker.” The chain-link position did seem impossible. I couldn’t fathom that there were those who thought they could trace a tangible, visible lineage of their church all the way back to Christ. I believe now that the reason it seemed so odd was because that wasn’t what “landmarkers” actually believed. Chain-link, like Baptist brider, and even landmarker, were part of the ad hominem attack on those believing local-only ecclesiology.

Maranatha published two books ever. One was Evaluating Versions of the New Testament by Edward Fowler, in which Dr. Cedarholm in the preface says he’s TR only, a bit of history now denied by Maranatha revisionists. The other was a hardback two volume set of Armitage’s History of the Baptists. Maranatha considered Armitage to take a different view of Baptist successionism, called the spiritual kinship view. Maranatha taught spiritual kinship, which is still Baptist successionism. Maranatha sold the Challenge Press, local only books in its bookstore and we read them for Weeks’ classes. I’m talking about S. E. Anderson’s The First Baptist and The First Church, and then Roy Mason’s The Myth of the Universal, Invisible Church Exploded. Baptist successionism is simply saying that there have always been churches with Baptist distinctives, that true churches always existed from today back to Christ, and that today they are Baptist churches. Spiritual kinship says that we can trace the succession back spiritually. Chain-link, according to the attacks, would be that you can find the church that came from the church that came from the church all the way back to the Jerusalem church.

I have not met one of these chain linkers, and I’m guessing that neither has Fred Moritz. Chain linkers are fictional boogeymen. Here’s what landmarkers believe, as I understand them. They believe that churches come from churches. They believe that Christ gave the first church His authority and His authority is Scriptural and important. Churches are given authority not just vertically, but horizontally. You don’t have to trace your church all the way back, but you should be looking to see if your church was started by a church, which was started by a church. These “chain-linkers” don’t believe authority came from Roman Catholicism and, therefore, Protestantism. That line of churches is not the line of New Testament authority. If the church was not started by a church, they question what they see as an important aspect of authority. To act in faith, someone should be baptized by authority. To act in faith, a church should be started by another true church, one that has authority. This position is still a faith position. It trusts Matthew 16:18, the promise of perpetuity. I don’t have a problem with the position I’ve just explained. I take it myself. I also don’t have a problem with spiritual kinship. As it stands, I don’t think it is strong enough, but it is trusting Scripture as to the perpetuity of the church.

Fred Moritz is a recent addition to the Maranatha faculty. I always, always had respect for Fred Moritz. I liked hearing him preach, when I heard him. I read both of his books on holiness and separation and liked a lot of what he wrote. They were worth reading. They would be especially good if people practiced them, which I would say they never do in fundamentalism. Fred Moritz himself doesn’t practice his own books. I didn’t know that until I was forced to encounter Moritz when he was the executive director of Baptist World Mission. I was expecting him to do what he wrote, and was surprised when he didn’t. That was part of my “When I Left Fundamentalism” series here at this blog.

I believe Moritz wants to separate Maranatha from its history of local church teaching. I believe he wants that characteristic of Maranatha to be eradicated. I would say that it is gone already, but this is to scorch the earth upon which the local only teaching once sat. What is sad about it is that he uses Dr. Weeks to do it at the end of the article. Most probably don’t care, but I do. It’s sad. Maranatha deserves what it’s getting, but again, it is sad. Moritz himself has been a long time advocate, proponent of universal church teaching. At one time, Calvary Baptist Theological Seminary published a journal and in either the first or one of the early editions, Moritz wrote an article promoting the teaching of the universal, invisible body of Christ. The whole article was about that. What I’m saying is that he is definitely the wrong man to be writing on this subject. He’s always differed than Maranatha, never been supportive of their historic position, and would have reason to want to rid it of that teaching. Many will cheer what he’s done. I don’t.

In the article itself, Moritz is attempting to portray landmarkism and really local only ecclesiology (because he doesn’t really differentiate them) as novel in history, and in that sense, cultic. That teaching, he is asserting, began with James R. Graves in the mid 19th century and it was merely a reaction to rise of Campbellism among the Baptist churches of America at that time. He’s also saying that it’s the influence of covenant theology (which I’ll get to later). Moritz is using history, and I say “using” purposefully, to make his point. It is not much of a theological or biblical article. I would consider myself at least a bit of a historian, because of my reading and my teaching it for over 20 years. I care about history. I know that history can be used in many different ways for almost any purpose that someone wants. We can use information to make what happened to look like something else actually happened. It’s an easy way to discredit.

Moritz says that Graves was a controversialist by nature. The tenor of the article is that Graves was destroying the Baptist churches in America with his teaching. That is only an opinion. Calvinists often believe that non-Calvinists are destroying churches. Mormons believe that all true churches were lost until they came along. When Jonathan Edwards’ father-in-law, Solomon Stoddard, instituted the half way covenant in the New England, he thought he was helping churches. That Graves was destroying churches is only an opinion of Moritz. See, I believe Moritz himself is a controversialist, based on his own standard, and I know that first hand. Jesus said that broad is the road to destruction and narrow the road to life eternal. All the broad road people think that the narrow roaders are controversialists who won’t fit in. Outstanding old and historical sources say that Graves was a giant and have a positive view of him. I’m not saying that Graves invented successionism any more than Darby invented dispensationalism, and I think those two are a good parallel. You’ll hear Calvinists say, “the reformed doctrine of justification,” as if the reformation invented justification. It’s not a correct view to say that Baptist successionism was a reaction movement to Campbellism. Baptist successionism is biblical teaching. Christians should believe it.

In future articles, I will break-down Moritz’s journal article.

Spirit Baptism—the Historic Baptist View, part 15; the Alleged Reference in 1 Corinthians 12:13, part 6

January 27, 2012 / 5 Comments on Spirit Baptism—the Historic Baptist View, part 15; the Alleged Reference in 1 Corinthians 12:13, part 6

d.)
The Exegesis of 1 Corinthians 12:13

1 Corinthians 12:13 reads, “For by one Spirit
are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.”[i] The clauses of this passage will be
examined in order, and their significance evaluated.

“For
by one Spirit”: kai« ga»r e˙n
e˚ni« Pneu/mati

The historic Baptist position affirms that this
clause refers to the instrumentality of the Holy Spirit, as do both the PCP and
UCD doctrine. This clause, on the
Biblical, historic Baptist view, refers to the Holy Spirit leading the members
of the church at Corinth to submit to water baptism. Although the members of the Corinthian assembly boasted
about the amazing spiritual gifts given them by the Spirit, and caused division
in the assembly on their account, the apostle Paul reminded the congregation
that the Holy Spirit had led the members of their church to submit to a common
immersion with the phrase “by one Spirit.” 1 Corinthians 12:13 affirms that the Holy Spirit is the
Producer of congregational unity around the ordinances of baptism and the
Lord’s Supper.

Various commentators and writers have advanced
the idea that by in the verse should be
translated as in, and
consequently affirmed either that the correct translation is “in one Spirit” or
“in one spirit.” The question of a
reference to the Holy Spirit, or a “spirit,”[ii]
and of the rendition of en as by or in
will be addressed in order.

Thomas Strouse, Baptist seminary professor and advocate of Spirit baptism as
a completed historical event, commented concerning 1 Corinthians 12:13:

Paul
employed the expression “by one Spirit” (en heni pneumati) in Phil. 1:27 as “in one spirit,” referring to “the
spirit of unity.” Since pneumati is anarthrous in I Cor. 12:13, Paul differentiated pneumati (“spirit”) from the seven previous articular
references to “the Spirit” (to pneumati) as deity.[iii]

Strouse
affirms that 1 Corinthians 12:13 refers to a “spirit of unity” that the
assembly possessed when its members received water baptism, rather than to the
Holy Spirit leading the members of the assembly to receive immersion. However, the idea that 1 Corinthians
12:13 refers to “a spirit” of unity rather than the third Person in the Trinity
cannot be sustained exegetically.

First, the immediate context provides
overwhelming support for a reference to the Holy Spirit in 1 Corinthians
12:13. Consider 12:3-13:

Wherefore I give
you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God
calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the
Lord, but by the Holy Ghost. Now there
are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are
differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of
operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. But the
manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. For to one
is given by the Spirit the word
of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the
same Spirit; To another the working of
miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers
kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues: But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit,
dividing to every man severally as he will. For as the body is one, and hath
many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body:
so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be
Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or
free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.[iv]

The
eleven references to the word pneuma,
“Spirit/spirit,” in 1 Corinthians 12:3-13, uniformly refer to the Holy
Spirit. Changing “by one Spirit”
to “in one spirit of unity” in v. 13 is very contrary to the context. For that matter, the “one Spirit” of v.
13 is the “one and the selfsame Spirit” who “worketh . . . as he will” in v.
11. The explanatory words
“for” in v. 12, 13 connect the reference to the “one Spirit” (hen
Pneuma) of v. 13 immediately back to the
“one . . . Spirit” (hen . . . Pneuma) of v. 11. Since v. 11
refers to the Holy Spirit, v. 13 refers to the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, that the second half of 1
Corinthians 12:13 refers to “drink[ing] into one Spirit,” the Holy Spirit, not
a “spirit of unity,” confirms the reference to the Holy Spirit in the first
half.[v] The overwhelming evidence of eleven
references to the Holy Spirit in the immediate context of 1 Corinthians 12:13,
the fact that v. 13 explains and develops the reference to the Holy Spirit in
v. 11, and the evidence of the second half of v. 13, prove that 1 Corinthians
12:13a refers to the Holy Spirit, not to a “spirit of unity.”

Furthermore, the word “spirit” is not employed
anywhere in Scripture as a reference to a “spirit of unity.” If 1 Corinthians 12:13 referred to such
a thing, it would be absolutely unique in Scripture in doing so. An alleged parallel to Philippians 1:27
fails because the latter passage refers to the human spirit, as is made obvious
by the immediately following reference to another portion of the human person,
the mind or soul: “I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit
[en heni pneumati], with one mind [mia
pseuche] striving together for the faith of
the gospel.”[vi] Philippians 1:27, along with the
similar reference in Acts 4:32 to “the multitude of them that believed [being]
of one heart and of one soul,”[vii]
do indeed emphasize unity in the assembly, as in both verses the inner beings,
the minds, souls, hearts, and spirits, of the members of the church were to be
in agreement as they strove together to serve the Lord. Nonetheless, Philippians 1:27 and Acts
4:32 do not refer to a “spirit of unity” anymore than they do to a “soul of
unity” or a “heart of unity.”
Thus, unless one wishes to make 1 Corinthians 12:13 into a reference to being
baptized and drinking into the human soul and spirit—which would require a
definite mental stretch to produce any reasonable signification—there is no
parallel whatever between 1 Corinthians 12:13 and Philippians 1:27 in the use
of the word pneuma, “Spirit/spirit,”
as a reference to a “spirit of unity.”
None of the 385 references to the word pneuma in the New Testament refer to a “spirit of
unity.” A very large number of the
references to pneuma—including
ten instances other than 1 Corinthians 12:13a in 12:3-13—refer to God the Holy
Spirit.

Strouse’s statement, “Since pneumati is anarthrous in I Cor. 12:13, Paul differentiated pneumati (“spirit”) from the seven[viii]
previous articular references to ‘the Spirit’ (to pneumati) as deity” cannot be sustained. Several rules of
Greek grammar demonstrate that there is no reason to require an article to make
“by one Spirit” have a definite signification. Daniel Wallace, in his Greek Grammar Beyond the
Basics,[ix]
writes:

The
function of the article is not primarily
to make something definite that would otherwise be indefinite. . . . It is not
necessary for a noun to have the article in order for it to be definite. . .
there are at least ten constructions in which a noun may be definite though
anarthrous. . . . [A] proper name is definite without the article. . . . There
is no need for the article to be used to make the object of a preposition
definite. . . . [they are only] occasionally indefinite . . . Thus, when a noun
is the object of a preposition, it does not require the article to be definite:
if it has the article, it must be definite; if it lacks the article, it may be
definite. The reason for the article, then, is usually for other purposes (such
as anaphora or as a function marker). . . . [Furthermore,] [a] one-of-a-kind
noun does not, of course, require the article to be definite (e.g., “sun,”
“earth,” “devil,” etc.). One might consider pneuvma as monadic when it is modified by the adjective a‚gion. If so, then the expression pneuvma a‚gion is monadic and refers
only to the Holy Spirit.

A
reference to the name of the monadic Spirit of God,[x]
with Spirit as the object of the preposition “by,” has no need of the Greek
article to express definiteness.
To argue otherwise neglects important characteristics of Greek syntax.

Furthermore, not all of the references to the
Spirit of God in 1 Corinthians 12:3-13 contain the Greek article. In 12:3, the Holy Spirit is twice
mentioned without an article, both instances following the same preposition (en) employed in 12:13.[xi] Furthermore, the Spirit of God is
referred to without the Greek article following en (and in a variety of other constructions, naturally,
7:40, etc.) elsewhere in 1 Corinthians (2:4, 13; 6:19). In fact, the construction en
heis, “in/by one,” never is followed by the
Greek article in the epistles of Paul or, for that matter, in any of the New
Testament outside of Luke’s gospel[xii]—but
one could not properly supply the English indefinite article after any of the
Greek nonarticular en heis
constructions.

1 Corinthians 12:13a of necessity refers to the
Holy Spirit. The connection of v.
13 to v. 11 and the eleven uses of pneuma
for the Holy Spirit in the immediate context compel this conclusion. Arguments in favor of an alternative
reading of the text as a reference to a “spirit of unity” fall far short of
dismantling the contextual evidence for a designation of the Holy Spirit. Scripture does not refer to a “spirit
of unity” with the word pneuma
anywhere in the Bible. Syntactical
asseverations against a reference to the Spirit of God in 1 Corinthians 12:13a
entirely fail to establish their conclusions. Reference to the great God, the Holy Spirit, must not be
removed from 1 Corinthians 12:13a.

Note that this complete study, with all it parts and with additional material not reproduced on this blog in this series, is available by clicking here.

TDR

[i]
kai« ga»r e˙n e˚ni« Pneu/mati hJmei√ß pa¿nteß ei˙ß e≠n sw◊ma
e˙bapti÷sqhmen, ei¶te ∆Ioudai√oi ei¶te ›Ellhneß, ei¶te douvloi ei¶te
e˙leu/qeroi: kai« pa¿nteß ei˙ß e≠n Pneuvma e˙poti÷sqhmen.

[ii]
Believers
with a strong view of God’s providential working in the translation of the King
James Bible often also consider that the use of a capital “S” in the King James
Bibles that they read and study from should be considered hermeneutically. While this providential argument should
not be ignored or belittled, because as modern capitalization practices became
standardized an upper-case “S” in 1 Corinthians 12:13 indeed became the
capitalization practice found in the Authorized Version, in the original 1611
KJV the “s” was lower case in 1 Corinthians 12:13, as it was in a great number
of other verses referring to the Holy Spirit (such as 1 Corinthians 12:3,
“spirit of God,” v. 4, 7, 8, 9, 11, “spirit,” 2 Corinthians 3:3, “spirit of the
living God,” 3:18, “spirit of the Lord,” etc. This is not to say that the Holy Spirit universally lacks
capitalization in the 1611, e. g., 1 Corinthians 2:14; 7:40, “Spirit of
God.”). See The Holy Bible:
1611 edition. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson 2003 (reprint
ed).

[iii]
“Ye Are
The Body of Christ,” Dr. Thomas M. Strouse. Emmanuel Baptist Theological
Seminary, Newington, CT. elec. acc.
http://www.faithonfire.org/articles/body_of_christ.html.

[iv]
12:3
dio gnwri÷zw uJmi√n, o¢ti
oujdei«ß e˙n Pneu/mati Qeouv lalw◊n le÷gei aÓna¿qema ∆Ihsouvn: kai« oujdei«ß
du/natai ei˙pei√n Ku/rion ∆Ihsouvn, ei˙ mh e˙n Pneu/mati ÔAgi÷wˆ. 4 Diaire÷seiß de« carisma¿twn ei˙si÷, to de« aujto Pneuvma. 5 kai« diaire÷seiß diakoniw◊n ei˙si÷, kai« oJ aujtoß Ku/rioß. 6 kai« diaire÷seiß e˙nerghma¿twn ei˙si÷n, oJ de« aujto/ß e˙sti Qeo/ß, oJ
e˙nergw◊n ta» pa¿nta e˙n pa◊sin. 7 e˚ka¿stwˆ de« di÷dotai hJ
fane÷rwsiß touv Pneu/matoß proß to sumfe÷ron. 8 wˆ— me«n
ga»r dia» touv Pneu/matoß di÷dotai lo/goß sofi÷aß, a‡llwˆ de« lo/goß gnw¿sewß,
kata» to aujto Pneuvma: 9 e˚te÷rwˆ de« pi÷stiß, e˙n twˆ◊
aujtwˆ◊ Pneu/mati: a‡llwˆ de« cari÷smata i˙ama¿twn, e˙n twˆ◊ aujtwˆ◊ Pneu/mati:
10 a‡llwˆ de« e˙nergh/mata duna¿mewn, a‡llwˆ de« profhtei÷a,
a‡llwˆ de« diakri÷seiß pneuma¿twn, e˚te÷rwˆ de« ge÷nh glwssw◊n, a‡llwˆ de«
e˚rmhnei÷a glwssw◊n: 11 pa¿nta de« tauvta e˙nergei√ to
e≠n kai« to aujto Pneuvma, diairouvn i˙di÷aˆ e˚ka¿stwˆ kaqw»ß bou/letai. 12 Kaqa¿per ga»r to sw◊ma e≠n e˙sti, kai« me÷lh e¶cei polla¿, pa¿nta de«
ta» me÷lh touv sw¿matoß touv e˚no/ß, polla» o¡nta, e≠n e˙sti sw◊ma: ou¢tw kai«
oJ Cristo/ß. 13 kai« ga»r e˙n e˚ni« Pneu/mati
hJmei√ß pa¿nteß ei˙ß e≠n sw◊ma e˙bapti÷sqhmen, ei¶te ∆Ioudai√oi ei¶te ›Ellhneß,
ei¶te douvloi ei¶te e˙leu/qeroi: kai« pa¿nteß ei˙ß e≠n Pneuvma e˙poti÷sqhmen.

[v]
However,
an advocate of the “spirit of unity” position would likely also wish to deny
that the second half of 1 Corinthians 12:13 is a reference to the Holy
Ghost. Note the further comments
below on the “drink into one Spirit” clause.

[vi]
aÓkou/sw ta» peri«
uJmw◊n, o¢ti sth/kete e˙n e˚ni« pneu/mati, miaˆ◊ yuchØv sunaqlouvnteß thØv
pi÷stei touv eujaggeli÷ou.

[vii]
Touv de« plh/qouß tw◊n
pisteusa¿ntwn h™n hJ kardi÷a kai« hJ yuch mi÷a: kai« oujd∆ ei–ß ti tw◊n
uJparco/ntwn aujtwˆ◊ e¶legen i¶dion ei•nai, aÓll∆ h™n aujtoi√ß a‚panta koina¿.

[viii]
While
Strouse appears to have stopped counting at an earlier point, probably verse
four, there are nine, not seven, references to the Holy Spirit from
12:3-12:12. There are indeed seven
in 12:4-12. It is not clear why
one would stop references to pneuma
at v. 4 when two additional references to the word occur in v. 3.

[ix]
Pgs. 210,
243, 245, 248, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the
New Testament, Daniel B.
Wallace. Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan, 1996.

[x]
It is true
that the phrase pneuvma
a‚gion is not found in the instances
where pneuvma is found 1 Corinthians 12:4-13, but the references in
v. 4-13 are controlled by v. 3, where the Spirit is specifically designated
with His monadic title of pneuvma a‚gion, as well as His
unique status as pneuvma Qeouv.

[xi]
oujdei«ß e˙n Pneu/mati
Qeouv lalw◊n le÷gei aÓna¿qema ∆Ihsouvn: kai« oujdei«ß du/natai ei˙pei√n Ku/rion
∆Ihsouvn, ei˙ mh e˙n Pneu/mati ÔAgi÷wˆ.

[xii]
The
complete list of e˙n
ei–ß references in the NT is Luke 5:12,
17; 8:22; 13:10; 20:1; Romans 12:4; 15:6; 1 Corinthians 10:8; 12:13; Galatians
5:14; Ephesians 2:16, 18; 4:4; Philippians 1:27; Colossians 3:15; James 2:10;
Revelation 18:8, 10. Note that all
13 of the references outside of Luke are not followed by the article, while
Luke uniformly employs one.

Jockeying for the Most Spiritually Dead or Most Spiritually Unable Position

January 26, 2012 / 5 Comments on Jockeying for the Most Spiritually Dead or Most Spiritually Unable Position

When I present the gospel, I tell people that they are dead spiritually (Ephesians 2:1, 5). It’s true. And I also believe that spiritual deadness is spiritual inability (Romans 3:10-12). Men don’t seek after God. Men, who are in the flesh, cannot please God (Romans 8:8). However, those two truths must be understood in light of everything that the Bible teaches. God won’t contradict Himself, because He can’t deny Himself. And it is these two points among others, man’s spiritual deadness and his inability, that Calvinists take past what the Bible says about them, confusing people on the doctrine of salvation.

Calvinists claim a high view of God. I’m happy to think they have a high view of God. Having a high view of God is no problem with me. However, we can only have as high a view of God as God is High. We can’t get higher than the Highest, and the Highest would be how God describes Himself to be the Highest. We can’t get God Higher by saying things that He didn’t even say. Calvinists seem to think that they can make God seem even higher by making men look even lower. And their way to “improve” upon the sovereignty of God seems to be their diminishing men even further than what the Bible describes them to be.

Man is low. No doubt. But he’s only as low as God says he’s low. For instance, man is still in the image of God, even if he’s lost. So if you murder someone, you are still striking at the image of God, just like God said in Genesis 9. An unsaved man has a level of value that doesn’t pin the needle on lowness.

Is man so low that his deadness means that nothing within his will will allow him to respond to God’s Word, when his soul interacts with it? Of course, many Calvinists would say, no, but that is how many of them both write and talk. The entrance of the light and life of God’s powerful Word is still not enough. This is why John Piper says that “salvation is not a decision.” This is also at the root of those who say “regeneration precedes faith,” rather than “faith precedes regeneration.” They say man’s spiritual deadness affects him to the degree that he cannot believe without regeneration. Ligon Duncan, one of the Together for the Gospel guys, writes:

. . . the inability of man and the sovereign grace of God in salvation. These biblical doctrines are compromised by the assertion that faith precedes regeneration.

He continues to write in contradiction to faith preceding regeneration:

Though he is at enmity with God and a slave to sin, and morally and spiritually blind, this view says he is not so dead in sin that he cannot believe in God for salvation. That is, this view says that all men are capable of ordinary initial saving faith, and they do not need to be regenerated to exercise it.

I’ve followed the teaching of John MacArthur since I listened to him on radio in the early 1980s while I was in college, but it was only recently that he began saying the same thing as Piper and others about regeneration. In this message in 2005, he spends almost the entire sermon attempting to prove that regeneration precedes faith. Before that, in 1997 when his study Bible came out, he clearly writes in his doctrinal statement that faith precedes regeneration. Something changed between 1997 and 2005 on that subject of which I had not heard.

The above idea is that man is so, so bad that he can’t believe without being first regenerated. I gladly agree that man is very bad, but not so bad that he cannot believe without God’s arbitrary, predetermined regeneration of a relative few out of the pool of all mankind. Man is so low that he can be said to have any involvement in his regeneration, which explains salvation testimonies with no perceivable conversion experience. Do these guys really believe this? They say they do, but it’s a doctrine so inconceivable, that some of them who hold it are found slipping out with what the Bible actually teaches, as is the following case with R. C. Sproul, well-known Calvinist (The Holiness of God, 1993 edition, p. 144):

Once Luther grasped the teaching of Paul in Romans, he was reborn.

Oops! Wow. How did Luther grasp the teaching of Paul before he was reborn? Oh well.

So much of Scripture reads differently than “regeneration precedes faith.” It isn’t because they haven’t been reborn that they don’t receive Christ, but because of hard, thorny, or stony hearts. A particular kind of heart wouldn’t be an issue to a regeneration that will produce saving faith no matter what the circumstances. It isn’t because they haven’t been reborn, but because when they “knew God”—how did they know Him if they were dead?—they didn’t glorify Him as God (Rom 1:18-25). “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name” (John 1:12). Receive Him (believe on His name) and then become sons of God. They’ve got to have some discombobulated explanation to undo that plain meaning. If ability to respond is at zero until regeneration and then it is inevitable, why would sowing and watering (1 Cor 3) relate at all to God giving the increase? If nothing precedes man being born spiritually, then how is he begotten by the Word of Truth (James 1:18)? He would have to hear the Word of God before he was begotten and therefore hearing would precede new birth. Why would anyone already regenerated spend any time counting the cost before coming to Christ? There are so many contradictions like these, if man is so bad that only regeneration would allow him to believe.

I would be fine if Calvinists would just think man was bad enough that they ceased using his carnal musical styles as worship to God or stopped wearing his immodest and worldly apparel. I think it would be very good if these Calvinists would quit using fleshly techniques to lure in visitors, instead of depending upon the sovereignty of God. I would be better persuaded by these Calvinists of their low view of man if they applied the same truths to their own contextualization of the gospel. Those would help convince me that they really do believe how bad men actually are.

Spirit Baptism—the Historic Baptist View, part 12; Alleged Reference in 1 Corinthians 12:13, part 3

January 8, 2012 / 2 Comments on Spirit Baptism—the Historic Baptist View, part 12; Alleged Reference in 1 Corinthians 12:13, part 3

As an aside, the church is never called universal or catholic in Scripture. The designation first appears in the Epistle of Ignatius to the Smyrneans 8:2, among a number of other unbiblical statements: “Wherever the bishop appears, there let the congregation be; just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic church. It is not permissible either to baptize or to hold a love feast without the bishop. But whatever he approves is also pleasing to God, in order that everything you do may be trustworthy and valid.” It is quite likely that this affirmation of the existence of a catholic church was a later interpolation into Ignatius’ epistle, if Ignatius actually wrote to the Smyrneans at all. There are three different recensions of Ignatius’ letters, a long, middle, and short version. The long version is generally recognized as a spurious fourth century forgery which projects later hierarchicalism and other developing Roman Catholic heresies into earlier centuries. The short recension only exists in Syriac, and contains only the letters to the Ephesians, Romans, and Polycarp, in a version shorter than either the long or middle recensions. The middle recension, the version quoted above, is found in Greek in only one manuscript, the eleventh century Codex Mediceo-Laurentianus. Scholarship is divided about the genuineness of either the middle or short recensions, with some maintaining that all the letters are extremely heavily interpolated and others arguing that “Ignatius bishop of Antioch did not exist” (pg. 66, “Ignatian Problems,” Journal of Theological Studies, C. P. Hammond Bammel, 33:1 (April 1982); see the article, pgs. 62-97, for a discussion of various theories on the authenticity or forging of the allegedly Ignatian epistles.) Even if one assumes that Ignatius actually wrote something similar to the middle recension, and his writings were then corrupted and falsified into the long and short recensions, there is no reason to conclude that the eleventh century Greek codex of the middle recension referring to a “catholic church” does not itself have numerous dogmatic interpolations designed to support later Roman Catholic dogmas—such as Smyrneans 8:2, the verse in question, and its reference to the catholic church— he catholike ekklesia.

“There are, in all, fifteen Epistles which bear the name of Ignatius. These are the following: One to the Virgin Mary, two to the Apostle John, one to Mary of Cassobelae, one to the Tarsians, one to the Antiochians, one to Hero, a deacon of Antioch, one to the Philippians, one to the Ephesians, one to the Magnesians, one to the Trallians, one to the Romans, one to the Philadelphians, one to the Smyrnaeans, and one to Polycarp. The first three exist only in Latin; all the rest are extant also in Greek. It is now the universal opinion of critics, that the first eight of these professedly Ignatian letters are spurious. They bear in themselves indubitable proofs of being the production of a later age than that in which Ignatius lived. Neither Eusebius nor Jerome makes the least reference to them; and they are now by common consent set aside as forgeries, which were at various dates, and to serve special purposes, put forth under the name of the celebrated Bishop of Antioch . . . [among the other epistles, a spurious long form, a middle recension, and a short recension exist, and] there was . . . a pretty prevalent opinion among scholars, that [no form] could . . . be regarded as absolutely free from interpolations, or as of undoubted authenticity. . . . This expression of uncertainty was repeated in substance by Jortin (1751), Mosheim (1755), Griesbach (1768), Rosenm¸ller (1795), Neander (1826), and many others; some going so far as to deny that we have any authentic remains of Ignatius at all, while others, though admitting the seven [middle recension] letters as being probably his, yet strongly suspected that they were not free from interpolation. . . . [T]he question [was reignited] by the discovery of a Syriac version [the short recension, first published in 1845] of three of these Epistles among the mss. procured from the monastery of St. Mary Deipara, in the desert of Nitria, in Egypt. . . . some accepted the [view that only these three short letters] represented more accurately than any formerly published what Ignatius had actually written . . . [while] others very strenuously opposed [this position in favor of the middle recension]. . . . [T]he Ignatian controversy is not yet settled” (Church Fathers—The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, “Introductory Note to the Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians,” ed. Alexander Roberts & James Donaldson. elec. acc. in Accordance Bible Software, prep. OakTree Software, ver. 1.1). While the reference to a catholic church by Ignatius is dubious, Pope Cornelius, writing against the Anabaptist Novatian, and developing a proto-Roman Catholic principle not found clearly before the third century, affirmed that there “should be but one bishop in a catholic church” (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 6:43:11).

Let it also be briefly mentioned that it is indisputable that the so-called “Apostles’ Creed” was not written by the apostles, and its present form, with its profession of faith in a “catholic church,” is a development of the era after the union of proto-Popery with the Roman state. The “Apostles’ Creed” developed from the Old Roman Creed, which simply affirmed faith in the “holy church.” It was “in the late fourth century that catholic began to appear in [various] Western creeds” (pg. 385, Early Christian Creeds, J. N. D. Kelly. London: Longman, 1972. 3rd ed.), in large part to contrast the Roman church with dissident movements including the “heretical” Anabaptists of the age among the Donatists and Novatians. The earliest physical evidence for the Apostles’ Creed itself is contained in the tract De singulis libris canonicis written by the monk Priminius between A. D. 710-724. Both Pope Leo the Great (d. 461) and Gregory the Great (d. 604) appear to have been ignorant of the Creed, and among scholars “very few will be likely to deny that [the received version of the Apostles’ Creed] is to be sought somewhere north of the Alps at some date in the late sixth or seventh century” (pg. 398, 410, 421, Early Christian Creeds, ibid.).

Nobody who read 1 Corinthians 12:13 in the age when Paul wrote it, or, for that matter, any other verse in the Bible, would come to a belief in a universal church. That view must be read into 1 Corinthians 12:13 in the light of later Roman Catholic and Protestant dogma, but it cannot be exegeted from the text itself.

Note that this complete study, with all it parts and with additional material not reproduced on this blog in this series, is available by clicking here.

TDR

Spirit Baptism, the Historic Baptist View, part 10

December 23, 2011 / 1 Comment on Spirit Baptism, the Historic Baptist View, part 10

Spirit baptism: The
alleged reference

in 1 Corinthians 12:13, part 1

1 Corinthians 12:13 is the lynchpin upon which
the structure of the universal church dispensational (UCD) doctrine of Spirit
baptism is based [i]—deprived
of the verse, it is very difficult to even attempt to defend it
exegetically. The verse reads, “For
by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into
one Spirit.”[ii] UCDs argue that “in this dispensation
those who place their faith in Jesus Christ have been baptized into the body of
Christ, both Jew and Gentile, and are now seen as one in the body of Christ (1
Cor. 12:12–13). . . . According to 1 Corinthians 12:13, it is the Spirit who
baptizes Jew and Gentile into one body.”[iii] “Every believer is baptized by the
Spirit . . . The Spirit forms the church . . . by baptizing all believers into
the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:12, 13).” [iv] However, 1 Corinthians 12:13 teaches
nothing of the kind. In the verse,
Paul teaches that the members of the church at Corinth, led by the Holy Spirit,
were all baptized in water to join the membership of that local assembly—the
particular congregation, not a non-extant universal church, being the body of
Christ—and that all the members of that assembly partook of the common blessing
of the Lord’s Supper. The
theological division between UCDs and historic Baptists on the significance of
1 Corinthians 12:13 may be resolved into the following questions: a.) Is the body of Christ the visible
congregation or a universal, invisible church? b.) Does Christ baptize with the
Spirit, or does the Holy Spirit baptize? c.) Was Spirit baptism a completed
historical phenomenon at the time Paul wrote 1 Corinthians, or is it a event that
takes place regularly throughout the entire dispensation of grace? The following few posts will deal with
these questions.

a.)
Is the body of Christ the visible congregation or a universal, invisible
church?

The body of Christ, referred to in 1 Corinthians
12:13, is the particular, local assembly.
It is not a universal and invisible church because no such entity is
found in the New Testament. While
a discussion of the many proofs of the unscriptural nature of the universal
church dogma would go beyond the boundaries of the present composition,[v]
and, besides, this blog has elsewhere carefully refuted the universl church
position, it will briefly be noted that the word translated church, ekklesia, never is used for
a universal, invisible entity in any of its 115 appearances in the New
Testament.[vi] The LXX, in accord with the
significance of the word in classical Greek, likewise employs ekklesia of local, visible assemblies, not of anything
unassembled[vii]
and invisible.[viii] While the family of God is a universal, invisible entity that consists of
all believers everywhere (Galatians 3:26), a church is a particular, local, visible congregation. The major metaphors for the church also
demonstrate that the idea of a universal, invisible church is false. The church is Christ’s body (1
Corinthians 12:27), His temple (1 Timothy 3:15), and His bride (2 Corinthians
11:2).[ix] Bodies are very local and visible—a
bunch of flesh and bones scattered around the globe is not a body. A temple is
in one particular location, available for everyone to see; bricks scattered all over the place are
not a building at all. And certainly
every man on his wedding day rejoices that his bride is very local and visible,
not invisible or cut into little pieces which are scattered all over the
earth! Christ’s church is not a
building, a denomination, or something universal and invisible; it is a particular assembly of baptized
saints.

Furthermore, the immediate context of 1
Corinthians 12:13 demonstrates that the body metaphor refers to the particular
congregation. 1 Corinthians 12:27,
the only verse in the New Testament that defines the body of Christ, addresses
the particular congregation at Corinth (1 Corinthians 1:2) and states, “Now ye
are the body of Christ, and members in particular.” The Pauline exhortation to unity in 1 Corinthians makes it
evident that the apostle employed the body metaphor to emphasize the need for
real oneness among the brethren in the city of Corinth. His purpose was not to teach some sort
of theoretical church-unity between believers at Corinth, Ephesus, Galatia, and
everywhere else. In 12:14-27, Paul
tells the members of the Corinthian congregation that each of them is required
for the smooth function of the assembly—one is like an eye, the other like a
hand, another like a nose, and their united functionality underneath the
direction of Christ the Head (Ephesians 1:22-23) is necessary for their
congregational “body” to work effectively, just as united functionality of
literal body parts is necessary for a healthy human body. The local sense of “body” in v. 14-27
is directly tied to the statement of v. 13 by the explanatory word “for” and
requires a local sense of the body metaphor in 12:13. Furthermore, universalizing the Pauline image to make
members of the congregation at Corinth into parts of a body cut up into pieces
all over the world would not only violate the necessarily localized nature of a
living body but do nothing to advance Paul’s purpose of promoting Corinthian
unity—rather, a universal body would have further contributed to Corinthian
division, as today the Protestant universal church doctrine, when adopted by
Baptist churches, contributes to a neglect of, disrespect for, and a failure to
adequately strive for genuine, Scriptural unity within particular
assemblies. 1 Corinthians 12:13
cannot refer to the Spirit placing someone into the universal, invisible church
as the body of Christ, because the body of Christ is the local, visible
assembly in the context of 1 Corinthians 12 and in the rest of the New
Testament.

Furthermore, 1 Corinthians 12:25 states that
there should be no schism in the body (cf. Ephesians 4:3-4). If all believers are the body of
Christ, and unity is commanded in the body, then it would be a sin for a
Bible-believing Baptist to separate from any believer whatsoever, whether he is
part of the church of Rome, one committing the grossest forms of sexual
immorality, or a terribly compromised neo-evangelical, for such separation
would be sowing discord in the body of Christ. Ecclesiastical separation from any believer would be
sin. However, such a conclusion
directly contradicts the Biblical imperative to separate from disobedient
brethren (2 Thessalonians 3:6, 14), and the example within 1 Corinthians itself
of separation from an errant believer (5:1-5). The UCD position cannot consistently apply the Biblical
standard of unity to its universal “church” and practice the Biblical doctrine
of separation.[x] Indeed, an examination of the nature of
the genuine unity in orthodoxy and orthopraxy commanded within the assembly
(Ephesians 4:3-16) demonstrates that the tremendous discord of doctrine and
practice within the alleged universal “church” has very little to do with the
Bible. Since the body of Christ is
the visible and local assembly, the conflict inherent in the UCD view is
removed by the historic Baptist doctrine, for an imperative for unity within an
assembly of the Lord’s people is entirely consistent with the removal of a
disobedient or doctrinally errant brother from a congregation by church
discipline.

–TDR

[i]
In the
words of the UCD John F. Walvoord:
“[T]he Scriptures make it plain that every Christian is baptized by the
Holy Spirit at the moment of salvation. Salvation and baptism are therefore
coextensive, and it is impossible to be saved without this work of the Holy
Spirit. This is expressly stated in the central passage on the doctrine, ‘For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into
one Spirit’” (pg. 423, “The Person of the Holy Spirit Part 7: The Work of the
Holy Spirit in Salvation.” Bibliotheca Sacra 98:392 (Oct 41) 421-447. Indeed, “1 Corinthians 12:13 . . . [is] [t]he major passage,
which may be taken as the basis of interpretation of the other passages . . .
[namely, the] eleven specific references to spiritual baptism . . . Matthew
3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16; John 1:33; Acts 1:5; 11:16; Romans 6:1-4; 1
Corinthians 12:13; Galatians 3:27; Ephesians 4:5; Colossians 2:12” (pg. 139, The
Holy Spirit: A Comprehensive Study
of the Person and Work of the Holy Spirit, John F. Walvoord).

While 1 Corinthians 12:13 is important to the PCP
advocate as well, it is only so as an allegedly supportive element of the PCP
position, not as the central verse for the entire theological construction.

[ii]
kai« ga»r e˙n e˚ni« Pneu/mati hJmei√ß pa¿nteß ei˙ß e≠n
sw◊ma e˙bapti÷sqhmen, ei¶te ∆Ioudai√oi ei¶te ›Ellhneß, ei¶te douvloi ei¶te
e˙leu/qeroi: kai« pa¿nteß ei˙ß e≠n Pneuvma e˙poti÷sqhmen.

[iii]
pgs.
193-194, “Does Progressive Dispensationalism Teach A Posttribulational
Rapture?—Part I,” John Brumett. Conservative Theological Journal, 2:5 (June 1998).

[iv]
Note on
Acts 2:4, Scofield Reference Bible,
ed. C. I. Scofield. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1945.

[v]
Interestingly,
UCD John Walvoord wrote, “The principle cause of disagreement . . . on the
doctrine of the baptism of the Holy Spirit . . . is found in the common failure
to apprehend the distinctive nature of the church” (pg. 138, The Holy
Spirit: A Comprehensive Study of
the Person and Work of the Holy Spirit). The false doctrine of a universal,
invisible church is indeed a tremendous barrier to a recognition of the correct
view of Spirit baptism, the historic Baptist position, and an unsound prop of
the UCD and PCP positions. For
representative refutations of the universal church dogma, see Ecclesia, B. H. Carroll (Emmaus, PA: Challenge Press, n. d.
reprint ed.; also available at
http://thross7.googlepages.com), The Myth of the Universal, Invisible Church
Theory Exploded, Roy Mason (Emmaus, PA:
Challenge Press, 2003), and Landmarks of Baptist Doctrine, Robert Sargent, vol. 4 (Oak Harbor, WA: Bible
Baptist Church Publications, 1990), pgs. 481-542. One notes that even non-evangelical scholars such as “James
Dunn[,] [who] needs no introduction, for his prolific scholarship ensures that
he is one of the most well known NT scholars in the world . . . [believes that]
particular and local assemblies are the church of God in Paul, and any idea of
the universal church is absent” (pg. 99, book review of The Theology of Paul
the Apostle, James D. G. Dunn. Grand
Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1998, by Thomas R. Schreiner. Trinity Journal 20:1 (Spring 1999)).

[vi]
The word
appears in Matthew 16:18; 18:17; Acts 2:47; 5:11; 7:38; 8:1,3; 9:31; 11:22, 26;
12:1, 5; 13:1; 14:23, 27; 15:3-4, 22, 41; 16:5; 18:22; 19:32, 39, 41; 20:17,
28; Romans 16:1, 4-5, 16, 23; 1Corinthians 1:2; 4:17; 6:4; 7:17; 10:32; 11:16,
18, 22; 12:28; 14:4-5, 12, 19, 23, 28, 33-35; 15:9; 16:1, 19; 2 Corinthians
1:1; 8:1, 18-19, 23-24; 11:8, 28; 12:13; Galatians 1:2, 13, 22; Ephesians 1:22;
3:10, 21; 5:23-25, 27, 29, 32; Philippians 3:6; 4:15; Colossians 1:18, 24;
4:15-16; 1 Thessalonians 1:1; 2:14; 2 Thessalonians 1:1, 4; 1 Timothy 3:5, 15;
5:16; Philemon 2; Hebrews 2:12; 12:23; James 5:14; 3 John 6, 9-10; Revelation
1:4, 11, 20; 2:1, 7-8, 11-12, 17-18, 23, 29; 3:1, 6-7, 13-14, 22; 22:16. The small minority of uses where an
individual congregation in a particular location is not in view (cf. “Christ is
the head of the church,” Ephesians 5:23; Colossians 1:18) do not prove the
existence of a universal, invisible church any more than “the husband is the
head of the wife” or “the head of the woman is the man” (Ephesians 5:23; 1
Corinthians 11:3; see below) establish that there is a single universal, invisible
husband or a universal, invisible man made up of all individual husbands or men
scattered all over world. Rather,
these verses employ the word church
as a generic noun, as a reference to any or every particular church (or
husband, man, etc.) in the class church (husband, man, etc.). The
common category of the “generic noun . . . focuses on the kind. . . .
emphasizes class traits . . . [and] has in view . . . the class as a whole”
(pg. 244, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New
Testament, Daniel B. Wallace. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996).

[vii]
cf. the
verb e˙kklhsia¿zw, “to hold an assembly, convene, assemble.” (BDAG); “summon to an assembly” (Liddell, H. G.
& Scott, R. Greek-English Lexicon, 9^th ed., New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1996); “attend an assembly; attend a church
service” (Patristic Greek Lexicon
ed. G. W. Lampe (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007, 20^th
ed). The verb is always employed
in the LXX and related Koiné
literature (at least until after the time of the post-NT development of the
concept of a catholic church) for a visible and local assembly, not some sort
of invisible and unassembled “assembly.” See Leviticus 8:3; Numbers 20:8;
Deuteronomy 4:10; 31:12, 28; Esther 4:16, LXX; Josephus, Antiquities 4:302; 6:56; 8:277; 10:93; 12:316; 17:161; 19:158; War 2:490; 7:47; Philo, On the Migration of Abraham 1:69; On Joseph 1:73; On the Decalogue
1:39; Freedom 1:6.

[viii]
Deuteronomy
4:10; 9:10; 18:16; 23:2-4, 9; 31:30; Joshua 8:35; Judges 20:2; 21:5, 8; 1
Samuel 17:47; 19:20; 1 Kings 8:14, 22, 55, 65; 1 Chronicles 13:2, 4; 28:2, 8;
29:1, 10, 20; 2 Chronicles 1:3, 5; 6:3, 12-13; 7:8; 10:3; 20:5, 14; 23:3;
28:14; 29:23, 28, 31-32; 30:2, 4, 13, 17, 23-25; Ezra 2:64; 10:1, 8, 12, 14;
Nehemiah 5:7, 13; 7:66; 8:2, 17; 13:1; Judith 6:16, 21; 7:29; 14:6; 1 Maccabees
2:56; 3:13; 4:59; 5:16; 14:19; Psalms 21:23, 26; 25:5, 12; 34:18; 39:10; 67:27;
88:6; 106:32; 149:1; Proverbs 5:14; Job 30:28; Sirach 15:5; 21:17; 23:24; 24:2;
26:5; 31:11; 33:19; 38:33; 39:10; 44:15; 46:7; 50:13, 20; Solomon 10:6; Micah
2:5; Joel 2:16; Lamentations 1:10.

B. H. Carroll’s book Ecclesia provides a number of helpful instances of the
classical use of e˙kklhsi÷a [transliterating the word as ecclesia], documenting that the word, in classical Greek,
signified “an organized assembly of citizens, regularly summoned, as opposed to
other meetings.” Note:

Thucydides 2:22: – “Pericles, seeing them angry at the
present state of things… did not call them to an assembly (ecclesia) or any
other meeting.”

Demosthenes 378, 24: – “When after this the assembly
(ecclesia) adjourned, they came together and planned … For the future still
being uncertain, meetings and speeches of all sorts took place in the
marketplace. They were afraid that an assembly (ecclesia) would be summoned
suddenly, etc.” Compare the distinction here between a lawfully assembled
business body and a mere gathering together of the people in unofficial
capacity, with the town-clerk’s statement in Acts 19:35, 40.

Now some instances of the particular
ecclesia of the several Greek states –

Thucydides 1,87: – “Having said such things, he
himself, since he was ephor, put the question to vote in the assembly
(ecclesia) of the Spartans.”

Thucydides 1,139: – “And the Athenians having made a
house (or called an assembly, ecclesia) freely exchanged their sentiments.”

Aristophanes Act 169: – “But I forbid you calling an
assembly (ecclesia) for the Thracians about pay.”

Thucydides 6.8: – “And the Athenians having convened an
assembly (ecclesia) … voted, etc.”

Thucydides 6,2: – “And the Syracusans having buried
their dead, summoned an assembly (ecclesia).”

This historical reading concerning the
business assemblies of the several petty but independent, self-governing Greek
states, with their lawful conference, their free speech. Their decision by
vote, whether of Spartans, Thracians, Syracusans or Athenians, sounds much like
the proceedings of particular and independent Baptist churches today (Ecclesia, B. H. Carroll, pgs. 35-36).

Thus,
the uses of the word in the LXX and other pre-Christian works supports the
evidence from the instances of e˙kklhsi÷a in New Testament
itself that the word always signifies a particular, visible assembly. “[A]n inductive study of all the ecclesia passages [in the LXX demonstrates] that in the
Septuagint it never means ‘all Israel whether assembled or unassembled, but
that in every instance it means a
gathering together, and assembly. . . . [T]he New Testament writers neither
coined this word nor employed it in an unusual sense. The apostles and early
Christians . . . wrote in Greek to a Greek-speaking world, and used Greek words
as a Greek-speaking people would understand them. . . . [I]t is a fiction that ecclesia was used in [the New Testament in] any new, special
sense. The object of Christ’s ecclesia, and terms of membership in it, were indeed different from those of the
classic or Septuagint ecclesia.
But the word itself retains its ordinary meaning. . . . [In contrast to ecclesia], the word panegyros [was employed to designate] a general, festive
assembly of all the Greek states.
This general assembly was not for war but peace . . . not for business
but pleasure—a time of peace, and joy, and glory. In the happy Greek conceit
all the heavenly beings were supposed to be present [at the panegyros]. How felicitiously does [Paul] adapt himself to the
Greek use of the word [in Hebrews 12:23], and glorify it by application to the
final heavenly state. . . . [Thus, there] is a general assembly . . . [in
heaven where] warfare is over and rest has come [designated by panegyros, but never by ecclesia].” (pgs. 34-36, Ecclesia, Carroll).

[ix]
It is true
that the bride metaphor is employed for the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:2-3)
as a synecdoche for all the people of God who will inhabit it. However, at that time they will all be
present in the future heavenly festive assembly (Hebrews 12:23). There will indeed be this coming
gathering of all the saints to the eternal heavenly City, but it will still be
quite local and visible, it does not yet exist, and it certainly does not prove
that saved people on earth in the United States, Colombia, Vietnam, and the
Central African Republic are somehow currently members of the same,
never-assembling and invisible congregation, assembly, church, or ekklesia.

[x]
There are
many other practical impossibilities and ecclesiological errors that come from
the universal church view. Dr.
Thomas Strouse has well explained a number of them:

The ramifications of the biblical teaching that the
local church is the body of Christ, that Spirit Baptism was a temporary
phenomenon, and that the mystical body of Christ does not exist are broad and
serious. If there is no con-current Spirit Baptism and no mystical body then
there is no divine authority for organizations or efforts outside of the local
church to practice the Great Commission. Since the Great Commission (Mt.
28:19-20) requires evangelism, baptism, and instruction in the Word of God,
para-church organizations have no divine authority for their existence. If
there is no divine authority for para-church organizations then there is no
divine authority for para-church Bible colleges/seminaries, mission boards, or
structured church fellowships, associations or conventions. These so-called
“handmaidens” to the local church have no authority “to help” the Lord’s
candlesticks because the latter have His presence (Rev. 1:13) as their
respective Head (Eph. 1:22-23) and all power to accomplish His Great Commission
(Mt. 28:19-20). The impact of these para-church “handmaidens” on the Lord’s
candlesticks has been biblically and theologically disastrous. Scholars
operating in the realm of the “big” universal church offer unbiblical and
therefore confusing theological restatements of the Scriptures. Their weak
ecclesiology impacts other doctrines such as bibliology, soteriology, and
eschatology. They foster notions such as “God has preserved His Word in all the
extant manuscripts through the scholars of the mystical body of Christ,” “all
the saved are in the universal Church,” and “Christ will rapture the Church.”
To them “true” scholarship occurs in the para-church university or seminary
where theologians, trained by other para-church theologians, postulate the
“truth” of Scripture. The local church is ill equipped and the pastor is ill
prepared to do the real work of the ministry in the realm of scholarship, they
maintain. These scholars, whether they have any affiliation with a local church
or not, have earned doctorates from accredited para-church academic
institutions, and therefore think that they have the last word on theology.
Their condescending attitude toward the Lord’s assemblies is supposedly
justified because they are the “doctors” of theology since they are in “the big
church.”  This disastrous impact undermines the authority of the Bible and
usurps the ministry of the Lord’s ekklesia. Scripture states that the church is
“the pillar and ground of the truth” (I Tim. 3:15), that the ekklesia is to
“commit [theological training] to faithful men” (II Tim. 2:2), that the church
member “is to study to shew [himself] approved unto God” (II Tim. 2:15), and
that the assembly has been given Christ’s gift of “pastors and teachers” (Eph.
4:11). The local church as the divinely ordained doctrinal training institution
is the Lord’s “college.” College comes from the Latin collegeum that means a group of colleagues who have banded
together around a particular guild or trade. The particular “guild” in which
the local church is engaged is the scholarly pursuit of studying the Scriptures
(cf. Acts 17:11).  Para-church organizations not only produce disastrous
results in theological academia, but also in the area of missions. Para-church
mission boards usurp the privilege and responsibility of local church missions.
The Great Commission is the divine mandate to plant immersionist assemblies
both locally and worldwide. Only the Lord’s candlesticks can produce NT
churches. Para-church mission boards cannot baptize converts and cannot
commission missionary candidates. Nevertheless, these same boards develop a
hierarchy of unbiblical offices, such as “missions president/director,” and
dictate to “their” missionaries and to the pastors of supporting churches,
their policies, practices, and doctrines. The NT teaches, in contradistinction,
that the church at Antioch acted as Paul’s “mission board” and sent out
Barnabas and the Apostle (Acts 13:1 ff.). To be sure, other churches such as
the Philippian church helped support Paul’s missionary endeavors on his second
journey (Phil. 4:15-16).  Much of the same criticism could be leveled toward
highly structured Baptist fellowships. The unbiblical mindset of the universal
church produces the necessity for organized hierarchy outside of the local
church. Fellowships, associations and conventions, which develop organizational
structure beyond the local church, end up usurping the autonomy of each of the
Lord’s assemblies. The presidents, regional directors, etc., of these
non-authorized structures tend to dictate to the churches resolutions which in
turn become “suggested” tenets for orthodoxy and fundamentalism. Some pastors
feel intimidated and hesitate to reject these suggestions, ultimately embracing
the “traditions” of men (Mk. 7:7) and incorporating these tenets in their
particular ekklesia. The NT does teach that there is a place for churches to
fellowship around “the faith once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 1:3).
Furthermore, the churches of Galatia were united in biblical doctrine around
the Lord Jesus Christ, while retaining their respective autonomy (Gal. 1:2;
3:27-28). Once the Lord’s churches recognize that the unproved assumptions of
Spirit Baptism and the mystical body of Christ have no biblically exegetical
defense, then they may realize the authority, importance, and dignity the Lord
gives exclusively to His candlesticks. The Scriptures teach that the church at
Jerusalem had the divine authority in precept and set the precedent to practice
the Great Commission. Christ gave the precept of the Great Commission to the
apostles who were representatives of the 120 disciples who made up the Lord’s
ekklesia on the day of Pentecost (Acts 1:20). This ekklesia began to
evangelize, baptize and instruct Jews and Gentiles as the Book of Acts gives
ample precedent. The Scriptures make some amazing and outstanding claims for
the Lord’s churches. For instance, Paul taught that Christ, Who is Head over
all His creation, completely fills His body, the local church (Eph. 1:23). He
revealed that the saints in the local churches teach the angelic realm
redemptive truths (Eph. 3:10). He averred that local churches, like the
Ephesian church, grow up in Christ to become mature bodies through doctrinal
teaching (Eph. 4:11-16). He proclaimed that the Lord Jesus Christ both loved
and died for individual church members (Eph. 5:25) and that He will cleanse the
church members through the washing of the word to present each ekklesia as
glorious (Eph. 5:26-27). Elsewhere, the Apostle taught that the local church,
the one with a bishop and deacons, was the pillar and ground of the truth (I
Tim. 3:1-15). The Lord spoke through the Apostle John and gave His
apocalyptical revelation to seven local churches (Rev. 1-3). When one realizes
that the Scriptures teach the local church is the Lord’s sole institution for
His presence, worship and service, then one recognizes the glory, dignity, and
honor that should be attributed to each and every one of Christ’s assemblies. (“Ye
Are The Body of Christ,” Dr. Thomas M. Strouse. Emmanuel Baptist Theological
Seminary, Newington, CT. elec. acc.
http://www.faithonfire.org/articles/body_of_christ.html)

Spirit Baptism, the Historic Baptist View, part 9

December 9, 2011 / Leave a comment

Spirit Baptism in Acts, part 2

The
Spirit’s being poured out or shed
forth (Acts 2:17, 18, 33), employing the
Greek verb ekkeo (e˙kce÷w), is employed
in Acts 2 in connection with Spirit baptism.[i] This one-time event[ii]
where the Father, at the Son’s request, poured out the Holy Ghost in accordance
with the prediction of Joel 2:28-32, is employed in Luke-Acts only for the
unrepeatable event of Pentecost.
This is consistent with the facts that the Hebrew verb shafach (Kpv), employed in Joel 2 and discussed above, “does
not mean a gradual pouring as required, but rather a sudden, massive spillage,”
the LXX employs ekkeo to render shafach in the three passages where the latter verb is
connected with the outpouring of the Spirit (Joel 2:28-29; Zechariah 12:10;
Ezekiel 39:29), and the Greek verb is not employed in the Greek Old Testament
in connection with Spirit outpouring in any other passage. No other text in Luke-Acts connects the
work of the Spirit with ekkeo,[iii]
although the closely related but distinct verb ekkunno (e˙kcu/nnw)[iv]
is employed in Acts 10:45 for the closely related but distinct miraculous work
of the Spirit on the Gentiles in Acts 10.
When “the Holy Ghost . . .[was] shed forth” or poured out, visible
miracles, “which ye now see and hear,” were connected with the event (Acts 2:33). Thus, the outpouring of the Spirit was
for those already converted and already church members, it took place once for
the entire church age in Acts chapter two, and it was accompanied with signs
and wonders. For the Spirit to be
outpoured again, He would have to leave the earth, which He will not do for the
entire dispensation of grace.
However, after He is removed at the Rapture, He will be outpoured again
on Israel in the Tribulation in the ultimate fulfillment of Joel chapter two.

In
contrast to the once-for-all outpouring of the Spirit on the church for the
entirety of the dispensation of grace in Acts 2, when the Spirit’s validation
of Samaritans[v] and Gentiles
as fit members of the NT church in Acts 8 and 10 is in view, the Spirit is said
to fall upon (e˙pipi÷ptw) them after their
conversion (Acts 8:16; 10:44; 11:15).
Christ baptized the church with the Spirit directly and immediately in
Acts 2, and the benefits of this one-time event were transmitted mediately
through the apostles to Samaritans and Gentiles in Acts 8, 10, and 19,
explaining the connection of the miraculous fruits of Spirit baptism in
connection with the laying on of apostolic hands. The uniqueness of Acts 2, as the actual and unrepeatable act
of Spirit baptism, is supported by the appearances of tongues of fire on each
member of the pre-Pentecost church (2:2-3), a miracle not repeated in the
coming of the Spirit on the groups in Acts 8, 10, and 19. The Spirit fell upon the Samaritans
subsequent to both faith and baptism in Acts 8, and the use of a pluperfect
periphrastic construction for Spirit’s falling upon men in 8:16 suggests that
the falling took place at one point in time, with abiding results;[vi] furthermore, no text in Acts or
elsewhere in the New Testament portrays the Spirit as repeatedly falling upon
anyone.[vii] One would have expected the Spirit to
fall upon the Gentiles in Acts 10 after their faith and baptism as well, but
Peter and his Jewish brethren would never have accepted the immersion of
Gentiles had the Spirit not come on them first; as it was, they “were astonished” that the Spirit had fallen
upon the Gentiles (10:45), but recognized the fact as proof that God wanted
them added to the church by immersion, which they consequently performed
(10:47-48), although even in this situation the addition of uncircumcised
Gentiles to the church was an occasion of trouble which Peter needed to explain
and defend (11:3ff.). In both Acts
8 and 10, the Spirit fell upon the Samaritans and Gentiles subsequent to the
point of their faith in Christ, with an emphasis upon them as a corporate body,
rather than as individuals, just as in Acts 2 and 19 the coming of the Spirit
took place after saving faith.[viii] Since Peter states, “the Holy Ghost
fell on them [Gentiles, Acts 10], as on us [Jews, Acts 2] at the beginning”
(Acts 11:15), the book of Acts indicates that it is appropriate to view the
pouring out of the Holy Ghost on the church in Acts 2 as another instance of
the Spirit falling upon a body of people.
It is likely that the falling upon
terminology emphasizes the coming of the Spirit from heaven upon a particular
group of believers, and is thus appropriately employed for any of the
miraculous bestowals of the Spirit recorded in Acts 2, 8, 10 and 19. However, this terminology is never
employed for the receipt of the Spirit by individuals at the moment of
conversion, nor is it ever found apart from the miraculous bestowal of the gift
of tongues, nor is it ever connected with any kind of PCP blessing on those
already Spirit-indwelt.

In
Acts two, the Spirit was poured out on
the 120 pre-Pentecost church members, but Acts 2:38 promised those who “repent
. . . [that they] shall receive [lamba¿nw] the gift of the Holy
Ghost.”[ix] Receive terminology is employed both for the indwelling of the Spirit
experienced by all believers after the transitional period connected with the
baptism of the Holy Ghost in Acts, which was not connected with signs and
wonders (cf. Romans 8:9), and for the commencement of His indwelling in those
who experienced Spirit baptism and its concomitant speaking in tongues. Thus, the Spirit was received by the 3000 men converted on Pentecost, but He was poured
out also (and in this manner likewise received) by
the 120 members of the pre-Pentecost church. There is no evidence that the 3000 spoke in tongues or
manifested any miraculous gifts when they repented, or at any subsequent point
whatever, other than the certain manifestation of the miraculously bestowed new
nature bestowed on all saints in regeneration (2:41-47; 2 Corinthians
5:17). Christ received from the
Father the promise of the Holy Ghost (2:33), and the Son gives the Spirit to
all who find salvation (2:38-39), but the “promise” (2:39) of the possession of
the Holy Ghost is of Him as a Person, not of some particular manner of His
coming, such as Spirit baptism with its accompanying signs and wonders. Receipt of the Spirit is thus specified as a gift for
believers throughout the dispensation of grace, received at the point of
conversion or regeneration (John 3:5), in Luke-Acts (Acts 2:38) and elsewhere
in Scripture (John 7:39; Galatians 3:14), but receive language is also used for the action of the Spirit
in falling upon men in the dispensationally transitional events accompanied
with miraculous phenomena in Acts 2, 8, and 10 (Acts 8:15-19; 10:47; cf. Acts
19:2, 6; John 20:22).

The baptism of the Holy Ghost, accompanied with
tongues speaking,[x] is also
associated with the Spirit “coming upon” (e˙pe÷rcomai . . . e˙pi÷) the church in Acts
1:8. This language is thus
employed in the beginning of Acts for the miraculous coming of the Spirit, and
is found elsewhere in the New Testament only in the beginning of Luke’s gospel
for the miraculous work of the Spirit within Mary associated with the coming of
the Son into the world (Luke 1:35).[xi] The miraculous coming of the Spirit,
associated with tongues speaking, found in Acts 19:6, employs similar, but not
identical, “coming upon” language (e¶rcomai
. . . e˙pi÷), which is
found elsewhere in the NT (yet cf. Ezekiel 2:2; 3:24, 37:9; Wisdom 7:7; LXX) only
in the record of Christ’s baptism with its associated visibly miraculous
manifestation of the Spirit (Matthew 3:16). The pneumatological coming upon language of Acts is thus appropriately considered as
necessarily accompanied with signs and wonders.

The historic Baptist view of Spirit baptism
fits the evidence found in the book of Acts. The baptism of the Holy Ghost was the validation of the
church as God’s new institution for worship, comparable to the coming of the shekinah into the tabernacle and temple in the Old
Testament. Accompanied by
miraculous signs and wonders, Christ baptized the church as as a one-time event
in Acts two on the day of Pentecost.
As the Jewish church of Pentecost spread to the Samaritans (Acts 8),
Gentiles connected with Judaism and in the Promised Land (Acts 10), and
Gentiles without any previous Jewish connection (Acts 19), the Spirit came,
mediately through the apostles as representatives and leaders of the church,
upon these new groups with similar signs and wonders, fulfilling the outline of
the book of Acts in 1:8. With the
immediate baptism of the church by Christ in Acts 2, and the coming of the
Spirit as mediated by the apostles on the groups in Acts 8, 10, and 19, Spirit
baptism was complete, never to be repeated in the church age. The evidence of the book of Acts
contradicts the universal church dispensational (UCD) view because Spirit
baptism was corporate, not individual, a post-conversion event, not one
synonymous with conversion, one always associated with miraculous signs and
wonders including tongues, while tongues and other miraculous gifts have now
ceased (1 Corinthians 13:8),[xii]
one that took place after the moment of faith and, with one exception, after
baptism as well, not one that took place at the moment of saving faith, and one
associated with the historically completed sending of the Comforter, not one
without visible miraculous phenomena that continues until the Rapture whenever
a sinner is regenerated. The
evidence of the book of Acts also contradicts the PCP (post-conversion power) view,
because PCPs interpret Spirit baptism as an individual, not corporate event,
most PCPs do not claim that they receive the same ability to do miracles,
signs, and wonders as were found in Acts, while the evidence belies the claims
of those that do so claim,[xiii]
and the Comforter has already come to indwell the church and so Spirit baptism
simply does not happen today. Only
the historic Baptist doctrine of Spirit baptism fits the evidence of the book
of Acts.

-TDR

Link to part 8

Note that this complete study, with all it parts and with additional material not reproduced on this blog in this series, is available by clicking here.

TDR

[i]
It is the
opinion of this writer that there are indeed distinctions in the different
terms employed for the coming of the Spirit in Acts 2, 8, 10, 19, as explicated
in the following paragraphs. Some
distinctions are more evident (as that receive refers to simply the coming of the Spirit for the
purpose of indwelling, whether through Spirit baptism of one already converted
before Pentecost or at the moment of regeneration after the post-Pentecost
transition, in contrast to words, such as pour out, specifically used for the coming of the Spirit
associated with miraculous phenomena) than others. However, even if one wished to maintain that the various
terms analyzed below are essentially synonymous, it would not alter the
fundamental nature of Spirit baptism as a historical event accompanied with
signs and wonders that was completed in the first century and was synonymous
with Christ’s sending of the Comforter.

Note the following endnotes for the technical
distinction between the Spirit’s being poured out and Spirit baptism, and the comments on some of the other terms
discussed in the following paragraphs.

[ii]
There is
no exegetical basis in the New Testament for praying for the Spirit to be
repeatedly poured out in the church age to send revival or for any other
reason. No durative, progressive
verb tense is employed with the verb e˙kce÷w
in the New Testament for the Spirit being poured out; the future tense, which is aspectually like the aorist, is
employed for the prediction of the pouring out which took place once for all at
Pentecost (Acts 2:17-18; Joel 3:1-2, LXX), and the aorist is employed for the
actual pouring out that took place on that day (Acts 2:33). The indwelling and renewing of the
Spirit that takes place at regeneration is possibly also connected with e˙kce÷w in the aorist (Titus 3:5-6). The “pour out” language is not employed
in the New Testament for a work from the Spirit of deepening the saint’s
spiritual life, reviving a congregation, or anything of the sort. Although God may mercifully do great
things for misguided saints of His, praying for the Spirit to be poured out
again in the church age and similar instances of errant Pneumatology do not
contribute to genuine revival.
Believers should not grieve the Holy Ghost and disregard or deny the
sufficiency of the glorious work God has already done in pouring out the Spirit
by asking for Him to be again outpoured.

[iii]
Titus
3:5-6 speaks of “the Holy Ghost; which [the Father] shed on us abundantly
through Jesus Christ our Saviour” (Pneu/matoß ÔAgi÷ou, ou∞ e˙xe÷ceen e˙f∆ hJma◊ß plousi÷wß,
dia» ∆Ihsouv Cristouv touv swthvroß hJmw◊n). Here an allusion back to Pentecost is
likely, since the historia salutis
is in view in the sentence (3:4).
Consider, in light of the significance of Kpv as a
massive outpouring and the NT rendering of the verb with e˙kce÷w, that Titus 3:6 specifies that the Holy Ghost was
“shed on us abundantly” (e˙xe÷ceen e˙f∆ hJma◊ß plousi÷wß). The text contains a “clear allusion to
the tradition of Pentecost (e˙kce÷w is used with
the Spirit in the NT only here and in Acts 2:17, 18, 33) . . . [to] the Pentecostal
outpouring of the Spirit” (pg. 166, Baptism in the Holy Spirit, James Dunn).

Even if one affirms that there is no Pentecostal
allusion in Titus 3:5-6, and Paul connects the moment of personal regeneration
with the verb e˙kce÷w in the text, it would
not necessarily require that there is not a distinction made in Luke-Acts. Rather, the employment of e˙kce÷w for both the historical, completed event of the
sending of the Comforter, that is, Spirit baptism (Acts 2:17-18, 33), and for
the indwelling of the Spirit (Romans 8:9) associated with regeneration (Titus
3:5-6) would manifest that the Spirit baptism event constituted the transition
from the Old Testament “with you” to the church age “in you” ministry of the
Holy Spirit (John 14:17). After
the already saved and baptized church members in Acts 2 received Spirit
baptism, they were henceforward permanently indwelt by the Spirit, and this
ministry of permanent indwelling is the inheritance of all believers after the
conclusion of the dispensational transition associated with Spirit
baptism. While Spirit baptism
marked the point of dispensational transition to the permanent indwelling
ministry of the Holy Ghost in the first century, the use of e˙kce÷w in both Acts and Titus (where an allusion back to the
events of Pentecost is most likely, in which case nowhere does the New
Testament connect e˙kce÷w and anything that
continues throughout the dispensation of grace) certainly cannot be
legitimately be used to affirm that Spirit baptism is a synonym throughout the
church age for the commencement of indwelling connected with regeneration.

[iv]
BDAG, defining
e˙kce÷w, indicates that “beside it [is] the
Hellenistic Greek form e˙kcu/n(n)w.” Luke was perfectly able to use exactly
the same forms he did in Acts 2 to express the idea of pour out, but he chose not to do so. While in Acts 10:45 e˙kcu/nnw is in the perfect tense (as it is,
interestingly, in Romans 5:5), and e˙kce÷w is not found in the NT in the perfect, e˙kcu/nnw is employed by Luke in the tenses employed
for e˙kce÷w in Acts 2, so the possibility that in
Luke’s vocabulary some tenses simply employed the one verb form or the other is
unlikely, and a deliberate choice remains the preferred explanation.

[v]
Charles
Ryrie comments, “The best explanation of this delay [of the coming of the
Spirit as recorded in Acts 8 until the imposition of hands by Peter and John]
seems to lie in the schismatic nature of the Samaritan religion. Because the Samaritans had their own
worship, which was a rival to the Jewish worship in Jerusalem, it was necessary
to prove to [the Jews] that [the Samaritans’] new faith was not to be set up as
a rival to the new faith that had taken root in Jerusalem. And the best way for God to show the
Samaritan believers that they belonged to the same faith and group as Jerusalem
believers (and contrariwise, the best way to show the Jerusalem leaders that
the Samaritans were genuinely saved) was to delay giving of the Spirit until
Peter and John came from Jerusalem to Samaria. There could be no doubt then that this was one and the same
faith and that they all belonged together in the Body of Christ. This delay in the giving of the Spirit
saved the early church from having two mother churches—one in Jerusalem and one
in Samaria—early in her history.
It preserved the unity of the church[es] in this early stage” (pg. 71, The
Holy Spirit).

[vi]
h™n [e˙p∆ . . . aujtw◊n] . . .
e˙pipeptwko/ß. “It is easy to see how in the present, and especially in the
future, periphrastic forms were felt to be needed to emphasize durative action.
But that was the real function of the imperfect tense. The demand for this
stressing of the durative idea by h™n and the present
participle was certainly not so great. And yet it is just in the imperfect in
the N. T. that this idiom is most frequent” (pgs. 887-888, A. T. Robertson, A
Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research, Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1934).

[vii]
The
perfect tense of e˙kcu/nnw in Acts 10:45 likewise suggests a one-time coming of
the Spirit with continuing results.

[viii]
While in
Acts 8 the Spirit appears to have fallen upon each individual saved and
baptized Samaritan as hands were laid on him (note the imperfect tenses in e˙peti÷qoun ta»ß
cei√raß e˙p∆ aujtou/ß, kai« e˙la¿mbanon Pneuvma ›Agion in Acts 8:17), a group idea is still present. Likewise, in Acts 10:44, the Spirit
fell upon the entire group at one particular moment, so unless the entire group
had placed their faith in the Lord Jesus at exactly the same moment, the Spirit
fell upon them not just in logical but also in temporal subsequence to their
conversion. Temporal subsequence
also fits the comparison of this event to the outpouring of the Spirit in Acts
2 made in Acts 11:15-17, for faith certainly preceded Spirit baptism in Acts
2. One notes also the aorist tense
participle pisteu/sasin
in 11:17, which would be consistent with
temporal subsequence to the verb e¶dwken,
thus demonstrating that the Gentiles believed before the gift of the Spirit was
given, although it is true enough that aorist participles when dependent upon
aorist verbs are at times temporally simultaneous.

The fact that the the Spirit fell upon the
groups in Acts 2, 8, and 10 and 19 subsequent to faith, and upon the groups of
Acts 2, 8, and 19 after their baptism as well (Acts 10, the only exception, is
present only because the apostles would never have baptized the Gentiles at all
without the miraculous validation), demolishes the UCD claim that “[n]ever in
Scripture is baptism by the Spirit recorded as occurring subsequent to
salvation. It is rather an
inseparable part of it, so essential that it is impossible to be saved without
it” (pg. 140, The Holy Spirit:
A Comprehensive Study,
Walvoord). Rather, the truth is
that never in Scripture is baptism by the Spirit recorded as occuring at the
same moment as saving faith, so that everyone who has been saved has been saved
without it. Spirit baptism was
promised to already immersed believers in the gospels, and the fulfillment in
Acts fit the prediction. To
support his assertion of the necessity of Spirit baptism for salvation, UCD
advocate John Wavoord even affirms that “the converts on the Day of Pentecost .
. . include[d] the apostles” (pg. 144, ibid.)!
Rather, as the Head of the church was immersed in water before the
Spirit descended upon and authenticated Him in connection with the beginning of
His ministry (Matthew 3:13-17), so the church, Christ’s body, was first
immersed in water and then baptized with the Spirit on Pentecost (Acts 2) to
authenticate her as God’s new institution for the age.

[ix]
The
grammatical structure of Acts 2:38 connects the receipt of the Holy Spirit (and
thus the new birth “of the Spirit,” John 3, and its associated receipt of
eternal life) with repentance, not baptism. The section of the verse in question could be diagrammed as
follows:

Repent
(2nd person plural aorist imperative)

be baptized (3rd person singular aorist
imperative)

every one
(nominative singular adjective)

in (epi) the name of Jesus Christ

for/on account of (cf. Matthew 3:11) (eis) the remission of sins

ye shall receive (2nd person future indicative)
. . . the Holy Ghost

Both
the command to repent and the promised receipt of the Holy Spirit are in the
second person (i.e. e, “Repent [ye]” and “ye shall receive”). The command to be baptized is third
person singular, as is the adjective “every one” (hekastos, a partitive genitive, indicating the group from which
each person was derived.). Peter
commands the whole crowd to repent, and promises those who do the gift of the
Holy Ghost. The call to baptism was only for the “every one of you” that had
already repented. The “be baptized
every one of you” section of the verse is parenthetical to the command to
repent and its associated promise of the Spirit. Parenthetical statements, including those parallel in
structure to Acts 2:38, are found throughout Scripture. Ephesians 4:26-27 is an example:

Be ye angry (2nd person plural imperative)

and sin not (2nd person plural imperative)

[do]
not . . . let go down (3rd person singular imperative)

the
sun (nominative singular noun)

upon
your wrath

neither give place (2nd person plural imperative)

to
the devil

The
connection in Acts 2:38 between the receipt of the Holy Spirit and repentance,
rather than baptism, overthrows attempts to find baptismal regeneration in the
verse.

[x]
One could
view the speaking about the wondrous works of God in sixteen different tongues
in Acts two as a reversal of the Tower of Babel.

[xi]
But cf.
also Isaiah 32:15, LXX: eºwß
a·n e˙pe÷lqhØ e˙f∆ uJma◊ß pneuvma aÓf∆ uJyhlouv kai« e¶stai e¶rhmoß oJ Cermel
kai« oJ Cermel ei˙ß drumon logisqh/setai.

[xii]
cf. “1
Corinthians 13:8-13 and the Cessation of Miraculous Gifts,” R. Bruce Compton (Detroit
Baptist Seminary Journal 9 (2004)
97-144 for an excellent exposition of the Biblical cessation of tongues from 1
Corinthians 13. Since tongues are
universally conjoined with Spirit baptism, as evidenced in Acts, and tongues
have ceased, Spirit baptism must also have ceased. Could it be that miraculous gifts were limited to those who
either received or were alive and converted by the time of the events of Acts
2, 8, 10, and 19, and that the miraculous gifts ceased with the passing away of
that generation (cf. Hebrews 2:3-4; Mark 16:17, 20)?

[xiii]
No modern
PCP advocate speaks in Biblical tongues because tongues have ceased (cf. the
article referenced in the last endnote), and modern PCPs that claim the gift of
healing do not instantly heal everyone of every disease without fail (Acts
5:16), do not raise the dead (Acts 9:40; 20:9-10), nor perform other truly
apostolic signs and wonders.

WHAT IS TRUTH

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