Baptism in Holy Spirit: A Re-examination of the New Testament Teaching on the Gift of the Spirit in Relation to Pentecostalism Today

By James D. G. Dunn

In Baptism in the Holy Spirit James Dunn argues that water baptism is only one element in the New Testament pattern of conversion and initiation. The gift of the Spirit, he believes, is the central element. For the writers of the New Testament only those who had received the Holy Spirit could be called Christians. For them, the reception of the Spi

• Language: English
• Publisher: SCM Press
• Release date: Jan 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9780334047940

James D. G. Dunn

James D. G. Dunn was for many years the Lightfoot Professor of Divinity in the Department of Theology at the University of Durham. Since his retirement he has been made Emeritus Lightfoot Professor. He is credited with coining the phrase "New Perspective on Paul" during his 1982 Manson Memorial Lecture.

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Baptism in the Holy Spirit

©James D. G. Dunn 1970, 2010

First published by SCM Press in 1970.

This Second Edition published in 2010 by SCM Press

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Contents

Preface to the Second Edition

Preface to the First Edition

Abbreviations

I Introduction

PART ONE

II The Expectation of John the Baptist

III The Experience of Jesus at Jordan

PART TWO

IV The Miracle of Pentecost

V The Riddle of Samaria

VI The Conversion of Paul

VII The Conversion of Cornelius

VIII The ‘Disciples’ at Ephesus

IX Conversion–initiation in the Acts of the Apostles

PART THREE

X The Early Paulines

XI The Corinthian Letters

XII The Letter to Rome

XIII The Later Paulines

PART FOUR

XIV The Johannine Pentecost?

XV The Spirit and Baptism in John’s Gospel

XVI The Spirit and the Word in the Letters of John

PART FIVE

XVII The Spirit and Baptism in Hebrews

XVIII Conversion–initiation in Peter

XIX Conclusion

Index of Modern Authors and Works

Index of Biblical References

Preface to the Second Edition

The aim of Baptism in the Holy Spirit was to explore what the New Testament writers understood by that phrase – or rather by the verbal phrase used in the Gospels, Acts and Paul, ‘baptize(d) in the (Holy) Spirit. This particular focus was occasioned by the emphasis placed on the phrase, and the event or experience which it signified, in classic Pentecostalism and in the neo-Pentecostal movement or charismatic renewal which in the 1960s was gaining strength (and catching some headlines in the religious press). The question posed was particularly whether the event or experience of being ‘baptized in the Spirit’ was something distinct from and subsequent to the event/experience of becoming a Christian.

Underlying that question, however, was the broader (or deeper) issue of the relation of the Spirit to baptism, or, more precisely, the relation of the gift of the Spirit to the ritual act of baptism. This was not the same as the old debate about the relation of baptism to faith – a debate still unresolved as between those who argue that the New Testament knows only believer’s baptism and those who maintain that the New Testament provides plenty precedents for infant baptism. I wanted to avoid that debate, and coined the inelegant phrase ‘conversion-initiation’ to cover both options – ‘conversion’ for those who emphasize the personal commitment of faith as the beginning a Christian life, ‘initiation’ for those who emphasize baptism as the beginning of a Christian life. This larger question, then, was what the New Testament writers said about the relation between the gift of the Spirit to a person and that person’s conversion–initiation.

It quickly became apparent that there were two distinct aspects of this question which overlapped so much that they both had to be dealt with. One was the Pentecostalist issue: whether the New Testament writers envisaged baptism in the Spirit as a second coming of the Spirit into a life subsequent to conversion–initiation. Alternatively put, whether the New Testament writers envisaged a coming or action of the Spirit into or upon the individual at conversion-initiation, which was different and distinct from the subsequent baptism in the Spirit. The other was the issue of sacrament: whether the New Testament writers conceived of baptism as a sacrament which conveyed (the gift of) the Spirit to the baptizand. Did the phrase ‘baptized in the Spirit’ actually refer to the sacrament of baptism, the ritual act conceived as the means by which the Spirit entered the baptizand’s life? The overlap lay in the fact that in the middle of the twentieth century there was still a strong body of opinion within English-speaking theology that the gift of the Spirit came to the individual not through baptism but through the subsequent ritual/sacrament of confirmation.¹ Here classic Pentecostals and a significant sacramentalist tradition stood on much the same ground.

One of the most intriguing outcomes of the publication of my thesis, however, was the difference in the responses given to my handling of the two aspects of the issue. On the one hand, the response from the Pentecostal side was generally warm and appreciative. My attempt to write as a sympathetic but critical observer was usually recognized and acknowledged. Baptism in the Holy Spirit has evidently helped to some extent to bring Pentecostal theology to the attention of a wider circle of theological scholarship as an important dialogue partner which should be heard, and, more important, has encouraged Pentecostal scholars to engage in the dialogue of critical scholarship. So Baptism in the Holy Spirit drew some immediate response from Pentecostal scholars and, somewhat to my surprise, has continued to evoke responses to the present day. Indeed, it was the decision of the Society for Pentecostal Studies to devote one of their sessions at the Society of Biblical Literature meeting in New Orleans in November 2009 to celebration(!) of and engagement with my Baptism in the Holy Spirit which made me think that a new edition of Baptism in the Holy Spirit might be appropriate on the 40th anniversary of its publication.²

On the other hand, I have been equally surprised and rather saddened that Baptism in the Holy Spirit has engendered scarcely any interest on its second front – the debate about the Spirit and baptism. This I find somewhat disturbing, I must confess – that the various questions which I see the New Testament texts putting to deeply established doctrines are so lightly passed over or ignored. I appreciate, of course, that traditional theology and practice is often more determined by (early) church tradition. But when that tradition cuts across or away from clear emphases of the canonical scriptures (canon = yardstick by which faith and order are determined) I find it impossible to avoid the question whether the New Testament is being permitted to exercise its canonical role.³

For example, according to our texts, the phrase ‘baptize in the Spirit’ was coined by John the Baptist in contrast or antithesis to ‘baptize in water’ – ‘I have baptized you in/with water, but he will baptize you in/with Holy Spirit’ (Mark 1.8 pars.). Consequently the phrase (‘baptize in Spirit’) is hardly likely to have been intended to denote a baptism in water and Spirit. The obvious reference is to a different kind of baptism, with a different medium, different from a baptism in water. So to take the phrase, ‘he will baptize in Holy Spirit’, as a reference to Christian baptism, the sacrament which focuses on the dipping into or pouring on water, seems to be somewhat perverse. The unease is strengthened when Acts refers the fulfilment of the promise (‘you will be baptized in the Holy Spirit’ – Acts 1.5; 11.16) to events/experiences of the Spirit quite distinct from any water or baptismal ritual (2.1–4; 10.44–8). It was these facts which prompted me to question the otherwise plausible interpretation of the only other New Testament ‘baptize(d) in the Spirit’ phrase as a reference to Christian baptism (1 Cor. 12.13). For if ‘baptize in the Spirit’ was coined by the Baptist as a metaphor for an event/experience different from baptism in water, then it is more likely, I still think, that Paul in writing 1 Corinthians 12.13 will have had in mind his converts’ experience of receiving the Spirit as such, using ‘baptized’ and ‘made to drink’ as metaphors for that experience. I was strengthened in this reading of 1 Corinthians 12.13 by the fact that Paul refers to his converts’ experience of receiving the Spirit, as something they readily remembered, more than he does their experience of being baptized (Rom. 5.5; 8.2, 9, 15; 1 Cor. 2.12; 6.19; 12.13; 2 Cor. 1.22; 3.3, 6, 16–17; 5.5; Gal. 3.2–5, 14; 4.6; etc.).

Similarly I have always found it odd that Jesus’ experience at the Jordan is almost universally entitled ‘the baptism of Jesus’. Of course that is the immediate context – John after all was ‘the baptizer who preaches a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins’ (Mark 1.4 pars.). And it was when Jesus was or had been baptized by John that the Spirit came down upon him (Mark 1.10 pars.). But all that Mark and Matthew indicate is that the act of baptism and the descent of the Spirit happened in close sequence (‘immediately’) (Mark 1.10/Matt. 3.16). To interpret that as Jesus receiving the Spirit through baptism, or as the event which turned John’s baptism in water into baptism in water and Spirit is to read much more into Matthew’s and Mark’s description than the text states, and runs counter to the antithesis of the Baptist’s words (Mark 1.8 pars.) to which Jesus’ reception of the Spirit is the sequel. Even more noteworthy is the fact that Luke narrates the episode in three parts: Jesus has been baptised (the baptism has been completed), and is praying, when the heavens open and the Holy Spirit descends on him (Luke 3.21–2). And John does not even mention Jesus’ baptism by the Baptist. He focuses exclusively on the Baptist’s testimony to the fact that the Spirit descended and remained on Jesus (John 1.32–4). Similarly in Acts there is no doubt that ‘the baptism of John’ marked the beginning of Jesus’ mission (Acts 1.22; 10.37; 13.24). What matters, however, is not so much that Jesus was baptized by John, as that ‘God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power’ (10.38).

Of course, a sacramental reading of ‘baptized in the Holy Spirit’ is almost as old as the New Testament writings themselves. But the more I familiarized myself with what the New Testament says about the Spirit and the gift of the Spirit to humans, the more I found myself wondering whether the traditional reading had in fact subordinated the Spirit to baptism, made the gift of the Spirit secondary to the primary business of baptism. What came home to me was that, to the contrary, in the earliest years of Christianity (‘the apostolic age’), the gift of the Spirit was the primary and central factor in conversion-initiation. So I began to wonder whether church tradition had actually shut the Spirit in baptism, had restricted the channelling of the gift of the Spirit to baptism, or to a properly administered rite of baptism.

Moreover, it became more and more clear to me that in the beginnings of Christianity the gift of the Spirit was usually an experience of the individual receiving the Spirit, an experience vivid enough for them (and others) to remember. The question of Paul in Acts 19.2, ‘Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?’, assumed that if those addressed had in fact received the Spirit, they would know it and would be able to answer the question by referring back to their experience of receiving the Spirit. In the same way Paul could refer the Galatians to their experience of receiving the Spirit, and he took it for granted that they would remember how that came about (Gal. 3.2).⁴ But from the church of Corinth (or Pentecost!) onwards the vivid character of the experience of the Spirit has been somewhat unnerving for most Christians. Patristic Christianity was unnerved by Montanism, and Protestants will always be unsettled by the possibility of the re-emergence of ‘enthusiasm’ (Schwärmerei).

So the suspicion which arose in me was that the official Church, equally unnerved by the early experience of enthusiastic Christianity (as in Acts!), found that the unexpectedness and exuberance of the Spirit could be best controlled by restricting the Spirit’s vitality to sacrament and bishop. As charismatic vitality continues to bubble up more outside than inside the traditional church structures of today, I find that suspicion unresolved and still troubling. Occasionally I wonder whether the Trinity for some is in effect God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Bible. And whether for others the Trinity is in effect God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Church. For if the Trinity is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, then according to John 3.8 there is an ungovernableness of the Spirit which escapes all human control and which Church or faction tries to control at its own peril. I hope Baptism in the Holy Spirit has done something to reassert the centrality of the gift of the Spirit in the whole business becoming a Christian.

To launch the new edition of Baptism in the Holy Spirit it is probably more appropriate to engage with those who have noted and interacted with Baptism in the Holy Spirit. In fact, however, I have already done this quite extensively in the items indicated in note 2 above. So perhaps it will be sufficient for me to pick out some of the most salient points, particularly as made in the discussion of November 2009 intended to mark the fortieth birthday of Baptism in the Holy Spirit.

It was always clear from the earliest days that Baptism’s treatment of Acts was most vulnerable to criticism from the Pentecostal side.⁵ In particular, the account of Philip’s mission to Samaria and its immediate sequel in Acts 8 provides such an obvious expression of Pentecostal subsequence theology that it might seem somewhat perverse to argue otherwise. The Samaritans had believed and been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus (8.12, 13, 16); on any evaluation that would constitute them as ‘Christian’ (even if use of the term as such in relation to that time is rather anachronistic). So the somewhat later mission of Peter and John, ‘that they might receive the Holy Spirit’ (8.15), and the Samaritans’ consequent reception of the Spirit was indubitably subsequent. My suggestion that perhaps Luke intended his readership to infer that the Samaritans’ faith was somehow faulty was justifiably criticized. A more natural reading, so the regular response ran, was that the Samaritans had already received the Spirit when they believed and had been baptized – what Paul would refer to as ‘the Spirit of adoption’ or John as the regenerating Spirit.

However, there is an important point here, which I may not have brought out with sufficient clarity in Baptism in the Holy Spirit. I refer to the fact that Luke evidently did not think of any of the characters in his narrative as having the Spirit prior to the Spirit ‘coming upon’ them, prior to their being ‘baptized in the Spirit’. Luke evidently did not think of the Spirit entering a life quietly prior to the more visible ‘crash, bang, wallop’ of the reception of the Spirit (as in Acts 2.4; 8.18; 10.44–6; 19.6). There is no thought in Acts that the Samaritans were ‘regenerate’ or had ‘received the Spirit of adoption’ as a result of Philip’s ministry. On the contrary, Luke’s point could hardly be clearer: ‘the Spirit had not yet fallen upon them’ (8.16), the Spirit had not yet been given and received (8.15, 17–19); ‘they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus’ (8.16).

This is why I refute the charge that I use Paul to interpret Acts in a way that is unjust to Acts. For Luke (as well as Paul) there was evidently a sine qua non quality in the gift of the Spirit. Without the Spirit’s evident presence in a life something was judged to be wrong. Without clear evidence of the Spirit’s action upon/entry into a life, the evangelism was incomplete. This presumably explains the concern of Peter and John as portrayed in the case of the Samaritans. Despite the effectiveness of Philip’s ministry ‘the Spirit had not yet fallen upon them’. Something had gone wrong. Hence the speed with which Peter and John responded. According to Acts 8, the first thing they did, and presumably the reason why they had been sent, was to pray for the Samaritans ‘that they might receive the Spirit’. That was evidently what was lacking. Similarly in Acts 19.2, what is the first question that Paul asks the Ephesian disciples? ‘Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?’ That was the priority. That was what mattered. The depth of the concern which Luke clearly attributes to Peter and John and to Paul is not best explained in terms of their desire for the Samaritans and Ephesians to be equipped for ministry (‘Spirit of prophecy’). The issue was more basic than that. The total (visible) absence of the Spirit from their lives was the crucial deficiency which had to be corrected. My attempt to explain what had gone wrong in the case of the Samaritans may not be very successful, and need not be given much weight. But any inadequacy of my attempt should not be allowed to cloud or sidestep the fundamental feature of Luke’s narrative, that the absence of the Spirit meant that something had gone wrong, something which required urgent remedial action by the two leading apostles.

The main weakness of most Pentecostal responses to Baptism in the Holy Spirit on the subject of Acts is their treatment of Acts 10–11, the conversion of Cornelius and his household. Acts 11.18 should surely put the issue beyond doubt. Luke’s (and Peter’s) account of Cornelius having the Spirit outpoured on him (10.45), of his receiving the Spirit (10.47), of the Spirit falling upon him (10.44; 11–15), of his being given the Spirit (11.17; 15.8) and of his being ‘baptized in the Holy Spirit’ (11.16) is responded to by the Jerusalem believers: ‘Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life" (11.18). Luke could hardly have so written unless he regarded ‘repentance into life’ as synonymous with these various other descriptions of the Spirit’s operation in and on Cornelius. Cornelius’ repentance into life and his being baptized in the Spirit were two sides of the same coin, two descriptions of the same event. The same conclusion had already been implied in the Acts 10 account. The intervention of the Spirit followed directly on Peter’s exhortation to believe and receive forgiveness of sins (10.43–4). The implication is that Cornelius believed and the gift of the Spirit was God’s response (11.17). Similarly in 11.14–15: the salvation which Peter had been told to offer Cornelius (11.14) began to be effected by the falling of the Spirit upon the latter (11.15), that is, by their being baptized with the Holy Spirit (11.16). Similarly in 15.8–9: the gift of the Spirit was God’s way of ‘cleansing their hearts by faith’. However strong a basis in Acts a Pentecostal may think he has, (s)he should not ignore the most obvious pointers to Luke’s understanding of how the Spirit worked in his account of the conversion of Cornelius.

I find it encouraging that so many Pentecostals seem to find my treatment of Paul so persuasive. So I will limit myself to restating the main points. First, Paul’s understanding of reception of the Spirit as that which begins the Christian life, as indeed constitutive of what it meant for Paul to be a Christian. I recall being struck very forceably when I first realized that the nearest Paul comes to defining the term ‘Christian’ is in terms of having, that is, of having received the Spirit: ‘if anyone does not have the Spirit, he is not Christ’s’ (Rom. 8.9). Similarly, with 1 Corinthians 12.13, a passage so important in a discussion of the Pentecostal understanding of Spirit-baptism. For there Paul, in his only explicit reference to being ‘baptized in the Spirit’, makes it clear beyond doubt that participation in Christ, membership of Christ, is effected by Spirit-baptism. To take one other sequence: it is surely undeniable that for Paul what constituted the Galatians as Christians was their reception of the Spirit; they received the Spirit by believing what they heard (Gal. 3.2). This was the beginning of their Christian experience (3.3). Their reception of the Spirit was another way of speaking of the blessing of Abraham, the other side of the coin of their being justified (3.6–9, 14).

The initiating character of the Spirit’s coming into a life is well indicated by Paul’s metaphors of the gift of the Spirit as the arrabõn (‘first instalment and guarantee’) (2 Cor. 1.21–22; 5.5; also Eph. 1.13–14), and the reception of the Spirit as the aparchê (‘first fruits’, the first sheaf of the harvest) anticipatory of the climactic experience of ‘adoption, the redemption of our bodies’ (Rom. 8.23). The gift/reception of the Spirit as the beginning of the process of salvation is fundamental to Paul’s soteriology, the Spirit as pre-eminently the ‘life-giver’ (2 Cor. 3.6). And if the Spirit is also the Spirit of prophecy, for Paul as also for Luke, that is not to distinguish the Spirit of prophecy from the life-giving Spirit.⁶ If the ‘anointing’ referred to in 2 Corinthians 1.21 is anointing for ministry (cf. Luke 4.18; Acts 10.38), it is the Spirit as arrabõn, the Spirit which seals the believer as belonging to Christ, which is also the anointing Spirit (2 Cor. 1.22). The thought, then, would be the same as is implied in 1 Corinthians 12.13. In the context of 1 Corinthians 12, being ‘baptized in the Spirit’ (12.13) is envisaged not as an equipping for ministry distinct from and subsequent to their becoming members of Christ’s body. On the contrary, to be baptised into membership of the body is to be engraced with the charism/ministry, which is each member of the body’s particular function (charisma) within the body. In both 2 Corinthians 1.21 and 1 Corinthians 12.13, conversion-initiation is thought of as something dynamic, as initiation into service as well as discipleship, service as an integral part of discipleship. In both cases it is almost certainly the anointing/sealing/being baptized in the Spirit that marks the beginning of Christian commitment which was most probably in mind.

So far as John is concerned, the obvious response of the Pentecostal is to argue either that the Pentecost of Acts (Acts 2) is subsequent to what John narrates in John 20.22, or that John 20.22 is itself subsequent to the implied reception of the Spirit by Jesus’ disciples earlier in his ministry (cf. John 3.3–8; 4.10, 14). The problem with the latter is that John 7.39 cannot be sidestepped. When Jesus spoke of the ‘rivers of living water’ (as presumably also the spring of water gushing up to eternal life in 4.14), John makes it clear beyond doubt that Jesus was speaking ‘about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive’ (emellon lambanein). The emellon (‘were to’) points to a future event or experience, denoting an event which would inevitably follow in accordance with divine purpose. The Evangelist’s added explanation (‘for the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified’) is somewhat puzzling, but must at least mean that what the promise of Jesus referred to would not happen or be experienced until after or as a consequence of Jesus’ glorification. I do not see how readers/hearers could take any other sense from 7.39. The Spirit was not given to the disciples at or prior to 7.39 (proleptically or however); 7.39 points to a giving of the Spirit still future in the narrative time of John’s Gospel.

That giving of the Spirit within John’s Gospel is probably hinted at in John 19.30 and 34, but is explicitly recounted in 20.22: on the evening of resurrection Sunday Jesus ‘breathed’ on the disciples and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’. The key feature here, to which I drew attention on this page of Baptism in the Holy Spirit, is surely the use of the verb ‘breathed’ (enephysêsen). For that verb is used only twice to denote the divine creative breath in the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible. First in Genesis 2.7 – God ‘breathed into the nostrils (of Adam) the breath of life; and the man became a living being’. Second in Ezekiel 37.9 in Ezekiel’s great vision of an exiled Israel as a valley of dry bones, where Ezekiel is instructed to prophesy: ‘Come from the four winds, O breath (or wind or Spirit)⁷ and breathe upon these slain, that they may live’. It could be hardly clearer that what is in view in these usages of the verb ‘breathe(d)’ is the breath/Spirit of life. In depicting this scene (John 20.19–23) in just these terms, then, there can be little doubt that John intended his readers/audiences to understand this event as the new creation – Jesus giving the Spirit of new creation life to the disciples as God gave old creation life to Adam in the beginning. I see no reason to doubt that John intended his readers to understand this event as Jesus’ baptizing the disciples in the Holy Spirit (1.33), as giving them the water which would bubble up in ‘eternal life’ (4,14), as the ‘living water’ of 7.38–9. This would certainly fit with the way John focuses everything in his Gospel towards the saving climax of Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension.

As with 2 Corinthians 1.21–2 and 1 Corinthians 12.13, we should note that for John too the life-giving function of the Spirit was also a commissioning and empowering (the authority to forgive sins), such equipping for ministry being understood as the immediate outworking of this new life (20.23). That authority did not await a further endowment or anointing or commission. In John’s theological perspective, the gift of the Spirit was the immediate consequence of the salvation-decisive event of Jesus’ death-resurrection-ascension which brought to the disciples both new life and new authority in ministry. It was the life-giving Spirit which empowered for ministry. This, of course, is why John 20.22–3 is often referred to as the Johannine Pentecost. The way to view the relation between John 20.22 and Acts 2 is as alternative ways of telling the same story, not as two parts of the one story. John’s Gospel has to be understood in its own terms.

In sum, I am somewhat disappointed that the debate which my Baptism book seems to have occasioned has not revealed more inadequacies of my thesis than it has. Disappointed, because I continue to take Paul’s vision of the believing community as the charismatic body of Christ seriously. That is, I believe that discernment of God’s will (and truth) is communally achieved. The insight or claims of individual members of Christ’s body have to be discerned and evaluated by other members of the body if the charism is to be fully realized. So I offer such insights as I have received in full expectation that in any discussion or debate they occasion, these insights will be qualified, sharpened, corrected, supplemented, etc. by that discussion and debate. And, as a result, which is what I hope for, my own perception of the issue will be clarified and deepened in the process. Here, however, the necessary qualification seems to be modest, and the main thrust of the thesis of Baptism in the Holy Spirit seems to retain its validity – at least in terms of the debate with classic Pentecostalism’s understanding of Spirit-baptism. Less so, or indeed, perhaps not at all, in terms of the other debate in which Baptism was engaged with the more sacramentalist traditions of mainstream Christianity. But that’s another story, and another debate for another day, which I continue to await, though with fading anticipation!

James D. G. Dunn

July, 2010

Preface to the First Edition

This monograph is primarily a New Testament study. But it is occasioned by the increasing interest in and influence of Pentecostalism over the past ten years, and therefore has several subsidiary purposes. It is my hope that these chapters will help to introduce scholars, students and ministers to the most distinctive aspect of Pentecostal theology – baptism in the Holy Spirit. It will become evident that this doctrine cannot escape heavy criticism from a New Testament standpoint, but I would hope also that the importance and value of the Pentecostal emphasis will not be lost sight of or ignored. In particular, the Pentecostal contribution should cause Christians in the ‘main-line’ denominations to look afresh with critical eyes at the place they give to the Holy Spirit in doctrine and experience and in their various theologies of conversion, initiation and baptism. And any voice which bids us test familiar traditions by the yardstick of the New Testament is to be welcomed.

I wish to take this opportunity of expressing my thanks: to the Rev. Michael Harper for his interest, information and fellowship at various stages of my research; to Dr G. R. Beasley-Murray and the Rev. J. P. M. Sweet for their comments on an earlier draft (my thesis); and to the Rev. John Bowden and Miss Jean Cunningham of SCM Press for their advice and skill in the preparation of the manuscript for publication. I cannot sufficiently express my gratitude to Professor C. F. D. Moule, that most gracious Christian gentleman and scholar, whose acute and constructive criticism at all times during my research was invaluable. Above all comes my debt to my mother, whose years of sacrifice on her family’s behalf is I hope rewarded in some small measure by this volume, and to Meta, my wife and ‘true yokefellow’, whose love and patience have been a constant inspiration and support in all the hours spent on this book.

Edinburgh, March 1970

JAMES D. G. DUNN

Abbreviations

I

INTRODUCTION

WITHIN more radical and pietistic Protestantism there has grown up a tradition which holds that salvation, so far as it may be known in this life, is experienced in two stages: first, the experience of becoming a Christian; then, as a later and distinct event, a second experience of the Holy Spirit. For many Puritans the second experience was one of assurance.¹ For Wesley the first stage was justification and partial sanctification, the second the divine gift of entire sanctification or Christian perfection.²

A direct line can be drawn from Puritan teaching on the Spirit through early Methodism to the nineteenth-century Holiness Movement with its ‘Higher Life’ message, in which justification by faith (deliverance from the penalty of sin) was distinguished from the second divine work of sanctification, also received by faith (deliverance from the power of sin). One of the Holiness Movement’s most vigorous offspring, the Keswick Convention, used to be notable for its ‘second blessing’ teaching,³ and such metaphors as the one which characterizes some Christians as living between Calvary and Pentecost still have currency at the Convention.

Within this whole tradition the idea of Spirit-baptism has often been associated with the second stage. Thomas Goodwin equated the experience of