The Spirit was at work in tose who hand not received the Spirit
Luke provided similar hints in his narration of the mission of the church after Pentecost. A particularly strong hint concerning the Spirit’s prior work comes at Acts 9:10–19. Ananias, a disciple and therefore presumably in receipt of the Spirit, had a vision in which he heard the Lord calling.
That Ananias should have a vision was in perfect accord with the explanation, given by Peter on the day of Pentecost with reference to Joel 2:28–32, that the arrival of the Spirit ushered in a plethora of prophetic activity including seeing visions (Acts 2:17). It is perhaps, then, a little more surprising to find Paul, at Acts 9:12, also having a vision.
Paul was only to receive the Spirit once Ananias had reached him (Acts 9:17). Yet prior to his Spirit reception, Paul was already the object of divine activity for which Luke elsewhere offered only one explanation: visions come by the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:17).80 Acts 26:16–18 is consistent with this, for here Luke presented the voice of Jesus giving many clear directive words to Paul while he was still lying on the Damascus road. Elsewhere in Luke’s works, this prophetic infusion was characteristically given by agency of the Spirit (Acts 20:23; 21:11, etc.).
Cornelius too had a vision before he received the Spirit.81 When Luke presented Cornelius’ narration of this apparition, the words used were “a man in bright clothes” (Acts 10:30).
Angelic visitations, according to Luke, could occur quite apart from the agency of the Spirit (Luke 1:11, 26–27; Acts 1:10). However, when Luke himself acted as narrator of Cornelius’ experience, he chose to write of a “vision” of an angel (Acts 10:3), a term that, as I showed above, the reader, prompted by Luke, associates naturally with the work of the Spirit.
There are one or two references in Acts to the conversion of people whose reception of the Spirit was not narrated, but in whose lives a work of the Spirit may be glimpsed before their presumed reception. Lydia is a prime example: “Lydia … a worshipper of God was listening. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what Paul was saying.
When she and her household were baptised, she pleaded, ‘If you have judged me to be a believer in the Lord, come and stay at my house’ ” (Acts 16:14–15). This divine opening of Lydia’s heart could not refer to her actual reception of the Spirit, as this opening was the cause of her belief rather than a consequence and evidence of it, as Spirit reception would be (cf. Acts 15:8–9, as ably exegeted by Menzies82).
But was it a work of the Spirit? It was narrated as a work of Jesus. The verbal coincidence between “the Lord opened her heart” (Acts 16:14) and “he opened their minds” (Luke 24:45) is noteworthy. Beyond the verbal coincidence, the immediate context indicates that “the Lord” refers to Jesus, not the Father or undifferentiated God.83
This is evident from verse 14, which does not read, “a worshipper of God, who opened her heart.” It also emerges from the words, “If you have judged me a believer in the Lord” in verse 15. Here, “Lord” clearly refers to Jesus, for Lydia was already a worshipper of God, and so Paul’s verdict was demanded of her attitude to Jesus specifically.
That this opening of Lydia’s heart can be viewed as a work of the Spirit may be argued both from its similarity to the wisdom-granting work of the Spirit already noted in connection with Christ’s opening of the disciples’ minds after the resurrection and also from the realisation that the only way Jesus was explicitly presented in Acts as working on earth after his exaltation was by his Spirit.84
As noted, Luke did not report Lydia’s subsequent reception of the Spirit, but as Lydia was baptised (Acts 16:15), the reader is led to assume that she did indeed receive the gift, not least based on the programmatic promise at Acts 2:38–39.85
A further example where the Spirit’s work may be discernible before reception is at Acts 2:37: the people who heard Peter preach on the day of Pentecost were presented as having been “cut to the heart.” Here too one might be justified in seeing the work of the Spirit in taking the message and using it to cut to the heart.
A similar hint is to be found in the traditional view of the role of the Spirit of prophecy, on which, indirectly, Luke probably built.86 This subsection, then, shows the same trait in Acts as found in the Gospel. In subtle ways that avoid reference by name to the Holy Spirit, Luke nevertheless recognised the Spirit’s work in someone even before that person had received the Pentecostal gift.
Conclusion
A fairly consistent picture has emerged. Luke was unwilling to state by name that the Holy Spirit was at work in the lives of those who, by his own description, had not yet received the Spirit. However, he was not unwilling to describe divine activities, which he generally attributed to the Holy Spirit elsewhere in his works, occurring in the lives of people at this stage.
An important conclusion may be drawn from this observation, relating to Turner’s position. The observations set out above undermine his conclusion that the reception of the Spirit (Turner’s favourite term is the “gift of the Spirit,” no doubt from Acts 2:38) is, in Luke’s conception, soteriologically necessary.
Though throughout Power from on High Turner notes situations where the Spirit works before Spirit reception, his focus seems to be on cases where the Spirit’s work in an individual or group is indirect.87
He admits the possibility of the direct work of the Spirit in the pre-Pentecost disciples, but speculates that this activity is not worthy of the term Spirit of Prophecy, but must be limited to “God’s liberating power at work through the disciples.”88
He overlooks the implied direct work of the Spirit of prophecy at, for example, Acts 9:12, even while attributing Ananias’ vision at Acts 9:10 to the Spirit,89 and so when he discusses the soteriological necessity of the Spirit, he merely discusses the soteriological necessity of receiving the Spirit, without due recognition of any prior work.
Turner accuses Pentecostals at this point of over-simplifying Luke,90 but himself over-simplifies Luke, failing to note prior works that distance the reception of the Spirit, as conceptualised by Luke, from soteriological necessity.
Turner implicitly sees the direct work of the Spirit of prophecy as absent before reception of the Pentecostal gift. Luke’s frequent hints indicate otherwise. Turner is right to declare that Luke “thought the Spirit performed soteriological functions in the believer,”91 but is wrong to tie these functions, in Luke’s mind, to the moment of reception and beyond.
Turner would probably counter-argue that I, like other Pentecostals, am confusing the inception of salvation with salvation itself. He might concede that reception of the Pentecostal gift of the Spirit is not necessary for the inception of Christian faith, but would perhaps continue to assert that it is necessary for ongoing faith and active Christian life.
However, while Pentecostals must not restrict their definitions of salvation too narrowly, neither must Turner “expand” his unduly. The accounts Luke offered both of Zacchaeus (Luke 19:9) and of the Philippian jailer (Acts 16:31) indicate, especially when taken together, that salvation could refer, in Luke’s thinking, to an immediate change in relationship to Jesus and thereby to God.
And we must not forget the Samaritans. While Luke may at times want to invest in the term salvation all the qualities of successful ongoing Christian life and experience (as Turner wants), Philip baptised the Samaritan converts—and Peter and John did not query this baptism, as far as we know.
The implication is not that the Samaritans had yet received all they would need for successful ongoing Christian life and activity. However, it is that they had sufficiently engaged in the quality of life that Luke elsewhere calls salvation for mature Christians both to baptise them and recognise their baptism.92
In summary, Turner’s 1996 alternative to Dunn’s thesis is unsatisfactory in several respects. Most particularly, his claim that the Pentecostal gift of the Spirit, while not the immediate conveyor of new covenant life, is after all soteriologically necessary has turned out to be based on a reading of Luke that fails to take note of Luke’s subtleties. With extreme terminological caution, Luke’s works indicate:
a. that the Spirit may be directly at work in the process of people’s coming to faith;
b. that these new converts, despite such prior “soteriological” work of the Spirit, still need to receive the Pentecostal gift of the Spirit.
80 Admittedly, Acts 2:17 uses horasis (“vision”), governed as it is by the wording of Joel 2:28 LXX. Acts 9:12 uses the similar word horama (“vision”; there is some textual doubt at this point).
81 Again the word used is horama. Turner actually denies that Cornelius’ vision here was an activity of the Spirit, but his own advice to “avoid … multiplying hypotheses where one is sufficient” (Turner, “Luke and the Spirit,” 138) applies here.
82 See discussion in ch. 2. In short, Dunn states that “God’s giving of the Holy Spirit is equivalent to his cleansing of their hearts” (Dunn, Baptism, 81–82); Menzies counters that “Verse 8 is the premise from which the deduction of v. 9 is drawn” (Menzies, Empowered for Witness, 217).
83 Against Turner, Power from on High, 410 n. 26. Of the 108 times the singular kurios (“Lord”) is used in Acts, it is clear from the context that it refers to God the Father eight times (Acts 2:25 etc.), four of them in Old Testament contexts, and that it refers to Jesus forty-three times (Acts 1:6 etc.), seventeen times in the term Lord Jesus. On fifty-five occasions, it is debatable whether the context allows us to be firm about whether the referent is the Father or Jesus. Once, the term is used of an angel (Acts 10:4). The plural kurioi (“Sirs”) can be used of people (e.g., Acts 16:30).
84 Especially at Acts 16:7. That Jesus spoke to Paul on the Damascus road by his Spirit has been argued above.
85 See discussion earlier in this chapter about reading conversions later in Acts in the light of 2:38.
86 “There is no moment in which man’s works can be concealed, because they are written on the heart in the Lord’s sight. And the spirit of truth testifies to all things and brings all accusations. He who has sinned is consumed in his heart and cannot raise his head to face the judge” (T. Jud. 20:4–5; translation from Charlesworth, Pseudepigrapha, Vol. I, 800).
87 See Turner, Power from on High, 417, 435; though cf. ibid., 423 and n. 56.
88 Ibid., 341.
89 Ibid., 423 n. 56.
90 Ibid., 433, 435.
91 Ibid., 438.
92 Turner’s difficulty here is his overemphasis, following, for instance, the work of N. T. Wright, on corporate Jewish expectations of “salvation.” These are undoubtedly testified to in Luke (e.g., 1:69–71; 2:25, 38), but whatever these pre-Christian Jewish expectations were, and however strong they were, they must not be allowed to drown out Jesus’ concept of salvation, as expressed in Luke’s writings.
Atkinson, W. P. (2011). Baptism in the Spirit: Luke-Acts and the Dunn Debate (pp. 86–90). Pickwick Publications.
