Baptism in the 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

Publisher:

SCM Press

, 2010

Overview

In Baptism in the Holy Spirit James D. G. 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 Spirit was a very definite and often very dramatic experience. It was a decisive and climactic conversion experience—which Christians recalled when reminded of their Christian faith and life. Dunn uncovers the place of the gift of the Holy Spirit in the total, complex event of becoming a Christian. His conclusions help readers deepen their understanding of the sacrament of baptism. Since its original publication in 1970, Baptism in the Holy Spirit has become a classic of New Testament scholarship. This new edition, published on the fortieth anniversary of its original publication, includes a new extended preface in which James D. G. Dunn engages with the debates about Baptism in the Holy Spirit since its first publication.

Contents

Top Highlights

“But does the NT mean by baptism in the Holy Spirit what the Pentecostal understands the phrase to mean? Is baptism in the Holy Spirit to be separated from conversion-initiation, and is the beginning of the Christian life to be thus divided up into distinct stages? Is Spirit-baptism something essentially different from becoming a Christian, so that even a Christian of many years’ standing may never have been baptized in the Spirit?” (Page 3)

“For once again we stand at a watershed in salvation-history, the beginning of the new age and new covenant, not for Jesus this time, but now for his disciples. What Jordan was to Jesus, Pentecost was to the disciples.⁵ As Jesus entered the new age and covenant by being baptized in the Spirit at Jordan, so the disciples followed him in like manner at Pentecost.⁶ With the wider enjoyment of the messianic age made possible by Jesus’ representative death, so at Pentecost the new covenant, hitherto confined to the one representative man, was extended to embrace all those who remained faithful to him and tarried at Jerusalem in obedience to his command.” (Page 40)

“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?” (Pages vii–viii)

Product Details

• Title: Baptism in the Holy Spirit: A Re-Examination of the New Testament Teaching on the Gift of the Spirit in Relation to Pentecostalism Today
• Author: James D. G. Dunn
• Edition: Second Edition
• Publisher: SCM Press
• Print Publication Date: 2010
• Logos Release Date: 2015
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subject: Baptism in the Holy Spirit › Biblical teaching
• ISBNs: 9780334043881, 0334043883
• Resource ID: LLS:SCMBPTSMHLSPRT
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T02:52:53Z

About James D. G. Dunn

James D. G. Dunn (1939–) is emeritus Lightfoot Professor of Divinity at the University of Durham and is a leading British New Testament scholar. Dunn is a significant proponent of the New Perspective on Paul, and coined the term in a 1982 lecture. He received a PhD and DD from the University of Cambridge, and a MA and BD from the University of Glasgow. In 2002 he became only the third British scholar to be made the president of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas.

His recent works include Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? The New Testament Evidence, A New Perspective on Jesus: What the Quest for the Historical Jesus Missed, the volumes Romans 1–8 and Romans 9–16 of the Word Biblical Commentary, and The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon in The New International Greek Testament Commentary (12 vols.).