When Christians Collide
I’ve always been a little vague when it comes to Christian terminology. I tend to assume the meanings of words from usage, context, and how much they resemble other words. So it was that when I signed up with the Evangelical Christian Union on my enrolments day I assumed I was signing up for a group that was focused solely on evangelising people. ‘Well, no,’ I was later told, and then ‘well, no, but yes’.
I was a little confused. Having been a Christian all my life, I’d never heard of having to be an Evangelical one. It sounded closed and cultish. After listening to a few more conversations, it turned out that I was actually something called a Charismatic, a thing that these new lovely people around me didn’t seem to think very highly of.
‘Aren’t we all just Christians?’ was my plaintive question. Yes, I closed my eyes when I sang and yes, I had been known to speak in tongues, but weren’t we all just acting out the same faith according to our gifts and personalities? My answer now to my eighteen-year-old self is ‘well, yes and no’.
This is still an issue that concerns me, mostly because I’ve come to believe that our sin results in no church ever being able to find and maintain that fabled balance between Biblical thinking and exuberant practice. The amount of labelling, stereotyping and plain unhelpful gossip that goes on about ‘them’ on both sides can make a girl scream and a God dissatisfied with his people. Which is why I think Ken Smith’s short book “Charismatic Distinctives in the Light of Scripture” is a step in the right direction in bridging the gap between assumption and reality.
The book is split into two separate halves, the first dealing with the concept of baptism in the Holy Spirit, and the second with extra-Biblical revelation (in other words, modern visions and prophecies). I found the first half to be the most helpful in understanding the differing theology between Evangelicals and Pentecostals, and the sometimes ill-informed Charismatics in the middle. Smith argues that the term ‘baptism in the Spirit’ means different things depending on who you ask. He begins by clarifying the distinction between being ‘baptised in the Spirit’ and being ‘filled with the Spirit’; both are the norm in Christian living, but refer to separate concepts. Using the seven times it is referred to in the New Testament, Smith explains baptism in the Spirit as an event where Jesus is the baptiser, the repentant sinner is the baptised, the Spirit is what the sinner is baptised in, and the purpose of the baptism is to incorporate the newly saved into the body of Christ. Receiving the Spirit empowers us to serve and live as Christians. There is no post-conversion baptism into the Spirit as some Pentecostals teach; we are never taught in the Bible to seek one, and Jesus clearly states in Acts 1:8 that Christians receive power to witness when the Spirit comes on them at conversion, not later.
So if we have all received and been baptised in the Spirit, why do some seem to have more of the Holy Spirit’s power than others? This is where the crucial distinction that helped me greatly comes in. Baptism in the Spirit is different to being filled with the Spirit, something that the New Testament mentions thirteen times. Being filled with the Spirit means we are controlled by the Spirit. Just as we may let our joy or anger control us, so we can surrender to the control of the Spirit. Unlike baptism, which only happens once, surrendering our lives to God and the Spirit occurs on hopefully a daily basis. Being filled is not a measure of who has more of the Spirit - he is not a substance to be doled out - but how much of our heart he has.
This is an issue where I think terminology trauma has been unhelpful in understanding our own theology and others; in my experience, Charismatics may call being filled by the Spirit as a baptism when they are just repeating what they heard someone else call it. Thus they may seem to be advocating an unscriptural position that they might not actually follow. That was certainly the truth in my case, and when I explained the difference to some others while writing this article they had the same lightbulb moment. Meanwhile, Evangelicals may reject to being ‘filled with the Spirit’ simply because it sounds a little Hillsong. We all ought to pay attention to the words that are coming out of our mouths and avoid jargon and fancy terms; especially when we don’t know what they mean! The gap in theology is not always as wide as it appears.
And sometimes it is. The second half of the book deals with the issue of seeking visions and extra revelations on top of the Bible. This issue is far too complex to go through here; get the book and see how Smith defends the sufficiency of Biblical revelation against the idea that visions and prophecies are necessary to truly know God’s will.
“Charismatic Distinctives in the Light of Scripture” is a well-researched book, addressing two of the biggest issues that Evangelicals and Pentecostals have with each other. Smith is certainly biased towards the former, but lets the latter speak for themselves using quotes from various theologians and documents. He can be a little sarcastic at times, but overall it is a loving book. I would promote it to people in both camps as a challenge to really think over the issues on a personal level instead of being content to passively accept information second-hand.
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