Pentecostal and Charismatic Theology — Unit 2: Reading Luke–Acts: Narrative Theology and Hermeneutics

Key Verse

"Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you; but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high." (Luke 24:49, NKJV)

Learning Objectives

When you finish this unit, you should be able to:

1. Explain what "hermeneutics" means and why Luke–Acts is so important to Pentecostal teaching.

2. Describe the Pentecostal understanding of Luke as a theologian who teaches through narrative.

3. State the question of whether biblical stories can establish doctrine, and give the Pentecostal answer with its safeguards.

4. Compare the views of Stronstad, Dunn and Turner on the Spirit in Luke–Acts and on the relationship between Luke and Paul.

5. Apply a careful method to reading the Spirit's coming in Acts 2, 8, 10 and 19.

The Voice of This Course

This course is written from inside the classical Pentecostal tradition, for students who belong to it. It is conservative and Trinitarian. Other evangelicals and many scholars read these passages differently. We state their views fairly and then give our answer, and we hold our convictions with humility. In Unit 1 we saw that Scripture is our first and final authority. In this unit we ask how to read it well, especially the two books of Luke.

What Is Hermeneutics?

"Hermeneutics" is the study of how to interpret a text. Every reader has a method, whether he knows it or not. A pastor who opens Acts and asks "What does this teach us?" is already making choices. He is deciding what kind of writing he is reading, what the author meant, and how the passage speaks to the church today.

Early Pentecostals read the Bible simply and with great faith. They took the stories of Acts as an invitation: what God did then, He can do now. They did not write books on method. As the movement matured, Pentecostal scholars began to explain how we read. This unit follows that discussion in plain terms.

We hold to a basic principle. The goal of reading is to hear what the Holy Spirit said through the human author to the first readers, and then to hear what He says to us through the same words. We do not make the text say what we wish.

Why Luke–Acts Matters

Luke wrote the Gospel that bears his name, and he also wrote the Acts of the Apostles. Acts begins by speaking of "the former account," which is the Gospel (Acts 1:1). Most scholars treat the two books as a single work in two volumes. Luke dedicated the Gospel to Theophilus and wrote that he wanted him to "know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed" (Luke 1:4).

For Pentecostals, Luke–Acts is the central witness to the Holy Spirit's coming on believers for power. Three lines of evidence stand out.

The Spirit and Jesus. Luke tells us that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35). Yet at the Jordan, after His baptism, the Spirit came upon Him in a fresh way (Luke 3:21-22). Then Jesus began His public work and said in the synagogue at Nazareth, "The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor" (Luke 4:18). Peter later summed up His ministry: "how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him" (Acts 10:38). Pentecostals say that Jesus is our pattern. He was Son of God from the beginning, and yet He needed the Spirit's anointing for His ministry. His disciples need it too.

The promise. Before He ascended, the risen Lord told the disciples to wait: "Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you; but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high" (Luke 24:49). Luke repeats it at the start of Acts: "But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth" (Acts 1:8). The gift is for power in witness.

The fulfillment. On the day of Pentecost, "they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance" (Acts 2:4). Peter explained: "But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel" (Acts 2:16). The people who waited were disciples already, not waiting in order to be saved.

Luke as a Theologian

Luke was a careful historian, but he was also a theologian. He chose which stories to tell, arranged them in order, and shaped them to teach.

The Pentecostal scholar Roger Stronstad, in The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke (1984), argued that Luke has his own distinct teaching about the Holy Spirit. According to Stronstad, Luke understands the Spirit as the Spirit of prophecy, the One who empowers God's people for service and witness, just as He empowered prophets, judges and kings in the Old Testament. In Luke's story, the Spirit comes on Jesus for His ministry, then on the disciples for theirs. Luke's picture is a deliberate teaching, told in story form.

This matters because it answers a common criticism: that Pentecostals build doctrine on stories while ignoring teaching passages. The Pentecostal reply is that narrative is itself a way God chose to teach. A large part of the Bible is story. Paul told Timothy that "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine" (2 Timothy 3:16). That includes the stories. Paul also wrote that the Old Testament stories "happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition" (1 Corinthians 10:11) and that "whatever things were written before were written for our learning" (Romans 15:4). The Holy Spirit does not waste narrative.

The Great Debate: Can a Story Establish Doctrine?

This is the center of the discussion. Many evangelical scholars, including some who are friendly to Pentecostals, raise the following objection. They teach that a biblical story shows what happened, not necessarily what must always happen. The fact that something happened in Acts does not mean it is a rule for all believers in all times. Gordon Fee, a Pentecostal New Testament scholar, pressed this point in a well-known discussion of "historical precedent." He warned that using one incident in a story as a binding command is dangerous, and he asked for care.

This is a fair warning. A pastor who builds a doctrine on a single odd event is on weak ground. So Pentecostal teachers commonly give these safeguards.

1. Repeated patterns, not isolated events. Luke does not describe the Spirit's coming once. He describes it in several places, and in several kinds of people: Jews at Jerusalem, Samaritans, Gentiles and Ephesian disciples.

2. Jesus' own words. The Lord's promises in Luke 11:13, Luke 24:49 and Acts 1:8 state the purpose and extend it. Peter then says, "For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call" (Acts 2:39).

3. Agreement with the rest of Scripture. A story must not contradict teaching elsewhere in the Bible. Nothing in the Epistles denies that the Spirit empowers believers, and Paul tells the Ephesians, "be filled with the Spirit" (Ephesians 5:18).

4. The author's purpose. We ask what Luke intends the story to teach. Luke wrote the second volume to show how the risen Christ continues His work through the Spirit-filled church.

Pentecostals therefore answer: we do not take every detail of every narrative as a command. We take what Luke clearly intends to teach, confirmed by the repeated pattern and the Lord's promises, and tested against the whole Bible.

Luke and Paul: Stronstad, Dunn and Turner

The scholarly debate is sharper on a second question: do Luke and Paul teach the same thing about the Holy Spirit?

Dunn's view. The evangelical scholar James D. G. Dunn, in Baptism in the Holy Spirit (1970), argued that in the New Testament, receiving the Spirit and being baptized in the Spirit are part of conversion and belong together. Every believer is baptized in the Spirit at the beginning of the Christian life. He taught that the cases in Acts which look like a second step were special, because they happened at turning points in salvation history. For example, he said the Samaritans in Acts 8 did not truly believe until they received the Spirit, and that the twelve men at Ephesus in Acts 19 were not yet Christian disciples. Dunn's main support in Paul is 1 Corinthians 12:13: "For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body."

Turner's view. Max Turner, in The Holy Spirit and Spiritual Gifts (1996), and in other writing, argued that Luke does see the Spirit as the Spirit of prophecy, which gives power for witness, but that Luke does not neatly divide this from conversion. He suggested that in Luke the gift of the Spirit may also reach to the believer's new life with God. Turner's reading gives more room than Dunn's to Luke's own emphasis on power for witness, though he did not hold the classical Pentecostal doctrine of subsequence.

Stronstad's view. Stronstad and many Pentecostals reply that Luke has his own emphasis, which is complementary to Paul's. In Luke the gift of the Spirit is power for witness. In Paul the Spirit is also the source of new life, sonship and holiness (Romans 8). The Pentecostal reading is that Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 12:13 are about the Spirit uniting all believers into one body, while in Luke the exalted Christ baptizes believers in the Spirit for service. Both are true, and they do not compete. One Bible teaches both.

Our assessment. We note three points in answer to Dunn. First, Luke says the Samaritans "believed Philip as he preached the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ" and were baptized (Acts 8:12). Luke does not call them unbelievers. Then Peter and John came, prayed for them, and they received the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:14-17). Second, Paul found at Ephesus "some disciples" (Acts 19:1), and his question, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" (Acts 19:2), assumes that believing and receiving might be distinguished. Third, Jesus' own life in Luke fits the pattern: He was conceived by the Spirit and later anointed by the Spirit for ministry. Honest scholars discuss these passages carefully, and we respect them. But we think the Pentecostal reading follows the narrative as Luke tells it.

We also agree with part of what our critics say. Every believer receives the Holy Spirit at new birth, for "if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His" (Romans 8:9). Our claim is that Luke describes a further empowering for witness, and that believers may and should seek it. We do not teach that a believer without this experience is not saved.

Reading the Four Accounts Together

A careful pastor looks at the accounts side by side.

Acts 2. Jewish disciples who already followed Jesus are filled on Pentecost and speak in other tongues.

Acts 8. Samaritans who believed and were baptized receive the Spirit when Peter and John pray and lay hands on them (Acts 8:14-17). Simon the sorcerer saw that the Spirit was given, and wanted the power to give it (Acts 8:18-19).

Acts 10. Gentiles in Cornelius' house receive the Spirit while Peter is still speaking. The Jewish believers knew it, because "they heard them speak with tongues and magnify God" (Acts 10:46).

Acts 19. About twelve men at Ephesus are asked whether they received the Spirit. After Paul laid hands on them, "the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke with tongues and prophesied" (Acts 19:6).

The order and the circumstances differ. In some cases water baptism comes first, and in one (Acts 10) it follows. In some cases hands are laid, and in others not. This variety warns us against a mechanical formula. What is constant is that the Spirit's coming is a clear, known event, and that it is connected to witness. We will return to the question of tongues as the initial sign in Unit 5.

Experience, Community and Scripture in Reading

Pentecostal scholars have also asked how our experience and church life shape our reading. Kenneth Archer, in A Pentecostal Hermeneutic (2004), proposed that Pentecostals read with three partners in conversation: Scripture, the Holy Spirit and the community. This follows the way the Jerusalem council reached its decision in Acts 15, where the apostles and elders appealed to experience, to Scripture and to the guidance of the Spirit together.

Critics worry that if experience shapes reading, then people will find in the Bible only what they already believe. This is a real danger for every reader, not only for Pentecostals. Every tradition brings its starting point to the text. The answer is to say openly where we stand, to test our reading by the whole of Scripture, to listen to those who disagree, and to be willing to be corrected. Peter's phrase at Pentecost, "this is what was spoken" (Acts 2:16), shows the way early believers read: they saw what was happening in the light of the Word.

Pentecostals also use the ordinary tools of careful reading: the author, the first readers, the language, the setting and the type of writing. These tools do not oppose the Spirit's help.

Pastoral Application

A pastor is asked to teach a Wednesday-night study on the book of Acts. Two members of the class challenge him. One, a young man trained in another tradition, says, "Acts is only history. You cannot make doctrine from it." The other, a new believer who has been filled with the Spirit, says, "Everything in Acts is for us, exactly as written. Why do we not also expect to be shaken by earthquakes in prison?"

The pastor sees that both are partly right. To the first he answers: "Luke wrote Acts to teach, and the Bible says all Scripture is useful for doctrine. We look for what Luke clearly means to teach and for patterns that Jesus' own words confirm." To the second he answers: "We do not take every detail as a command. We learn what the story shows about God's purpose, and we test it by the whole Bible." Then he leads the class slowly through Acts 2, 8, 10 and 19, asking of each: Who were these people? What did they receive? What happened afterward? He is neither afraid of the story nor careless with it.

Summary

Hermeneutics is the study of how to interpret. Luke–Acts is the central witness to the Spirit's empowering of believers for witness, from the anointing of Jesus at the Jordan to the coming of the Spirit on Jews, Samaritans, Gentiles and disciples at Ephesus. Roger Stronstad argued that Luke is a theologian who teaches through narrative, presenting the Spirit as the Spirit of prophecy. Critics such as Gordon Fee warn that a story does not always set a rule for all believers. Pentecostals answer with safeguards: repeated patterns, the words of Jesus, agreement with the rest of Scripture, and the author's purpose. James Dunn taught that Spirit baptism belongs to conversion, and Max Turner took a middle position; Pentecostals reply that Luke and Paul complement one another, and that Acts 8 and 19 fit a distinct empowering for witness. Kenneth Archer's proposal of Scripture, Spirit and community in conversation helps us read faithfully, as long as Scripture remains the judge of experience.

Further Reading

• Roger Stronstad, The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke (1984).

• James D. G. Dunn, Baptism in the Holy Spirit (1970), an evangelical critique.

• Max Turner, The Holy Spirit and Spiritual Gifts (1996).

• Gordon D. Fee, God's Empowering Presence (1994).

• Kenneth J. Archer, A Pentecostal Hermeneutic (2004).

• Frank D. Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit (2006).

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