Excerpt from Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (BTC Article on Acts 2)

ACTS 2

“And in the Holy Spirit”: The Fullness of the Church

Acts 2:1 AV When the day of Pentecost was fully come.

The affirmative articles of the Nicene Creed of 325 conclude with the words “and in the Holy Spirit,” with no further explanation.1 But it was the expansion of these words about the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the closing articles of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381 that made the latter creed a full-blown confession of the Trinity in a way that the creed of 325 had not been, which is why “the expounding of the dogma of the Trinity is the fundamental theological theme of the festival of Pentecost.”2 But the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed did not content itself with repeating the method it had employed in its articles about the second hypostasis of the Trinity—“begotten from the Father before all the ages, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial [ὁμοούσιος] with the Father”—by explaining why a confession of faith in the third hypostasis was legitimate because the Spirit was “proceeding forth from the Father, co-worshiped and co-glorified with Father and Son” (→4:24–30).3 Instead, the subject of these closing articles was the fullness of the church as “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic,” as this was constituted by baptism and as it was sustained by the hope of eternal life.4

Therefore the AV’s translation “when the day of Pentecost was fully come” here, like the Vulgate’s cum compleretur, is an attempt to convey an emphasis on the “fullness” (πλήρωμα) of the Holy Spirit, which seems to be suggested by the Greek ἐν τῷ συμπληροῦσθαι, but which does not come through as explicitly in the more prosaic “had come” of RSV and NRSV or even the “came round” of NJB. There are at least two significant parallels to this locution elsewhere in the New Testament: the “hinge passage” of transition to the passion story in Luke’s Gospel, “When the days for his being lifted up had been fulfilled [ἐν τῷ συμπληροῦσθαι τὰς ἡμέρας τῆς ἀναλήμψεως αὐτοῦ], he set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51); and the words of Paul, “When the fulness of the time was come [ὅτε δὲ ἦλθεν τὸ πλήρωμα τοῦ χρόνου], God sent forth his Son” (Gal. 4:4 AV). As is evident in both of these passages, the first on the passion and the second on the incarnation, the emphasis on the time having “fully come” is “not understood in a strictly chronological sense, but in the setting of the history of salvation.”5 The coming of the Holy Spirit on the disciples at Pentecost fulfilled “the promise of the Father, which, he said, you heard from my mouth” (1:4 TPR), which, as Luke had written earlier (Luke 12:2) and as the Gospel of John described at considerably greater length (John 14:16–17; 15:26–27; 16:7–15), had been given by Jesus during the days of his earthly ministry.

This theological theme of the connection between the Holy Spirit and “fullness” runs through the entire narrative of Acts.6 Here in the Pentecost event, “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit” (2:4); and here in the Pentecost sermon of Peter (2:28), the promise of the Psalm (Ps. 16:11 LXX), “thou wilt fill me with joy with thy countenance,” is said to have been uniquely carried out in Jesus Christ. As he was defending the message before the high priest, “Peter [was] filled with the Holy Spirit” (4:8), and the company of believers “were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness to anyone who was willing to believe” (4:31 TPR). In a dramatic contrast between the two diametrically opposite ways of “being filled,” with Ananias it was “Satan [who] has filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit” (5:3). The requirement stipulated for the new deacons who were to be appointed was that they be “full of the Spirit and of wisdom” (6:3); and one of them was “Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit” (6:5), who was “full of grace and power” (6:8) and who at his protomartyr’s death, “full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God” (7:55). Barnabas, too, “was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith” (11:24). After his conversion, Saul was assured by Ananias that he would “regain [his] sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit” (9:17), and so “Saul, who is also called Paul, [was] filled with the Holy Spirit” when he denounced the sorcerer as “you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy” (13:9–10). Not only Paul, but all “the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit” (13:52).

Although, as the defenders of orthodoxy had to acknowledge,7 there were not early liturgical prayers addressed to the Holy Spirit (→5:3–4) as there were to the Son of God (7:59), so that they could not use such prayers as proof texts for the deity of the Spirit (→4:24–30)—the great exception being the Gloria Patri, with variants in the prepositions that became themselves the occasion of controversy8—the definitive formulation of the dogma of the Holy Trinity by the First Council of Constantinople in 381 eventually gave rise to such prayers to the Holy Spirit. Before the formal opening of the Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom the priest prays to the “Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, who art everywhere and fillest all things”; and in the Latin West, probably in the ninth century, there arose this prayer for the fullness that the Holy Spirit grants:

Veni, Creator Spiritus,	Come, Holy Ghost, Creator blest,
mentes tuorum visita,	Vouchsafe within our souls to rest.
imple superna gratia,	Come with thy power and heavenly aid,
quae tu creasti, pectora.	And fill the hearts which thou hast made.9

It is sung not only at Pentecost, but for ordinations and for the opening of synods and church councils10—and any church council that sings it at its opening must be prepared to deal with the possible consequences! It is also the text for the first movement of Gustav Mahler’s Eighth Symphony.

The sneer “they are filled with new wine” (2:13) and Peter’s dismissive and even humorous (→12:13–16) response to this canard, “These men are not drunk, as you suppose, it being only the third hour of the day” (2:15 TPR), do call to mind the contrast drawn by Paul between the right and the wrong way of being filled: “Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart” (Eph. 5:18–19). It is right to want to be “filled” with something, and the drunkard quite properly recognizes that human nature stands in need of some power that will take it out of itself (as alcohol and drugs do). But this need also includes the requirement that such fullness will in the process not corrupt and destroy it (as alcohol also does), but fulfill it by loosening the tongue and making it sing—but “to the Lord.” As Cyril of Jerusalem paraphrased Peter’s words here, “They are drunken, with a sober drunkenness, deadly to sin and life-giving to the heart, a drunkenness contrary to that of the body; for this last causes forgetfulness even of what was known, but that bestows the knowledge even of what was not known.”11 This paradox was to become a theme especially in the literature of Christian mysticism in both East and West.12

The concept of the fullness of the Holy Spirit also becomes evident in the account (19:2–6 TPR) of those “disciples” in Ephesus whom Paul asked, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” and who replied, “No, we have never even heard that some have received the Holy Spirit” (or even, as in the AV and RSV, “No, we have never even heard that there is a Holy Spirit”). When they received Christian baptism “in the name of the Lord Jesus for the forgiveness of sins” (→22:16) in place of the baptism of John (→19:2–3), and when Paul laid his hand on them (→6:6), “the Holy Spirit fell on them, and they spoke in tongues and interpreted them themselves and prophesied” (19:6 TPR). Although they are specifically identified as already being “disciples” (μαθηταί) (19:1) in spite of their inadequacy, they achieved the fullness of that discipleship only when they received baptism and the Holy Spirit.

The primacy of the free divine initiative in the “coming” of the Holy Spirit is dramatically heightened in those several passages of the book of Acts where the Holy Spirit is described as not only “coming upon” persons, but as “falling” upon them. In the passage just quoted (19:6), the TPR has “the Holy Spirit fell [ἐπέπεσεν] on them” rather than “the Holy Spirit came to [ἦλθε] them,” which other manuscripts have; and at the conclusion of the account of the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch it has the report that “when they came up out of the water, the Holy Spirit fell upon the eunuch” (8:39 TPR). But all the textual traditions, not only the TPR, read that way at several other places: “While Peter was still saying this, the Holy Spirit fell on [ἐπέπεσεν] all who heard the word” (10:44); again, in the words of Peter: “As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning” (11:15); earlier, too: “the Holy Spirit … had not yet fallen on any of them” (8:15–16). The words of Peter, “just as on us at the beginning,” suggest that the freedom of the Holy Spirit to “blow where it wills” (John 3:8) is often implied even in places where the verb πίπτειν (“to fall”) is not being employed, as particularly here in the account of Pentecost. Above all, that implication is at work in the standard transitive verb for the “coming” of the Holy Spirit, which is “to send” (πέμπειν): especially in the Gospel of John, where it is the usual technical term for the coming of the Son of God as sent by his Father, it is also employed for the coming of the Holy Spirit (John 14:26; 15:26; 16:7).13 In the light of subsequent controversy14 it bears explaining, on the basis of the distinction between “theology” and “economy” (→15:8–9), that this “sending” of the Holy Spirit by the Father and the Son was described as “economic,” that is, within the dispensation of human history, by contrast with the eternal “proceeding” (ἐκπορεύεσθαι) within the Godhead, which was “from the Father” and not from the Son (John 15:26).15 The range of that freedom of the Spirit is also the theological presupposition for the varieties of how Christians have experienced conversion, whether they were instantaneously “born anew” (John 3:3) or “were persuaded” (ἐπείσθησαν) (17:4) gradually, sometimes almost imperceptibly, through the preaching and teaching of the word of God (→9:1–4).

The varieties in the manifestation of the Spirit would include the special inspiration of the apostles. “Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them” (4:8): when combined with the apostolic claim to be speaking “in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:13) and with the apostolic extension of this authority from “word of mouth” to “letter” (2 Thess. 2:15), this inspiring action of the Holy Spirit was eventually taken to include the New Testament in the attribute “inspired by God” (θεόπνευστος) (2 Tim. 3:16) that had originally been predicated only of the Old Testament (→8:25). Also included as a manifestation of the Spirit was the gift of tongues here at Pentecost. From the experience of the church at Corinth it is evident that ecstatic speech under the extraordinary working of the Holy Spirit was one of the special “spiritual gifts” (πνευματικά) (1 Cor. 12:1), sometimes—especially after the New Testament—called χαρίσματα,16 that continued to appear, if sporadically, also after Pentecost, including “gifts of healing,” “the working of miracles” (→6:8), “various kinds of tongues,” and “the interpretation of tongues” (1 Cor. 12:4–11). In the modern era, the presence or absence of these spiritual gifts has not only become an issue in the rise of Pentecostalism as a radical form of “dynamic” Protestantism in opposition to the supposedly “static” elements of the Catholic tradition, but in the “charismatic renewal movement” that has been taking place within the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and other traditional churches.17

The catholicity of the church (→22:27) here is defined as linguistic and geographic, “run[ning] from east to west,”18 rather than ethnic. It is anticipated in the variety of territories that are represented (though only, it seems, by “Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven … both Jews and proselytes” (2:5, 10), not by pagan Gentiles from those nations) and into which the message would eventually penetrate, beginning already in the later chapters of Acts. But among the creedal marks of the church as “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic,”19 the emphasis in the Pentecost miracle is on the unity of the church even more than on its catholicity, because Pentecost represents the undoing of the Tower of Babel, where the human race, which until then “was one lip, and there was one language to all,” had been punished for its pride by God, who “confused the language of all the earth … that they may not understand each the voice of his neighbor” (Gen. 11:1–9 LXX). Language, especially the eloquent and persuasive language that is the object of rhetorical study, is a prominent feature of the narrative here in Acts (→24:1–2); but so are languages in their infinite variety (→21:37), which are the object of linguistic study. The text speaks expressly of “other tongues” (ἑτέραις γλώσσαις) (2:4), apparently meaning the languages spoken by the Parthian Jews, Arabian Jews, and all the others. But at 2:8 the word is “we hear, each of us” (ἀκούομεν ἕκαστος), which suggests the appearance here not of a polyglot congregation but of the phenomenon of glossalalia familiar from the experience of the Christian community in Corinth (1 Cor. 14). Did the apostles actually speak—or did those present only hear—all of these other languages?20

This catalog of nations is by no means exhaustive, for as Pope John Paul II said in his Pentecost homily at Gniezno, on 3 June 1979, upon his first visit to his Polish homeland after his election, describing the mission of Cyril and Methodius, “equals to the apostles,”21 to Greater Moravia in the ninth century:

After so many centuries the Jerusalem upper room was again opened up and amazement fell no longer on the peoples of Mesopotamia and Judea, Egypt and Asia, and visitors from Rome, but also on the Slav peoples and the other peoples living in this part of Europe, as they heard the apostles of Jesus Christ speaking in their tongue and telling in their language “the mighty works of God.” … These languages cannot fail to be heard especially by the first Slav Pope in the history of the Church. Perhaps that is why Christ has chosen him, perhaps that is why the Holy Spirit has led him—in order that he might introduce into the communion of the Church the understanding of the words and of the languages that still sound strange to the ear accustomed to the Romance, Germanic, English and Celtic tongues.22

2:14 Ordinarily “the twelve” (οἱ δώδεκα) is the technical term for the disciples throughout the New Testament (e.g., Luke 8:1); but it was reduced to “eleven” in these early chapters of Acts, or even to “ten” here in the TPR of this verse, either to take account of the apostasy of Judas (1:26) or—though this is considerably less likely, except perhaps in a passage like this one—to single out the primacy of Peter (→5:29a).

2:15 Peter’s observation that it was too early in the day for these men to be drunk does carry at least a touch of humor (→12:13–16).

2:22–23 (→6:8; →26:26). Except perhaps for the words in the first chapter about Judas “go[ing] where he belonged” (1:25 NEB), this is the first reference in Acts to the mysterious—and ultimately unfathomable—relation between the accountability of human free will and the omniscient “foreknowledge” (πρόγνωσις) of God, which does not observe human action as though God were a neutral and helpless spectator, but has what is termed here a “definite plan” (ὡρισμένη βουλή) for it. Here this term applies directly to the death of Christ (→13:48), but as the central event of the total “economy” or plan of salvation (→15:8–9). This reference to Pontius Pilate and the Roman authorities as “lawless men,” whose “hands” were the most directly responsible for the unjust killing of the innocent Jesus, must be seen in the total context of how the book of Acts depicts the Roman Empire, its emperor and entire power structure (→25:11), as well as of how it deals with Roman law (→25:8), and, on the other hand, in the light of how it speaks about the Jewish adversaries of Jesus (→3:25) and about the “law” in Judaism (→10:15).

https://biblia.com/books/brazos65ac/Ac2

AV Authorized (King James) Version

1 Nicene Creed 8 (CCF 1:159).

2 Ouspensky and Lossky 1999, 200.

3 Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed 8 (CCF 1:163).

4 Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed 2, 9–12 (CCF 1:163).

AV Authorized (King James) Version

Vulgate Vulgate (see Nova vulgata 1986)

RSV Revised Standard Version

NRSV New Revised Standard Version

NJB New Jerusalem Bible

AV Authorized (King James) Version

5 Grässer 1957, 208.

TPR textus a patribus receptus (see Boismard 2000)

6 David Peterson in Winter and Clarke 1993–94, 1:83–104.

LXX Septuagint (see Rahlfs 1979)

TPR textus a patribus receptus (see Boismard 2000)

7 Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations 31.12 (SVS 125–26).

8 Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit 1.3 (SVS 17–18).

9 Raby 1959, 116.

10 Julian 1957, 1206–11.

TPR textus a patribus receptus (see Boismard 2000)

11 Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 17.19 (NPNF2 7:128).

12 On “sober drunkenness,” see Lewy 1929.

TPR textus a patribus receptus (see Boismard 2000)

AV Authorized (King James) Version

RSV Revised Standard Version

TPR textus a patribus receptus (see Boismard 2000)

TPR textus a patribus receptus (see Boismard 2000)

TPR textus a patribus receptus (see Boismard 2000)

TPR textus a patribus receptus (see Boismard 2000)

13 BDAG 794.

14 Chr. Trad. 2:183–98.

15 Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed 8 (CCF 1:162–63); Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed: Occidental Recension 8 (CCF 1:672).

16 BDAG 837, 1081; PGL 1104–5, 1518–19.

17 ODCC 1253–54, 321.

18 Chrysostom, Homilies on Acts 4 (NPNF1 11:26).

19 Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed 9 (CCF 1:163).

LXX Septuagint (see Rahlfs 1979)

20 Bede, Exposition of the Acts of the Apostles 2 (PL 92:947).

21 Sophocles 1870, 603.

22 Pope John Paul II in Levi 1982, 1:3–4.

TPR textus a patribus receptus (see Boismard 2000)

NEB New English Bible

23 Marguerat 1999, 91–92; Tarazi 2001, 19.

24 Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed 5 (CCF 1:163).

25 Nikanor 1905, 1:30, 59.

LXX Septuagint (see Rahlfs 1979)

LXX Septuagint (see Rahlfs 1979)

26 Masai Creed 2 (CCF 3:569).

27 On its use in early Christianity, see Origen, Commentary on John 28 (ANF 10:343).

TPR textus a patribus receptus (see Boismard 2000)

28 Grimaldi 1980, 19–21.

29 BDAG 818–20.

30 Origen, Contra Celsum 2.63 (Chadwick 1953, 114).

AV Authorized (King James) Version

TPR textus a patribus receptus (see Boismard 2000)

TPR textus a patribus receptus (see Boismard 2000)

31 Jervell 1996, 34; see also Esler 1987.

32 Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed 9 (CCF 1:163).

33 Cyprian, Unity of the Catholic Church 23–25 (ACW 25:65–66).

34 Bogolepov 1900, 405–8.

35 BDAG 881.

36 Johnson 1992, 58.

37 Chr. Trad. 1:71–81.

TPR textus a patribus receptus (see Boismard 2000)

AV Authorized (King James) Version

38 Chrysostom, Homilies on Acts 7 (NPNF1 11:45).

39 BDAG 552–53.

Vulgate Vulgate (see Nova vulgata 1986)

40 Chr. Trad. 3:184–214.

TPR textus a patribus receptus (see Boismard 2000)

NA Novum Testamentum Graece (ed. Erwin Nestle, Kurt Aland, et al.; 27th ed.; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1999)

27 Novum Testamentum Graece (ed. Erwin Nestle, Kurt Aland, et al.; 27th ed.; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1999)

41 BDF §252.

42 Didache 9 (ACW 6:20).

43 Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History 5.22 (NPNF2 2:133).

Jaroslav Pelikan, Acts, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2005), 48–61.

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