Articles by Kevin Baird

It might be noteworthy to let the readers know that at my blog site (drkevinbaird.com) are many articles exploring the subject of tongues, including these recently posted. Just use the search engine on the site and you can access some of my thoughts.

Let’s now pivot to the critiques many offer with regard to speaking in tongues and baptismal language. Let’s see if the criticism is as overwhelming and powerful as some want to lead us to believe. Most objections generally fall into four categories:

1. Narrative Non-Normativity: Acts describes but does not prescribe.
2. Insufficient Uniformity: Tongues do not appear in every Spirit reception account.
3. Misuse of 1 Corinthians 12:30: Not all speak in tongues.
4. Theological Reductionism: Initial evidence creates a two-tiered Christianity.

While these critiques deserve serious consideration, none proves fatal to classical Pentecostal initial evidence theology. On the contrary, each objection can be answered exegetically and theologically.

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Let’s begin with an historical story. Pentecostalism emerged out of the American Holiness (Methodist) revival tradition in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In broad terms, Pentecostalism was initially a novel development within the Holiness ranks before becoming a distinct movement of its own. 

Holiness believers emphasized:

1. Conversion / new birth
2. A definite post-conversion experience of sanctification
3. Holy living / separation from sin
4. Revivalism and experiential religion
5. Expectation of supernatural divine activity

Early Pentecostals inherited nearly all of that framework. In fact, many of the first Pentecostal leaders were formerly Holiness preachers or members of Holiness churches. The decisive innovation was this…

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It is not unusual to find many believer’s who have personally experienced a Pentecostal type encounter to start from the theological square of trying to understand this experience. Is it Scriptural? Is this moment a God-moment or simply an emotional moment? How should I interpret this new happening in my life? For others, which would include myself, I started from the theological square of asking, “What does the Bible say?”, before I ever had an experience. I think it is legitimate to approach the question of the baptism with the Holy Spirit from either direction as long as Scripture supports the reality of this experience. This is why I maintain that one of the most important distinctions in Pentecostal theology is between the Holy Spirit’s work in salvation and the Holy Spirit’s work in empowerment. Many traditions collapse all New Testament references to Spirit baptism into a single, salvific event; but a careful reading of Scripture shows that the Bible distinguishes between the Spirit baptizing the believer into Christ and Christ baptizing the believer with the Holy Spirit. To conflate these experiences is to ignore important biblical distinctions and obscure the empowering dimension of Spirit baptism that the early church clearly experienced. The confusion and conflation is the misunderstanding between I Corinthians 12:13 and Acts 1:5-8. Let’s unpack these verses carefully.

I Corinthians 12:13 states, “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body…”

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Few doctrines have been more contested in modern theology than the claim that believers may experience a definite work of grace subsequent to salvation. Critics often dismiss this doctrine as emotionalism, theological innovation, or a misreading of Acts. Yet such objections collapse under careful biblical examination. The New Testament plainly presents a second definite work of grace beyond conversion. Pentecostals would see it as a post-salvation baptism with the Holy Spirit for power, boldness, and spiritual empowerment. The Holiness Movement may see this “secondness” in terms of entire sanctification, freedom from inner sin, or heart cleansing. I will not attempt to deal with those concepts in this post. I will reserve those discussions for another post. I do, however, want to broach the topic of a second work of God’s grace by His design.  

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One of the most challenging aspects of proper interpretation is dealing with the Scripture contextually in order to make sure one is extracting (or exegeting) the proper principle or lesson which God would have us know and practice. The exegesis becomes all the more interesting when the one exegeting must determine whether the principle of that Scripture is strictly for the people it was directed to AT THAT TIME, is it a universally applicable precept to be implemented in the Church for ALL TIME, or is it an historical narrative which simply communicates an event which happened at that time and has no direct application or implementation to our lives today? In other words, is the book simply describing events -or- prescribing important precepts?

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