PERSPECTIVES ON SPIRIT BAPTISM The Reform position of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit is possibly the most commonly held position in the American mid-west. Walter Kaiser is a brilliant theologian but very typical in his assessment of the Holy Spirit’s representation in the New Testament. Kaiser does a masterful job of presenting the theological and chronological exegesis of the Holy Spirit without jumping off the Calvinist cliff. He makes an excellent observation of seeing the Pauline letters as didactic and Lukan letters as narrative, but falls short of full scholarship by asserting that narrative passages could not be doctrinal in scope. Kaiser also stays true to the conversion initiation theory by using 1 Corinthians 12:13 as the proof text for one Spirit and his defense against subsequence. I also appreciated that Kaiser did not try …show more content…
Hart is a contemporary version of Dr. Horton’s very formal style. However, Hart combines the tradition of Pentecostalism with the reality of Charismatic experiences. Harts uses a dimensional concept to explain his insight. First he refers to the Paschal Dimension, Purifying Dimension, and the Pentecostal Dimension. Instead of trying to completely segregate Lucan passages to empowering references of the Holy Spirit and Pauline passages to soteriological or indwelling references, Hart blends to two together by taking both sides of the initiation – subsequence controversy. Hart seem the Baptism of the Holy Spirit as both, in that he emphasized that the Holy Spirit is given at conversion, but a greater portion is given subsequent to conversation. Like the difference between a gilled steak or a frozen one. However, it seemed that Dr. Hart took the opinion that speaking in tongues was not the indicial physical evidence as emphasized by Dr. Horton, be he didn’t come right out and state that. Furthermore, Hart did believe that a “law of tongues” was not a correct interpretation of the