Thinking with C. René Padilla about the Holy Spirit (Part V: English Version)

Preface

This is the fifth essay in a six- or seven-part series on C. René Padilla’s essay “The Holy Spirit: Power for Life and Hope.” The series’ first four English-version essays are here, here, here, and here respectively. Its first, second, and third  Spanish-version essays are here, here, and here. Mi padre y yo hope you enjoy the series ¡Saludos!

The Spirit of God in the Mission of the Church

Padilla’s essay considers the Spirit of God’s work in creation and history (Part 1), in Jesus’ mission (Part 2), and in the life and mission of the church (Part 3). The previous post examined how the OT’s and NT’s promises of the Spirit relate Jesus’s mission to the Church’s mission. We now turn to Padilla’s teachings on the place of Pentecost in the Church’s mission. Thus, we join Padilla in tracking the biblical arch of the Spirit’s creative and redemptive work.

Padilla begins his reflection on Pentecost by stressing the links between Pentecost, the Church, and the Spirit. “From a Christian perspective, Pentecost and the church of Jesus Christ are inseparable realities, and both of them jointly point to the presence and action of the Holy Spirit.” Padilla unpacks his claim in terms of the biblical promises of the Spirit.

To speak of Pentecost is to speak of the power of the Holy Spirit that, in fulfillment of Jesus’ promise, God gives to his people for the spread of the good news of the kingdom in all nations. The church that emerges out of Pentecost is by nature a missionary community.

Padilla presumes readers will recall God’s promise to pour out the Spirit upon the people of God in Joel 2 with Jesus’ promises in Luke 24 and Acts 1 to send the Spirit so that the disciples may fulfill God’s mission by being Jesus’ witnesses “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Hence, Pentecost reveals that the Church is an inherently missional community.

But, Padilla adds, Pentecost also shows that the Church is a “pneumatic community—the community of the Spirit.” Thus, it mirrors and extends Jesus’ earthly mission. Padilla writes:

At the beginning of the first of his two-volume work, Luke relates the Holy Spirit with Jesus’ baptism (Lk 3:21-22) and with his messianic ministry (Lk 4:18). At the beginning of the second volume of his work, he relates the Holy Spirit with the church. Pentecost is the baptism of the church, through which God enables it to continue Jesus’ mission to the very end of time.

These Lukan links between Jesus and the Church remind me of St. Paul’s teachings on the Church’s union with Christ and its standing as Christ’s body: “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink” (1 Cor. 12:12-13).

Padilla now directs his readers to Acts 2. He acknowledges that this text “may be regarded as the key passage for understanding the Holy Spirit’s role in the life and mission of the church.” This central text has three parts: “the Pentecost event (Acts 2:1-13), the meaning of Pentecost (Acts 2:14-39), and the result of Pentecost (Acts 2:40-47).” We will conclude this post by considering Padilla’s presentation on the first of these parts.

The Pentecost Event (Acts 2:1-13)

Padilla begins his discussion of Acts 2 by contextualizing Pentecost. “The Feast of Pentecost was one of the three annual festivals with which the Jewish people used to celebrate the harvest, and it was held for fifty days (hence the reference to pentékosté, meaning “fifty” in Greek) after the Passover—the beginning of the harvest.” The mention of a “harvest” should remind readers of our previous post. There Padilla alluded to Matthew 9:38, writing, “‘The Lord of the harvest’ has so designed the crop [i.e., the gathering of all nations to God] that the gleaning of it does not depend on sophisticated techniques, or on human strategies, or on financial resources, but on the Resource that [Jesus] himself provides for that purpose.” Note that this allusion is to a passage in which Jesus is traveling to different synagogues teaching and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom through word and deeds of mercy. Seeing crowds of battered and beleaguered peoples—those Howard Thurman calls “the disinherited”—Jesus “had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Filled with compassion, Jesus turns to his disciples and says, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field” (Mt 9:35-38).  Read intertextually, Acts 2 presents the answer to Jesus’ and the disciples’ prayers for workers to proclaim good news to and perform deeds of mercy among the downtrodden.  

Though Padilla’s readers are poised to see these textual connects, Padilla notes that Luke does not stress them. Instead, “Luke simply mentions that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit took place ‘when the day of Pentecost came’ (Acts 2:1), without drawing any conclusions from this fact.” Luke’s focus is on the Church’s baptism. He wants us to see that “the Spirit of God descended on the 120 disciples of Jesus Christ gathered in Jerusalem…this is the baptism of the church.”

Padilla draws our attention to three features of the Spirit’s outpouring. First, the outpouring “was both a personal and social experience.” Luke stresses this point, Padilla continues, by writing that the disciples “saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them” (Acts 2:3) and that “they were all together in one place” (Acts 2:1) and that “all of them  were filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:4). Consequently, Padilla concludes, “The experience of the Spirit is not a private experience but an experience in which the personal and the social dimensions are brought together.”

The second feature of Acts 2:1-13 that Padilla highlights is that the Spirit became manifest through “apparently ‘natural’ phenomena, namely, ‘a sound like the blowing of a violent wind’ (Acts 2:2) and ‘what seemed to be tongues of fire’” (Acts 2:3). Ever attentive to OT themes in the NT, Padilla suggests that these phenomena are “probably taken from the theophanies, or visible manifestation of God in the Old Testament: wind, a symbol of power; fire, a symbol of purification.” Moreover, these phenomena relate to the baptism John predicted in Luke. “‘He [Jesus] will baptize you with the Holy Spirit [pneuma = wind] and with fire’ (Lk 3:16).”

The third feature of this text Padilla emphasizes is its internationalism. The Spirit’s outpouring enabled “the proclamation of the gospel to ‘all nations,’ an anticipation of the evangelization that, beginning in Jerusalem, was to reach ‘the ends of the earth’ (Acts 1:8).” Honing his analysis, Padilla adds:

Luke leaves no room for doubts about the international character of the multitude that was present in Jerusalem for the celebration of Pentecost. He states that the city of Jerusalem was full of God-fearing Jews who had come from the diaspora, “from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:25). Then he includes a long list of the nationalities represented (Acts 2: 9-11a).

Padilla thus helps readers see Luke’s focus upon Pentecost’s multinational, diasporic nature. The Spirit goes to the nations as their members come to Jerusalem and hear the good news.

Luke stresses that the Spirit empowers the disciples to speak in diasporic tongues they hadn’t known. Padilla underscores this point, taking aim at certain interpretations of speaking in tongues. “The purpose of the glossolalia (speaking in tongues, Acts 2:4) on the day of Pentecost can only be understood in light of God’s intention that the gospel be proclaimed to all nations of the world. It was not an ecstatic or mystical experience but a resource for mission.” Anticipating rejoinders from some Pentecostals, including segments in Latin America, Padilla defends his position.

[My] conclusion is supported by the statement that each of the people present “heard them speaking in his own language” (Acts 2:6), and by the comments made by the listeners: “Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language?” (Acts 2:8), “we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” (Acts 2:11)

Padilla rejects readings of Acts 2 that render speaking in tongues a mystical or normative experience. For Padilla, this passage reveals that God sends the Spirit to empower speech that makes the church full of people “from every nation, tribe, people, and language” (Rev 7:9). Quoting Peter Goodwin Heltzel, Padilla affirms, “Pentecost provides a template for the Christian movement as a Spirit-empowered, transnational, multilinguistic, intercultural movement for justice.”

Padilla concludes his discussion of the Pentecost event by flagging an often-ignored part of this text. “A piece of information that should not be overlooked is that the first messengers of the gospel were Galileans (Acts 2:7), that is, people whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem generally regarded as inferior.” Echoing St Paul, Padilla concludes: “Is this not a sign of how oftentimes throughout the history of the church the Spirit of God manifests his power and humility?”