FULL OR FALLIBLE?
The perception that one needs “more” of the Spirit to get all of the Gospel is one of the distinguishing marks of what has come to be known as the Full Gospel movement. It treats justification as a conversion event or experience, while concentrating the post-conversion faith on a separate and distinct work of the Spirit in the Christian life. The belief that it is necessary to have an experience subsequent to justification in order to receive “all” or the “rest of” the Spirit is standard Full Gospel doctrine. The password tenet is the conviction that there exists a difference between receiving the Spirit at conversion and fully receiving the Spirit after conversion. The baptism in the Holy Spirit is simply the full treatment.
Gordon Fee, a respected New Testament scholar raised in the Full Gospel tradition, lists the two primary distinctions:
(1) The doctrine of subsequence, i. e., that there is for Christians a baptism in the Spirit distinct from and subsequent to the experience of salvation …. and (2) the doctrine of tongues as the initial physical evidence of baptism in the Spirit.
(Gospel and Spirit: Issues in New Testament Hermeneutics, (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Pub., 1991)
The receiving of the Spirit as an event that is “distinct from and subsequent to” the New Birth, is fundamental to Pentecostal faith. It assumes that one who is justified is not yet baptized in the Spirit. Full Gospel adherents reason that the Spirit has baptized every believer into Christ (conversion), but that Christ has not yet baptized every believer into the Spirit (Pentecost).
This addition to the Gospel of an essential experience subsequent to conversion opened the door for the potential of other supplements being included. Over time, even more was attached to the Full Gospel. As Donald Dayton explains in his study of Pentecostalism, there were five components which became generally received by Pentecostals to comprise the Full Gospel:
During the Reformation God used Martin Luther and others to restore to the world the doctrine of justification by faith. Rom. 5:1. Later on the Lord used the Wesleys and others in the great holiness movement to restore the gospel of sanctification by faith. Acts 26:18. Later still he used various ones to restore the gospel of Divine healing by faith (Jas. 5:15, 15), and the gospel of Jesus’s second coming. Acts 1:11. Now the Lord is using many witnesses in the great Pentecostal movement to restore the gospel of the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire (Luke 3:16; Acts 1:5) with signs following. Mark 16:17, 18; Acts 2:4; 10:44 – 46; 19:6; 1:1 – 28:31. Thank God, we now have preachers of the whole gospel.
(Donald W. Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism, Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson Publishers, 1987, p. 20, quoting from H. S. Maltby, The Reasonableness of Hell, (Santa Cruz, CA:, n.p., 1913) pp. 82-83.)
The addition of these elements of the Christian faith to justification proper, led many to create a more complex gospel than that which was embraced by the protestant movement. The gospel as basically preached and taught by the Apostles was the standard message of most evangelical churches up until the “first wave” of the Full Gospel phenomenon in 1901 at Bethel Bible College, Topeka, Kansas, when Agnes Ozman received what she called the baptism of the Spirit and spoke in “tongues”. Nationwide interest in this development was further augmented by the Azusa Street Pentecostal experience in Los Angeles, California in 1906.
Full Gospel advocates have waved the flag of what could be regarded as nothing less than a misunderstanding of justification. Among Full Gospel believers there is often a lack of assurance as to whether they have enough of the Spirit. I believe this directly results in many of the bizarre and extreme excesses that have come through the years (soaking in the Spirit, filling of teeth, barking, uncontrollable laughing, unfulfilled prophecies, et. al.). Those who embrace the Full Gospel theology are driven to seek more and more of the Spirit because they want to be sure they are spiritual enough to be accepted by God. All too often the impulse behind the Full Gospel movement is created by an inadequate teaching of the reality and dynamics of justification by faith and its accompanying indwelling of the Spirit. This does not mean that those who promote the Full Gospel are not sincere, dedicated, and honest people. That is not what is under question. One could not find more intensely religious and committed people than in Full Gospel circles. The question is, how much greater would be their faith if they fully appreciated the meaning of Christ’s righteousness for them.
What makes the Full Gospel position a fallible position and causes it to be “another gospel” is not so much the characteristics of other errant gospels such as those which cancel or correct the original. The problem with the Full Gospel view is an “add to” of elements that the New Testament apostolic proclamation did not see fit to include.