(4) Pentecost. — That event which corresponded to the Resurrection, and displays itself as the second moving cause of the attitude to Christ which we find taken up by the infant Church, was the experience of Pentecost, described as the out- pouring of the Holy Spirit. Fundamental as the Resurrection was, it did not stand alone as a basal fact on which the faith and life of the young Church were built ; nor is it possible to explain what fol- lowed in the development of life or thought from the Resurrection by itself. That was succeeded after a short interval by Pentecost and the indue- ment with spiritual power of those who believed in Jesus as the glorified Messiah. To the fact of the Resurrection was added the experience of a Spirit- filled life ; and quite apart from any questions as to the form in which this experience manifested itself, it is to this highly intensified and concen- trated perception of God's activity in the lives and wills of those who submit themselves to Him in Jesus Christ, working on the complex of facts il- luminated by the Resurrection, that the unfolding of systematic Christian thinking is due. As to the narrative of Pentecost itself, it was only natural, in view of the character of the phenomena, that tradition should seize on the externally marvellous and enhance it, to the obscuring of the really sig- nificant. And in particular the tradition as it reached St. Luke was so shaped either before him or by him that the central featirre in the account (2^"^i), the declaration by men of many different nationalities, ' we do hear them speaking in our tongues the mighty works of God,' differs from every other item of evidence as to the meaning of the glossolalia or 'speaking with tongues.' That this phenomenon, the speaking with ' new ' or strange tongues, was a familiar one in the first gen- eration of Christians, we know from St. Paul's Epistles ; that the first manifestation of it is what St. Luke is describing we may be sure ; but inas- much as a marked characteristic of glossolalia in all other contexts is incomprehensibility and the necessity for interpretation, we may take it that on the first occasion also the phenomenon was that of ecstatic speech, not comprehended by the hearers except in the sense that, being infected by the like enthusiasm, they felt themselves in mental com- munication with the speakers, though they did not understand their words. The essential thing is that something occurred of a public and striking descrip- tion which not only called for explanation, but justified St. Peter in seeing in the experience
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shared by him and so many others the fulfilment of Christ's words about ' the promise of the Father ' (V; cf. Lk24-'a, Gal 3").
The fulfilment of this promise became the second moment in the development of a deeper and richer Christology. On the one hand, it involved, and so revealed, a relation between God and ' His Christ ' of a different quality from what had hitherto been recognized. That relation had been conceived as something due to positive choice, as external, official ; and the Spirit was bestowed on Jesus as part of His Messianic equipment. The Christian experience of Christ sets up a process at the end of which we find St. Paul boldly identifying Christ and the Spirit, and the writer of the Fourth Gospel interpreting the parting Avords of Jesus in terms of that identification. And the effect of this identi- fication on the Christology is to provide an explana- tion of the attitude of believers to the Risen Lord in their recognizing Him as united to God in a re- lation which was not official but inherent, not mediated in time but eternal and unchangeable. And once more the stage in this process which we find reflected in the Acts is the intermediate one. The glorified Messiah is no longer the subject of the Spirit's influence (as in the Synoptic Gospels), nor is He as yet identified with it ; but he is the instrument and channel of the Spirit's bestowal. That bestowal is conditioned by faith in Him (2^^), by obedience to Him (5^^). On the other hand, the bestowal of the Spirit, which was afterwards recog- nized and described as 'the Spirit of unity and brotherly love,' involved and revealed a new re- lationship between all those who received the gift from Christ. That is the real meaning of Pentecost so far as it has been identified with the birth of the Church. "We are told of the 3000 souls that were added to the infant community that they were steadfastly adhering to the teaching of the apostles, and to the fellowship (Koivuvia), the breaking of bread, and the prayer (2^^). We have here a new word for a new thing, the new consciousness of sacred union connecting the believers, knitting them together in what St. Paul afterwards called the Body of Christ. Hovt {Christian Ecclesia, 1897, p. 44) understands by KOivwvla here ' conduct ex- pressive of and resulting from the strong sense of fellowship with the other members of the brother- hood.' Pentecost had for its most striking result the creation of the sense of brotherhood within a body of men and women whose common bond was not only a common allegiance to Christ, but com- mon participation in His Spirit. No doubt the extreme form which the principle at first assumed — community of goods — proved unworkable, and was of temporary duration ; but underlying it we see a whole series of new ethical ideals in opera- tion— mutual service, mutual self-sacritice, the merging of the individual in the corporate whole, ' love of the brethren' as a governing motive of the new life.