a contextual missiology of the spirit - eTheses Repository ...

and resulted in the transformation of both. As Allen has observed, Peter ‘realized
that his action was liable to be called in question, but he acted under the impulse
of the Spirit.’ 125 While he was preaching, the Holy Spirit fell upon the people and
they started speaking in tongues, and this changed Peter’s theology. He asked,
who could forbid the Spirit-filled, tongues- speaking Gentiles from being
baptised? This shows that he, like many other Jewish Christian leaders of the
time, believed that the Spirit would work only among certain groups of people,
and so baptism was only for them. Now these Gentiles had received the Holy
Spirit before they were baptised in water. This incident influenced the
reformulation of the theology of the early Christian community, and so later, at
the Jerusalem Council, Peter himself made the confession that God acknowledged
people by giving them the Spirit (Act. 15:7-11). Referring to the events in Acts
15, Newbigin says that the Spirit experiences reported by Peter silenced the
assembly. 126 Thus, the Spirit experiences of both the leaders as well as the
receivers changed the mission theology and practice of the early Christian
community.
6.2.2.4 The Spirit and Global Mission
Another important role of the Spirit in the early Christian community was in
directing its missionaries in global mission. Even though the promise of Jesus
included mission beyond the Palestinian border (Act.1:8), the early community
failed to act on this. According to Allen, the disciples of Christ intellectually
failed to understand their master’s ‘world-wide commission embracing all the
125 Allen, ‘Spirit the Source,’ 100.
126 Newbigin, Open Secret, 61.
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