and the church (Acts) so there are in both accounts fairly obvious allusions and parallelism with the story of the exodus and formation of Israel into a people of God. Both of these literary devices indicate the same answer to our question. What really happened at Pentecost was the forming of the new covenant community of the Spirit. Let us look more closely at the significance of these characteristics of Luke’s account.
The teaching that the church was born at Pentecost is, of course, not new. Nor is the idea of continuity as well as discontinuity with Israel new, although this has been a matter of dispute within evangelicalism. What has not been sufficiently recognized is that the new thing that happened on Pentecost is the new community. It is this parallelism with the formation of Israel from a “mixed multitude” into a “people” that Luke’s many allusions to Exodus seem to underscore.
The immediate manifestations of the Spirit’s presence were fire, wind, and speaking in other tongues. All three have a rich and varied symbolic use in the Old Testament and other Jewish literature. No doubt Luke consciously alludes to this tradition. To make exodus symbolism primary is not to rule out all other possible allusions, but rather to highlight the fundamental significance in his account.
As the Israelites left Egypt the special presence of the Lord leading his people was manifested in the “pillar of fire” (Exod. 13:21–22; 14:24). Now the presence appears again and disperses itself, resting on each one in the representative new Israel (Acts 2:3). The mysterious “violent wind” which dried up the waters of the Red Sea (Exod. 14:21) and whipped in the faces of the Israelites as they crossed to Sinai now again filled the house with a roar and is fully identified as God’s Spirit. The play on words in the original language of the Bible makes this more obvious. Both ruach (Hebrew) and pneuma (Greek) have the double meaning of wind and spirit. . . .
The symbolism of speaking and hearing in different dialects is also multifaceted. It most likely alludes to the confusion of languages at Babel (Gen. 11:7–9). The Spirit’s presence reverses Babel, and as Saint Paul said, in Christ there are no “barbarians,” that is, those of uncouth languages (Col. 3:11). It also indicates the universality of the salvation message and therefore the mission and nature of the new people being formed. The connection with Exodus and Sinai is not so apparent until we learn that there was a Jewish tradition that the Mosaic Law had been given in seventy languages simultaneously, indicating the universal scope of its authority. Luke’s account of the new covenant’s being announced in many languages may well be a parallel to this Jewish tradition. . . .
In his sermon at Pentecost, Peter explained all this as the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy. Jesus, the true Messiah, has sealed the new covenant in his death. Now, risen and victorious, he is forming his new people. Just as the Israelites were “baptized in the sea” (1 Cor. 10:2), marking decisively their separation from their old family identity in Egypt, so Peter called upon his audience to be baptized and to save themselves from the old “crooked generation.” Just as Israel received their new identity as the people of God at Sinai through the gift of the law, so the new people is constituted through the gift of the Spirit. And just as great signs accompanied Israel’s deliverance and formation into a covenant nation, so “signs and wonders done through the apostles” accompanied the birth of the new community of the Spirit. . . .
On the day of Pentecost, to be saved meant to join the messianic community. On that day, baptism in the name of Jesus Christ was a public act of acknowledging that Jesus was truly the Messiah, the rightful leader of God’s people, and a declaration of allegiance to him by throwing in one’s lot with the original apostolic band. To be as explicit as possible let me perhaps overstate the point. It was not a matter of “receiving Jesus into their hearts” and then being urged to find a church (voluntary society) of their choice for fellowship. It was not a matter of an inner experience of justification or even of conversion that made them members of the spiritual or invisible body of Christ to be followed by baptism and “joining the church.” It was not a matter of “saving their souls” and then gathering them into conventicles or visible religious societies.
Within the new group defined by allegiance to Jesus Christ they received the Holy Spirit, for it was the victorious Messiah and Lord of the new community who was giving the Spirit (Acts 2:33). The Spirit of the ascended Christ now became the Spirit of his new body. Peter’s promise that following repentance and baptism they would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (2:38) was not the promise of a “second experience” but the announcement that it is within the community of the Spirit that the new reality is to be found. ◆
7
Christian Communism
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José P. Miranda
“All the believers together had everything in common; they sold their possessions and their goods, and distributed among all in accordance with each one’s needs” (Acts 2:44–45). “The heart of the multitude of believers was one and their soul was one, and not a single one said anything of what he had was his, but all things were common. . . . There was no poor person among them, since whoever possessed fields or houses sold them, bore the proceeds of the sale and placed them at the feet of the apostles; and a distribution was made to each one in accordance with his needs” (Acts 4:32, 34–35).
Anticommunist commentators allege that this is Luke’s personal point of view, and that the other New Testament writers fail to corroborate it. . . . We shall see that the hypothesis is false, for Jesus himself was a communist. But let us place ourselves hypothetically in the worst possible position: that only Luke teaches communism. With what right, indeed with what elemental logic, is it thereupon asserted that communism is incompatible with Christianity? . . . If at least the Lucan part of the New Testament teaches communism, how is it possible to maintain that communism is at odds with Christianity?
Let us suppose (not concede) that there are parts of the New Testament which lend footing to the projection of social systems different from Luke’s. Well and good. That some Christians today may prefer these other parts of the Bible to Luke’s is their affair. But with what right do they deny the name Christian to what the Lucan part of the Bible teaches emphatically and repeatedly? The origin of the communist idea in the history of the West is the New Testament, not Jamblicus or Plato. . . .
A second anticommunist allegation against the texts we have cited from Luke is that the communism of the first Christians failed. It is flabbergasting that sermons, documents of the magisterium, books, and bourgeois public opinion should brook the notion that this is an argument. The Sermon on the Mount failed too, but this does not deprive it of its normative character. . . . What should concern us is to find out why it broke down, and bring communism to realization without committing whatever error caused the first Christians to break down. This would be the logical conclusion if our objectors had the flimsiest desire to be guided by the Bible. But what our objectors have done is make an antecedent and irreformable decision to disagree with the Bible, and to this purpose they bring forward every pretext, even if it tramples upon the most elemental logic.
To cite that initial failure is pure pretext. It is as if we told ourselves we were eliminating the Ten Commandments because they failed in history. . . .
The third objection runs as follows: the communism of the first Christians was optional, as can be seen from Peter’s words to Ananias, “Was it not still yours if you kept it, and once you sold it was it not yours to dispose of?” (Acts 5:4). . . .
According to Luke, what is optional is not communism, but Christianity. Peter does not tell Ananias that he could have come into the Christian community without renouncing the private ownership of his goods. Nor could he say such a thing after it was explicitly emphasized that of the Christians “not a single one said anything was his.” Ananias lied to the Holy Spirit by pretending to become a Christian via a simulated renunciation.
The objection belongs to the type of reader who thinks a work can be understood without understanding the thought of the author. Luke would have to have been a very slow-witted writer if he claimed to assert, in the Ananias episode (5:1–11), the optional character of communism, when four verses earlier he has insisted that “whoever possessed fields or houses sold them,” and so on, and