In Hebrews 6:1-2 we read:
‘1 Therefore, let us leave the basic teaching about the Messiah and be carried forward to maturity, not again laying a foundation of repentance from dead actions and faith in God, 2 of teaching about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment.’
In this passage the author lists six elements of Christian
teaching that he says are basic: repentance, faith, baptisms, laying on of
hands, resurrection and judgment.
I have written an article entitled, ‘Should
Hands Be Laid on New Christians?’ in which I discuss the fourth of these,
the laying on of hands.
In that article I reach the following conclusions:
(1) It is highly likely that in Hebrews 6:1-2 the author has in
mind laying on of hands for the purpose of new Christians receiving the Holy
Spirit.
(2) The Bible quite strongly suggests that in the early church a
common way in which Christians first received the Spirit was through the laying
on of hands. And this may have been the
most common way.
(3) There is very much a place for laying on hands for this
purpose today.
An argument against
using hands for this purpose today
In my earlier article there was one argument against the position
I was taking that I only touched on briefly.
In this present article I want to deal with it more fully. The argument runs as follows:
In the early church, only the apostles laid on hands for
Christians to receive the Spirit. There
are no apostles alive at the present time.
Therefore, when Christians first receive the Spirit today, laying on
hands is never the means God uses. Instead
He always just does it Himself without using any human agents.
I am convinced that this argument is a very weak one. And in what follows I will try to demonstrate
why.
What do we mean by an
apostle of the early church?
The first thing we need to do is spend a moment considering
exactly what we mean by an apostle of the early church.
Different New Testament authors actually use the term ‘apostle’
(Greek: apostolos) in different ways.
For example, Luke usually uses it to refer exclusively to members
of the twelve, although in Acts 14:4, 14 he exceptionally refers to Paul and
Barnabas as apostles.
Paul, however, often uses the term more broadly to refer to more
than just the twelve. He frequently describes
himself as an apostle. In 1 Corinthians
15:5-7, speaking of a time when he wasn’t yet an apostle, he probably implies
that ‘all the apostles’ was a broader group than ‘the twelve’. And in Galatians 1:19 he probably refers to
James the brother of the Lord as an apostle.
When Paul uses the term ‘apostle’, he usually seems to have in mind
a group of Christians, including himself, who received an extraordinary
commission for ministry by the risen Jesus.
This definition appears to have been the most common one in the early
church. And it is the one I will use in
this article.
Is there apostolic
ministry today?
One other preliminary point concerns the existence of apostolic
ministry today. Some Christians claim
that apostles exist in our day. Others say
that they don’t.
It is surely true that there are no apostles today who have anything
like the degree of apostolic authority that the twelve or Paul had.
However, I do think that God calls some Christians today to
perform roles that have quite a lot in common with what the first century
apostles did. Whether these people
should be given the label ‘apostles’ is a valid question, although it isn’t one
that I want to discuss here.
Those who make the argument based on apostles that I am trying to
counter in this article, believe that there are no apostles today of any sort. Importantly, however, none of my arguments in
what follows depend on there being any kind of apostles today.
Let’s turn now to the key points of this discussion. If there are no apostles today, would that mean
that there should be no laying on hands for new Christians to receive the Holy
Spirit? There are two main points I would
like to make.
We would expect others
to continue what the apostles did
First, even if we were to assume that the apostolic ministry
ceased when the original apostles died, and we were to assume too that when
they were alive no one else laid on hands for Christians to receive the Spirit,
it seems likely that others would have taken over this practice once the
apostles were dead. It is less likely
that God would have stopped imparting the Spirit through the laying on of
hands.
The reason for this can be found especially in Hebrews 6:1-2. Here laying on of hands is said to be a basic
element of the Christian faith. And in
my earlier article I showed that there are good reasons for believing that the
hands in this passage are for Christians to receive the Spirit.
It seems unlikely that God would describe something as a basic
element of the faith if it only applied to the first few decades of a Christian
era that is thousands of years long.
Even if, then, we were to suppose that in the early church all
laying on of hands for receiving the Spirit was done by the apostles, and that no
other apostles came after them, we would expect other Christians probably to
continue this practice.
It is highly probable
that non-apostles laid hands on new Christians
Second, it is extremely doubtful that in the early church all
laying on hands for Christians to receive the Spirit was in fact done by the
apostles. There are a few things to think
about here.
(1) To begin with, we need to consider an argument used by those
who say that only apostles laid on hands for this purpose at that time.
In Acts 8:5-17 we are told that some people in Samaria Jerusalem
It is sometimes argued that this episode shows that in the early
church only apostles laid on hands for Christians to receive the Spirit. The argument goes in this way:
This argument is not one that should be easily dismissed. It is, of course, normal for Christians to receive
the Spirit at the time of their conversion.
So it is quite right to ask why Philip hadn’t already laid hands on
these new Christians for them to receive the Spirit if he was able. It seems highly likely that he wasn’t able,
at least on this occasion.
Nevertheless, it is going much too far to use this passage in Acts
as proof that in the early church only apostles ever laid on hands for Christians
to receive the Spirit. Importantly, everything
to do with the Holy Spirit is mysterious and difficult, if not impossible, to tie
down into theological formulas.
For example, if we leave aside the exceptional example of what
happened on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-13), there are three places in Acts
where we are given some description of how Christians receive the Spirit. In two of these examples laying on of hands
is used: Acts 8:15 -17; 19:6. In the other, no laying on of hands is used: Acts
10:44 -47.
Why is there this variation?
We can make guesses, but I don’t think it’s possible to reach clear answers. I think the Holy Spirit is too mysterious for
us to fathom this out.
Similarly, we can say that for some reason the apostles Peter and
John needed to lay their hands on the Christians in Samaria
It is true that this account might at first sight seem to suggest
that in the early church only apostles laid hands on new Christians for them to
receive the Spirit. But the passage falls
far short of proving this. At best, it
is a pointer towards this view that needs to be weighed against other factors. And I am sure that these other factors carry much
greater weight. Let’s turn to these now.
(2) In my earlier article I showed that there are good reasons for
thinking that in the early church a common way in which Christians first
received the Spirit was through laying on of hands, and that this may have been
the most common way.
We must bear in mind how rapidly the church grew at this time over
a wide geographic area. And we must bear
in mind too how few apostles there were.
Given these things, it seems very unlikely that an apostle could have
been present on each occasion when hands were laid on a new Christian.
Receiving the Spirit took place at the time of conversion. (Acts 8:5-17 is a puzzling exception to this,
as I have said.) So it doesn’t make
sense to think that if someone became a Christian where no apostle was present,
they would have waited a few weeks or months until an apostle visited to have
hands laid on them. The matter was much more
urgent than that. And it is reasonable
to think that non-apostles regularly laid on hands for this purpose.
Especially relevant here is Hebrews 6:1-2. In my earlier article I showed that there are
good reasons for believing that this passage teaches that laying on of hands
for receiving the Spirit is a basic part of the Christian faith.
Hebrews is widely believed to have been written some time between 60
and 90 AD. Even if it was written at the
beginning of this period, we know of at least one apostle who was dead by this point,
James the brother of John (see Acts 12:2).
And it is probable that others had died by this time too. If it was written near the end of this
period, the vast majority of the apostles would almost certainly have been dead.
The problem of the large number of Christians and the lack of
apostles to lay on hands is therefore especially pressing in the light of this
passage in Hebrews. In other words, Hebrews
6:1-2 is a strong piece of evidence that at some time between 60 and 90 AD non-apostles
were regularly laying hands on new converts for them to receive the Spirit.
(3) The New Testament refers to non-apostles laying on hands as a
means of commissioning Christians for ministry and imparting gifts to them.
Acts 13:1-3 tells us that ‘prophets and teachers’ laid hands on
the apostles Paul and Barnabas to commission them for their upcoming mission. It is true that in v. 1 Barnabas is named as
one of the prophets and teachers, and he was also an apostle. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that any
of the other prophets and teachers were apostles. And it seems that those who laid hands on
Paul and Barnabas were mainly or exclusively non-apostles.
In 1 Timothy 4:14 we learn that elders
laid hands on Timothy to bestow a spiritual gift. And in 1 Timothy 5:22 Timothy himself, who
was not an apostle, is envisaged laying hands on others, presumably to bestow a
gift or to commission in some way.
In the early church, then, non-apostles clearly laid hands on
Christians in these important ways. And
it would fit well with this if they also laid on hands for new converts to
receive the Spirit.
Similarly, there is water baptism to consider. In 1 Corinthians 1:13-17 Paul thanks God for
how few of the Corinthians he baptized. And
he remarks that God didn’t send him to baptize but to proclaim the good news. This probably suggests that non-apostles
often baptized new Christian converts.
Again, if water baptism was performed widely by non-apostles, it becomes
more likely that laying on of hands for receiving the Spirit was widely
performed by them too. This is
especially true because both these things took place at the time of conversion.
When points (1), (2) and (3) are all taken into account, it becomes
highly likely that in the early church non-apostles often laid hands on new Christians
for them to receive the Holy Spirit.
Conclusion
In the above discussion we have found:
(A) Even if we were to suppose that in the early church all laying
on of hands for new believers to receive the Spirit was done by the apostles,
and that no other apostles came after them, we would expect other Christians
probably to continue this practice.
(B) It is in fact highly likely that in the early church non-apostles
often laid hands on new Christians for them to receive the Spirit.
Together these points carry considerable weight. Therefore, those who say that the absence of
apostles today means there should be no laying on of hands for Christians to
receive the Spirit are making a very weak argument. I refer readers to my previous article for more
reasons to support the view that there is very much a place at the present time
for laying on hands for this purpose.
See also:
