The Pentecostal Doctrine of Initial Evidence

Question 4166.

The doctrine of initial evidence is the classic Pentecostal teaching that speaking in tongues is the necessary first sign that a person has been baptised in the Holy Spirit, so that anyone who has not spoken in tongues has not yet received this baptism. It is one of the defining doctrines of the Pentecostal movement, written into the statements of faith of major denominations, and it has shaped the spiritual expectations and the anxieties of millions of believers.

I take the doctrine of initial evidence seriously, and I want to examine it carefully rather than dismiss it, because the people who hold it are usually devout believers who long to be filled with the Spirit. As a cautious continuationist I have no quarrel with tongues as such. My quarrel is with the claim that tongues is the one required proof of Spirit baptism, and I believe that claim cannot be sustained from Scripture.

What the doctrine of initial evidence claims

The doctrine of initial evidence holds that the baptism in the Holy Spirit is a distinct experience, usually understood as following conversion, and that the invariable first outward sign of having received it is speaking in tongues. On this view a person may be truly converted yet still await Spirit baptism, and the way they and others will know it has come is that they speak in tongues.

This makes tongues a kind of spiritual thermometer. It is not presented as one gift among many that the Spirit distributes as He chooses, but as the universal entry sign that every Spirit-baptised believer must display, at least once. Classical Pentecostalism distinguishes this initial sign of tongues from the ongoing gift of tongues that not everyone will exercise, but the initial evidence is held to be for all.

The doctrine of initial evidence therefore does two things at once. It separates Spirit baptism from conversion as a second, later experience, and it makes one particular gift the compulsory badge of that experience. Both moves need to be tested against the New Testament, and in my judgement both fail the test.

Where the doctrine of initial evidence came from

The doctrine of initial evidence is younger than many of its adherents realise. It crystallised at the very start of the twentieth century, associated especially with Charles Parham and his Bible school, and then with the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles from 1906. Before that period you do not find the historic church teaching that tongues is the required proof of Spirit baptism.

This does not by itself disprove the doctrine, because a teaching could in principle be recovered after long neglect. But it does mean we should be cautious about a doctrine of initial evidence that the church did not hold for eighteen centuries, and we should ask all the harder whether it really arises from the text or whether it was read back into the text from a powerful experience. The honest answer, I believe, is the latter.

The text that undoes initial evidence: 1 Corinthians 12:30

The plainest difficulty for the doctrine of initial evidence sits in 1 Corinthians 12, where Paul is describing the varied gifts the Spirit distributes within the one body. He asks a series of rhetorical questions, including do all speak with tongues, and the form of the question in the Greek expects the answer no. Paul plainly assumes that not every Spirit-filled believer speaks in tongues.

Now lay that beside the doctrine of initial evidence. If tongues were the necessary first sign that every believer receives Spirit baptism, then in a real sense all would indeed have spoken in tongues, at least initially, and Paul could not so casually assume that they do not. The Pentecostal reply is to distinguish the initial sign from the ongoing gift, but this is a distinction Paul never draws, and the text gives no hint of it. He treats tongues simply as one gift among many, given to some and not to others as the Spirit wills.

This is why I regard 1 Corinthians 12:30 as decisive against the doctrine of initial evidence. The chapter that most directly addresses who has which gift flatly denies that all speak in tongues, and the whole thrust of the passage is the diversity of the gifts, not a single universal sign. The doctrine of initial evidence has to work around Paul’s plain words, and that is a poor position for any doctrine to be in.

Reading the Acts narratives carefully

The doctrine of initial evidence leans heavily on the book of Acts, where tongues accompany the coming of the Spirit on several occasions, at Pentecost in Acts 2, in the house of Cornelius in Acts 10, and with the disciples at Ephesus in Acts 19. The argument is that this is the normal pattern, so tongues must be the expected sign.

But Acts is a narrative of a unique transitional period, recording how the gift of the Spirit spread from Jerusalem to the Samaritans, to the Gentiles, and to the edges of the known world, and the signs that accompanied these milestones served to authenticate each new stage. Tongues do not appear at every reception of the Spirit in Acts. There is no mention of tongues when the three thousand were converted at Pentecost, nor at Samaria in a way the text spells out, nor when Paul himself was filled. A pattern that is present sometimes and absent at other times cannot bear the weight of a universal rule. I look at one of these episodes in my answer on the Ephesian disciples of Acts 19.

When we let the clear teaching passages of the epistles interpret the narrative passages of Acts, rather than the reverse, the doctrine of initial evidence loses its footing. Narrative shows us what happened on particular occasions. The epistles tell us what is normative for all, and they do not make tongues the required sign of Spirit baptism.

One baptism, not a second blessing

Behind the doctrine of initial evidence lies the assumption that Spirit baptism is a second experience subsequent to conversion. I hold, with the plain sense of 1 Corinthians 12:13, that in one Spirit we were all baptised into one body, and that this happens to every believer at conversion. The past tense and the emphatic all leave no room for a class of Christians still waiting to be baptised in the Spirit.

If every believer is baptised in the Spirit at conversion, then the whole framework that the doctrine of initial evidence depends on begins to dissolve, because there is no later experience for tongues to be the sign of. There is one Spirit baptism received by all at conversion, and there are many fillings available to all who are willing. I unpack this further in my answers on the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the second blessing doctrine.

Tongues as a gift, not a thermometer

None of this is meant to disparage the gift of tongues. I believe tongues is a real gift of the Spirit, an utterance in a language not known to the speaker, directed toward God, and I would never want to forbid it, as Paul himself says do not forbid speaking in tongues. The gift is genuine and has its place under the order Paul lays down in 1 Corinthians 14.

The error of the doctrine of initial evidence is not that it values tongues but that it misuses them, turning a gift the Spirit gives to some into a test imposed on all. A gift becomes a thermometer, and believers are measured by whether they register on it. That is to take something good and bend it into an instrument of pressure and exclusion. My fuller view of the gift is set out in my answer on speaking in tongues today.

The pastoral harm of the doctrine

The doctrine of initial evidence does real pastoral damage, and I have seen it. It creates two tiers of Christians, the haves and the have-nots, and it tells sincere believers who have not spoken in tongues that they are somehow incomplete, still waiting for a blessing that others enjoy. Earnest people are coached to seek tongues, to tarry for it, sometimes to manufacture it under intense expectation.

This is a heavy and needless burden. A believer indwelt and sealed by the Spirit, bearing His fruit, walking with Jesus, is told they lack the one sign that proves the Spirit has truly come in power. The good news is so much simpler and kinder. If you belong to Jesus, the Spirit already lives in you, and no missing gift can change that standing.

A continuationist who rejects initial evidence

It is worth saying clearly that you do not have to be a cessationist to reject the doctrine of initial evidence. I am a continuationist. I believe the gifts, including tongues and prophecy, continue in the church today, and I have no wish to quench them. Yet I reject the doctrine of initial evidence wholeheartedly, on the authority of Paul’s own words.

This is the careful, biblically tethered position I commend. Hold the gifts open, since Scripture nowhere closes them, while refusing the system that makes one gift the compulsory proof of a second experience. That keeps us from the cold cessationism that has shelved the Spirit, and from the Pentecostal overreach that has burdened His people, which is the narrow and good road between the ditches.

What Spirit baptism is actually for

It helps to step back and ask what the baptism in the Spirit is actually for, because a wrong answer to that question lies underneath the whole debate. In the Pentecostal scheme the baptism is chiefly an empowering, a second endowment of power for service that arrives with its own sign. But Paul ties the baptism in the Spirit to something more fundamental than power. He ties it to belonging.

In one Spirit, he says, we were all baptised into one body. The point of the baptism is incorporation, the joining of a believer to Christ and to His people, the making of many into one. That is why it cannot be a later, optional experience reserved for some, because there are no Christians outside the body. To be in Christ at all is to have been baptised by the Spirit into Him, which is precisely why Paul can say it has happened to all.

Once the purpose is seen rightly, the search for a sign that proves a second baptism loses its reason for being. You do not need a badge to certify an experience you received the moment you believed. The Spirit Himself, indwelling and sealing you, is the evidence that you belong, and that evidence is given to every child of God without exception.

A gentler way to seek the Spirit’s fullness

None of this means there is nothing further to seek. There plainly is. The same Bible that says every believer is baptised in the Spirit also commands every believer to go on being filled with the Spirit, and that ongoing fullness is real, renewable, and worth pursuing with all our hearts. The mistake is to confuse the once-for-all baptism with the repeated filling, and then to demand a sign for the first.

So how do we seek the Spirit’s fullness without falling into the error we have been examining? Not by tarrying for a sign, but by yielding. The filling of the Spirit is bound up with surrender, with confessing and forsaking known sin, with offering ourselves afresh to God, with walking in step with Him through an ordinary day. It is less a crisis to be triggered than a relationship to be kept in good repair.

That is a path open to every believer, the timid and the bold, the demonstrative and the reserved. You do not have to wait for tongues to know the Spirit has come, and you do not have to manufacture an experience to prove you are full. You have only to keep short accounts with God and keep saying yes to Him, and the Spirit who already lives in you will fill and use a yielded life. That is a far sweeter pursuit than chasing a sign.

What a yielded life looks like

It may help to picture what this looks like away from the heat of the debate, in the life of an ordinary believer who has stopped chasing a sign. She rises, opens her Bible, confesses the sharp word she spoke the night before, and asks the Lord to fill and use her through a day of school runs and emails and a difficult phone call. There is no platform, no tarrying, no manufactured experience, only a quiet keeping in step with the Spirit who already lives in her.

That is the New Testament pattern, and it is gloriously available to everyone. The Spirit is not withheld from the undemonstrative or rationed to those who can produce the right phenomenon. He fills the surrendered heart, whether that heart is loud or quiet by temperament, and He bears His fruit through a thousand unremarkable acts of obedience. A life like that is worth far more than any badge, and it is open to you today.

And notice what it does to a person’s assurance. The believer who has stopped looking for a sign to prove the Spirit has come is free to rest in the plain promise that everyone who trusts Jesus is indwelt and sealed. Her confidence rises and falls with the faithfulness of God rather than with the presence or absence of an experience, and that is solid ground to stand on when the feelings come and go.

So, now what?

If you have spent years feeling like a second-class Christian because you have never spoken in tongues, let me set you free from that today. The doctrine of initial evidence is not taught in the Bible. The apostle Paul himself assumed that not all believers speak in tongues, and he never made any gift the badge of the Spirit’s presence.

You received the Holy Spirit the moment you trusted Jesus. He sealed you, He lives in you, and He is growing His fruit in you whether or not you have ever spoken a word in tongues. Stop chasing a sign and start enjoying the Saviour. Is your assurance resting on a gift, or on the One who gave you His Spirit?

Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret?

1 Corinthians 12:30

For Further Study

For careful evangelical treatments of Spirit baptism, the gifts, and the question of tongues as evidence, see Charles Ryrie’s The Holy Spirit, J. Dwight Pentecost on the Spirit’s ministry, John Walvoord’s The Holy Spirit, and Lewis Sperry Chafer’s systematic theology. Millard Erickson’s Christian Theology weighs the Pentecostal arguments fairly, and Arnold Fruchtenbaum is helpful on the transitional character of the Acts narratives within God’s distinct programmes for Israel and the Church.