Quote:
Originally Posted by good samaritan
Never heard it called a Cornelius exception. ... Since you proving things by scripture, Where does the Bible call this an exception?
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It's my term. I call it the Cornelius exception because in the Bible, the order of events in a conversion is hear the Gospel, get baptized, receive the Holy Ghost. But in Cornelius' case (and the other gentiles who were gathered with him to hear Peter), the pattern was hear the Gospel, receive the Holy Ghost, get baptized. It is a singular event repeated nowhere else in Scripture, so therefore qualifies as an "exception" to the normative "hear, baptized, receive" pattern elsewhere followed in Scripture.
And my point was that you are pointing to that exceptional pattern (the pattern of events in the conversion of the first gentiles to the Gospel) as a response to me pointing out the normative usual pattern of conversion in Scripture. So I addressed the issue, because the conversion of Cornelius does NOT serve as a "gotcha" refutation of the normative pattern of salvation found in the book of Acts. As I said, the exception proves the rule. And in fact Luke's account of the events and the discussion among the brethren that followed (see ch 11) demonstrates that it was indeed an exception due to the early church's failure to immediately begin evangelizing gentiles. They were still under the impression that gentiles could not be saved as gentiles but must first become Jews. That error persisted for some time and was THE major issue in the early church during the first century prior to AD 70.
Now, looking forward through history, down to our day, I believe God includes things in His Word so that all Christians in every time and every culture can derive benefit and learn. In our case, we are today faced with the question of "Why do some people receive the Holy Ghost before baptism, and why do others get baptised and yet it is some time later that they receive the Spirit? Why doesn't everybody get it exactly the same way, in the same order?"
Now, I do not have a answer as to "Why" things happen the way they do. But I see in scripture some get baptised and do not necessarily receive the Spirit right away (Samaritans, for example). I also see where some receive the Spirit prior to being baptised, even right in the middle of the evangelistic sermon (Cornelius and company). And I see others who hear and are baptised and receive the Spirit right after being baptised, as part of the same event (disciples of John in
Acts 19). So what I see in Scripture is provision for a Biblical ground of faith and assurance for the many even today, who either have a waiting period after baptism before they receive the Spirit or for those who receive the Spirit prior to baptism. Both scenarios are found in Scripture, therefore both are valid, as much as the hear, baptised, receive all-in-the-same-meeting folks.
But the exception (notice, only in the case of the first gentiles did people receive the Spirit before being baptised) does not overthrow the general template or pattern of hear, baptism, Holy Ghost found in all the other examples. Even in the case of the Samaritans, where there is a gap of time between their baptisms and their receiving of the Spirit, the same basic pattern is found - hear, baptised, receive. In the case of the gentiles, nobody was evagelising them at that time, nobody would have accepted them as candidates for baptism unless they also submitted to circumcision. Baptism was a mikvah, a rite of Judaism, now understood as being a mikvah or baptism into Messiah, who was for Israel, not uncircumcised gentiles. So God gave them the Spirit proving to the church that yes gentiles need to be baptised and accepted into the congregation just like Judeans.
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