J.H. King’s ‘Expansive’ Theology of Pentecostal Spirit Baptism

Bishop J.H. King, an early twentieth-century Pentecostal Holiness Church leader, in some respects explained Spirit baptism in more ‘expansive’ terms than characterized Classical Pentecostal tradition in the United States in his time and later. In his theological and devotional writings are some of the same ‘expansive’ emphases Frank D. Macchia enunciates in his 2006 groundbreaking work on Spirit baptism, Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology. Although King’s Spirit-baptismal theology was traditionally Pentecostal in important ways, there are some interesting thematic parallels between Macchia’s ‘expansive’ Spirit baptism theological proposal and the very modest (in comparison) treatments of the topic by King. The similarities relate to the baptism in the Holy Spirit as a Trinitarian act, as an infilling of divine love, and in connection with the latter, as a generator of a rich ecclesiastical corporate life of koinonia.