"Present revelation" relates to the very title of Karkkainen's work: Spiritus spirat ubi vult. The Spirit blows where it wills. Does that mean that Pentecostals are beginning to grasp the Orthodox understanding of the Spirit also at work outside the church? But where? In those thinkers and representatives of the Enlightenment who fought for religious freedom in Europe, for example? Neither the Catholic nor the Protestant churches were great champions of religious freedom. Indeed, while they disagreed on almost everything during and after the Reformation, they were at one in the conviction that Anabaptists and Jews had to be persecuted, harassed, burned, drowned and driven away. Religious freedom was championed by people outside the church or at least by people who were at odds with the churches.(37)

During the last war, the number of Christians who fought for the Jews was not very large - and to my knowledge there was only one Pentecostal among them, namely Louis Dalliere of France.(38) A few Protestants - for instance Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth - and also many secularists defended the Jews. So was the Holy Spirit perhaps blowing more outside Pentecostalism and Catholicism? And if so, might we also expect him (or her) today outside the church, according to the testimony of Acts 2:17 (the Holy Spirit is poured out on all flesh) or the prophetic understanding of the pagan king Cyrus as an anointed one, a Messiah, a Christ (Isa. 45:1)? Are Pentecostals prepared to realize that the Holy Spirit blows also outside the Christian community?

Spirit baptism and adult baptism

For the South African Pentecostal dialogue partner F.P. Moller, the peak of spiritual experience, wrought by faith, is "baptism in the Holy Spirit".(39) There was an attempt from the Catholic side to see a similar experience in the Catholic tradition. Kilian McDonnell was fairly successful in showing that baptism in patristic times was usually accompanied by a special experience of the Spirit.(40) Of course Catholics did not buy the doctrine of "initial evidence", but this is also controversial among Pentecostals.(41) On the other hand, Catholics value the practice of prayer which does not use semantic categories, speaking in tongues as a form of non-grammatical prayer, a "language of the heart".(42)