James D. G. Dunn: NT Pneumatology

“That the Spirit, and particularly the gift of the Spirit, was a fact of experience in the lives of the earliest Christians has been too obvious to require elaboration (eg., Acts 2.4; 4.31; 9.31; 10.44-46; 13.52; 19.6; Rom. 5.5; 8.1-16; 1 Cor. 12.7, 13; 2 Cor. 3.6; 5.5; Gal. 4.6; 5.16-18, 25; 1 Thess. 1.5f.; Titus 3.6; John 3.8; 4.14; 7.38f.; 16.7–the presence of the Spirit was to be better than the presence of Jesus).  It is a sad commentary on the poverty of our own immediate experience of the Spirit that when we come across language in which the NT writers refer directly to the gift of the Spirit and to their experience of it, either we automatically refer it to the sacraments and can only give it meaning when we do so (1 Cor. 6.11; 12.13; 2 Cor. 1.21f.; Eph. 1.13f.; Titus 3.5-7; John 3.5; 6.51-58, 63; 1 John 2.2o, 27; 5.6-8; Heb. 6.4), or else we discount the experience described as too subjective and mystical in favour of a faith which is essentially an affirmation of biblical propositions, or else we in effect psychologize the Spirit of existence.”

-James D. G. Dunn, Baptism in the Holy Spirit (1970), 225-226.