使徒行传

8:16 因 为 圣 灵 还 没 有 降 在 他 们 一 个 人 身 上 。 他 们 只 奉 主 耶 稣 的 名 受 了 洗 。

8:17 于 是 使 徒 按 手 在 他 们 头 上 ， 他 们 就 受 了 圣 灵

有人说，这是使徒行传中最难解的一个问题，

但是，最难解不是不能解。
这也是灵恩派最喜欢引用的经文 (可惜，在福音派看来是断章取义的解释)

请看我先前贴的有关赖德的系统神学关于圣灵的洗和另一本系统神学书中关于这里的撒玛利亚人为何奉主耶稣的名受洗后，却未领受圣灵的讨论。
http://www1.bbsland.com/rainbow/messages/432811.html
http://www1.bbsland.com/rainbow/messages/432815.html
那是教会初创，开始往外扩张的时期。有其神学的意义。

不是发生在哪时候的事情，以后都会发生。
例如：亚拿尼亚和撒非拉的事件。你今天还听说过有那个人欺哄圣灵，就会立刻遭到神的审判吗？

关于这个奉耶稣基督的名受洗却没有领受圣灵的事件，也是如此。
那是一个不寻常的事件，不能作为普遍的规则来运用(不能把非常当正常)，
要放在整本使徒行传的架构中 (或者说要放在整个“救赎历史”的架构中) 来看，才能给予比较完整的解释，不能断章取义。

下面摘录一个解释 ( from Expositor's Bible Commentary)
我手头另外还有一本John Stott 的使徒行传的注释，说明得更详细。
认真的基督徒应该去买一本，国内已经有简体字版了。
这是我觉得的，每一个大学程度的基督徒都应该看的一本注释。
因为，使徒行传是新约中一本非常重要的书；而这本注释书虽然不是最好的，
但是，是中文版中最好的。

有时候，我觉得基督徒太不爱看书了。
我们都投资了不少钱，花了至少12年的功夫准备念大学，求取最高的世界的学问与知识。可是我们花多少钱，费多少功夫准备念神的话呢？
这可以部分反映出我们多重视神的话。基督徒实在应该多花点钱买书，多花点时间看书的。

Here it is: ( from Expositor's Bible Commentary)

15-17 When Peter and John arrived (lit., "went down," katabantes), they prayed for the Samaritan converts, laid their hands on them, and "they received the Holy Spirit." Before this, Luke tells us, "The Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them; they had simply been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus." We are not told just how the coming of the Holy Spirit upon these new converts was expressed in their lives, but the context suggests that his presence was attended by such external signs as marked his coming on the earliest Christians at Pentecost--probably by some form of glossolalia.
The temporal separation of the baptism of the Spirit from commitment to Jesus and water baptism in this passage has been of paramount and perennial theological interest to many. Catholic sacramentalists take this as a biblical basis for the separation between baptism and confirmation. Charismatics of various denominational persuasions see in it a justification for their doctrine of the baptism of the Spirit as a second work of grace following conversion. But before making too much of this separation theologically, it is well, as we have noted earlier (cf. comments on 2:38), to look at the circumstances and ask what may seem an elementary question, yet one of immense importance: What if both the logical and the chronological relationships of conversion, water baptism, and the baptism of the Spirit as proclaimed in Peter's call to repentance at Pentecost (cf. 2:38; see also Rom 8:9; 1Cor 6:11) had been fully expressed in this case?
The Jerusalem Jews considered the Samaritans to be second-class residents of Palestine and kept them at arm's length religiously. And on their part, the Samaritans returned the compliment. It is not too difficult to imagine what would have happened had the apostles at Jerusalem first been the missioners to Samaria. Probably they would have been rebuffed, just as they were rebuffed earlier in their travels with Jesus when the Samaritans associated them with the city of Jerusalem (cf. Luke 9:51-56). But God in his providence used as their evangelist the Hellenist Philip, who shared their fate (though for different reasons) of being rejected at Jerusalem; and the Samaritans received him and accepted his message. But what if the Spirit had come upon them at their baptism when administrated by Philip? Undoubtedly what feelings there were against Philip and the Hellenists would have carried over to them, and they would have been doubly under suspicion. But God in his providence withheld the gift of the Holy Spirit till Peter and John laid their hands on the Samaritans--Peter and John, two leading apostles who were highly thought of in the mother church at Jerusalem and who would have been accepted at that time as brothers in Christ by the new converts in Samaria. In effect, therefore, in this first advance of the gospel outside the confines of Jerusalem, God worked in ways that were conducive not only to the reception of the Good News in Samaria but also to the acceptance of these new converts by believers at Jerusalem.
The further question as to how far in practice this acceptance by the Jerusalem church would have gone had Samaritan Christians actually traveled to Jerusalem to meet and worship with the Jerusalem believers is left unanswered. Nor does Luke tell us anything about how these Samaritan
believers expressed their commitment to Jesus in their Samaritan cultural and religious milieu. These are matters that would be of great interest to us today but which did not concern Luke. What he does tell us, however, is that in such a manner as this vignette shows, God was working in ways that promoted both the outreach of the gospel and the unity of the church. And rather than trying to extract from the account further theological nuances of a deeper kind, we would better expend our energies in trying to work out in theory and practice the implications of such a divine interest in outreach and unity for the church today.