Howard Ervin

Howard M. Ervin., Th.D., was a Spirit-filled American Baptist pastor and Pentecostal scholar. His scholarship on Luke-Acts and Pentecostal theology pioneered early academic conversations about Pentecostal faith. Ervin’s work, These Are Not Drunken as Ye Suppose (1968), was one of the first books to enter the scholarly debate about Spirit baptism from the Pentecostal position. Some of the leading Evangelical New Testament scholars in the early 70s engaged and responded to Ervin’s Pentecostal scholarship.

Ervin was born on September 21, 1915, in St. Nicholas, Pennsylvania. After graduating from high school, this self-described agnostic had an experience where Jesus appeared to him in his room, and he surrendered his life to Jesus and to a ministry calling. Ervin completed his B.A. and Th.B. degrees from Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, an M.A. in Near Eastern Studies from the Asia Institute, and a B.D. from New Brunswick Theological Seminary. Ervin then completed a Th.D. in Old Testament Studies from Princeton Theological Seminary while pastoring in an American Baptist church in New Jersey.

In the early 1960’s, Ervin became aware of the Charismatic Renewal and received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit at a Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship meeting. Ervin then became a regular speaker at conferences where he combined his Pentecostal experience with solid biblical and theological teaching. In 1966, he joined the founding faculty of Oral Roberts University as a professor of Old Testament and Pneumatology. He later served as chair of the Undergraduate Department and greatly shaped its later Graduate Theology program. His influence on students and faculty of Oral Roberts University spanned forty years.

Ervin helped pave the way for the expansion of work on pneumatology and, in particular, on Luke-Acts. In 1968, Ervin wrote the first academic, exegetical, and theological defense of the Baptism of the Spirit in Acts with his work These Are Not Drunk as Ye Suppose. In 1984, Ervin wrote a scholarly rebuttal to Evangelical scholar James Dunn’s conversion-initiation theory of Acts in a book entitled Conversion, Initiation, and Baptism in the Holy Spirit. This work became a popular apologetic for Pentecostal scholars for the next two decades. Ervin also wrote one of the early essays on Pentecostal hermeneutics in 1985. In 1987, he revised his previous work on the Holy Spirit in the republished title Spirit-Baptism: A Biblical Investigation. In 2002, Ervin published his final book called Healing: Sign of the Kingdom.

Ervin’s testimony and scholarship helped him become an ecumenical leader who had a significant impact on the Charismatic Renewal in the 1960s-1970’s.He was a guest at several Charismatic Catholic conferences on the Holy Spirit and participated in the Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogues from 1979 to 1987.

He died in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the age of 93, on August 12, 2009. Ervin had the ability to cross denominational and liturgical lines to bring people into the fullness of the Spirit. He was convinced that “The Spirit’s number one agenda is the healing of the Church" and believed that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit would unite it. His life, ministry, and scholarship all contributed to this vision.

For Further Reading:

Paul Elbert, ed. Essays on Apostolic Themes: Studies in Honor of Howard M. Ervin Presented to Him by Colleagues and Friends on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1985.
Howard M. Ervin, Spirit Baptism: A Biblical Investigation. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1987.
Daniel D. Isgrigg, Pilgrimage Into Pentecost: The Pneumatological Legacy of Howard M. Ervin. Tulsa: Word & Spirit Press, 2008.

Howard M. Ervin (1915—2009)

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