I have a lot of refutations of this. But a few questions. First question: When Craig mentions people not receiving the Holy Spirit at Baptism but then receiving when Paul or Peter “lays hands on them” is that referring to Confirmation.
Craig is making a lot of fallacious assumptions. First that John’s baptism is the same as Jesus’s baptism, as if all ceremonial washings were equivalent. Not only is it never stated in Scripture that they are the same, they are expressly distinguished in Acts 19, where those who were baptized only with John’s baptism had to still be baptized with Jesus’s. Also, John himself says,
I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire. This is in accordance with Catholic teaching, which holds that John’s baptism was not identical with Jesus’s, but only prefigured with it.
Secondly, he assumes that expressions like like “receiving,” “having,” “being filled with” etc. the Holy Spirit always signify the same thing in all places. This cannot be so. One easy way of proving this is that Christ says in John 16 that the Paraclete will not come to them if Christ does not leave them. However, the Holy Spirit was active in the world before the Ascension. For example, turn to Luke 1, where we see the promise that St. John the Baptist will be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb, Blessed Mary being overshadowed by the Holy Spirit in the conception of her son, Elisabeth being filled with the Holy Spirit upon receiving Mary, and Zacharias being filled with the Holy Spirit when he prophesied. All this occurred before Jesus was born, much less ascended, so what happened in Luke 1 must be different from what occurred in Acts 2 at Pentecost. Additionally, the three occurrences of being with the Holy Spirit probably do not all indicate the same thing even though they occur in the same chapter. When it speaks of Elisabeth and Zacharias, it likely means that they were momentarily moved by the Holy Spirit to prophesy as they did. In John’s case, it may mean something different since he did not prophecy from his mother’s womb. The traditional interpretation is that it means he was sanctified from his mother’s womb. In any case, there is no reason to believe that these instances were when Elisabeth and Zacharias “got saved” or the moments where they began their life as Christians.
Third, he argues that because people received the Holy Spirit before the sacrament of baptism, therefore baptism does not cause the reception of the Holy Spirit. This is false because, as said before, the expression does not always indicate the same thing. But even if it is assumed that it did always mean the same thing, the conclusion still does not follow. There is more than one way to skin a cat. So just because certain people received the effects of baptism without the sacrament does not mean that people who receive the sacrament do not receive the effects of baptism.
