Hi CMP,

Regarding 1 Cor 13:8-10

8“Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.

Verse 8 certainly references prophecies and knowledge as “passing away” and references tongues as “ceasing”. Then verse 9 references knowing and prophesy as “in part”. Tongues is not mentioned in verse 9. Verse 10 then says that when the perfect comes, the PARTIAL will pass away. Verse 10 doesn’t mention tongues and uses the “pass away” as was used in the previous verse when referring to knowledge and prophesy. To me, this seems to support your position.

Blessings,

Buddy

[...] 1 Part 2 Part 3 – Prophecy and Healings Part 4 – [...]

learning wrote: These missionaries were evangelical in their theology, but when it came to applied pneumatology in real life contexts, they were functional deists.

Evangelical = believing in and proclaiming the Good News:

1 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit…

14 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. 15 He taught in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.

16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. 17 The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, 21 and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4)

It seems to me that to be “evangelical” means to also be pneumatological in real life contexts and situations. :^)

Eclectic,

I would agree with your comment on cessationism being a western thing. I have had the same thoughts and feelings about this whole topic. Timothy C. Tennent in his books ” Theology in the Context of World Chrisitianity “, in his chapter on Pneumatology states :

” The Reformation’s emphasis on the authority of Scripture, ecclesiology, and Christology are clearly reflected in the post-Reformation attempt to systematize the theological deposit of the Reformers. However, this meant that, as was the case during the patristic period, a full development of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit was delayed and several vital aspects of his person and work were neglected in post-Reformation Protestant theology in the West. Over time, several major theological traditions developed that either denied completely or extremely limited the active role of the Holy Spirit in performing miracles, divine healing, demonic deliverance, prophecy, tongue speaking, and other elements that later became central features of the Pentecostal doctrine of the Holy Spirit. For example, this tendency is evident in many expressions of Reformed theology as well as in the later nineteenth-century emergence of dispensationalism, although the precise lines of their argumentation against the exercise of the gifts of the Holy Spirit today are different from one another………..the point is that theological reflection in the West gradually became dominated by a range of theological systems that denied that the exercise of the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit was a normative, much less essential, part of the church’s ongoing life and witness in the world…….
…….Traditional Western theologies were written by scholars who received their education in respected universities that were deeply influenced by Enlightenment assumptions. The Enlightenment worldview creates a high wall separating the experiential world of the senses – governed by reason and subject to scientific enquiry- from the unseen world beyond the wall; such a world either does not exist (naturalism) or, if it does, we can know little about it (deism). The result has been essentially a two-tired universe that separates the world of science from the world of religion………
………..However, much of the world finds this mechanistic, rationalistic worldview of the Enlightenment unintelligible. For most people there is no real wall of separation, and the border that separates this world from the unseen world is more of an open frontier than a high wall with a few approved border crossings. The whole of creation is animated by spirits and various dynamic unseen forces, including demons and angels. Frequently, spiritual explanations are more common than naturalistic ones because their overall worldview is more spiritualistic and relational than naturalistic and mechanical…..
………….In the past, when missionaries arrived with their modified Enlightenment worldview and their restricted, truncated pneumatology, they did not know what to say when someone claimed that a drought was caused by God’s judgment, or when concerned parents came and asked the missionary to cast out the demon tormenting their daughter, or when someone claimed they had received a revelation to preach the gospel in a particular new region. Sadly, the missionary had no training or categories to respond to this worldview. They had inhabited a Christianized version of a two-tiered universe, whereas they were working among people who lived in what Paul Hiebert insightfully calls the world of the ‘ excluded middle ‘. The only catergory the missionaries had was a term like ‘ superstition ‘, which they frequently resorted to in order to explain these ‘ spiritualized ‘ explanations of what surely had its basis, they reasoned, in naturalistic explanations. These missionaries were evangelical in their theology, but when it came to applied pneumatology in real life contexts, they were functional deists. This is why Lesslie Newbigin argued that Western missionaries were one of the greatest forces of secularization in history “.

I remember a pastor once saying something to the effect that if we want to receive the same Holy Spirit the disciples and the early Christians received, and know that we received the same Holy Spirit that they received, then we have to receive it the same way they did. I.e., he was saying that if, as the Book of Acts seems to confirm or bear witness to, the sign to the early church that a person had received the Holy Spirit was that they gave forth some kind of prophetic or charismatic utterance or exclamation or manifestation – e.g., tongues or prophecy or ecstatic behavior – then we should not settle for anything less or anything else. Because if we don’t have what they had or get what they got or do what they did, then how will we know that what we got is what they got, and what we have is what they had? :^)

Even after the church had become ritualized in its baptisms, the initiation was still accompanied by exorcisms (e.g., Apostolic Constitutions or Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, etc., IIRC).

Michael,

I think this whole cessationist argument is really a North American/European thing.

One keynote speaker at Urbana (sorry I forget who) made the point that if you go out on the mission field as a cessationist you will soon discover that the rest of the world looks through a very different spiritual lens.

I wonder if our rampant consumerism in North America has made us blind to some spiritual matters.

Case in point. I am what you would describe as a “quiet charismatic”, charismatic in theology, but not so much practice.

There have been occasions where I have been given one of the sign gifts to use for the benefit of the body. (Was this temporary or permanent – I don’t know, but that is for another discussion.)

I visited a poor church in North Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. I was a first time visitor, there with a friend. When I walked into the church I felt this overwhelming sense of evil, like I have never felt before. Was something in the service causing me to feel that way? I couldn’t figure it out.

So I asked my friend to come outside and pray with me. We asked God to protect the church. When we went back in, the sense of evil was gone.

My friend suggested that I talk to the pastor. I protested, he didn’t know me from Adam, and how would a pastor feel if someone told him his church was full of evil. My friend insisted, saying that he would vouch for me, and that it was important that the pastor knew what had happened.

We went to the pastor, and told him what had happened. The pastor didn’t blink an eye but said to my friend. “How far was he sitting from person X?” My friend said two seats over and one row back. The pastor said that this would explain in because person X had been experimenting with the occult, and his fear was that this had opened a door to bring spiritual forces into the church. The pastor then turned to me and said. “If God has given you this spiritual gift, I would encourage you to consider attending a church where this gift is allowed to be exercised. By not doing so you are restricting what the spirit wants to do through you.”

I never did fully follow his advice, but it did open my eyes a lot more as to what the Spirit may choose to do in a believer.

Incidentally, I don’t think I ever went back to that church, but my friend told me that two weeks later Person X had manifested a demon in the church, and had to be taken out of the service and delivered. Yeah, I know that it sounds a lot like Frank Perreti, but it s really hard to be a cessationist when you have had experiences like that.

Yet in Yuppyville, Southern Ontario, where I now live, I think it would be very rare to find experiences like that. (Unless of course your church chooses to deliberately work with the poor – but few are doing that.)

I am a continuationist, although I would not be considered a Pentecostal or strong Charismatic (I do not believe that individuals are given specific gifts, but that the gifts are available to the church).

Experience is, I think, can be a basis for both continualists as well as cessationasts (of course, for them it would be a lack of experience…). I’m interested in the theological justification for your position, as I think it is impossible from Scripture to support a position that the gifts stopped with the Apostles; again, that seems to be based on an understanding of historical experience rather than Scripture.

One thing that I think is interesting about the cessationist position is that they don’t discount all of the “gifts;” as you’ve pointed out, they still pray for healing and miracles. However, I think they’d have a different position about prophecy and speaking in tongues. How do you support this divided approach?

Jugulum -

In regards to Edmund Clowney’s critique of Grudem’s thesis on prophecy: he only does this in one of his chapters in the whole of the book, so it is maybe 15-20 pages. Here was the thing that I found interesting. Both Clowney and Grudem are reformed theologians. Yet, Clowney is much less open to prophecy than Grudem, actually I think Clowney would say it does not exist. Yet, Clowney showed some fallacies in Grudem’s argument. Here was a hard-nosed cessationist critiquing a soft-cessationist/soft-charismatic. That is why I thought it was interesting. Not to mention that I thought Clowney’s arguments, albeit they are only in 15-20 pages, were good challenges. Grudem answers Clowney back in the newer edition of his book of prophecy.

I would say that the second BIGGEST thing that has *disuaded* me from cessationism is *how they treat “charismatics.”

There are segments of the body of Christ I disagree with theologically, but I treat them with love and give them a lot of deference generally.

I don’t see this happen hardly ever from cessationists towards “tongues talkers.”. I usually see rampant name-calling and accusatory language like “deceiver.”

I appreciate your tone and manner of writing here.

Waiting for more….

ScottL,

I share your questions about Grudem’s watered-down version, though I suspect that there’s something to it.

For instance, his connection between OT prophets and NT apostles. The New Testament does look toward apostles for authoritative teaching–and never toward any of the prophets that are mentioned. And his argument from “weighing/sifting/testing/discerning prophecies” is important. As are his observations about the Greek for “prophecy”, and the way that word was used in the 1st century. (If we’re talking about a different word than the Hebrew word–a word with a definition & usage that’s broader than the Hebrew word–then it becomes a bit more reasonable for NT prophecy to be less authoritative.)

I thought this part of your comment was…”meh”.

Even his own seminary professor (Edmund Clowney) challenged Grudem’s position in his book The Church (not harshly, they are still friends). So, I don’t think Grudem’s thesis was very good.

Ed Clowney disagrees. So what? Lots of people have true beliefs that their seminary profs disagree with. (And Grudem may have other seminary profs who agree with his thesis!)

Someone could say, “D.A. Carson sees merit in Grudem’s position. So, I think Grudem’s thesis was very good.” And that would have precisely as much merit as your observation about Clowney.

I will, however, check out Clowney’s critique. Thanks! (I’d like to find some good interaction with Grudem’s ideas.)