The Continuationist/Cessationist Debate Part XI

Conclusion

This series has been far longer than I originally intended, but we have finally come to the end. In this post, I want to very briefly summarize the study so far.

We began the study by looking at the spiritual gifts, and dividing them into two groups: 1) those that are generally agreed upon between continuationists and cessationists as to continuing, and 2) those that are in question as to whether they continued or not. In the third entry, we looked at the miraculous gifts, signs, and wonders to see if we could find out what their purpose is or was. We saw that these gifts were primarily tied to the Apostles and the early church as a means of authenticating the message and new revelation.

The next three posts took a closer look at two particular gifts: apostleship and the gift of tongues. We found out that the Apostolic ministry is tied to the first century due to several factors. The first is the qualifications one must have to be an Apostle, such as seeing the resurrected Christ, is unable to be met today. The second is that the role of apostle and prophet were a foundational role only that we are not to continue, but build upon. We took two posts to look at the gift of tongues, one to look at what tongues are and one to look at their purpose. We saw that uniformly throughout scripture that tongues were a foreign language that was previously unknown to the speaker, the purposes of which I found to be threefold: missionary purposes, a covenantal sign to unbelievers, and edification of the local church through revelation. We also saw how all three of these purposes found a direct fulfillment in the end of the apostolic era.

After looking at the apostolic office and the gift of tongues, we began to answer the question of “when?” from scripture. The first passage that we looked at was Acts 2.14-21, where Peter affirms that the gift of tongues was the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy in Joel 2.28-32. We looked at the scriptural evidence that seems to point to a first century fulfillment of the prophecy, which points to the “last days” of the Jewish Age and the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D.

The next passage that we looked at was 1 Corinthians 13.8-12, which speaks of the cessation of tongues, and the passing of partial knowledge and partial prophecy when the perfect comes. We saw that the word for perfect is better understood by the surrounding context to mean full or mature. The argument then seems to be that partial knowledge and prophecy will pass when the fullness of both come which according to 2 Timothy 3.16-17 and Daniel 9.24-27 was the fullness of Scripture in the first century.

The third post trying to answer “When?” from Scripture took a quick look at Ephesians 2.20, Hebrews 2.1-4, and Daniel 9.24-27. These verses had been discussed throughout the series already, so there was not much new work done with them, but a recapitulation of what has been already seen.

Finally, after looking at the internal evidence of Scripture to see whether the miraculous gifts had ceased or not, we took a look at external evidence. I put a lot of stress on the fact that external evidence is not authoritative like Scripture, but that it should be reflective of what is taught in Scripture. As such I quoted from various theologians from the 4th century on that points to the cessation of miraculous gifts. These quotes were already collected by Nathan Busenitz on Pulpit Magazine.

So to wrap up what we have found in this study, the specific nature and purposes of the gifts in question, along with the temporal clues given to us in scripture, the best conclusion that I see is that the gifts temporary, in use during the first century to authenticate new revelation and build a foundation for the church. This is not to say that God does not perform the miraculous, because it is my firm belief that He does. Neither have we answered whether God can sovereignly employ the use of these gifts outside of the norm. However, with the sealing of vision and prophecy, any and all claims to spiritual gifts as a means of revelation of God must be rejected. Contemporary solutions attempt to say that prophecy today is fallible, but should we dare take such a position that God’s very word to us should fail? Reformed Charismatics such as Grudem must radically redefine the gifts that they see in use today. It seems that the most Biblically true position is that of a cessationism of miraculous gifts along with a recognition that God still does the miraculous.