A Brief Case for Cessationism

Cessationism says that miraculous gifts, especially tongues and prophecy, have ceased with the closing of the canon of Scripture. Those gifts were signs to authenticate either the word itself or the Apostles’ ministry of founding the church by that word.

Now we must admit that there is no single text in the New Testament that says that the gifts of tongues and prophecy have ceased. On the other hand, neither is there any such text saying that those gifts are expected to continue as the norm throughout the church age. Both sides are working from biblical premises and making inferences from there. Consequently, the honest inquirer will want to examine which premises are biblically sound and whether the resultant inferences are valid.

As to the biblical credentials of those premises, a few verses to consider are Hebrews 2:3-4, 1 Corinthians 12:29-31, 13:8-10, and 2 Corinthians 12:12.

“It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will” (Heb. 2:3-4).

““Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way” (1 Cor. 12:29-31).

“Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away” (1 Cor. 13:8-10)

“The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works” (2 Cor. 12:12)

Now what do these passages tell us? In summary, these show that certain miraculous gifts were designed by God to authenticate the Apostles; that these gifts fit a general pattern of “growing up and out of,” and thus fade once the task is completed; and that not all Christians should pursue what might seem like the “most spiritual” gifts—that, in fact, the more excellent is that which belongs to all Christians.

Such an excellence as love is the centerpiece in the middle Paul’s three-chapter-long corrective of the Corinthians self-exalting hyper-spiritualism. How do we interpret these passages today? In the exact same way the Corinthians did and which Paul was rebuking! But those three chapters of context are crucial for knocking down a straw man about “the lone Cessationist proof text.”

In my first few years as a believer, it was simply repeated to me, again and again, that all Cessationists ever point to is 1 Corinthians 13:8-10 about “the perfect” making tongues fade away. And of course those silly Cessationists don’t seem to catch that there are other things that are on that list besides tongues, and so even if one wants to say that the canon of Scripture is “the perfect” being discussed, the argument is either special pleading or else proves too much.

The more I read the epistle as a whole, the more I realized that this “perfecting” activity was part of a larger argument that Paul was making against Corinthian excesses and that it had less to do with a moment of time, and more to do with a natural process of growing up (the closing of the canon being simply one—albeit important—redemptive-historical moment of the church growing up). But when we see this growth from sensational signs to love as the universal principle, and the closing of the canon as one particular, then suddenly the “selective” application of the perfect to the finality of revelation is not so awkward anymore.

But in order to get a better sense of that larger flow and place of the “sign-gifts,” we need to consider a few pieces of the puzzle.

Tongues as a Sign

The word "tongues" is just as synonym for languages. All throughout human history it was used in that way and still is. It is only in the modern church context, because of the interpretation of the Charismatic and Pentecostal movements, that the word was invested with some other mystical meaning. But this is a very common way to talk, to speak of someone's "mother tongue" or "native tongue." At first, pointing this out might seem guilty of a straw man of my own. Obviously, Continuationists (the more general heading under which Pentecostals and Charismatics fit on this question) are well aware that tongues equals languages. They just include a “private prayer language” and a prophetic language to be interpreted in the assembly and even a “tongues of angels.”

Interpretations may vary, to be fair, but my point about that is actually not to claim that Continuationists don’t understand the bare meaning of the word on paper. It is rather that they seem to forget the simple implications of that when they run into a more mature (less of a straw man) version of the Cessationist argument. For the Cessationist argument is actually much more sophisticated and steeped in wider biblical theology than at first meets the eye. And it has to do with the role that confused languages have played in the whole drama of redemptive history.

So it is quite natural to ask how tongues were a sign—a sign of what? All parties can see how it was a sign in the narrative of Acts 2. It showed the Spirit at work in the disciples, as Peter’s sermon was instantly known in the Gentiles’ various languages. Augustine adds about the function of the signs, that tongues were “to show that the whole world and all nations with their variety of languages were going to believe in Christ by the gift of the Holy Spirit.”1

What is less obvious is that it was a reversal (or the beginning of it) of the curse of Babel, as Christ's kingdom would reunite the human peoples again in Him. The final scene of Revelation 5:9, where “every tongue” is included in the characteristics of that inheritance of nations (cf. Ps. 2:6-7). And Christ would do so, through the Spirit, in a way where the judgment against the Jews for rejecting their Messiah was, in a sense, logically and chronologically coextensive with the explosion of light out to the Gentiles.

So to those people who demanded a “sign” (1 Cor. 1:22), the final sign was now given: “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36). Hence, what once flowed outward from Babel in a torrent of chaos and confusion was now made Zion, and what from was once the city of God in Jerusalem would flow the new spiritual Babylon. The last was made first, and the first last.

What was it all a sign of? Oh, only everything.

It is against this grand redemptive-historical background that 1 Corinthians 14 points back to a prophecy in Isaiah, where there would be a judgment against the Jews, in that the Gentiles would understand that which the Jews would not accept (cf. Rom. 9:25-33; 10:19-21). So it was foretold,

“For by people of strange lips and with a foreign tongue the LORD will speak to this people” (Isa. 28:11).

Corinth was a bustling port city, where tradesman from all over the Empire would come with their goods and, yes, their tongues. Now Luke tells us that when “Paul left Athens and went to Corinth … he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome” (Acts 18:1-2). The timing of this was by divine appointment. A large Jewish community would be descending on Corinth just as the new church was growing. And as they grew numerically, Paul was trying to grow them up intellectually, to rise up from being sensationalists to those who saw the big picture of redemptive history. Now one can read the text with new eyes.

“Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature. In the Law it is written, ‘By people of strange tongues and by the lips of foreigners will I speak to this people, and even then they will not listen to me, says the Lord.’ Thus tongues are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers, while prophecy is a sign not for unbelievers but for believers (1 Cor. 14:20-22).

So the Holy Spirit was manifesting the gift, according to prophecy, and the showboating “Super Apostles,” as Paul seems to designate them in the second Corinthian letter, were whipping people up into a use of these gifts similar to how the modern Pentecostal-Charismatic groups interpret and use them. The whole point of these three chapters (11-13) in the Corinthian letter is to correct this very error!

But what about those “tongues of angels” in 1 Corinthians 13:1? Again, we must understand the corrective nature of the 1 Corinthians letter. So it is here that the "tongues of angels" is Paul's hyperbolic way of pointing to the most excellent kind of eloquence, as that was a particular Corinthian sin. See Chapters 1 and 2 of that letter.

What are angels, after all? They are ministering agents, chief worshipers, and warriors in the heavenly realm—all true. But the other basic meaning of the word for “angel,” whether in Hebrew or Greek, is “messenger.” Starting to see the connection? If Corinthians could boast in their philosophers and debaters, the best of them were mere mortals. In other words, Paul quips, “even if I had the eloquence of an angel," and had not love … Do you see how it fits the context? Paul was not saying that it was actually an angelic language. He has using his typical biting wit to bring shame to his arrogant opponents.

But What About Prophecy?

While the office of prophet in the New Testament church differed from that of the Old, there is still a reason why that office ceased after the first century. Its design was to speak God's revelation to that church in ways relevant to the establishment of the church until the Scripture of the NT should become their clear, sufficient, and authoritative rule. Hebrews 1:1-2 is a crucial text as to the logic of the cessation of the prophetic. Christ is the final revelation of God and so the need for the office after he came was restricted only until the canon of Scripture was completed.

Let’s not make things too complex. What is prophecy in general? Prophecy is any divinely authoritative message which God gives to his servant to speak. It has the same authority as God himself speaking. Deuteronomy 18:15-20 is one important text in setting forth the office.

It is understandable to come to those passages that warn of false prophets in the New Testament, or to not despise prophesies, testing them, and so forth, and then to immediately infer that this would make no sense unless the office or activity continued. However, this neglects the idea of “prophecy” in its more general use in the Bible.

For example, Peter says about the whole of the Old Testament Scriptures that, “that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:20-21). Likewise John, in Revelation, uses the general meaning: “Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy” (1:3), and a few times in Chapter 22 speaks of “the prophecy of this book” (vv. 7, 10, 18), and finally with even more clear totality: “the book of this prophecy” (v. 19). So what is not to be despised in 1 Thessalonians 5:20 are words from the Lord, in whatever manner they are delivered.

And what was the “prophetic” in the New Testament church anyway? This was generally recognized to be distinct function in the the New Testament, though similar to the Old Testament prophet at least in authority, until the canon of Scripture was complete. Ephesians 2:20 is debated in this sense, as "prophets" there could refer to either (1) the authors of the OT and NT canons or else (2) one of the two offices in the NT church. There is also a sign aspect, as even Saul in the OT wouldn't be considered in the office, yet he prophesied. So did Caiaphas in the NT.

And as for those tests for true and false prophets (e.g. Mat. 7:15-20; 1 Jn. 4:1-6), Deuteronomy 13 and 18 are still important even if the office does not exist as it did in either the OT and NT. That is because the essential product of a prophet is still the same: namely, revelation from God. That it has settled in the canon of Scripture would not change either the benefits of truth, or the pit-falls of error.

Defining Miracles and Supernatural Healing

Sometimes the argument against cessationism is something more like a suspicion. In this light, it will often be asked, “Then why so many miracles in the Bible?”

However, the miracles recorded in the whole scope of the Bible appear to us in an instant and in clusters because we can turn the pages that way. And this can create a false impression. The reality is that those were spread over time and space (sometimes centuries), and in the case of the New Testament where there were many all at once, we can see why. The coming of Christ meant that the kingdom had come, and these were kingdom signs. In that one burst of miracles, the coming of the kingdom was being announced. So yes, they were more frequent—at that exact point—but in the case of the rest of the Bible (at least with healings) that is actually a false impression.

When it comes specifically to healing, there seems to be no logical necessity against the idea that: (1) the miraculous sign of healing and (2) a special office (as in apostles) ordinarily given that gift to heal, both ceased, but that (3) God still heals in response to prayer, per James 5:14-15. I have never heard any attempt to argue against this, let alone a good one. It is usually all just lumped together and presented as some sort of “inconsistency.”

But, it may still be asked: If healing is supernatural, why is it not a miracle? R. C. Sproul distinguished between “miracles” as a divine sign, which it is, in the literal meaning of the Hebrew and Greek term—as opposed to the looser definition of “miracle” as any divine disruption into the ordinary causality of nature.

In other words, when the Cessationist denies the continuation of “miracles” he has in mind the first sense and not the second. What is being denied is not that God possesses either power or care to supernaturally intervene in x, y, or z areas of our lives. Rather, what is being denied is that those particular gifts and functions and offices of the first century church have continued.

Seriousness, Charity, and the Burden of Proof

Does one’s position on these gifts represent an important or essential debate?

This is one of those controversies that is difficult to place on a neat spectrum of essentials, not least because the whole subject is a hybrid of doctrine and practice. More difficult still is that the majority in the Pentecostal and Charismatic tradition have inherited an anti-doctrinal and anti-historical form of spirituality; and one of the consequences of that is that the majority will not see their views as particularly “doctrinal” to begin with. It is then easy for such to sincerely hold to the main essentials of historic Christianity and live with massive amounts of cognitive dissonance about the implications of private revelations.

Like many other secondary issues, it can also be elevated to the level of essential when it is pressed as if it were necessary to salvation or, as indicated, as an alternative to biblical revelation. That latter point is where Cessationism will often focus because the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements have often elevated these gifts to the status of ongoing revelation.

There are many believers who come to reject the Pentecostal and Charismatic understanding of things, and yet have things happen in their lives that cannot be explained. It is important to realize that between the sovereignty of God and the whole realm of mystery (which is infinite) with which God works, the Christian actually needs no such explanation.

It is not the burden of the Cessationist position to argue what God “cannot do.” Rather the issue is about the norm for revelation. The Scriptures give us the Scriptures as the norm, and not private revelation.

If God were to sovereignly, on rare occasion, give dreams to those in some pocket of history, such as Muslims today, or those who are apart from a translated Bible, it would be no strike against the Cessationist argument. The issue is one of norm. We test each claim according to Scripture. How we do that specifically will depend on (1) our level of overall doctrinal understanding and (2) the kind of claim to revelation being made. Having said that, it remains true that the main way that God speaks to us is through his Word. Yes, the Holy Spirit is present and active in our lives today, but he is called the “Spirit of truth” (Jn. 14: 17, 15:26, 16:13) who will “glorify [Jesus]” (Jn. 16:14). It was ultimately the Spirit who says, “Test the spirits to see if they are from God” (1 Jn. 4:1).

In other words, the Reformed argument against the Charismatic view has never been that God does not (much less “cannot”) do such and such. Nor is it essential to the Cessationist argument to offer a full explanation of alternative causes for these practices, such as that it is always and equally demonic, or purely and simply peer pressure or other psychological manipulation. The argument must stay focused. It is all about what the Bible tells us is the norm for God’s revelation and his ordinary means of grace.

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1. Augustine, On the Trinity, IV.5.29.