Live your theology.

I didn’t know you where a dispensationalist! ;-)

I would argue that God is the same, yesterday, today and forever..

As far as the whys, who are we to judge? God has his plan, his purpose, and our analysis of his strategy has little to do with it’s validity.

The fact that we don’t see a similar distribution today does not mean much. 1 cor 14:1 tells us to earnestly desire the Spiritual gifts. I don’t think today’s church does this. In many cases it does the opposite, and shuns them. The church doesn’t practice Acts 2 flavored communism very often either, but that doesn’t mean it was or is a bad thing, or that God only wanted that to happen in that age.

I do think that many who do practice the Spiritual gifts today do it flamboyantly and pridefully and are unbiblical in their behavior. (It is more about showing off than giving glory to God) I also think that many may use them in humble ways – and most are not even going to know about this.

Anyway, I don’t think it is safe to throw the baby out with the bathwater. If the Holy Spirit calls somebody to pray in tongues they ought to obey. If we throw out 1 cor 14:39, why can’t we throw out everything else that we think was for then, not for now?

Jon good article. I plan to write a response later.

Good post and nice comments, too. I, myself, am a weak cessy. There’s strength in weakness. :)

Josh, a couple possible corrections: 1 Cor 14:1 tells the Corinthian church earnestly to seek the gifts. It MAY also instruct the church through the ages to do the same thing, but it MAY not. Also, Acts 2 doesn’t indicate any sort of Communism. Rather, they were very communal and shared their private property according to their own discretion… hardly Communism.

1, I will grant, Although you could make the same argument about most of the instruction in the epistles — slippery slope I fear. I would be more worried about 1 cor 14:39 which says “Do not forbid tongues”

2, I think is a matter of semantics, I am using “Communist” in the Oregon hippie flavor, not the bureaucratic tyrannical kind. At any rate — Whatever you call the Acts 2:44-45 arrangement, you don’t see it often today.

They must be fake

David

Looking forward to it!

I believe the passage about earnestly seeking spiritual gifts should be read in light of a temporary, apostolic command to the apostolic church. Paul makes a point to have them seek after the higher spiritual gifts in 1 Cor. 12:31 with the knowledge that there is something even better.

Paul continues to show the superiority of Christian love and points out that these spiritual gifts will pass away… and they certainly seem to have done so. Some modern day continuists have better theology than those who have held onto that thought in the past (Grudem, etc.), but they’re building on a bad foundation, IMO.

Well, I see little indication that it is temporary from Scripture.. Most folks go to 1 cor 13:8 to claim that Tongues will cease — But they are less reticent to say that prophecy and knowledge have ceased — And tongues is smooshed right in there like a sandwich. Yes, when Christ transforms us into our new bodies, all of this will be silliness — But I don’t think anyone can make a solid argument that “perfection has come” without using a good dose of eisogesis.

Moreover – if God could sanction a behavior for a time in Corinth, I see know reason he could not sanction a behavior for a time in Van Nuys. Almost all spiritual activity seems to roll in and out like waves. The bible is full of a pattern of faithfulness followed by assumption, followed by forgetfulness followed by denial, followed by revival. We can never take a snapshot of what we see now and assume that there was a straight trajectory between the cross and today’s practices.

Many people will say that Tongues as we see it today is not miraculous.. My answer would be that it is not for the outside observer to judge.. See 1 cor 14:2. It is a form of prayer. Unless you are party to the conversation, it is really hard to know if it is miraculous or not. What may seem silly to the observer may be miraculous to the participant. I don’t see why God would sanction a form of prayer for one age, but not for another. Yes, when we are with him, prayer is going to be as necessary, but until then – prayer is needed.

Contrary to what some Pentecostals teach, The gifts aren’t for everybody, but just because we are not gifted with one – we ought not assume that somebody else does not have that gift. I don’t think the gifts are dead. If they certainly have died out – we wouldn’t be having this conversation would we?

Well, we still talk about synergistic salvation, too. That doesn’t make it true, though.

As far as the “perfect” goes, I don’t take this to mean Christ’s 2nd coming. The word used indicates completeness. If it’s talking about Christ’s 2nd coming then this is the only Scripture (that I’m aware of) that refers to him as a neuter gender. Also, we’re mixing metaphors with the 2nd coming understanding — that’s never a good thing. The mirror is the first part of the metaphor and then there is a BUT indicating a continuation of the metaphor (face to face). We’re not given any literary reason to understand this as anything but metaphorical.

So I follow Warfield & my other Presbyterian homies in understand the perfect to be the completion of the canon of Scriptures. We’re in agreement on the completeness of the canon & sufficiency of Scripture, so no need to go further there.

In all this discussion, I think I’m most saddened that no one shared my opinion that the caption under the Benny Hinn photo was hilarious. I’m a lonely man when it comes to the funny.

[...] discussion on Spiritual Gifts from yesterday made me think about 1 Corinthians 13:8-13 — specifically the part about [...]

Yes, Jason. Your caption about Benny Hinn was HILARIOUS. =)

Response! Response!

No. Communism MEANS something. Socialism means something else. Taking the means of production into government (“peoples’”) hands by force of arms (not willingly) is not quite what the apostles were into. They knew Jerusalem’s days were numbered, as Jesus told them. Thus, selling off property and helping each other was a wonderful way WILLINGLY to serve the brothers.

State run communism as we see it now is not the ideal of communism — Marxism calls for a common good to prevail that ultimately leads to communal ownership of the means of production. The Communist States that we see now are theoretically fixing things first so that that ideal can happen.. (Using Tyranny mostly.) But Tyranny isn’t the only route to a communist (In the idealistic term) culture.

There have been many commune experiments — Acts 2 would likely qualify. Yes it was voluntary, But if you have enough faith in an ideal, Who is going to choose otherwise? The motivation was for the greater good — There have been many communal cults. Many hippie communes have been tried. I visited one last year. Rarely do they work out terribly well in the long term, but in many cases, I don’t think these people are oppressed. They just believe in something enough that they are willing to sacrifice everything for it.

So, yes, communism means something, but it doesn’t mean what it is supposed to mean. Looking in the dictionary, both definitions are listed. I am speaking of it in the idealistic definition, you are speaking of it in the realistic observable definition. My definition is 1, yours is 2.

Still waiting on Mr. Adair.

You have to know Role Playing Games, or DnD to get the joke. I thought it was great.

“I would argue that God is the same, yesterday, today and forever…”

By itself, that is no argument at all. While I agree that God is unchanging, that doesn’t mean redemptive history is uniform. In fact, it is not; it is progressive. Does God relate to us the same way he related to Adam? Abraham? Moses? David? No, of course not. At least in the garden, Adam had not sinned, and so he enjoyed much closer fellowship with God. Abraham was given the sign of circumcision, whereas we have baptism. Moses received the ordinaces for animal sacrifice, we look back to the perfect sacrifice of the Lamb of God. David ruled Israel in a type of theocracy, where religious and civil laws were equally punishable by the civil govenment, while we have a separation of church and state, (not in the liberal sense). Yet this does not violate the fact that God doesn’t change. If it did, we would have to conclude that the Bible contradicts itself, and also that God will always relate to us exactly as he does right now. In other words, that the eternal state will be no different from our current state.

How God relates to his people changes, and that can be demonstrated from redemptive history. The spiritual gifts that were for the purpose of validating the apostolic ministry passed along with the apostolic age, the same way that sacrifices passed when Christ suffered in our place on the cross.

If not, then we would expect that they would have continued throughout the church age, not disappeared for centuries, only to pop up unexpectedly. They would also have to be the same thing as the gifts spoken of in the NT. Very few people I have talked to would assert that the modern manifestations are the same as the NT examples in every way.