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Answering the Cessationists’ Case against Continuing Spiritual Gifts, by Jon Ruthven

| April 4, 2000 | 7 comments

11 Gallup Religion Data. http://www.prrc.com/data.html#3 IN 10
12 George Gallup, Jr., and Sara Jones, 100 Questions and Answers: Religion in America (Princeton: Hermitage Press, 1989), 10.
13 For example by R. B. Gaffin, Jr., Perspectives on Pentecost: Studies in New Testament Teaching on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit (Phillipsburg: PA: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishers, 1979), pp. 93‑116; R. L. Thomas, “Prophecy Rediscovered? A Review of The Gift of Prophecy in the New Testament and Today,” BS 149 (January‑March 1922), pp. 83‑96; K1. Gentry, The Charismatic Gift of Prophecy: A Reformed Response to Wayne Grudem (Memphis: Footstool, 1989); R.F. White, “Gaffin and Grudem on Eph. 2:20: In Defense of Gaffin’s Cessationist Exegesis,” WJT 54 (1992), pp. 303‑20; and F.D. Farnell, “The Gift of Prophecy in the Old and New Testaments,” BS 149/596 (October‑December 1992), pp. 407‑10.
14 See my article, “The ‘Imitation of Christ’ in Christian Tradition: Its Missing Charismatic Emphasis,” forthcoming in The Journal of Pentecostal Theology, where I argue that a central mission of Jesus was to provide a rabbinic “pattern-to-follow” for his disciples: that Jesus’ life was to be duplicated exactly in terms of charismatic ministry.
15 “Gave” (edoken—aorist tense) need not mean that Christ gave these gifts once and for all never to repeat them in any other generation. Otherwise, today we would have no claim to the gifts given as evangelists, pastors and teachers, which are here listed seamlessly with apostles and prophets. It is reasonable to ascribe to this tense the eternal view of Christ in the same sense that He “chose us before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1.3). In this same context “He lavished [his grace] on us with all wisdom and understanding” (1.8).
16 For example by Farnell, “Is the Gift of Prophecy for Today?,” p. 409.
17 I cannot improve on the argument for this by Barth, Ephesians 1‑3 Anchor Bible Commentary, pp. 317‑19.
18 Counterfeit Miracles, 27.
19 See Greenspahn, “Why Prophecy Ceased,” pp. 37‑39.
20 C. Pinnock, “The Work of the Holy Spirit in Hermeneutics,” JPT 2 (1993), pp. 3‑23.
21 The thesis of Roger Stronstad, The Prophethood of All Believers (Sheffield: Sheffield Univ. Acad. Pr, 1999).

 

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Category: Pneuma Review, Spirit, Spring 2000

About the Author: Jon M. Ruthven, Ph.D., passed away April 11, 2022. He spent his entire adult life in ministry, starting with David Wilkerson in Boston and New York City in the mid-60s. After spending a dozen years pastoring, a couple a years as a missionary in Africa as President and Dean of Pan Africa Christian College in Nairobi, Kenya, he ended up teaching theology in seminary for 18 years. Always interested in training and discipleship, Jon sought to develop a radically biblical approach to ministry training that seeks to replicate the discipling mission of Jesus in both content and method. Jon wrote numerous scholarly papers and books including On the Cessation of the Charismata: The Protestant Polemic on Postbiblical Miracles (1993 and 2009) and What’s Wrong with Protestant Theology? Tradition vs. Biblical Emphasis (2013). He emphasized the biblical grounding for a practical ministry of healing, signs and wonders in the power of the Spirit. Facebook.

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