The Duration of Prophecy: How Long Will Prophecy Be Used in the Church? (Part 2) by Wayne A. Grudem

In addition to the views of Reymond and Chantry, there have been other attempts to see “when the perfect comes” as some time before Christ’s return, but we will not treat them in detail here. Such views all seem to break down at 1 Corinthians 13:12, where Paul implies that believers will see God “face to face” “when the perfect is come.” This cannot be said about the time suggested in any of these other proposals.

The proposal about the completion of the “canon” of New Testament Scripture (the group of writings that came to be included in the New Testament) also fails to fit Paul’s purpose in the context. If we take a.d. 90 as the approximate date of the writing of Revelation, the last New Testament book written, then the end of the writing of Scripture came about thirty-five years after Paul wrote 1 Corinthians (about a.d. 55).

But would it be persuasive to argue as follows: “We can be sure that love will never end, for we know that it will last more than thirty-five years!”? This would hardly be a convincing argument. The context requires rather that Paul be contrasting this age with the age to come, and be saying that love will endure into eternity.⁸

In fact, we see a similar procedure elsewhere in 1 Corinthians. When Paul wants to demonstrate the eternal value of something, he does this by arguing that it will last beyond the day of the Lord’s return (cf. 1 Cor. 3:13-15; 15:51-58). By contrast, prophecy and other gifts will not last beyond that day.

Finally, these proposals fail to find any support in the immediate context. Whereas Christ’s return is mentioned clearly in 1 Corinthians 13:12, no verse in this section mentions anything about the completion of Scripture or a collection of the books of the New Testament or the inclusion of the Gentiles in the church or the “maturity” of the church (whatever that means—is the church really mature even today?). All of these suggestions bring in new elements not found in the context to replace one element—Christ’s return—which clearly is right there in the context already.

So Richard Gaffin, who himself holds that the gift of prophecy is not valid for today, nevertheless says that the “perfect” in 1 Corinthians 13:10 and the “then” in verse 12 “no doubt refer to the time of Christ’s return. The view that they describe the point at which the New Testament canon is completed cannot be made credible exegetically.”⁹

Tags: church, duration, grudem, long, part, prophecy, wayne

Category: Spirit, Summer 2001