Tongues and Other Miraculous Gifts in the Second Through Nineteenth Centuries, Part 2: 3rd to the 5th Centuries
Dearth of Miracles in the Established Church
The Life of Anthony and the Life of St. Martin are basic sources in the literature of early monasticism. While these works are filled with accounts of the operation of the miraculous gifts of the Spirit, the established church of this time did not, for the most part, report the operation of the gifts in its midst. In fact at the time that these miracles were taking place, John Chrysostom (A.D. 344-407), bishop of Constantinople, wrote as follows in his comments on 1 Corinthians 12, the major Biblical passage on spiritual gifts:
This whole place is very obscure: but the obscurity is produced by our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation, being such as then used to occur but now no longer take place. And why do they not happen now? Why look now, the cause too of the obscurity hath produced us again another question: namely, why did they happen, and now do so no more?42
Chrysostom’s lack of contact with any of the spiritual gifts demonstrates the extent to which such phenomena had moved from the established Church to the deserts, where monasticism was beginning to develop. His statements were echoed by Augustine of Hippo (A.D.354-430), who wrote:
In the earliest times, “they Holy Ghost fell upon them that believed: and they spake with tongues,” which they had not learned, “as the Spirit gave them utterance.” These were signs adapted to the time. For there behooved to be that betokening of the Holy Spirit in all tongues, to shew that the Gospel of God was to run through all tongues over the whole earth. That thing was done for a betokening, and it passed away. In the laying on of hands now, that persons may receive the Holy Ghost, do we look that they should speak with tongues? Or when he laid the hand on infants, did each one of you look to see whether they would speak with tongues, and, when he saw that they did not speak with tongues, was any of you so strong-minded as to say, These have not received the Holy Ghost; for, had they received, they would speak with tongues as was the case in those times? If then the witness of the presence of the Holy Ghost be not given through these miracles, by what is it given, by what does one get to know that he has received the Holy Ghost? Let him question his own heart. If he love his brother, the Sprit of God dwelleth in him.43
In his Retractations (A.D. 426-427), Augustine provided further elaboration of his views with respect to the cessation of miracles in apostolic age:
For not even now, when a hand is laid on the baptized, do they receive the Holy Spirit in such a way that they speak with the tongues of all nations; nor are the sick now healed by the passing shadow of the preachers of Christ. Even though such things happened at that time, manifestly these ceased later. But what I said is not to be so interpreted that no miracles are believed to be performed in the name of Christ at the present time. For, when I wrote that book, I myself had recently learned that a blind man had been restored to sight in Milan…44
PR
Category: Church History, Winter 1999
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