Upon This Foundation: Ephesians 2:20 and the Gift of Prophecy, by Jon M. Ruthven
18 E.g., E. Fowler White, “Gaffin and Grudem on Ephesians 2:20,” 304 n.6. “Strictly speaking, for Gaffin the foundation of the church consists of Christ (Eph 2:20b; 1 Cor 3:11) and the apostles and prophets. The laying of the foundation (Isa 28:16) began with Christ (e.g., Matt 21:42-44) [sic!] and concluded with the apostles and prophets as witnesses to Christ (e.g., Luke 24:44-48).” So Gaffin, Perspectives on Pentecost, 91-93, 107-08.
19 A cessationist response to this syllogism might be that there is a sense in which “Jesus-class” activities might well have “ceased” in one of two ways. First, Jesus’ earthly ministry was “foundational,” since at his ascension and reign, His ministry changed in fundamental ways. So, the analogy would run, apostles and prophets would have an earthly ministry, receiving and issuing “scripture-quality” revelation during the “foundational” period, but after their death, their ministry would continue in their scriptures.
At this point, however, the analogy would be quite shaky. The ascension of Jesus—the end of his “foundational” period–precipitated a profusion of miraculous, revelatory Spiritual gifts, which then encountered another terminating “foundational” period: that of the apostles and prophets. The “foundations” are neither congruent temporally, nor conceptually. Moreover, the point of the cessationist analogy is that the apostles and prophets were, in and of themselves, the gifts of apostleship and prophecy. On this reasoning, Jesus Christ is, in and of Himself, a gift of salvation, which would die when He physically died.
But these apostles and prophets in no sense continue personally to participate in the lives of believers today via the Spirit as Christ does. Moreover, Christ’s gift does not die with Him, but rather is made viable only in His death. These points open up such a serious disjunction between the foundational members that one must seek another interpretation of the metaphor.
A better analogy would be: the church is founded on a blended metaphor of Christ Himself and the Spirit-revealed confession of Christ, the Son of the Living God, a confession like that of the apostles and prophets, i.e., a revelatory experience, which, like the present ministry of Christ, continues through the Holy Spirit. This calls to mind the maxim from the Book of Revelation: “The Spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus.” The Spirit of prophecy cannot be simply equated with the unfinished canon of the New Testament!
A second cessationist rejoinder might be to insist that there is an analogy between the apostles/prophets and Jesus, in that both spoke scripture-quality words until the end of “foundational” period, when the canon was completed.
Again, for the cessationist “foundation” metaphor to hold, it must treat Christ, as part of that foundation, in identical ways as the apostles and prophets: the central and characterizing expression of Christ, certainly involving the gift of Salvation itself, would need to cease at His death—a position flatly contradicted by the very Scripture cessationism purports to defend. “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith not be based on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power” (1 Cor 2:4-5).
20 See the summary in A. T. Lincoln, Ephesians. Word Biblical Commentary, 42 (Dallas: Word, 1990), 154.
21 G. W. H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961), 66: “The top-most angle or point of a pyramid, obelisk, etc.”
22 So Cyril, Is.3.2 (2.397E) and John of Damascus, Hom. 4.30 (MPG 96.632c).
23 Elwell expresses a common misconception in that he seems to feel that it is difficult to have a “stone of stumbling” if placed in the foundation as a cornerstone, “but metaphors can be stretched.” The point of two of our passages (Mt 21 and Lk 20) is that the stone cannot be in the building at all if it is indeed, “rejected!”
Category: Biblical Studies, Pneuma Review, Winter 2002
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