Last time I quoted this from Packer:
Seventeenth-century England did not, to my knowledge, produce anyone who claimed the gift of tongues, and though claimants to prophetic and healing powers were not unknown, particularly in the wild days of the forties and fifties, the signs of 'enthusiasm' (fanatical delusion) and mental unbalance were all too evident.
(Among God's Giants, p290)
And for John Owen:
There's also Jonathan Edwards:gifts which in their own nature exceed the whole power of all our faculties" [tongues, prophecy, healing powers] belong to "that dispensation of the Spirit [which] is long since ceased, and where it is now pretended unto by any, it may justly be suspected as an enthusiastical delusion
(Owen, Works, IV:518)
Since the canon of the Scripture has been completed, and the Christian Church fully founded and established, these extraordinary gifts have ceased.
(Jonathan Edwards, Charity & Its Fruits, 29)
The Westminster Confession of Faith, of course says:
I. Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence, do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of his will, which is necessary unto salvation; therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal himself, and to declare that his will unto his Church; and afterwards for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing; which maketh the holy Scripture to be most necessary; those former ways of God's revealing his will unto his people being now ceased.
(Chapter 1. Of the holy Scripture)
How much is cessationism the consensus position of the Reformed church? Or the Catholic church for that matter?
I guess one place to look would be:
B. B. Warfield, Counterfeit Miracles (New York: Charles Scribners, 1918).
The Wikipedia artilcle on Cessationism gives some leads and also links to some Cessationist articles at the Highway, including those by Charles Hodge, J. Gresham Machen and Richard Gaffin.
I could have done with a few lectures on this at Vicar factory!
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4 comments:
Hi Marc,
There are some interesting historical articles in the volume on miracles, from the ecclesiastical history society: http://www.oxbowbooks.com/bookinfo.cfm/ID/43900?/Location/Oxbow
I was interested in the chapter on augustine's attitude to miracles. The society still has a sale on their own site of some volumes, not this one though. Amazon sell it for same price - not cheap, but somebody has to keep our old reformation tutor at oxford in the life to which he is accustomed!!
Thanks, Pete.
The book Pete is referring to is:
Signs, Wonders, Miracles: Representations of Divine Power in the Life of the Church
edited by Kate Cooper and Jeremy Gregory
Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, perhaps more so than today, relied on physical manifestations or signs to substantiate their faith. These signs were a prevalent theme of hagiography and accounts of conversion while relics and accounts of miracles played an active role in everyday worship. This volume presents thirty-three papers, including commissioned and conference papers, which trace the impact of `miraculous phenomena' on Christian history from the time of Constantine to the time of the Methodist movement and the reported sightings of angels in WW1 trenches. The majority of articles focus on the Middle Ages and the Reformation, examining such subjects as martyrs, crosses, miracles on crusade, early medieval missionaries, Byzantine hagiography and ghosts. 475p (Studies in Church History 41, Ecclesiastical Historical Society, Boydell and Brewer 2005)
ISBN-13: 978-0-9546809-1-6
ISBN-10: 0-9546809-1-X
Hardback. Price GB £45.00
The Amazon blurb says:
The signs, wonders, and miracles by which God was believed to communicate with his people on earth provide the focus for this wide-ranging volume. Beginning with a re-consideration of Constantine's vision in 312 and ending with a discussion of the place of miracles in the making of twentieth-century Spanish identity, these essays explore the manifestations of divine power in the conversion of the ancient world to Christianity, in medieval saints' lives and Byzantine hagiography, in the Crusades, and in the early modern and modern periods. A surprising feature of this collection is its demonstration that the miraculous continued in its importance to Christian communities from Reformation Europe forward into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Taken together these essays eschew any simple secularisation thesis and highlight the persistence of the role of divine power in how men and women interpreted the world around them. Contributors include W. H. C. Frend, Bernard Hamilton, Michael Goodich, Brenda Bolton, Jaime Lara, Alexandra Walsham, Hartmut Lehmann, and Grant Wacker.
Don't think I'll be forking out £45 for that, I'm afraid.
Yep. That's what libraries are for!!
Oh, for a copyright library in Eastbourne! :)
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