Within the Church today there is great confusion as to the nature, operation, and duration of spiritual gifts. The size of the confusion is exemplified by the title of a book published in 1996 by Zondervan Publishing House, Are Miraculous Gifts For Today? Four Views. The general editor of the book, Wayne Grudem, says that the title could have easily been five views instead of four, but he believed that having three views in favor of one answer would have provided an “imbalanced” position.[1] Consequently, since views four and five had only a shade of theological difference, they were combined. These four writers, in defending their positions, did so based on their understanding of the teaching of Scripture. So how then can four intelligent men come to four different conclusions on what the Bible teaches? Part of the answer to that question comes from one’s understanding of the relationship between experience and theology. It is similar to the age-old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg (of course creationists have no problem answering that question). Does one’s experience of God determine how to interpret Scripture, or does one’s understanding of Scripture determine how one is to experience God? The answer to this important question is both, at least to some degree. In that Satan seeks to imitate the things of God, every experience of the believer needs to be evaluated by the teaching of the Word of God. On the other hand, failure to experience what God has declared in His Word means that our understanding of what He supposedly promised is incorrect. For example, suppose that the Word of God clearly and emphatically states that a believer will never experience a toothache from the hand of God. Tomorrow I wake up and my tooth is aching unbelievably. Is that toothache from the hand of God? The answer cannot be anything but NO. Scripture determines my experience. However, suppose I understand the Bible to teach that when I wake up tomorrow there will be deposited in my bank account $1 million. If that is what the Bible truly teaches, then tomorrow there must be $1 million in my account, or I have misunderstood what Scripture teaches. In this scenario, my experience validates or invalidates my understanding of the teaching of the Bible.
Unfortunately, some build their theology on the foundation of personal experience. If a child of God experiences something of a spiritual nature, it is assumed then that this experience must be from God, and therefore Scripture must teach it. Such a position was declared a few years ago by a female preacher on the local “Christian” television channel who declared, “You can debate my theology, but you can’t debate my experience.” When this is the case, often the rules of Bible interpretation (hermeneutics) are discarded and “exceptions to the rules” are accepted. Such a position is held by Douglass A. Oss in his presentation of the fourth view of Grudem’s book. In his conclusion for the continuance of miraculous gifts he writes, “While doctrine is necessary to know about God’s plan of redemption and about [emphasis his] having a relationship with Christ, in and of itself doctrine is not the object of our faith and is powerless to transform or empower us. For that the Spirit’s work is required.”[2] While it is true that doctrine is not the object of a Christian’s faith, it is, though, what defines who is. While I believe in the person of Jesus Christ for the provision of my salvation, I believe in a Jesus Christ who is declared and defined by “doctrinal” absolutes. I believe in the doctrine of the deity of Jesus Christ, for without Jesus being God, the salvation that He affords is useless before God. Likewise I believe in the Holy Spirit who empowers me to live the Christian life, but a Holy Spirit who also is declared and defined by doctrinal absolutes. As with Jesus Christ, a Holy Spirit who is not God is a Holy Spirit who is incapable of empowering a believer in living the Christian life. For Oss, doctrine becomes, at best, only loosely associated with the nature and consequent activity of the Holy Spirit. For example, he writes,
“Indeed, to confine so narrowly the contemporary application of the Scripture’s teaching on the Spirit denatures the third member of the Trinity. Given the dearth of explicit evidence, it strains credulity to postulate a point in time (whether the death of the last apostle, the end of the New Testament canon formation, completion of the foundation of the church, or whatever) that affects a dramatic mutation in the Spirit’s person and work so that he is no longer the power-anointing, charismatic being he once was, but is now restricted solely to his inner-transforming work.”[3]
Oss begins with the nature or personality of the Holy Spirit. He then states that unless a significant amount of explicit statements are made concerning His activity, His activity, because of His nature, would remain constant. But how much evidence is needed to be considered a significant amount? After the conclusion of the Noahic flood, God promised He would never again destroy the earth with a flood of waters. That promise was only stated once. God certainly remains able to bring another universal flood to destroy the earth, but in that He said He would not do so, universal floods have ceased. It is granted that the promise given to Noah was an explicit statement, but the point here is that it only takes one statement in the Word of God to be sufficient to make a change in the activity of God.
A second reason for conflicting understandings concerning spiritual gifts is that there is no specific statement that says in unmistakable terms what is the nature of some gifts, or how some gifts operate, or how long each gift was designed by God to be operative. That specific statements are not found in Scripture, though, does not mean these things cannot be determined. By use of inductive and deductive reasoning a number of biblical conclusions are drawn where there is general agreement within the Body of Christ. Deductive reasoning synthesizes two premises into one conclusion. For example: Premise 1 - Only dogs bark. Premise 2 - Fido barks. Conclusion - Fido is a dog. By such logic the deity of Jesus Christ can be demonstrated: Premise 1 - Only God is eternal (Psalm 90:2). Premise 2 - Jesus is eternal (Micah 5:2). Conclusion - Jesus is God.
Oss’ argument above, put in a deductive reasoning form would look like this:
Premise 1 - The Holy Spirit accomplished His purposes in the early church through the use of miraculous spiritual gifts.
Premise 2 - The Holy Spirit is immutable (incapable of change - this is stated a sentence or two following the above quote).
Premise 3 - Unless there is explicit evidence to the contrary, the exercise of miraculous spiritual gifts should continue indefinitely.
Premise 4 - There is no explicit evidence in Scripture for the cessation of gifts.
Conclusion - Miraculous gifts are still operative in the church today.
Oss’ argument is correct as long as Premise 4 is true. But if the conclusion of a deductive argument is accepted as “explicit evidence” as it is with the deity of Jesus Christ, then the conclusion may be that miraculous gifts have ceased in their operation. It will be contended later that sufficient statements are made in the New Testament that lead to the logical conclusion that the exercise of miraculous gifts has ceased.
Inductive reasoning goes in the opposite direction. Induction takes a number of truths and looks for a common truth. By inductive reasoning we conclude that the Trinity exists even though there is no definitive statement of such, even the absence of the word itself. Truth 1 - There is only one God (Deuteronomy 6:4). Truth 2 - The Father is called God (John 6:27). Truth 3 - The Son is called God (John 20:28). Truth 4 -The Holy Spirit is called God (Acts 5:3-4). Conclusion- There is one God existing in three persons (Trinity).
If logical reasoning is not used to draw biblical conclusions concerning their nature, use and duration, then one is free to define spiritual gifts according to their own wishes. And since experience trumps theology in the thinking of many (especially when theological statements are not made), then who is to say that anyone’s definition or use of a spiritual gift is inaccurate or unbiblical? This can be seen in the modern day use of the gift of a word of knowledge. Nowhere in the book of Acts is there mention of the use of this gift, nor is there a given definition of it or rules for its usage in any of the epistles of the New Testament. If it is not possible to be critical of someone’s use of this gift, then the Christian must be willing to accept any and every demonstration of it regardless of how contrary to the will of God it may be. Obviously, this cannot be so.
Some, not wanting to “put God in a box,” appeal to the immutability of God and say that since God does not change, and if all gifts were operative in the first century, then all gifts must still be operative today. In response to this, it should be noted that God puts Himself in a box at times. For example, as noted before, subsequent to the Noahic flood, God promised He would never again destroy the world by a universal flood. Certainly God’s power or ability to create a universal flood was not exhausted after the days of Noah. But God unilaterally limited Himself. Immutability pertains only to the attributes and character of God, not His program in time. This can be easily supported by a number of observations. Old Testament saints were required to offer animal sacrifices for their sins; New Testament saints do not, relying instead on the sufficiency of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice. Old Testament saints were required to observe certain feast days such as Passover and Pentecost; New Testament saints need not. Likewise, spiritual gifts did not operate at all in Old Testament times; they are a New Testament endowment of God to the believer. To say then that because all spiritual gifts were operative in the first century they therefore must be operative today simply is incorrect.
Another area of misunderstanding concerning spiritual gifts is the relationship of the exercise of spiritual gifts by man and God’s ability to accomplish the same activity by another means. The cessation of any gift does not mean that the purpose of the gift cannot be any longer accomplished. This will be developed more fully later. In like manner, the discontinuance of a spiritual gift does not mean that God is unable to accomplish what a man who possessed a certain gift did. The cessation of a spiritual gift given to man does not diminish the ability of God to accomplish His purposes in any way whatsoever. This, too, will be developed later.
Scripture says that every activity of the believer is to be for the purpose of glorifying God (1 Cor. 10:31). God is glorified when the believer accomplishes the will of God in the manner prescribed by God. The exercise of spiritual gifts then, is to be done for the glory of God. If this is to be accomplished, it is absolutely necessary to understand what spiritual gifts are operative, what gifts a believer possesses, and how to use those gifts for the purposes God has intended them. That will be the objective of the rest of this study.
[1] Grudem, Wayne A. ed., Are Miraculous Gifts For Today? Four Views (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996) 13.
[2] Ibid., 283.
[3] Ibid., 271.