Satisfied by the Promise of the Spirit: Affirming the Fullness of God's Provision for Spiritual Living

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Dec 1998 by Schreiner, Thomas R

Satisfied by the Promise of the Spirit: Affirming the Fullness of God's Provision for Spiritual Living. By Thomas R. Edgar. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1996, 283 pp., n.p.

Thomas Edgar's book is primarily, although not exclusively, a response to Jack Deere's Surprised by the Power of the Spirit (1993), which I also reviewed in JETS (39/1 [1996] 151-152). On the whole my review of Deere was positive, and thus it is salutary to consider the work of Edgar, who champions a cessationist position.

A summary of some of the major features of Edgar's work will help us understand his thesis in more detail. He contends that Deere's understanding of spiritual gifts is rooted in experience rather than Scripture, despite Deere's statements to the contrary. The cessation of the miraculous gifts is supported by the absence of the gift of apostleship today, the witness of history, and the exegesis of Biblical texts. Texts such as Eph 2:20 are cited to show the foundational nature of spiritual gifts. The Church was established by the apostles and prophets, but now that this primary work has been accomplished these gifts are no longer operative. Wayne Grudem's view that the apostles and prophets refer to apostles who were also prophets in Eph 2:20 is disputed with a number of exegetical arguments. Edgar also maintains, contrary to Grudem, that the NT gift of prophecy is an infallible gift and focuses especially on the future. He takes particular aim at Grudem's view that Agabus' prophecies in Acts were flawed, arguing instead that there is no basis for seeing deficient prophecies here.

Edgar takes issue with the idea that the gifts as they are employed today are of lesser quality than the gifts exercised in the days of the apostles. If the gifts of performing signs and wonders are restored today, then they must match the signs and wonders of apostolic witnesses. He concludes that the gifts of miracles and healing played a role during the first generation of the Christian Church. Deere argues that God worked miracles all through history, and thus the notion that there were special periods when miracles were done to validate revelation is bogus. But Edgar responds that many of the miracles cited by Deere are not gifts exercised by human beings at all. They are miracles wrought directly by God and thus are irrelevant to the question of cessation of miraculous gifts. He also maintains that the gift of tongues is in known human languages, and thus modern tongue-speaking is not the same as the Biblical gift. The purpose of the gift was to address unbelievers in their own language, and thus there is no place for personal or private tongue-speaking.

In a brief review it is impossible to demonstrate in any detail the strengths and weaknesses of a work, and thus I must beg the reader's indulgence as I sketch in some of these in Edgar's book. Edgar rightly protests against the tone of some of Deere's comments. Deere criticizes cessationists for arrogance, hardness of heart and for having no Scriptural basis for their position. I believe that Deere was preaching to himself, that a sympathetic reading of his book indicates that he did not intend to attack cessationists personally and that he legitimately sees some potential weaknesses in those who defend cessationism. Nonetheless, his statements do border on overconfidence. Edgar is right in saying that the cessationist position cannot be dismissed so easily. Deere oversimplifies when he says anyone who studied his Bible alone would not become a cessationist. When I was a new believer, a friend told me to go home and read Acts 2, 10 and 19 and "do" what those passages said. I had never heard of speaking in tongues, and when I read the passages I was puzzled about what he said I should do because it never occurred to me that I could speak in tongues. Since many godly people in the history of the Church who have studied the Scriptures carefully have been cessationists, we must not give the impression that anyone who defends the view is clearly resisting the Holy Spirit. I also believe that Edgar is correct in saying that the gift of apostleship has ceased. Of course noncessationists, such as Grudem, concur at this point.

In my review of Deere I said that he seemed to be right in saying that we reject spiritual gifts because of lack of experience. But Edgar raises a point that has troubled me. Many of the alleged gifts today seem to be at a different level than the gifts in the NT. I was in a meeting in which a Vineyard pastor said that healings of sports injuries, back injuries, and leg lengthenings were common in his church. But he confessed that healings of blindness, lameness, cancer and other organic diseases did not occur. Edgar rightly wonders whether such contemporary healing represents the signs and wonders done by the apostles. Did many in the history of the Church argue for a cessation of gifts precisely because the more notable miracles became increasingly rare and not because they were "against" signs and wonders? When the miraculous gifts began to flag, our ancestors consulted the Scriptures to explain why their experience differed from that of the apostolic generation. They probably would not have offered a theology for cessation if miracles were at the same level as during the age of the apostles. All of this suggests to me (I am not sure Edgar would agree on this point-see below) that the dynamic between Scripture and experience must be carefully considered in working out our position on spiritual gifts and signs and wonders. In any case, both cessationists and noncessationists can (or should) agree that God still heals and does miracles today, even if they disagree on whether all the spiritual gifts are still operative. Disagreement also likely exists over how common such miracles and healings are.