REC Home*** Theological Forum Theological Forum Vol. XX, No. 2 & 3, September 1992 Word and Spirit
Richard B. Gaffin, Jr.*
I have been asked to respond specifically as someone who disagrees with the Report's major conclusion--that the New Testament gift of prophecy has not ceased and may be present in the church today. That mandate explains the largely critical tone of the following comments.
I will not attempt, other than incidentally, to argue the contrary "cessationist" position (see my Perspectives on Pentecost, 1979). Nor will I dwell on the strengths of the Report and where I agree; its extensive and methodical treatment of New Testament prophecy and its effort to consider and evaluate differing viewpoints are exemplary. Because of space limitations, I must confine myself to what I have been asked to do--stating why I disagree with the "continuationist" view advocated in the Report.
1. The Study Committee is to be commended for its expressed concern to remain faithful to the Scriptures and not to force them to say more than they intend to say. Its desire is to avoid what it faults others for doing, including the cessationist view, namely taking an approach that "stack[s] the evidence in favor of the conclusions one wants to reach" and "determines the outcome of the discussion in advance, before all the necessary exegetical work has been done" (p. 36).
The Report alerts us to a real danger here. Yet one cannot help but ask whether, in the major conclusion it reaches, it is as successful in avoiding that danger and as innocent of "stacking the evidence" as its authors apparently think. Some of the observations that follow suggest otherwise.
2. The opening paragraph of the Introduction (p.4) mentions tongues and their interpretation among the "word gifts" at the center of controversy in the church today. Yet tongues are not dealt with further in the Report, being mentioned only a couple of times in passing. That silence is puzzling, since in 1 Corinthians 14 Paul plainly considers prophecy and tongues to be closely associated, companion gifts; tongues, when interpreted, are functionally equivalent to prophecy (e.g., v. 5).
This omission is especially strange because the Report maintains the possibility of occasional prophecy today. Sooner or later questions, pressing and practical questions, are bound to arise: What does the RCA Synod think about the gift of tongues? Does it continue today? If so, what advice does Synod have for the members of the RCA? Are they to expect the gift? Are they to seek it? How are they to exercise it?
Perhaps the preceding comments are off target because a past Synod has already answered these questions or there are plans to do so in the near future. But, if so, there is no indication of that in either the Report or the actions of Synod concerning the Report, and the reader is left to wonder.
3. The Report opts for a "non-revelational and non-miraculous" understanding of the "word of wisdom" and "word of knowledge" gifts mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:8. As such they are not in "the realm of the controversial" and may be sought by all believers today (p. 33).
But almost certainly, contrary to what the Report asserts, these gifts involved more than "the ability to speak wisely and knowledgeably"; the Lord expects that ability in all believers to some degree. Rather, they were gifts variously distributed in the congregation, to some and not to others, and that by divine design (as the overall argument in 1 Cor. 12, especially vv. 28-30, makes plain). Moreover, they were most likely gifts of revelation; their close association, as word gifts, with prophecy and (interpreted) tongues suggests their revelatory nature (vv. 8-10).
As the Report itself shows plainly enough, we cannot be sure whether Paul has in view one gift or two and, if the latter, what the difference is. Even so confident and aggressive a continuationist as Gordon Fee believes that the difference "is perhaps forever lost to us" (cited in the Report, p. 31). I find that a remarkable concession. If the New Testament teaches with such certainty that these gifts, along with all the others listed in 1 Corinthians 12, continue in the church today, why the difficulty and uncertainty in distinguishing them and knowing what they are? At any rate, it seems less than advisable to encourage believers to seek something when the Synod itself is unsure, on good grounds, what it is they are to seek.
4. The Report gets off on the wrong foot with its analysis of prophecy in the OT (sec. A). It finds there a threefold distinction: Moses - canonical prophets - prophetic bands ("sons of the prophets"); the former two have "an absolute verbal authority" (p. 7), the latter, something less than that. Later (sec. E.7), this distinction functions to support a corresponding NT distinction: Jesus - apostles - prophets, and so to support the major conclusion that the latter are fallible.
Unlike some today, the Report recognizes correctly that in Numbers 12:6-8 the distinction between God's revelation to the prophets in visions and dreams and his more direct, "face to face" revelation to Moses does not provide a precedent for fallible prophecy; a revelation mediated through the former, as the subsequent OT record makes plain enough, is no less God's very words than the latter. This points up an important consideration: the authority of a particular prophetic revelation is not relative to the particular medium God uses nor to the experience, either in kind or frequency, of the person prophesying.
It is at best misleading, therefore, for the Report to speak of three "levels" of OT and NT prophecy (p. 34). When, for instance, the writer of Hebrews contrasts God's "partial and piecemeal" speech through the OT prophets with his eschatological speech in his Son (1:1-2), or the witness of Moses with that of Christ (3:1-6), in neither place does he mean that, considered as God's word, the latter is on a higher "level" of authority than the former. Nor is the teaching authority of Jesus during his earthly ministry greater than that of the apostles after his exaltation. The contrary thinking leads to red-letter editions of Jesus' words in the Gospels and, in extreme form, to the recurring liberal-critical tendency to play off the teaching of Jesus and the apostles against each other, at the expense of the latter.
The problem with the threefold distinction mentioned above is with the Report's use of it to argue that the prophetic-band kind of prophecy has a lower (fallible?) authority than that of Moses and the canonical prophets. The examples offered in evidence do not support that conclusion. To take just the first cited, the seventy elders in Numbers 11:24ff.: The point of the passage is not merely, as the Report observes, that they were in subordination to Moses and assisted him. For, in so doing, we are told not just that they were given the Spirit but that God "took of the Spirit that was on [Moses] and put the Spirit on the seventy elders" (v. 25). This phrasing is striking and surely highlights that they shared in the Spirit as given to Moses; as so endowed they prophesied. It was in the power and with the authority of this Moses-Spirit that they prophesied, even if only temporarily. Certainly, there is nothing in the immediate context (or 12:1-8) that even suggests that when they prophesied they did so with lesser authority than Moses.
As the Report observes more than once, it is difficult to know exactly what the group prophets did. But there is nothing in the pertinent texts that demands or even disposes us to conclude that they prophesied with a lesser, fallible authority. In fact, there are clear indications to the contrary. In 1 Kings 20:35ff., for instance, one of "the sons of the prophets," later also identified simply as a prophet (vv. 38, 41), speaks the word of the Lord with full, prophetic authority (cf. 2 Kings 9:1-13). As noted above, the fact that group prophets assisted or were under the oversight of other, "master" prophets does not of itself establish the lower authority of what they prophesied.
5. The Report's major conclusion is that NT prophets are no longer present in the church but that prophecy may be ("prophets have died out while occasional prophecy may still be with us," p. 37). It is left with this conclusion, it believes, by careful, balanced exegesis; it has not succumbed to the "unusual exegetical gymnastics" resorted to by the cessationist position as well as by the standard continuationist view that there are still prophets today.
How are we to evaluate what amounts to a categorical distinction between noncontinuing person/office and continuing thing/function? In the Report's own words, this is a "somewhat anomalous conclusion." In fact, it is beset with substantial exegetical difficulties.
To begin with, it has to be pointed out that, apart from an appeal to 1 Corinthians 13:8ff., the Report offers little, if any, exegetical support for this distinction (1 Cor. 14, it recognizes, has to do with the prophesying of prophets). Section D.3, where the possibility of prophecy today is raised, cites various Reformed authorities (whose statements, taken together, are hardly clear on the point at issue). Section F.3 ("The Continuing Possibility of Authentic Prophecy"), where the issue is finally addressed directly, consists entirely of some brief commentary based, remarkably, not on Scripture, but on a lengthy quote from a contemporary author (Graham Houston), presenting hypothetical examples of prophecy today. (In passing, the examples cited confuse the issue because, for the most part, they describe spontaneous, more or less unreflecting, Spirit-worked application of previously appropriated biblical truth; the reality of such promptings of the Spirit today is not under dispute here. But prophecy in the NT and as the Report is open to it today involves more than that; it is a specific revelation, often with clearly extrabiblical content.)
There is no evidence in the NT for permanent prophecy detachable from temporary prophets. The two, person and function, are regularly seen together as one gift (1 Cor. 12:8 & 28-29; 14:6, 22 & 29, 32, 37). Certainly some who were not prophets prophesied on occasion, but there is nothing to suggest that such occasional prophecy was categorically different and would continue after prophets were no longer present in the church. The Report doesn't provide what is crucial to its position: a convincing rationale for why prophets ceased while prophecy continues.
But what about 1 Corinthians 13:8ff.? Suffice it here to say that within the immediate context, where Paul dwells on the superiority of love to the gifts mentioned in chapters 12-14, his concern is not when certain gifts (prophecy and tongues) will cease. Rather, his emphasis is the partial, obscured quality of the believer's present knowledge (relative to love with its eschatological "reach"), and that such knowledge will not cease until Christ's return; only then, in contrast, will full, "face to face" knowledge be ours.
The revelatory word gifts, prophecy and (interpreted) tongues--the basis of the Corinthians' present, fragmentary knowledge (along with the OT and apostolic teaching, both spoken and written)--are singled out here because Paul moves on immediately in chapter 14 to an extensive discussion of their proper exercise (cf. 13:1-2). In another context, to make his point about our present, partial knowledge, he could have just as easily mentioned inscripturation, which has long since ceased (the Bible on the pulpit is a constant reminder to the congregation of its pilgrim identity, that they are still a people "on the way"; for a fuller argument, see Perspectives on Pentecost, pp. 109-112). It seems risky at best exegetically for the Report to stake virtually everything on this one passage.
That risk is especially precarious (and support for the preceding cessationist reading of 1 Cor. 13:8ff. emerges) in the light of Ephesians 4:11-13 (the exalted Christ "gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, ... until we all reach unity in the faith, ... attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ"). Almost certainly the "unity"/"fullness" of verse 13 has in view the same state of affairs as "the perfect" in 1 Corinthians 13:9, namely the situation brought by Christ's return. On that assumption, Ephesians 4:11-13, read as continuationists insist 1 Corinthians 13:8ff. must be read, leaves us with the unavoidable conclusion that there will be both apostles and prophets until the Parousia--a conclusion that the Report rejects.
In fact 1 Corinthians 13:ff. itself, on a continuationist reading, proves too much for the Report. On that reading prophecy will continue until the Parousia. It is to have a normal, ongoing role in the life of the church; it should be expected and even sought. There is no room here for the tentative view of the Report that prophecy may possibly continue.
All told, on this point the Report's position is inherently unstable; it brings the Church to a halfway house and leaves it there. Eventually, it does not seem gratuitous to surmise, the RCA will either reconsider and turn back to recognizing the cessation of prophecy or move on to accept the presence of prophets today.
6. The Report is open to prophecy today because it is convinced that NT prophecy is fallible; while based on a specific revelation, it does not have the full, divine authority of God's word.
The primary exegetical support for this view is sought in 1 Corinthians 14:29-30, discussed at length (sec. E.4). Here I can only single out a controlling factor for exegesis: The key verb applied to prophecy in verse 29 (diakrino) has a broad semantic range; it may be construed in a variety of ways, depending on the particular context, and variously translated ("evaluate," "test," "judge," "weigh"). There is nothing in Paul's usage in this context to demand that, because prophecy is subject to "testing," it therefore has lower, fallible authority. No more than the fact that the Bereans "examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true" (and are commended for doing so, Acts 17:11) means that what he taught them did not have full, infallible, apostolic authority (note the substantial semantic overlap between the verb "examine" here, anakrino, and the cognate verb used in 1 Cor. 14:29). The Report reaches its conclusion not because of what the passage demands but because of prior conclusions it brings to the passage, beginning with its misanalysis of OT prophecy noted earlier.
Nor does Paul's peremptory command to the prophets in verses 37-38 establish their lower authority. No more than his sharp rebuke of Peter in Galatians 2:11-14 means that the latter did not teach with full, infallible authority when he properly exercised his apostolic office. At issue is not the content of prophecy (and its relative authority), but the conduct of the prophets.
The Report is particularly vulnerable in its handling of Agabus and his prophecy in Acts 21:11 (sec. E.5). On the one hand, it effectively demonstrates the failed quest of some continuationists to find an instance of fallible prophecy here. Nonetheless, it eventually concludes that Agabus belongs to a lower level of prophecy that "could not lay claim to infallible authority...." (p. 31). What leads to this puzzling "demotion"? Several factors seem to be at work: once again, the Report's analysis of OT prophecy (Agabus belongs to the NT equivalent of the OT prophetic bands, pp. 34-35), as well as its understanding of 1 Corinthians 14:29; in addition, its inference that Paul does not feel bound by the prediction Agabus makes.
But is that inference correct? And is there really, as the Report maintains, a difference in accuracy between what was said to Paul at Tyre (v. 4) and what Agabus prophesied at Caesarea? Verse 4b is best read as a tightly compressed description of a situation parallel to that recounted more fully in verses 11-14. Both instances illustrate the sweeping truth expressed earlier by Paul himself to the Ephesians elders, "I know only that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me" (20:23). The fact that on both occasions disciples (perhaps even Agabus himself) sought to dissuade Paul in no way compromises the Spirit-breathed, infallible truthfulness of what was prophesied.
It should not be overlooked that there are just three places where the NT expressly records the actual contents of a specific, post-Pentecost prophesy: those of Agabus in Acts 11:28 and 21:11, and, massively, the Book of Revelation (1:3; 22:7, 10, 18, 19; virtually ignored in the Report). In all three instances, either explicitly or plainly implied, prophecy--not only what those prophesying receive but what they communicate to others--is "what the Spirit says to the churches."
In this respect the Report has not followed through on one of its own conclusions. It rightly disposes of the view of some continuationists that in Ephesians 2:20 ("built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets") the apostles and prophets are identical ("the apostles, i.e., the prophets"). It recognizes that there, as elsewhere in the NT, the prophets are distinct from the apostles and so as part of the church-foundation, like the apostles, have a temporary, noncontinuing role (E.1).
But to say that the NT prophets were "foundational" not only stipulates their temporary function but, much more importantly, the nature of that function. Along with the apostles, with whom they are closely associated, they are the foundation because they provide, as the NT examples illustrate, the infallible witness, authorized and inspired by the exalted Christ himself, on which the church-house is being built. The NT is that foundational, apostolic-prophetic (="canonical") witness, preserved in and for the church-- in its true contours and scope, though not in its actual, full extent and exact quantity (e.g., John 21:25; 1 Cor. 5:9).
Finally, the order expressed in 1 Corinthians 12:28 ("... first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, ....") presents a monumental predicament for the Report. Commentators are generally agreed that this ranking has to do with value or usefulness. On that assumption, and with the Report's basic conclusion, it is left with a further conclusion: prophesy, always subject to evaluation as fallible and therefore never binding on anyone, is more useful and edifying in the church than teaching based on God's clear, authoritative and infallible word! How can the Report avoid such an obviously unwanted and unacceptable conclusion? What exegetical warrant does it have for doing so?
7. Along with these exegetical tensions and difficulties, there are substantial theological problems that I can only mention briefly. The Report itself is alert to the primary concern-- protecting the unimpaired sufficiency and canonicity of Scripture (esp. F.2). But can that be managed on its approach?
The Report and the Synodical Guidelines are insistent that prophecy as may occur today is subordinate to Scripture and must be tested by it. But how will such testing take place? Prophecy in the NT (e.g., Agabus), and as the Report is open to it today, may sometime have a specificity that simply can't be evaluated by existing Scripture. For instance, a particular course of action urged upon an individual or group on the basis, say, of the contents of a dream can't be judged by the Bible other than where the proposed action would involve violating a biblical commandment. For the rest, it's a matter of trying to judge "apples" by "oranges"; Scripture by its very nature (as a redemptive/revelation-historical record) is silent just on those details that give the dream its specific and distinct (and sought-after) "revelatory" significance and appeal.
What the Report fails to assess is that the prophetic activity described in the NT takes place, by the nature of the case, in an "open canon" situation (relative to our 27 book canon); that is, prophecy occurs at a time when the NT documents were still in the process of being written. To put it another way, the "canon" for the church during its foundational, apostolic period was a fluid, evolving entity, made up of three factors: 1) a completed OT; 2) the NT and other inspired documents, no longer extant (e.g., the "previous letter" mentioned in 1 Cor. 5:9), as each was written and then circulated; and 3) an oral apostolic and prophetic voice. Provocatively stated, the church at the time the NT was being written, was not and could not yet be committed, as a formal principle, to the sola Scriptura of the Reformation; it lived by a "Scripture plus" principle of authority.
The Report, certainly despite its intention and its clear desire to subordinate contemporary prophecy to Scripture, nonetheless takes us back, anachronistically (as do all continuationist positions), to the open canon situation of the early church--but without the control of a living apostolate or of those with the companion gift, most likely, of infallibly distinguishing between true and false prophecy (1 Cor. 12:10).
Nor does the Report's effort to construe prophecy as analogous to a response to general revelation (pp. 27-28) really help. The issue is not our fallen and fallible perception of God's revelation, as the Report maintains; that defect adheres just as much to our interpretation of Scripture as of general revelation. Rather, the critical difference is this: on the one hand, general revelation (as well as Scripture) exists and is always accessible apart from its previous interpretations; in the case of prophecy as understood by the Report, however, there is no access to the underlying revelation nor any way to distinguish that revelation from its fallible rendering/ "interpretation" by the one prophesying.
All told, I cannot suppress the impression that the Report has opened the door, however tentatively and cautiously, to revelation in the life of the church today that is neither special, redemptive revelation nor general revelation, but a third kind--an extra, immediate revelation that functions, especially where guidance is concerned, along with Scripture and so unavoidably implies a certain insufficiency in Scripture.
Despite its intention and however minimally, the Report has blurred the "essential difference" (H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, vol. 1, par. 113) between Romans 8:14 and 2 Peter 1:21, between being "led" by the Spirit (the privilege, note, of all, not just some, believers) and the special, revelatory, redemptive-historical role of some, long since over, of being "borne" by the Spirit. To use Calvin's classic figure of the Bible as the eye-glasses indispensable for understanding ourselves and the rest of creation coram Deo (e.g., Institutes, 1:6:1; 1:14:1), prophecy, in the Report's view, is an additional lens that enhances vision; it temporarily augments or, on occasion, even replaces the Scripture-lens. That seems a fair assessment, especially in the light of Synod's declaration that prophecy today occurs, among other circumstances, "particularly in situations where the written Word of God is unavailable ..." (Article 75).
8. Any sound theology of the Holy Spirit will be left with a certain remainder, an unaccounted for surplus, an area of mystery. The cessationist position I hold is least of all driven by a rationalistic desire to have everything tied up in a nice, tidy little package. The truth of John 3:8a, for instance, has to be respected; the sovereign working of the Spirit, like the wind, is ultimately incalculable.
But at the same time we ought not to embrace a kind of "whimsy of the Spirit." In his own sovereignty he has seen fit to circumscribe his activity and to structure what he does today largely according to the patterns revealed in Scripture. Those patterns, not what may take place beyond them, need be and must be our only concern.
Initially it may seem that the position adopted in the Report, as the Study Committee no doubt believes, does greater justice to John 3:8 and is properly open to what the Spirit may do today; its strength, apparently, is that it is not guilty, like the cessationist view, of trying to "put the Spirit in a box." But the Report has failed to recognize how for now until Jesus comes, according to Scripture, the Spirit has sovereignly chosen to "box" himself in. The truly incalculable ought to remain unexpected (and, more importantly, unsought); conversely, what can be anticipated ceases to that extent to be unpredictable. Apparently the Report does not appreciate the implications of that. And because at important points it misreads the biblical patterns, it is left with the impossible task of having to differentiate, within the current confusing whirl of spurious claim and counterclaim, what may genuinely be the Spirit's incalculable working today. It has that problem because in effect it makes such activity what it should not be--a preoccupation of the church.
The Report does manage to avoid a monumental church-order problem by its conclusion, inconsistent as I have argued above, that there are no prophets today. But provision is still made for the expectation and regulation of direct extrabiblical guidance and for other experiences of prophetic immediacy. The inevitable tendency of such a provision, no matter how tentative and carefully qualified, is to divert attention from Scripture, particularly in practical and pressing life concerns.
The Report's closing Evaluation (F.4) quotes with approval an observation (of Richard Lovelace) to the effect that a denial of prophecy today seems to derive historically "not from the plain sense of Scripture but from the Reformers' necessity to fight a two-front war against papists and enthusiasts" (p. 41). That is a most unfortunate and misleading dichotomy (although the concern of the passage quoted, more carefully qualified, is what the Reformer's stress has "often degenerated into").
There should be no doubt that it was precisely the Reformation rediscovery of the claritas of Scripture (its "plain sense"), not some other, unrelated or less essential concern, that led to its two-front action--against the tradition principle of Rome, on the one hand, against the Radical Reformation with its claims of extrabiblical revelations, on the other. On both fronts it asserted, because it saw threatened, the inseparability of word and Spirit (Spiritus cum verbo), the unbreakable bond between the Spirit's working and the inscripturated word.
That struggle is not over; it is in fact perennial and carries the potential for undermining the power of the Reformation today. In the name of the Spirit, some continue to place church tradition on a virtual par with Scripture and others claim new revelations and guidance apart from Scripture. Nothing on a par with Scripture and nothing apart from Scripture--that remains the critical issue.
The RCA Synod, has opened the door, however slightly, to the latter danger. In adopting the majority report of its Word and Spirit Study Committee, it has compromised, however cautiously, the Reformation bond between word and Spirit. It would do well, in the judgment of one at least, to reconsider that decision.
* Dr. Gaffin is a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.