Recent Cessationist Arguments: Has the Storm Center Moved?

 

John C. Poirier looks at recent trends regarding those Christians who say the supernatural gifts of the Spirit have ceased, and what their arguments are today.

 

As I write this, cessationism is in the news for an apparent slippage in its subscription base: on June 1, 2007, the Research Division of LifeWay (the former Baptist Sunday School Board) released a study indicating that 50% of Southern Baptist pastors believe that God has given a “private prayer language” to some people. Wanting to mitigate the damage of this news, cessationists immediately questioned the way LifeWay worded the corresponding question in its poll (see Yarnell 2007b), but the question as it was actually asked seems to be well written: “Do you believe that the Holy Spirit gives some people the gift of a special language to pray to God privately? Some people refer to this as a Private Prayer Language or the ‘private use of tongues.’” Certainly, most fair-minded reviewers will have a hard time believing that anyone misunderstood the question in any way. The poll, I take it, is probably right in what it suggests: that the traditional cessationist arguments are losing their hold. But that, I submit, is something that the cessationists themselves had already noticed, even if they (like everyone else) were genuinely surprised by the poll.

One does not need a poll to see that a change has taken place. If recent arguments for a cessationist understanding of the gifts of the Spirit are any indication, there has been a remarkable shift in the strategies and concerns of cessationists, a shift that would seem to indicate that Pentecostals and other continualists have finally (!) won the battle over the correct interpretation of 1 Corinthians 13. The issue with the obsolescence of tongues has always been one of timing: What is meant by “when that which is perfect has come”? In the past, cessationists have claimed that this refers to the Bible, but the problems with this view are perhaps too obvious for a new generation of readers. If Paul was referring to the arrival of a “New Testament,” then he was speaking utter bathos both from his own perspective (seeing that he had no idea that there would ever be a New Testament) and from the Corinthians’ perspective (as it is even more problematic to assume that the Corinthians would have understood “that which is perfect” to refer to some future closing of a further canon of Scripture). In other words, the cessationist reading of 1 Corinthians 13 requires that Paul was writing about something that he knew nothing about (prophetically, of course), and that he was writing to people who also did not know (but for whom their not knowing was trivial enough to warrant Paul not giving them any illumination on the matter, almost as if Paul was not even writing to them). The only way to get around that conundrum is to assume that somehow Paul did know that there would be a New Testament, and that he had explained that to the Corinthians at some earlier time. My own guess is that a new generation of readers has recognized that that was a pretty tall order, and that the continualist reading of 1 Corinthians 13 makes a lot more sense: the more natural way of interpreting “that which is perfect” is to see it as a reference to the parousia. That is more consistent with Pauline theology in general, and has been the way (B. B. Warfield and his followers notwithstanding) that 1 Corinthians has been read throughout history. And certainly the parousia makes for a better referent of “then we shall see face to face” (v. 12). It is asking a bit much to suggest that, with the arrival of the completed New Testament, Christians were made able to see “face to face.”

 

A Leaner Cessationism?

That arguments for a cessationist reading of 1 Corinthians 13 have finally become relatively scarce is itself is a development that we should appreciate for its own significance, but it is worth noting also what the cessationists’ new strategies and concerns are, and what their strengths and weaknesses might be. I should note at the outset that the development I refer to falls well short of being a “sea change.” I would be very surprised if cessationist arguments on the basis of 1 Corinthians 13 suddenly disappeared altogether. Rather, I am talking about a remarkable absence of the traditional appeals to 1 Corinthians 13 within some recent cessationist arguments, as well as an unmistakable new focus in those arguments.

In some respects, the term “cessationist” has become less appropriate as a tag for the new arguments, as the burden has shifted somewhat from showing that the gifts of the Spirit have ceased to showing that the idea of a “private prayer language” (abbreviated by the debaters as “PPL”) is a scriptural concept. In strict terms, the new arguments would appear to concede that the gifts of the Spirit per se may still be operational, but that glossolalia in particular can still be shown (they argue) to be a thing of the past—that it was a special dispensation serving to authenticate the gospel during the first generation of the Church. It would be wrong to lump all the cessationists together (for the sake of convenience, I shall continue to call them “cessationists,” since that is what they are with respect to their understanding of glossolalia), and it may be that the silence of certain apologies was not meant to speak as loudly as it might be taken to speak. But I find it remarkable, for instance, that Malcolm Yarnell attempts, in his treatment of the book of Acts (2006: 2-4), to limit the glossolalic episodes to three watershed moments: the presenting of the gospel to the Jews (Acts 2), the presenting of the gospel to the Gentiles (Acts 10), and the presenting of the gospel to the disciples of John the Baptist (Acts 19). According to Yarnell, “there is no specific reason to assume that the verification provided by the particular spiritual gift of speaking in tongues is required beyond the verification of the incorporation of these three main communities—Jews, Gentiles, and followers of John the Baptist” (2006: 4).

In this Yarnell seems to be presenting some unfinished thoughts, as he then takes up Paul’s discussion of glossolalia without ever trying to reconcile Paul’s own frequent practice of glossolalia (see 1 Cor 14:18) with his (Yarnell’s) understanding of glossolalia as a three-time sign in Acts. (Cessationists studiously avoid mentioning that Paul wrote, “I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you” [1 Cor 14:18].) In point of fact, the disconnect between Yarnell’s explanation of tongues in Acts and his explanation of tongues in 1 Corinthians could not be more obvious. Yarnell himself acknowledges something of a disconnect, but he handles it by speaking of glossolalia in Acts as “biblical glossolalia” and of glossolalia in 1 Corinthians as “Corinthian glossolalia.” While there are problems with the idea that glossolalia in the Corinthian community comes from the continuing influence of the Corinthians’ pagan background (see below), the greater problem with Yarnell’s formulation is that it fails to address the fact that Paul himself regularly practiced glossolalia, a fact that does not fit with Yarnell’s explanation of Acts or his explanation of 1 Corinthians. Paul’s glossolalia is certainly not subsumable within the three watershed presentations of the gospel in Acts, but neither can we get away with attributing it to the supposed pagan delinquency of the Corinthians’ spirituality. It represents something that Yarnell forgot to make room for.

Yarnell thinks that the type of glossolalia practiced by the Corinthians was not “biblical.” By denying it a proper pedigree he seems to be saying not just that the Corinthians practiced it out of line with sound principles (which is the obvious point of 1 Corinthians 12-14) but that the very spirit inspiring those utterances was not of God. It should be noted, however, that Yarnell’s evidence for the possibility of pagan influences is based on an outmoded understanding of the inspiration of the Apolline oracle at Delphi. The idea that the Delphic oracle spoke in nonsensical syllables that were subsequently interpreted was decisively overturned by Joseph Fontenrose (1978: 204-12; see Forbes 1995: 103-19), and hardly anyone working with the Delphic material today assumes such a view. But Yarnell does, and he uses it to paint the Corinthians with a broad brush as former pagan glossolalists. He also uses the idea of a type of glossolalia connected with the worship of Dionysius and Cybele to explain why things went awry with the Corinthians’ approach to tongues, but again, as Christopher Forbes has shown, the evidence that such a thing ever existed has been decidedly overstated (1995: 124-48). Yarnell’s dismissal of “Corinthian glossolalia” as non-Christian in its inspiration is based on a construct whose day is mostly past.

 

The “Private Prayer Language” in 1 Corinthians 14

The point of Yarnell’s arguments is the specific one of denying that there is scriptural backing for a private prayer language. We should therefore observe how he handles those verses that refer most directly to private glossolalic prayer. We read in 1 Cor 14:14-16:

14 For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unproductive.

15 What should I do then? I will pray with the spirit, but I will pray with the understanding also; I will sing praise with the spirit, but I will sing praise with the understanding also.

16 Otherwise, if you say a blessing with the spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say the “Amen” to your thanksgiving, since the outsider does not know what you are saying? [adapted from NRSV]

Proponents of the idea of a private prayer language have typically taken v. 15 to refer to Paul’s praying in two different ways, rather than to a single way—“with the spirit” (that is, glossolalically) and “with the understanding” (that is, not glossolalically)—but Yarnell (and other cessationists) take Paul to be referring to a single mode of prayer, viz. praying with the spirit in intelligible words. As Yarnell interprets v. 15, “Paul concludes that the idea of unintelligible speech is extremely odd, for the human spirit must not be disconnected from the human understanding in prayer or in song” (2006: 6). Emir Caner (2006: 7-8) argues that the verse in question “actually argues against [the] practice” of a private prayer language:

Paul affirms that he will pray both in the Spirit and in understanding. But a prayer language cannot accomplish the latter. One would have to claim that Paul was discussing two different types of prayer in the passage, an argument from silence at best, and an argument which has no confirmation in any other New Testament passage.

The problem with that, of course, is that v. 16 seems to contradict the cessationists’ understanding of “in the Spirit”, as it shows quite clearly that, for Paul, to speak “with the spirit” is to speak in a way that others cannot understand. As far as I can see, cessationists do not address the fact that their interpretation of v. 15 comes to wreck upon reading the next verse. Caner thinks that the continualist reading of v. 15 is based on an “argument from silence”, but the cessationist silence about v. 16 is more deafening.

Cessationists also studiously avoid 1 Cor 14:18-19:

18 I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you;

19 nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind, in order to instruct others also, than ten thousand words in a tongue.

That Paul is referring here to a private use of tongues seems really plain: the “nevertheless” in this verse marks a change in venue, so what could the original venue in these verses possibly be if not a private one? And where could Paul possibly be speaking in tongues more than “all” the Corinthians if not in private? If the Corinthian congregation was as rife with an improper mode of glossolalia as 1 Corinthians 14 leads us to believe, then the only way for Paul to speak in tongues even more and to do it all in a congregational context would be to imagine that Paul spoke in tongues during the church service almost nonstop. Everything that Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 14 (esp. v. 19) leads us to assume that that is not the case.

The cessationist understanding of 1 Cor 14:15 is part of a program of denying that the gifts of the Spirit could even work in private contexts. According to the cessationists, the gifts were given for use in the congregation, and that is the only legitimate context in which they can operate. As Yarnell writes, “Spiritual gifts, as Paul repeatedly indicated, are for mutual edification” (2006: 6). In other words, the cessationists have a double problem with the idea of a private prayer language: they not only oppose the idea of glossolalia continuing to be practiced, but they also disagree rather sharply with the idea of any of the gifts being used in private. In one paper (2007a: 12), Yarnell even refers to “belief in a private prayer language” as “existentialism”! One wonders, of course, what could possibly be existentialist about it. Does Yarnell think that all private prayer is “existentialist” and, if not, what makes the difference in the case of praying glossolalically? Emir Caner (2006: 8) notes that, if 1 Cor 14:15 refers to a private use of tongues, then

tongues in the form of a private prayer language would be singled out as the only spiritual gift listed that has a personal use outside the body of Christ. Can anyone imagine prophesying privately? Or, teaching privately? Or, giving privately? Or, leading privately? Or, helping privately? Or, evangelizing privately?

Caner does not notice that this argument cuts both ways: since it is an element structurally present within glossolalia that makes the idea of its private use comprehensible, why should we think it strange that only this gift can be practiced in private contexts? Caner essentially admits (without realizing it) that it is something inherent in the nature of tongues-speech, rather than some sort of exceptional allowance on the part of Paul, that makes its use in private sensible, and which therefore makes Paul’s approving discussion of its private use not at all strange.

Of course, one of the main things fueling this antipathy to the idea of a private prayer language is a mistaken belief that biblical glossolalia is a supernatural ability to speak a language that one has not learned, along with a recognition that modern glossolalia is not that at all. Such an understanding of biblical glossolalia, of course, is derived from the narrative in Acts 2, and (reasonably enough) is assumed by cessationists to apply throughout all the references to glossolalia in the New Testament. (To make this one-size-fits-all understanding work, Yarnell [2006: 2] interprets kainais [“new”] in Mark 16:17’s reference to “new tongues” to mean “new to the speaker” rather than “new” per se.) As is well known, the earliest generation of Pentecostal glossolalists made the same assumption, leading to disastrous results on the mission field. It is one thing to assume that the tongues practiced on the day of Pentecost was the same as that practiced elsewhere in the New Testament, but it is quite another to try to make those other references to tongues advert to their supposed intelligibility. Yarnell does this in his exegesis of Acts 10 and 19: he writes of the glossolalic episode in Acts 10: “The Jewish Christians heard these foreign Gentiles magnify God as they communicated intelligibly in languages” (2006: 4), but he does not explain how he knows that it was intelligible communication, and he writes of Act 19: “the gift [of tongues] intelligibly conveyed the gospel”, but again he does not tell how he knows that. Perhaps Yarnell assumes that if the text states that the glossolalists “magnified God” in their tongues-speech, that that implies that it was intelligible, but that assumption is not backed up by the way in which near contemporary references to unintelligible speech can be linked to the function of praise. We read in the apocryphal Testament of Job, for example, that Job’s daughters are said to praise God in angelic tongues, and we are told in very general terms of the content of their praises: for example, one of Job’s daughters is there said to have “praised God for the creation of the heights”, doing so in “the dialect of the archons” (Test. Job 49.2 [trans. Spittler 1983: 866]). That this account is apocryphal (and clearly fictional) does not mitigate the point, which is that Yarnell is wrong in his implied inference that if so-and-so was heard to have praised God, then so-and-so spoke intelligibly. That inference is not borne out by literary-critical comparisons with other descriptions of glossolalic praise.

 

Conclusion

It is not my intent to suggest that cessationism is about to die out. The setbacks for cessationism that I have celebrated might well be temporary, but that will depend, to some degree, on how much a truly Berean posture is adopted among the traditionally cessationist churches. When Christians continue to ask whether what they are being taught is truly scriptural, they open the door to an improved understanding of the Holy Spirit’s activity in the Church today. I do not think we have yet grasped what a boon that will be.

 

PR 

 

Bibliography

Note: The “White Papers” that were engaged in this article were accessed at www.baptisttheology.org/papers.cfm, in early June 2007.

Caner, Emir

2006        “Southern Baptists, Tongues, and Historical Policy” (White Paper 12; Forth Worth: Center for Theological Research [Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary]).

Fontenrose, Joseph

1978        The Delphic Oracle: Its Responses and Operations with a Catalogue of Responses (Berkeley: University of California Press).

Forbes, Christopher

1995        Prophecy and Inspired Speech in Early Christianity and its Hellenistic Environment (WUNT 75; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck).

Spittler, R. P. (trans.)

1983        “Testament of Job”, in James H. Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments (Garden City: Doubleday) 829-68.

Yarnell, Malcolm B.

2006        “Speaking of ‘Tongues,’ What Does the Bible Teach?” (White Paper 8; Forth Worth: Center for Theological Research [Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary]).

2007a      “‘Were it So?’: An Appeal to the Christian Nobility of the Southern Baptist Convention” (White Paper 15; Forth Worth: Center for Theological Research [Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary]).

2007b      “Commentary on the LifeWay Research Division Study of Private Prayer Language” (White Paper 17; Forth Worth: Center for Theological Research [Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary]).