A Theology of the Gifts

  1. Sub­se­quence and the Spirit
  2. The Full­ness of the Spirit
  3. Fruits and Gifts of the Spirit
  4. On Con­cen­tric Cessationism
  5. Con­clu­sion

I feel as though much of evan­gel­i­cal­ism makes the doc­trine of Pneu­ma­tol­ogy (the Holy Spirit) more dif­fi­cult than it has to be. The only thing we seem to agree on is that the Holy Spirit is God every­thing else is up for grabs. Some believe that the believer can receive a sub­se­quent expe­ri­ence of the Spirit after sal­va­tion (Pen­te­costals, etc.), and some believe that the Holy Spirit has ceased work­ing in terms of mirac­u­lous spir­i­tual gifts (tra­di­tional reformed Chris­tians). Let’s make this a lit­tle easier.

Sub­se­quence and the Spirit

I just fin­ished a book by John Stott enti­tled Bap­tism & Full­ness: The Work of the Holy Spirit Today, and I found it to be a breath of fresh air in the debate. The edi­tion I read was from 1974, and it is every bit as timely today as then. He started off by very con­vinc­ingly prov­ing that a the­ol­ogy that the Holy Spirit indwells believ­ers sub­se­quent to con­ver­sion is faulty on many lev­els. He con­trasted the fact that although the Apos­tles in Acts 2 received the Spirit sub­se­quently, the 3,000 received it imme­di­ately upon con­ver­sion. He then aptly showed how the other exam­ples in Acts about receiv­ing it sub­se­quently were for the­o­log­i­cal rea­sons. Most notice­ably to show the Apos­tles that Gen­tiles are now in covenant with God (Samar­i­tans, Cor­nelius). He also warned against devis­ing a whole the­o­log­i­cal scheme upon a nar­ra­tive such as Acts. This is espe­cially true, because no where in any of the epis­tles does any apos­tle admon­ish us to seek a sub­se­quent expe­ri­ence of the Spirit.

There is no doubt that the Spirit indwells every believer upon regen­er­a­tion. It is a gift that “seals” us for our inher­i­tance (Eph 1:13–14). I am also trou­bled by the amount of atten­tion Pen­te­costals give to the Holy Spirit, because His pur­pose is to mag­nify Christ to the glory of the Father. If the Holy Spirit could be asked ques­tions, I guar­an­tee He would answer in the pos­i­tive that He doesn’t want to be noticed.

The Full­ness of the Spirit

I started to read about his con­trast between “full­ness” and “bap­tism,” and at first I was a lit­tle uneasy. His the­sis was that the Spirit, although it indwells every believer, is at dif­fer­ent times at dif­fer­ent lev­els of full­ness. He con­trasted peo­ple who were believ­ers but were not full of the Spirit and believ­ers that had the Spirit in Its full­ness. His text he talked a lot about was Eph­esians 5:18, “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dis­si­pa­tion, but be filled with the Spirit.” Here there is an admo­ni­tion to be “filled with the Spirit.”

I found this refresh­ing, and he took much care in mak­ing the whole sub­ject very applic­a­ble. I see a very real con­trast between dif­fer­ent lev­els of “full­ness” although it doesn’t dimin­ish the fact that all true believ­ers have an indwelling of the Spirit. It was some­thing that has pro­foundly impacted my own view on the Spirit, and seek­ing the full­ness of the Spirit is now some­thing that will be a large part of my Chris­t­ian expe­ri­ence from here on out.

Fruits and Gifts of the Spirit

For brevity’s sake, I’m going to talk shortly about his inter­pre­ta­tion of the fruits of the Spirit from Gala­tians 5:22–23. He broke them up into three cat­e­gories: our rela­tion to God (love, joy, peace), rela­tion to oth­ers (patience, kind­ness, good­ness), and rela­tion to our­selves (faith­ful­ness, gen­tle­ness, self-control). I did enjoy his ana­lyza­tion of the botany anal­ogy and its rela­tion to the fruits. His thrust was that the fruits of the Spirit, much like fruit itself, take a while to cul­ti­vate; but when it is com­pleted the ripened state is worth the wait. This is how we as Chris­tians should view our own walk.

The gifts of the Spirit also had good ana­lyza­tion. He started off by show­ing that the gifts of the Spirit are given to every­one. In other words, we can’t view the gifts of the Spirit as some­thing that is given only to a cho­sen amount of believ­ers. We all have some gift of the Spirit be it teach­ing, admon­ish­ing, or some­thing sim­i­lar. He also did good com­men­tary on the four major pas­sages deal­ing with Gifts: Romans 12, 1 Corinthi­ans 12, 1 Peter 4, and Eph­esians 4.

He came out about his “open but cau­tious view” which I have as well. He cor­rectly stated that the office of Apos­tle as was in the early church has ceased. There is no doubt about this fact since the Canon of Scrip­ture is com­plete. He also talked about prophecy a lit­tle bit. I agree that prophetic utter­ances as in “The Lord says…” are com­plete, but my under­stand­ing of prophecy is that of an office of admon­ish­ment (to which he says is to bind­ing a def­i­n­i­tion). He does admit that tongues could be around, but he points out cor­rectly that the Acts 2 and 1 Corinthi­ans 12 tongues are the same thing that being lan­guages. I found his analy­sis refresh­ing and hon­est. He didn’t admit that a com­plete ces­sa­tion of all mirac­u­lous gifts (he does define “mirac­u­lous” in his book) is hard to sub­stan­ti­ate, but the posi­tion is implied in his work. Again, I can’t sug­gest enough this work.

On Con­cen­tric Cessationism

Stott does talk about mirac­u­lous gifts being used to give valid­ity to a min­istry of God in the Bible. He men­tions Moses (Law), Eli­jah (Prophets), Jesus (Mes­siah), and Apos­tles as being the four divi­sions to which mirac­u­lous signs are uti­lized. I think this is the best way to inter­pret the mirac­u­lous work­ings of the Holy Spirit. I will be the first to admit that the ces­sa­tion of all mirac­u­lous gifts is not taught in the New Tes­ta­ment and 1 Corinthi­ans 13:8 has an escha­to­log­i­cal focus and not an end of the Apos­tolic age in view.

I was exposed to a view called Con­cen­tric Ces­sa­tion­ism artic­u­lated by Daniel Wal­lace, pro­fes­sor at Dal­las The­o­log­i­cal. The belief is that the mirac­u­lous gifts of the Spirit are still at work but only in areas where a val­i­da­tion of the min­istry and teach­ings of Christ are needed. Wal­lace gives us a def­i­n­i­tion of his view.

This is what I would call con­cen­tric ces­sa­tion­ism, as opposed to lin­ear ces­sa­tion­ism. That is, rather than tak­ing a chrono­log­i­cally lin­ear approach, this kind of ces­sa­tion­ism affirms that as the gospel moves, like the rip­pling effect of a stone drop­ping into a pond, in a space-time expand­ing cir­cle away from first cen­tury Jerusalem, the sign gifts will still exist on the cut­ting edge of that cir­cle. Thus, for exam­ple, in third world coun­tries at the time when the gospel is first pro­claimed, the sign gifts would be present. This view, then, would allow for these gifts to exist on the fron­tiers of Chris­tian­ity, but would be more skep­ti­cal of them in the â??worked over’ areas. (Source)

This would show itself in unreached peo­ple groups. Just a casual read­ing of the Scrip­tures gives valid­ity to this posi­tion, and I feel it is the most Scrip­tural for sev­eral rea­sons. First, as men­tioned, mirac­u­lous gifts accom­pa­nied min­istry where it needed val­i­da­tion such as Moses, Eli­jah, Jesus, and the Apos­tles. Sec­ond, the Bible pro­motes a view that God is a worship-oriented God which makes His com­mand to His fol­low­ers to be mis­si­o­log­i­cal. The mis­si­o­log­i­cal empha­sis of the Scrip­tures puts weight that God will be most active where there is no Gospel. Lastly, the empha­sis on “tongues” being dif­fer­ent lan­guages aptly used to share the Gospel gives weight to this view. That was the very empha­sis of Acts when bystanders noticed after the Bap­tism of the Spirit: “how is it that we each hear them in our own lan­guage to which we were born?” (Acts 2:8). And it was used solely for the pur­pose of spread­ing the Gospel.

Con­clu­sion

This is meant to be an end-all to the debate, but I hope it helps in clar­i­fy­ing a par­tic­u­lar view on the Spirit that holds up to the Scrip­tural teach­ing. There are things we as evan­gel­i­cals should be wor­ried about such as clearly defend­ing that the Holy Spirit is the only active agent in regen­er­a­tion, and it must pre­cede faith (as taught in reformed Sote­ri­ol­ogy). I am also con­cerned about the Pen­te­costal focus on the Spirit and their doc­trine of the sub­se­quence expe­ri­ence of the Spirit. In clos­ing, I again can’t sug­gest Stott’s work enough for clar­ity, brevity, and insight.