Evangelicals and the Holy Spirit, Part 1: Do you believe in Miracles?

This is the first of a several part series on Evangelicalism and the Holy Spirit. This post sets a very superficial context from a cultural and historical view that is needed, I feel, to truly understand the issues. It is longer than most blog posts and will be the longest of this series by far, but I believe it will be beneficial to the subject later in the week. So, grab a cup of coffee, pull up a chair, and let’s explore some issues in depth.

                                                                     

To rip off Al Michaels call when the U.S. beat Russia in hockey in the 1980 Olympics, “Do you believe in miracles?”  Every Bible believing Evangelical Christian would say yes, but there would be a lot of caveats offered for some. Some believe that, while God can do anything, the Age of Miracles have ceased and the miraculous gifts of the Spirit that were operative when the New Testament was being written are no longer given to the churches. These people are called cessationist (gifts have ceased).  Others believe that God continues to pour out his gifts  and perform miracles today. These people are called continualists (gifts have continued).  With the building controversy in the SBC over the restriction of missionaries who speak in tongues and the strong stance that Southwestern Seminary has taken against the practice, I feel that we are heading for a collision of worldviews in both the SBC and the evangelical world.  There are streams of thought (the cessationist view vs. the continualist view) that have run together for some time, but now seem to be diverging. Is this to be expected? Is it more important to stay unified or to follow what we believe the Bible to be teaching? How did we become divided? What are the solutions? I want to explore some of these questions over the next several posts and point to some possible solutions.

                                       

Origins of the Controversy

                                                       

To find the root cause of this controversy, I believe that you have to go back hundreds of years. There was a time when a supernatural perspective of life was to be taken for granted. We believed in miracles and we believed that the Word of God was true, even if we did not know what it said. The gifts of the Spirit were not talked about, because the ability to perform miracles was primarily locked within the Catholic Church as the Bible was kept from the people. The Church was the holder of all truth and you had to go through the Church and the priest to get to God as a relationship with Him was not necessarily personal, but there was still an expectation of the supernatural.  God was everywhere and there was a great awareness of His activity in the world and His presence. This was considered the pre-Modern period, or the Middle Ages (500-1300 A.D.).

                

When the Protestant Reformation and Renaissance occurred (1300-1600), there was a renewal of learning and a new emphasis on humanity. When I traveled through Europe a couple of years ago, I could see this perspective first hand from the art. Byzantine Art from the Middle Ages (first picture) was flat and iconic and represented a purely spiritual view of life. Humanity and spiritual truth were shown through symbolic representations and there was no attempt at realistic depictions. True reality was what was unseen in the spiritual realm and it could only be represented.  When the Renaissance came, there was a greater awareness placed on humanity and a more realistic depiction of this world was shown (second picture). Accuracy, detail, and an exploration of this world and the human condition was seen to be more important than an exploration of just the spiritual world and we began to develop a more humanistic view, even in our religious depictions, as you see of Jesus below.

                                                            

What began in the arts surfaced in philosophy and politics. Humanism and the Enlightenment were the results of a greater focus on this world, our reason, and our ability to understand this world through exploration, observation, and science. The Medieval monarchies that were supported by the Divine Right of Kings gave way to experiments in Social Contracts with the people and the beginnings of democracy. A belief emerged that if everyone used their “Reason” we would all come to the same truth apart from any need for Divine Revelation. This view emerged in the 1600 and 1700’s and was a reaction against the religious wars of Europe after the Protestant Reformation. To be consistent, all limitations on the unaltered use of human reason to discover truth had to be eliminated.  One of these limitations was the idea of a fallen nature or original sin. Another was the idea that God was intimately involved with the affairs of man. He gave us Reason and he took His hands off the world and allowed it to run on it’s own. This view is commonly known as Deism, and many of the leading thinkers of the Enlightenment subscribed to it.

                                                   

If truth could be learned through observation and exploration, then what could not be observed or explored was not in the realm of knowable truth. It was pushed to the realm of superstition.  Knowable truth was only what could be verified objectively.  Religion began to lose it’s sway on the minds of the West as the Catholic Church opposed the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo, and as Protestants and Catholics continued to war against each other and fight amongst themselves. By the 1800’s most intellectuals still believed in God in some form or another because they had to answer origin questions, but He was a distant God who created the world but had not been very involved since.

                                                         

Concurrently, the Protestant Reformation took place and restored to the church the vital doctrines of justification by faith, the prominence of Scripture over tradition, faith over works, Christ over everything else, salvation by grace alone, and the priesthood of  believers. Some Protestants established state churches (Lutherans and Calvinists in Northern Europe and Anglicans in England) where they changed their theology, but replicated much of the power of the Catholic Church with the state and culture. Others read the Bible and saw that the only true church was the Believers Church where the only members were the remnant who truly confessed Christ as their Savior and were not influenced by tradition. The Bible was the basis for faith and everything else was discarded. Baptists come from this stream of history.

                                                      

By the 1600’s, the hearts of many had grown cold and there was need for a renewal. Instead of just believing the Bible and being a part of a church, there was a need shown for an experience of Christianity on par with what the Bible spoke of. Pietism emerged in Germany and it reflected a movement toward a more personal experience with Christ. It affected groups such as the Moravians and spread to England where it affected the Separatists, Anglicans and Puritans, and Baptists. By the 1700’s, this view helped to ignite the First Great Awakening in the American Colonies and England and led to the Second Great Awakening in the United States.

                                                                

However, this view was a corollary to the Enlightenment because it placed the emphasis on the individual and a sense of objective truth based on one foundation began to be lost, and you see Protestantism split into thousands of denominations.  Over time, in the larger culture, truth was based more heavily on what one experienced more than on anything objective.  While Reason and education was continually appealed to in the Enlightenment camp, the center did not hold and you had the chaos of the French Revolution, the wars of the nation states and revolutions in Europe in the 1800’s, and the demise of the child of the Enlightenment, Modernism, through the World Wars in the 20^th Century. Darwin hypothesized God out of the equation altogether with the Theory of Evolution and a purely secular worldview emerged with no need for God or religion. Reason as a unifying force evaporated because no one could agree on how to live, and even science was shown not to have the answers. Radical Individualism grew until it’s flowering in the 1960’s where any appeal to Reason or a unified reality was lost as each person began to live by their own view of truth and relativism emerged.

                                                         

In the 19^th and 20^th centuries, Protestant Christianity tried to counter the scientific claims of modernism by showing that Christianity was a reasonable and verifiable faith. On the one hand, you had Liberalism, which rejected the miracles of the Bible and began to find perceived errors in Scripture. The hard teachings of Scripture were ignored and a faith that was more compatible with the scientific advance of Western culture was advocated. On the other hand, you had Fundamentalism, which was a reaction against the Liberal acquiescence to the Enlightenment, but it employed the same tactics. Instead of appealing to Reason and the Individual, Fundamentalism appealed to the Bible as a foundation, which was an excellent retort, but they ultimately failed, because their appeal used scientific means.

                                                                   

The Bible was analyzed through observation and the science of Biblical Hermenuetics (Interpretation) until it was broken into thousands of little pieces. Systematic Theologies and new teachings like Dispensationalism emerged that categorized the Bible in the same way that science categorized mosquitoes and plant life. The miracles of the Bible were believed because they were in the Bible, but the experience of miracles today was disavowed, in essence, because it wasn’t reasonable or verifiable. The Fundamentalists started at a different place than the Liberals, were faithful to uphold the cardinal doctrines of the faith and fought valiantly against the encroaching heresy of Liberalism, but ultimately capitulated to the culture because they employed the same means as the Secular Humanists. The means led them down the road of losing the larger meaning of Scripture while they broke it down into a thousand observable pieces.  While faithfully pointing to the greatest miracle of all, which is salvation, fundamentalist/cessationists disregarded other miracles and supernatural interventions as being forays into emotionalism. Those who ascribed to such practices were considered unsafe and unsound theologically.  They treated those who believed in the continuing work of the Holy Spirit through gifts and miracles in much the same way as the Liberals treated them when it came to their view of the Bible: With dismissal and thinly vieled contempt.

                                                            

All approaches of trying to get to truth apart from God's original intent, which is through a relationship with Him through faith in Jesus Christ, has led Western culture into a quagmire. We seem to be running out of gas spiritually and intellectually. Meanwhile, there is the emergence of Islamic Fundamentalism, the rise of China and India on the world scene, and the tightening grip of American Hegemony around the world to hold on to our safety and wealth. Globalization through technology and economics makes the world smaller and we are all learning from one another and conversing on a far more rapid and in depth scale than ever before. We are learning some amazing things.

                                                                  

One of these things, is that while we have been fighting battles with Liberals over the Bible and our interpretations of it (and rightfully so, I might add), God has also been at work around the world revealing Himself, leading multitudes to Christ, and performing miracles. The miracles that we have discounted from our scientific view of Scripture are happening and are being verified. Every continent on the planet is experiencing revival and a mighty movement of the Holy Spirit, except for North America and Western Europe, the home of Enlightenment/Modernistic thought. Groups such as Pentecostals and Charismatics, while they have engaged in excess and error at times, have restored to the church a reading of Scripture that expects God to work and move in the same way that He did during Bible times. This view of the direct involvement of God in the lives of people in a Supernatural way is very appealing to the masses of the unevangelized world, because the vast majority of this planet still lives with a pre-modern worldview. It just makes sense to them that God, if He is all powerful, can and does perform miracles. Consistent with this worldview are teachings that affirm gifts of healing, miracles, prophecy, and speaking in unknown tongues (1 Corinthians 12-14). 

                                                          

If you engage in a clear reading of Scripture apart from a cultural, anti-supernatural bias, and if you read the Bible as it was intended instead of as a science book from which to glean information, I believe that you are far more likely to come to the conclusion that God is working today in the same way that He was 2000 years ago. I am a continualist. I believe that God still gives supernatural gifts to His children and that He is working today, just as He worked in the 1^st Century Church in the Book of Acts. I do not believe in a separate baptism in the Holy Spirit with tongues as the sign, as Pentecostals do, but I do believe that God gives the gift of speaking/praying in unknown tongues to believers in Him and performs powerful miracles as a sign of the inbreaking of His Kingdom.

                                                         

Tomorrow, I’ll tell you why.

Comments

[John Stickley]

Great post, Alan. I'll give it a big old heartfelt Baptist AMEN. :)

[Keith Lucas]

PREACH ON BROTHER!

[Tim Sweatman]

Alan,

Nice historical summary. I'm looking forward to your subsequent posts on this subject.

[David Rogers]

I've been waiting for this ever since a few weeks ago when you let on you would eventually be posting more thoroughly on this topic. This is a great start! I will be closely following what you have to say in the coming days...

Great to hear the good news about Caelan as well!

Blessings,

David

[Strider]

I look forward to your next posts. I find very few true cesessionist in SBC life these days. Most pick and choose when it is comfortable to believe in miracles and when it is not. I have gone against advice and spoken openly when I am back home about the ways that God has miraculously worked among us overseas. Only one man has approached me afterward and said he disagreed with what I was saying. But then again that is one of the charactoristics of what you are saying isn't it? It is fine for most SBers to accept that the miraculous occurs out there somewhere but we know darn well that he doesn't do that here! Uh huh. I am pretty uncomfortable about telling God what he can and can not do. Keep writing Alan!

[Bryan Riley]

Well said. I look forward to more. My wife and I have committed to doing a study of the Holy Spirit in scripture, looking to the Word alone. I am absolutely a continualist and believe the Word clearly supports that, but I want to understand better what His word says about the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Perhaps we can discuss it at some point after we have done some of our study. Praise God for His love endures forever and praise Him that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever! May we always live to glorify and magnify His nature and character.

[GuyMuse]

A timely piece with far-reaching applications around the world. This is an uncomfortable subject for many of us, but one that needs to be brought to the forefront of dialogue. I thought you did an excellent job in introducing the subject and giving us a good background as to how we have come to the point where we are today. Looking forward to future posts on this subject!

[Tim Rogers]

Brother Alan,

Great post. I enjoyed your historical documentation nad analysis. I agree with you on the analysis of Scriptural interpretation and how it was relegated to a science. I too believe that we have lost some of what Scripture tells us by this purley scientific study.

Having said that, I know that you know that I know we do not agree completely.:>)

While I do struggle with my view (you term it a cessassionist view, I term it a view of continualist, but no proof of some gifts continuing based on what I have seen described as those gifts) falling into this scientific category, I do believe that God does not want us to just be open to every wind of doctrine. You refer to yourself this way; "I am a continualist. I believe that God still gives supernatural gifts to His children and that He is working today, just as He worked in the 1st Century Church in the Book of Acts. I do not believe in a separate baptism in the Holy Spirit with tongues as the sign," which we know has been established as a Pentecostal Doctrine. However, one cannot read the Scripture as you have described a reading of the sacred text, without seeing a separate incident of a Holy Spirit Baptism. The Book of Acts makes it clear that the a separate incident of the Holy Spirit's Baptism resulted in a gift of tongues.

Maybe you will deal with this in another post and I look forward to that time. Keep up the great research.

Blessings,
Tim

[Alan Cross]

Tim,

Something interesting about Pentecostal conclusions: at the point of defining their own doctrine of the Holy Spirit and Spirit baptism, they use a very technical and systematic approach. They do with the tongues verses what the Church of Christ does with the baptism verses to prove baptismal regeneration. They chop Acts up into case studies on how the Holy Spirit was poured out and they ascribe an initial evidence of speaking in tongues to each example (Acts 2,8,10,19). A narrative reading of Acts, which is what I am proposing, will lead you to see that there is no uniform evidence of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit other that an infilling with the power of God (Acts 1:5-8).

The Holy Spirit indwells all believers and we receive the Holy Spirit at the point that we receive salvation. However, we are all filled with the Holy Spirit in varying degrees based on our prayers and availability to the Lord. This infilling with the power of the Holy Spirit, that is available to all Christians everyday (Acts 4:31; Ephesians 5:18), is what I believe Pentecostals experience. Because of the teaching of tongues being the sign of a separate baptism in the Holy Spirit, many have concluded that they have received this based on the experience of speaking in tongues. I do not believe that the Bible supports this and it is a classic case of letting your experience dictate your understanding of Scripture.

In the same way, those who disavow tongues and the miraculous gifts of the Spirit because they have not experienced them are guilty of the same thing. They too, make an argument from a LACK of experience instead of from God's Word. They then buttress their argument with choppy hermenuetics that does violence to the contextual meaning of the Scripture. That is my opinion, however.

[Stephen Pruett]

This is a great post, and I am not surprised having seen your posts on other blogs. Have you heard the recent reports that brain scans of people speaking in tongues indicate that activity in the speech centers in the frontal lobes of the brain is greatly diminished? The scienctists concluded that the physical evidence is consistent with the perception of these people that they are not in direct volitional control of what they are speaking (http://www.world-science.net/othernews/061101_tongues.htm). I am a scientist and a Christian, so I find these results interesting on many levels. I do not like using science to "prove" faith, because science is entirely provisional and revisable. However, it is interesting that there is scientific support indicating that tongue speaking is not acting. If nothing else, it should make people who state that they are certain that mordern manifestations of tongue speaking are not of God at least think more about the possibility that they are wrong. How this fits into your very interesting analysis of the philosophical underpinnings of different strands of Christianity has given me a headache, so I have resolved to follow Scarlett O'hara's advice and think about it tomorrow.

[Bart Barber]

Alan,

I think it inaccurate (at least with regard to myself but perhaps also with regard to many others) to suggest that anyone who thinks "hamantahahnehrnea" is not the same as the biblical phenomenon of speaking in tongues is necessarily someone who has completely rejected the supernatural and miraculous. I think you are reprinting caricature.

[David Rogers]

Bart,

Since you are "speaking in tongues" publicly here, I think I had better have a go at "interpreting." It looks like you are trying to say "I wanna have a hernia." :)