Monday, February 14, 2005
Warnock Strikes Again
It is not my intention to make this blog an "all Adrian, all the time" thing, but dang, the boy just keeps good conversations going. If you visit Adrian Warnock's blog, it is obvious that he spent the weekend immersed in Charles Spurgeon. As someone who has posted Spurgeon himself, I must confess that is not a bad way to spent the weekend.
One of the questions Adrian poses is "Was Spurgeon a charismatic?" Truthfully, I don't care that much -- Spurgeon was a great preacher and worth listening to, even if he thought that he was attended to at night by little green men from an alien world. But Adrian is really using this question as a jumping off point to get us to read some older posts he did on Cessation and Charismaticism.
This issue is one I need to set aside the better part of a day to prepare a really meaningful post about. I discussed some of it over the weekend.
There is something I would like to say on the matter now, however. "Charismatic" is a very loaded term. In my thinking it refers not to those that believe the Holy Spirit is active in revealing God in the present day, but rather, it refers to those that believe either Pentecostal theology concerning the baptism of the Holy Spirit, or those with an unhealthy focus on the more miraculous manifestations of the Spirit, often to the exclusion or dismissal of those with less spectacular gifting.
As Adrian is using the word, I would qualify as a charismatic, and so, at least as far as I have read would he. I, for one would prefer a different label. I am not a cessationist, but I am not what I commonly think of as a charismatic. As I said before, I am more of an Elijah-at-Horeb-still-small-voice manifestation of the spirit kind of guy. What's a good word for that?
One of the questions Adrian poses is "Was Spurgeon a charismatic?" Truthfully, I don't care that much -- Spurgeon was a great preacher and worth listening to, even if he thought that he was attended to at night by little green men from an alien world. But Adrian is really using this question as a jumping off point to get us to read some older posts he did on Cessation and Charismaticism.
This issue is one I need to set aside the better part of a day to prepare a really meaningful post about. I discussed some of it over the weekend.
There is something I would like to say on the matter now, however. "Charismatic" is a very loaded term. In my thinking it refers not to those that believe the Holy Spirit is active in revealing God in the present day, but rather, it refers to those that believe either Pentecostal theology concerning the baptism of the Holy Spirit, or those with an unhealthy focus on the more miraculous manifestations of the Spirit, often to the exclusion or dismissal of those with less spectacular gifting.
As Adrian is using the word, I would qualify as a charismatic, and so, at least as far as I have read would he. I, for one would prefer a different label. I am not a cessationist, but I am not what I commonly think of as a charismatic. As I said before, I am more of an Elijah-at-Horeb-still-small-voice manifestation of the spirit kind of guy. What's a good word for that?
