Blogotional

The Reformed/Charismatic debate kind of petered out over the weekend when I was minimally posting at best, but I want to catch up on some stuff and comment. No one picked up on my challenge to deal with healing so I won't even bother with tongues, which I find the most problematic of this gifts.

This whole thing started with Pyromaniac bagging, rightly, on false prophecy. he has refused to pick up the gauntlet on other related matters. He has continued to pursue prophecy misuses here and here. Adrian Warnock has given some limited responses here and here.

Billoblog has some interesting input in the discussion, but by far, the best post I found over the weekend was this one from Between Two Worlds recommending a book on limited charismaticism.

Barring any major development, this will likely be my final entry in the discussion. I really think that Pyromanic is trying to repolarize a discussion that was coming together nicely, and frankly, I think that is unforunate.

I think that fact speaks volumes about the inevitable tension that arises between continuationism and biblical discernment. In effect, what the continuationists seem to be saying is: "Yeah, yeah, OK, false prophecies are bad. Over-gullibility is a problem. We can manage those things. They are incidental issues. The real danger (or a far greater danger) lies in the opposite direction."

That has been the knee-jerk response of many Reformed continuationists who have commented here and on their own blogs. As if a strict commitment to the absolute sufficiency of Scripture posed a greater and more immediate threat to the church in our generation than the horde of false prophets that are rising up everywhere.

Nothing less than the Reformation principle of sola Scriptura is at stake here, and I suggest that anyone who truly thinks cessationism poses a greater threat than the proliferation of false prophecies has already effectively abandoned the formal principle of the Reformation.

I had planned a post on the necessity of good teaching and maturity as necessary for handling the gifts in a proper way, building the kind of foundation that avoids the false prophecies and other misuse of the gifts that Phil slams so hard here, but not now. Phil grossly overstates here and then commits a grevious error based on that overstatement.

Let me ask you, what primary principle of reformed thought is not under severe fire today? "Grace alone" is grossly abused as a permission to do pretty much anything in the church, as an example. "Election" is viewed as somehow grossly distasteful. We are surrounded by heresy and ugliness. All those problems matter. Besides I have not heard anyone on the reformed continuist side argue against "a strict commitment to the absolute sufficiency of Scripture"

But so does squelching the Holy Spirit. I agree with Phil when he says

1. There is a monstrous potential for evil in blithely assuming that all your private imaginations are supernatural promptings that come to you as divine revelations from the Holy Spirit.
2. Those who order their lives by such an assumption are being willfully gullible and sinfully superstitious, and they have no biblical warrant for the practice. In fact, such a mindset is hostile to the biblical concept of discernment.
3. Claiming God told you something when in fact He did not is a profoundly wicked kind of presumption whose fruits are always evil. In fact, it was a capital crime under Moses' law.
4. That kind of presumption, paired with a declining concern about biblical doctrine, has unleashed an untold amount of mischief in the visible church over the past century.

I agree completely and have agrued such solidly in this blog, but the correct answer is not to insist that we have to hold the Holy Spirit somehow in check to avoid such things. I think the miraculous gifts manifest themselves far, far more rarely than the claims of almost all that practice them, but I cannot bring myself to squelch the actual working of the Spirit by being so cynical that I will never admit to it.

Do we respond to the prosperity gospel by ceasing fundraising in our own congregations? Do we respond to cheap grace by refusing to preach the doctrine of grace?

If you ask me what is wrong in mainstream Christianity these days, it is a failure to see the real action of the Holy Spirit. In general, we are so worried about the danger of false Holy Spirit practice that we keep Him out on the sidewalk and don't let Him in. I am convinced that the key to "saving the church" lies in rediscovering the Spirit. I am convinced that we have to name Him, and pray to Him, and invite His direct action. We have to learn to see Him in the miraculous and the regular -- but see Him we MUST.

Somehow, mainstream Christians have to learn how to embrace the passion and the committment so evident, even if grossly misguided in some of our Pentecostal friends. Tirades like that of Phil DO NOT HELP.

Phil chastises us to discernment - and indeed discernment is necessary, but discernment should be rooted in grace, not condemnation. Rather than tirades,we need correction. Rather than denouncement, we need teaching. Discernment can be taught and should be taught, so that we can feel free not to constrain the Spirit but to lose Him on the church, so that we can see Him in the ordinary and the miraculous, and everywhere in between.

And now, I must close with yet another humorous comment on the whole topic. It is a comment from my post yesterday on televangelists. It is the ultimate comment on discernment and it comes from Jollyblogger.

I was at the Shepherd's conference at Grace Community a couple of years ago. Someone asked how you could identify a false teacher. R. C. Sproul answered - "by their hair,"

Now there is denouncement couched in grace.