Tuesday, October 03, 2006
There is Cessasionism And Then There is Silly...
I am going to step into the middle of something I left behind long ago, and I will likely get trampled for it (it involves the Pyromaniacs) but here goes.
Recently Dan Phillips posted on prayer. I caught it when Brad responded with an excellent post on the efficacy of prayer. Dan got a lot of comments and dealt with some of them in which he made the startling admission that the Holy Spirit might actually act behind the scenes, which caused Adrian Warnock to mock him affectionately, and confessed that prayer was, in fact, effective.
In one sense, this strikes me as much ado about little. A careful reading of Dan's orginal post finds it not that far out of line - it merely does what the Pyromaniacs so often do - overstate their case for the sake of controversy.
But there are a one thing that I find interesting laying about in this discussion. In Dan's scriptural citations that God does not speak to us, he neglets numerous Old Testament accounts of direct converation between patriarchs and prophets and the Lord. He also neglects apostolic accounts of the same. I am forced to conclude that Dan's cessasionism extends not merely to the miraculous, but all the way to the ordinary - that in fact, God no longer acts in history in any fashion other than indirect providence. I think this is what Dan means with his now well mocked quotation
Here's why. We worship a supernatural Lord, by definition. He can do whatever He wants. When we restrict our belief structures to the purely, apparently, and exclusively natural, we deny at least part of the reality of that Lord. Providence is a mighty thing, and God does indeed act in this fashion, but He is not limited by it.
On a philosophical level, naturalism is the greatest enemy of Christianity today. It seems to me the generally reformed denial of God's supernatural action is a part of the slope down which we have travelled intellectually to give naturalism this much sway.
We need to exercise care when we state things. God may choose not to act supernaturally, but He most assuredly can, and I have to believe does at the points in history where it suits Him. To think anything less is to think of a lesser God and that is not something we can afford at this place in history.
Related Tags: naturalism, supernatural, miracles, prayer, divine intervention
Recently Dan Phillips posted on prayer. I caught it when Brad responded with an excellent post on the efficacy of prayer. Dan got a lot of comments and dealt with some of them in which he made the startling admission that the Holy Spirit might actually act behind the scenes, which caused Adrian Warnock to mock him affectionately, and confessed that prayer was, in fact, effective.
In one sense, this strikes me as much ado about little. A careful reading of Dan's orginal post finds it not that far out of line - it merely does what the Pyromaniacs so often do - overstate their case for the sake of controversy.
But there are a one thing that I find interesting laying about in this discussion. In Dan's scriptural citations that God does not speak to us, he neglets numerous Old Testament accounts of direct converation between patriarchs and prophets and the Lord. He also neglects apostolic accounts of the same. I am forced to conclude that Dan's cessasionism extends not merely to the miraculous, but all the way to the ordinary - that in fact, God no longer acts in history in any fashion other than indirect providence. I think this is what Dan means with his now well mocked quotation
I do think we can retrospectively and fallibly see times when our apparently-solitary thinking, planning, analysis, and decision-making had been directed by God from "behind the scenes," as it were.Can I personally claim to be conversant with the Almighty? No I can't. - Nor have I ever met anyone that I thought had a legitimate claim to it. Even those gifted with tongues that I know, claim not to know what they are saying, so it hardly qualifies as converstion. But that does not mean I don't think it can happen.
Here's why. We worship a supernatural Lord, by definition. He can do whatever He wants. When we restrict our belief structures to the purely, apparently, and exclusively natural, we deny at least part of the reality of that Lord. Providence is a mighty thing, and God does indeed act in this fashion, but He is not limited by it.
On a philosophical level, naturalism is the greatest enemy of Christianity today. It seems to me the generally reformed denial of God's supernatural action is a part of the slope down which we have travelled intellectually to give naturalism this much sway.
We need to exercise care when we state things. God may choose not to act supernaturally, but He most assuredly can, and I have to believe does at the points in history where it suits Him. To think anything less is to think of a lesser God and that is not something we can afford at this place in history.
Related Tags: naturalism, supernatural, miracles, prayer, divine intervention
