Topic

Spiritual Gifts

Whether the miraculous gifts described in the New Testament, such as speaking in tongues, prophecy and healing, are still given to the church today.

History

Roots

Every Christian tradition agrees that the Holy Spirit gives gifts to believers for the good of the church. The dispute is over the more dramatic gifts in Paul’s lists: prophecy, tongues and their interpretation, healing and miracles (1 Corinthians 12:4–11). Paul treats these as normal in a congregation and tells the Corinthians to “earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy” (1 Corinthians 14:1). He also says that prophecy and tongues will cease “when the perfect comes” (1 Corinthians 13:8–10), which is where the argument over timing begins.

The second-century church still reported these gifts. Justin Martyr told a Jewish opponent that “the prophetical gifts remain with us, even to the present time” (Dialogue with Trypho 82, New Advent). Irenaeus wrote of “many brethren in the Church, who possess prophetic gifts, and who through the Spirit speak all kinds of languages” (Against Heresies 5.6.1, New Advent), and of Christians who prophesy, heal and cast out demons (2.32.4, New Advent).

The first crisis came with Montanism in Phrygia in the 170s. Montanus and the prophetesses Priscilla and Maximilla spoke in ecstatic oracles that claimed to carry the Paraclete’s own voice and to add new discipline to the church. Bishops in Asia Minor condemned them (Eusebius, Church History 5.16–18, New Advent). The episode left the Early Church wary of free prophecy and more reliant on bishops, creeds and the emerging canon to test claims.

Fading and redefinition

By the late fourth century, the Corinthian gifts were a puzzle. John Chrysostom opened his homily on 1 Corinthians 12 by admitting that “this whole place is very obscure,” because of “our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation, being such as then used to occur but now no longer take place” (Homily 29 on 1 Corinthians, New Advent). Augustine called the tongues of Pentecost “signs adapted to the time” that “passed away” (Homilies on 1 John 6.10, New Advent). Yet late in life he recorded dozens of healings in North Africa, many at martyrs’ shrines (City of God 22.8, New Advent), and in his Retractations (1.13.7) he qualified an earlier claim that miracles no longer happened.

That pairing set the medieval pattern. Tongues and congregational prophecy dropped out of ordinary church life, while healing and miracles were expected from saints and relics. Thomas Aquinas filed Paul’s list under “gratuitous graces” (gratiae gratis datae), given to some people for the benefit of others and distinct from the sanctifying grace that saves (Summa Theologiae I-II q.111 a.4, New Advent).

Reformation and cessation

The Reformers used a cessationist argument against Rome. John Calvin rejected extreme unction on the ground that the apostles’ gift of healing “was temporary” and “immediately ceased” (Institutes 4.19.19, CCEL). Catholic miracle claims, on this view, could not authenticate Catholic doctrine. Martin Luther faced the same question from the other side when the Zwickau prophets and radical reformers claimed direct revelation. His Against the Heavenly Prophets (1525) set the written word above any inner voice. The Westminster Confession (1646) made the point confessional: Scripture is necessary, “those former ways of God’s revealing his will unto his people being now ceased” (ch. 1.1).

The Enlightenment pushed further. Conyers Middleton’s Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers (1749, Archive.org) argued that no miracle reported after the apostles could be trusted, which embarrassed Protestants who still accepted the biblical ones. John Wesley answered him in a long letter that same year, defending the early church’s reports and refusing to rule out the gifts in principle (title and date only; not online in a source I could confirm). Wesley’s openness, and his doctrine of a second work of grace, fed the Holiness movement that later produced Pentecostalism.

Causes of the modern dispute

Scattered nineteenth-century outbreaks of tongues, such as in Edward Irving’s London congregation in 1831, stayed on the margins. The modern movement began on 1 January 1901 at Charles Parham’s Bible school in Topeka, Kansas, when Agnes Ozman spoke in tongues. Parham taught that tongues were the “initial evidence” of baptism in the Spirit. One of his students, William Seymour, carried that message to Los Angeles, where the Azusa Street Revival (1906–1909) drew crowds across racial lines and sent missionaries around the world. Denominations such as the Assemblies of God (1914) wrote initial evidence into their statements of faith.

Most established churches rejected it. B. B. Warfield’s Counterfeit Miracles (1918, Archive.org) gave cessationism its classic modern form, aimed at Catholic miracles, faith healers and the new tongues movement together.

Influence

The gifts then spread into the older churches. In 1960 Dennis Bennett, an Episcopal rector in Van Nuys, California, told his parish he had spoken in tongues, and the Charismatic renewal moved into mainline Protestantism. In 1967 students and staff at Duquesne University began the Catholic charismatic renewal. The Second Vatican Council had already taught that charisms, “whether they be the more outstanding or the more simple,” are to be received with thanksgiving, while their genuineness is judged by church leaders (Lumen Gentium 12, Vatican).

In the 1980s a “third wave” brought the gifts into Evangelical churches that rejected both the Pentecostal label and initial evidence. John Wimber, founder of the Vineyard movement, taught a course on signs and wonders at Fuller Seminary and wrote Power Evangelism (1986). Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity is now among the largest forms of the faith, especially in Africa, Latin America and Asia; Pew’s ten-country survey of “renewalists” (Spirit and Power, 2006, Pew) documents how central healing, prophecy and tongues are to their practice. The same growth produced the Prosperity Gospel, which tied faith and the Spirit’s power to health and wealth.

Key ideas and contributors

Cessationism: the gifts were the apostles’ credentials. Warfield argued that miraculous gifts were “the credentials of the Apostles,” given through their hands and dying out with those on whom they had laid hands (Counterfeit Miracles, Archive.org). Signs confirmed the first witnesses (Hebrews 2:3–4; 2 Corinthians 12:12).

Cessationism: revelation ended with the foundation. Richard Gaffin’s Perspectives on Pentecost (1979, P&R) shifted the argument from miracles to revelation. The church is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets” (Ephesians 2:20); a foundation is laid once. Prophecy and tongues were word gifts that carried revelation, and with the canon complete they ceased. Gaffin did not rest the case on reading “the perfect” in 1 Corinthians 13 as the completed Bible, a reading he and most scholars reject. John MacArthur gave the popular version in Charismatic Chaos (1992).

Continuationism: nothing in Scripture ends them. Continuationists argue that the New Testament never says the gifts will stop before Christ returns, that “the perfect” in 1 Corinthians 13:10 is the return of Christ, and that Pentecost fulfilled Joel’s promise for “the last days,” a period that is still running (Acts 2:17–18). D. A. Carson’s Showing the Spirit (1987) made the exegetical case from 1 Corinthians 12–14 while criticising Pentecostal practice.

Prophecy as fallible. Wayne Grudem’s The Gift of Prophecy in the New Testament and Today (1988) became the most influential continuationist argument. He distinguished the authoritative words of Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles from ordinary congregational prophecy, which he described as a human report of something God brings to mind. It can be mistaken, must be weighed (1 Thessalonians 5:20–21), and adds nothing to Scripture. This let continuationists hold to Sola Scriptura while welcoming prophecy.

Pentecostal Spirit baptism. Classical Pentecostals hold that baptism in the Spirit is a distinct experience after conversion, empowering believers for witness, with tongues as its initial physical evidence (Assemblies of God, Statement of Fundamental Truths, art. 8). Charismatics usually welcome the gifts without requiring tongues; third-wave writers fold Spirit baptism into conversion. The Pentecostal scholar Gordon Fee, in God’s Empowering Presence (1994), argued for the gifts from Paul while doubting that initial evidence could be proven exegetically.

Sacramental traditions. Roman Catholic teaching treats charisms as real gifts, ordinary and extraordinary, placed under the discernment of the hierarchy. Eastern Orthodox piety expects healing and prophetic insight among saints and elders but does not seek tongues as a normal Christian experience.

The positions were set side by side in Are Miraculous Gifts for Today? Four Views (1996), edited by Grudem, with Gaffin (cessationist), Robert Saucy (open but cautious), Sam Storms (third wave) and Douglas Oss (Pentecostal).

Key controversies

Do the texts say the gifts stop? Cessationists point to Ephesians 2:20, the confirming purpose of signs in Hebrews 2:3–4, and the way Paul’s later letters say little about miraculous gifts. Continuationists answer that a foundation argument applies to apostles, not to every prophet in every church, and that 1 Corinthians 13:8–12 puts the end of the gifts at the time when “we shall see face to face.”

Is modern prophecy the same gift? Grudem’s fallible prophecy is the key move, and critics on both sides attack it. Cessationists say the Bible knows no prophecy that can be wrong without the prophet being false (Deuteronomy 18:20–22). Some Pentecostals think it shrinks the gift. Failed predictions, such as the many 2020 prophecies of a Trump re-election, gave the objection a public test case.

Are modern tongues real languages? Acts 2 describes known languages. Most modern tongues are not identifiable languages, which cessationists take as proof they are a different phenomenon. Continuationists reply that Paul describes tongues addressed to God that no one understands without interpretation (1 Corinthians 14:2).

History and experience. Cessationists read the church’s history as showing the gifts disappeared after the apostles. Continuationists cite Justin, Irenaeus, Augustine’s healings and later revivals, and argue that decline reflected neglect, not God’s design. Former cessationist Jack Deere, once at Dallas Seminary, argued in Surprised by the Power of the Spirit (1993) that cessationism rests on experience of the gifts’ absence more than on Scripture. Craig Keener’s two-volume Miracles (2011) collected modern eyewitness claims to rebut Humean scepticism.

Abuse and discernment. Critics point to faith healers, the Kansas City Prophets in the 1980s, the “Toronto Blessing” of 1994 with its holy laughter and animal noises (the Vineyard separated from the Toronto church in 1995), and the prosperity preaching of Kenneth Hagin and his heirs. MacArthur’s Strange Fire conference and book (2013) charged that the whole movement dishonours the Spirit. Michael Brown answered in Authentic Fire (2015), and many continuationists said MacArthur had condemned hundreds of millions of believers for the excesses of a few.

Initial evidence. Within the movement, the biggest dispute is whether every Spirit-baptised believer must speak in tongues. Paul’s rhetorical question “Do all speak with tongues?” (1 Corinthians 12:30) is the main text against it; Pentecostals answer that Paul means public tongues needing interpretation, not the private sign of Spirit baptism.

What remains unresolved

The sides agree more than their rhetoric suggests. Most cessationists believe God still heals in answer to prayer, and most continuationists agree that nothing a modern prophet says can bind the church like Scripture. The live question is whether the New Testament pattern of congregational prophecy, tongues and healing gifts is meant to be normal for the church now, and how a church should test claims to them. Cessationism risks explaining away what Paul told the church to desire. Continuationism risks letting unchecked revelation and spectacle displace the written word.