What you have done is help me out with your highlighting. You say that all the things that will pass away use the same word. Very interesting that tongues ceasing is a different word! I see this as supporting the view that tongues ceasing was viewed as somehow different than all the rest. Maybe that difference would be that tongues served its purpose and became useless before prophecy and knowledge.

An interpretation must be one that was intelligible to the original recipients. Fair enough I think. How does that apply here since the meaning of his words was obvious? Love endures forever. Gifts of prophecy and knowledge will pass away and tongues will cease. How was this unintelligible to them?

The way that I see the tongues issue is as follows. Paul said they would cease. They in fact historically did. Now the burden of proof is on the Pentecostal to prove that this new outpouring that looks nothing like the original is valid!

The Pentecostals sought to revive tongues in the beginning so they could get away with less missionary training (Charles Fox Parham in Kansas). They sought to recieve the biblical gift in the way it oprated in Acts, but they were so strongly desiring the experience that when the mystical tongues of false religion came instead they accepted that just as happily as if it were the real thing. It is still the case in Pentecostal experience that one must seek the gift. They teach you to turn off your mind and even to "prime the pump" by babbling. Pure mysticism! Did Peter "prime the pump" before His sermon or did the Spirit just work in His own way?

It is true that the view that tongues have ceased is somewhat open for debate. Philologos brings up a few references of tongues at work in the first couple hundred years. There were also heretical movements reviving it after the 1700's. I think that one must take that debate and then couple it with the debate of what the gift of tongues actually was. No one has spoken the gift of languages as Peter did since the early church. All claims in the Pentecostal movement to have actually done this are unsubstatiated (just like those stories of seeing Jesus and raising the dead). To say that mystical babbling has existed since Babylon is probably a very true statement. It has moved into fringe groups of the church several times in history. These accounts do not add up to the biblical gift of tongues.

Even if it were possible that somehow they have not ceased and the Spirit has simply chosen to keep the gift from us for nearly 2 millenia and now He wants to pour it back out I would expect to see the biblical gift and people moved to use it within biblical constraints. We in fact see nothing even close to this in the current Pentecostal movement. We see the abuses taught and the real purposes untaught. Paul was not encouraging the Corinthians in ICOR 14 to use the gift to edify themselves- He was rebuking them! He just finished the greatest work on love ever recorded and then attacked them for their abuse of the showy gifts to puff themselves up rather than edify the church. The fact that no gift was given for the edification of the gifted person is clear in Scripture. They are all for edification of the church and building up of each other. If Paul's assessment of prophecy being above tongues is correct as well as his rhetorical question implying that not all speak in tongues, then why the modern doctrine? If you get the baptism of the Spirit and speak in tongues and someone else speaks prophecies is not the latter better? If not all speak in tongues then how did this doctrine start? By a man who taught many false things (Charles Fox Parham). His other belief was that total sanctification was possible on earth after such an experience. Show me a single modern Pentecostal living in perfect holiness and I might convert to your beliefs.

nobody wrote I think that in your search for a scripture to back up cessationism you missed ICor 13:8. It establishes the fact that tongues will at some point permanently cease (pauo).

We need to see the verse in its whole context.

1Cor 13:8-11 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

The emboldened words are different translations of the verb katargeO which I posted on the Word Studies some time ago. For a consistent interpretation we would have to give a consistent translation, particularly when they are in the same sentence. Be careful what you conclude about ‘prophecies’ because the same fate is predicted of ‘knowledge’. I never yet met a cessationist who believed that ‘knowledge’ had already become redundant ( a valid translation for katargeO btw).

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Ron Bailey

nobody wrote There is no evidence of tongues in the period following the NT and by the time of Chrysostom and Augustine the gift was so far gone and obscure that they only knew of it what was in Acts and ICor.

nobody
a couple of comments.
First. There is an axiom in the study of history that 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence'. We have to be very cautious about 'arguments from silence'. One of the chief spoils of victory is that you get to write the history! Most of our knowledge of church history comes from hostile witnesses; the state church of Christendom. Besides which there are sporadic references to supernatural gifts in much early chuch history.

Clement of Rome (died c.96), and Ignatius (c.35-c.107) document the continued operation of spiritual gifts among average Christians.

Irenaeus of Lyon (c.130-202) describes charismatic gifts, especially prophecy, in his church in southern Gaul (modern France), warning against Gnostics who fabricate the gifts to win the naive.

Tertullian (c.160-c.225) and the Montanist "New Prophets" (whose condemnations as heretics has recently been questioned) practice healing, prophecy, and tongues.

Second. It is also an axiom of biblical exegesis that, other than in the case of predictive prophecy, an interpretation must be one that was intelligable to the original recipients. An interpretation cannot mean what it could never have meant to the Corinthians. I am presuming in this that you hold that the 'canon of scripture' is the perfect thing that would come? But this interpretation could have had no meaning to the original Corinthians. They would have had no concept of 'canon' nor is there any indication elsewhere in scripture that one day 'the canon' would be 'closed'.

Yes, I do believe the canon is now closed because I see that the original witnesses who were the guarantee of authenticity have now passed on; John being the last and with the Johanine contribution there is no more 'scripture' that could be authenticated by those who were authorised to authenticate it.

However, to conclude, your exegesis of this chapter stands on very shaky ground, arguments from silence and an hermeneutic that could never have been understood by the original readers.

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Ron Bailey

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Ron Halverson

hi nobody
I think our webmaster has shuffled the postings for us. Certainly makes for some interesting discussions. :-)

you wrote What you have done is help me out with your highlighting. You say that all the things that will pass away use the same word. Very interesting that tongues ceasing is a different word! I see this as supporting the view that tongues ceasing was viewed as somehow different than all the rest. Maybe that difference would be that tongues served its purpose and became useless before prophecy and knowledge.
It doesn't say 'prophecy' but 'prophecies'; this is a reference to the kind of 'prophecy' found elsewhere in this same letter, and on that basis would you say 'knowledge' has now passed away?

you wrote An interpretation must be one that was intelligible to the original recipients. Fair enough I think. How does that apply here since the meaning of his words was obvious? Love endures forever. Gifts of prophecy and knowledge will pass away and tongues will cease. How was this unintelligible to them?
Not the passing away but the arrival. How could they possibly have thought that the 'perfect' which would come would mean the closing of the canon?

you wrote The way that I see the tongues issue is as follows. Paul said they would cease. They in fact historically did. Now the burden of proof is on the Pentecostal to prove that this new outpouring that looks nothing like the original is valid!
I am not a Pentecostal, but you will be aware that for many centuries the truth of justification by faith seems to have dropped out of the picture too. Its absence in the records does not mean that folks were not experiencing the blessing. I repeat, absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence.

The Pentecostals sought to revive tongues in the beginning so they could get away with less missionary training (Charles Fox Parham in Kansas). They sought to recieve the biblical gift in the way it oprated in Acts, but they were so strongly desiring the experience that when the mystical tongues of false religion came instead they accepted that just as happily as if it were the real thing. It is still the case in Pentecostal experience that one must seek the gift. They teach you to turn off your mind and even to "prime the pump" by babbling. Pure mysticism! Did Peter "prime the pump" before His sermon or did the Spirit just work in His own way?
It just is not true that Pentecostals sought to revive tongues as an alternative to missionary training.

It is true that the view that tongues have ceased is somewhat open for debate. Philologos brings up a few references of tongues at work in the first couple hundred years. There were also heretical movements reviving it after the 1700's. I think that one must take that debate and then couple it with the debate of what the gift of tongues actually was. No one has spoken the gift of languages as Peter did since the early church. All claims in the Pentecostal movement to have actually done this are unsubstatiated (just like those stories of seeing Jesus and raising the dead). To say that mystical babbling has existed since Babylon is probably a very true statement. It has moved into fringe groups of the church several times in history. These accounts do not add up to the biblical gift of tongues.
Peter did not 'preach' in foreign languages. Read Acts 2 again. Almost certainly he preached in koine Greek, the lingua franca of the time, particularly in Galilee of Gentiles, his home turf. Those who recognised their mother tongues heard them 'praising God' as elsewhere in Acts.

Even if it were possible that somehow they have not ceased and the Spirit has simply chosen to keep the gift from us for nearly 2 millenia and now He wants to pour it back out I would expect to see the biblical gift and people moved to use it within biblical constraints. We in fact see nothing even close to this in the current Pentecostal movement. We see the abuses taught and the real purposes untaught. Paul was not encouraging the Corinthians in ICOR 14 to use the gift to edify themselves- He was rebuking them! He just finished the greatest work on love ever recorded and then attacked them for their abuse of the showy gifts to puff themselves up rather than edify the church.
The solution to abuse is not non-use but correct use. Paul is not attacking them, but putting the gifts into a context of submissive love. The problem with the Corinthian church was their individual self-centredness. Paul, himself, spoke with tongues more than any of them, but in the church the priority is the building up of the body not the individual. Someone who speaks in tongues edifies themselves, so says Paul. But the Corinthians were effectively denying the 'one body' by their egocentricity. Paul is correcting that.

The fact that no gift was given for the edification of the gifted person is clear in Scripture.
sorry don't understand this one.

They are all for edification of the church and building up of each other. If Paul's assessment of prophecy being above tongues is correct as well as his rhetorical question implying that not all speak in tongues, then why the modern doctrine? If you get the baptism of the Spirit and speak in tongues and someone else speaks prophecies is not the latter better? If not all speak in tongues then how did this doctrine start? By a man who taught many false things (Charles Fox Parham).
the key to interpreting these chapters is 'in the church'. In private devotions tongues edify the individual. I know some of Parham's doctrines. Luther taught justification by faith but was a rabid anti-semite.

His other belief was that total sanctification was possible on earth after such an experience. Show me a single modern Pentecostal living in perfect holiness and I might convert to your beliefs.
You have misread history here. It was the otherway around. The early Pentecostals came from a background of second blessing holiness. They already believed that had a experience to deal with 'the root of sin'. They still felt a lack of power and asked a foolish question. "What is the initial evidence of the baptism in the Spirit?" Ask a foolish question and you will get a foolish answer. It was their presupposition that there was "an initial evidence" that got them off on that trail.

As regards entire sanctification, the notion that God can keep us from falling, that He is able to save us to the uttermost, is a challenge to God's character and power, not the individuals themselves. We have an interesting list of speakers on sermondindex, among those who believe that God can empower us to "serve Him in holiness and righteous, all our days" we could list: Duncan Campbell, Leonard Ravenhill, Paris Reidhead, many others and even your humble servant! If we had their voices we could add George Fox, John Wesley, John Fletcher, William Booth, Barclay Buxton, Gypsy Smith, Paget Wilkes, Oswald Chambers, Thomas Cook, A B Simpson, Campbell Morgan, and many others.

In the words of a lovely Charles Wesley hymn... "let my lot be cast with them, the least of Jesus' witnesses.

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Ron Bailey

rookie stated

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Mike Brown

Hi sevenplacesforall:

Just a clarification, I didn't write that, "nobody" did.

In Christ
Jeff

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Jeff Marshalek

Oh, I'm sorry about that. There's so many people talking in this thread I just got it mixed up. Won't happen again

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Mike Brown

Philologos-

I wasn't there in 1900 so I can't give firsthand reports, but this idea that Parham was actually seeking human tongues for missions seems to appear many places. MacArthur would not put it in his book if he didn't have evidence and a quick internet search brings up many other sites claiming this same thing.

"Parham formulated the doctrine that tongues was the "Bible evidence" of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. He also taught that tongues was a supernatural impartation of human languages (xenolalia) for the purpose of world evangelization. Henceforth, he taught, missionaries need not study foreign languages since they would be able to preach in miraculous tongues all over the world. Armed with this new theology, Parham founded a church movement which he called the "Apostolic Faith" and began a whirlwind revival tour of the American middle west to promote his exciting new experience. "
http://www.fwselijah.com/Parham.htm

Early Pentecostals claimed the gift of tongues was not primarily the speaking of a heavenly language (glossalalia) but other human languages (xenolalia). The purpose? Early leader Charles Parham said, "I had felt for years that any missionary going to the foreign field should preach in the language of the natives, and that if God ever equipped his ministers in that way [by xenolalia], he could do it today." Though many anecdotes of xenolalia exist, none have been confirmed
http://www.ctlibrary.com/ch/1998/58/58h002.html

Parham formulated the doctrine that tongues was the "Bible evidence" of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. He also taught that tongues was a supernatural impartation of human languages (xenolalia) for the purpose of world evangelization.
http://www.iphc.org/docs/timeline/topeka.html



I know that internet sites aren't good historical references, but where there is this much smoke I'm sure one can find a fire. The claims of xenolalia still are told today by Pentecostals.

Hi nobody, you wrote in an earlier posting The Pentecostals sought to revive tongues in the beginning so they could get away with less missionary training (Charles Fox Parham in Kansas).

It was this statement that I was challenging, not that early Pentecostals claimed isolated evidence of tongues being recognised, or even that some hoped it would expedite missionary advance.

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Ron Bailey