The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Help with Tongues

I am well aware of how charismatics cite quotations from church history in order to affirm their belief in tongues and other signs and wonders type gifts. However, like I was saying in one of my earlier posts, no one is necessarily disagreeing with them. There were quasi-Christian groups that involved themselves with mysticism that supposedly manifested spiritual gifts. The problem is that those groups were severely unorthodox. They had a warped Christian theology and many of the earlier Church fathers wrote against such groups. In fact, I would suggest that the citations yor friend offers from Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian are not necessarily positive affirmations for the continual use of tongues and miracles by Christians, but are rather condemnations of those false Christians who claim a believer must show forth these gifts in order to be spiritual.

The early writings of Church fathers are used by practically every wacky religious group as proof for that particular wacky religious group's beliefs. Mormons regularly cite church fathers for the purposes of affirming their blasphemous doctrine that God was once a man. The question to simply ask is this: are those citations in context? What is the author originally intending to address? I would say the same about the other quotes your friend provides. I would again point out the Charles Finney, John Wesley and his buds, and the Quakers (of all things!)are not credible sources for the establishment of Christian orthodoxy with regards to spiritual gifts, because they had deplorable theology. Finney was Pelagian, Wesley a perfectionist, and the Quakers were misreably goofed up to the point of denying the biblical doctrine of God's eternal wrath.

Don't be persuaded by a bunch of random quotations that are not tethered to any meaningful context. The burden of proof is upon your charismatic friends to demonstrate at least 6 things I can name off the top of my head:

1) Is their convictions concerning their interpretation of gifts affirmed by a proper reading of scripture?

2) Are manifestation gifts necessary for meaningful spirituality?

3) Why are they necessary in worship when the gifts were specifically designed for service?

4) Why are these manifestation gifts primarily present in Arminian oriented denominations like the AOGs and Vineyard type fellowships?

5) Why are these miraculous sign gifts, like radical healings, never done in a public arena? This is one real sticking point with me. I always hear about these stories of some dead person being restored to life, people having severed limbs restored, and other fable like stories, but none of them are ever verifiable. These kind of stories are like the UFO stories you hear on Art Bell's radio show. When Christ and the apostles did miracles, it was before an unbelieving crowd of witnesses. They weren't having healing services that were only taking place at the end of a service in the closed, controlled environment of a Church for the benefit of Christians only. The healings were verifiable and witnessed by great crowds.

6) Again, where in Church History did any orthodox denominations practice spiritual gifts as a regular part of their Church life? In all honesty, the urban legend like stories of Roman Catholic missionaries and other strange spiritual mystics like Francis of Assi, that can never be verified, really don't count as a witness to the reality of a continuation of gifts.

Fred