Theology Unplugged: Why I Am/Not Charismatic, Part 17

Me and my wife eagerly look forward to the new podcast every week!!!

It is time for CMP and Sam to take all their salient points and arguments made to date; and then summarize them into a single length post!!!

CMP had a good point, I don’t hear any convincing argument for the normative case in Sam’s line of reasoning.

It’s quite obvious that verses like 1 Cor. 14:1 are merely regulative, not normative. They were not praying God to grant them the gift of prophecy in the absolute sense – they already had the gifts, just like people in Acts.

2 questions:

Sam says that you simply need to believe that gifts have continued, pray for it and expect it.

What then about former charismatics who genuinely believed that the gifts had continued, sincerely prayed and pursue the gifts for years and never received anything? Why would God withhold it from them if it is supposed to be normative/normal?

If it is normative, why are 99.99% of charismatic churches filled with blatant counterfeits? These people are all practicing continuationists, and yet God doesn’t seem to grant them genuine gifts – there’s something highly illogical there.

Why would their mind feel the need to create some counterfeits if genuine gifts are so easily available to everyone who believes?

Jonathan,

You wrote:

“If it is normative, why are 99.99% of charismatic churches filled with blatant counterfeits?”

Really? Isn’t this rhetoric a bit careless? How would you even begin to justify such an assertion? Have you been to or read reports of every charismatic church–in the world?

Such recklessness in argumentation makes it difficult to take your points seriously.

Ok, this is an overstatement, but I think you know what I mean by that…

I finally was able to listen to this TUP–another great episode. I think the fact that there was some genuine disagreement and a little “heat” (with love!) actually drew out some important points of distinction.

For Michael the issue is one of seeing church history (on this issue) through the lens of Acts 2, 10, and 19. People don’t need to “ask for it” because “God was just doing it.” (Interesting aside: in this Michael is arguing more like a classical Pentecostal since these are the same texts used to argue for their doctrine of subsequence of Spirit baptism!) For Sam 1 Cor. 12-14 is the paradigm and people need to seek for the various giftings. This is a helpful disagreement to be aware of because it influences how we interpret church history. Furthermore, it plays a part in how to assess Michael’s claims to be currently seeking the gifts. Michael seems to be waiting for the “majestic and amazing” to suddenly happen to him. This came out earlier in his post from Sept. 13, 2011 “My Amazing Feeling from the Lord This Morning.” http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2011/09/my-feeling-from-the-lord-this-morning/#comment-56520
In my comment #45 I challenged him on his notion of “methodological naturalism”:

” Are you saying that your default epistemic setting is “methodological naturalism?” If that is the case then this gets to the crux of the issue. It also explains why you continue to quest for the “thunder and fire” from God if you’re going to believe in an impression. You have raised up certain standards for an interactive relationship with God that may include an emotional component in answer to prayer. This are standards of the OT prophets–you want to see the “fire fall from heaven” or, at least, something that is so closed to any other explanation that it must be incapable of any other explanation. You will have to wrestle with whether you are using Scriptural standards here. Is “methodological naturalism” a standard you find in the Word of God?”

There may be at least two items which preclude Michael from genuine seeking in his own life and in seeing the phenomena in church history. (1) The epistemic standard of “methodological naturalism” and (2) the standard that only the “big and amazing” counts as genuine gifting. Here an analogy may be helpful. Michael wants the light switch that is either on or off. Whereas others are comfortable with a dimmer switch in which even lower level intensity manifestations are to be seen as in line with the giftings we see in Scripture.