While not
all Reformed Protestants are cessationists, the vast majority are. Indeed, we
see this in chapter 1 paragraph 6 of the Westminster Confession of Faith’s
formulation of Sola Scriptura:
The whole counsel of God, concerning all
things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either
expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequences may be
deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether
by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men. Nevertheless we
acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for
the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the Word; and that
there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, and government of
the Church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by
the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of
the Word, which are always to be observed.
Commenting
on Calvin’s flavour of cessationism, William DeArteaga (who himself is an
advocate for continuationism) wrote:
Calvin’s Development of Radical Cessationism
Martin Luther was the first of the Reformers
to resurrect Augustine’s cessationist theory. However, it was John Calvin
(1509-1564), the great systematic theologian and Protestant leader of Geneva,
Switzerland, who converted cessationism from a debatable theory into a basic
doctrine (2). Calvin argued many times in his writing against any continued ministry of healing or of
the miraculous:
But that gift of healing, like the rest of
the miracles, which the Lord willed to be brought forth for a time, has vanished
away in order to make the new preaching of the gospel marvelous forever. Therefore,
even if we grant to the full that anointing [for the sick] was a sacrament of
those powers which were then administered by the hands of the apostles, it has
nothing to do with us, to whom the administering of such powers has not been
committed (Institutes, book I, chap.
xix, sect. 18).
As part of his cessationism Calvin ridiculed
the Catholic sacrament of extreme unction as a useless, man-invented ritual:
And for what greater reason do they [the
Catholics] make a sacrament out of this unction than out of all the other
symbols mentioned to us in Scripture? . . . Why is not clay made of spittle and
dust a sacrament? But the others (they reply) were individual examples, while
this was commanded by James. That is, James spoke for that same time when the
church still enjoyed such a blessing of God. Indeed, they affirm that the same
force is still in their anointing, but we experience otherwise . . .
James wishes all sick persons to be anointed (James
5:14); these fellows [the Catholic priests] smear with their grease not the
sick but half-dead corpses when they are already drawing their last breath, or
(as they say), in extremis. If in
their sacrament they have a powerful medicine with which to alleviate the agony
of diseases, or at least to bring some comfort to the soul, it is cruel of them
never to heal in time. James would have the sick man anointed by the elders of
the church; these men allow only a priestling as anointer. (Ibid., sects. 19
and 21)
In regard to the other gifts of the Spirit,
such as prophecy and the gifts of the word of wisdom and knowledge, Calvin was
again negative in the absolute. Actually, there is not a single direct
statement about the gifts of the Spirit in his Institutes. Instead he used the phrase “evident powers” of the
Spirit to indicate the original apostolic gifts described in Acts. What he had
to say about the cessation of the evident powers is gleaned from his discussion
of the Catholic sacrament of confirmation, where a Catholic bishop lays hands
on the person for the intention of receiving the gifts of the Spirit:
If this ministry which the apostles then
carried out still remained in the church, the laying on of hands would also
have to be kept. But since that grace has ceased to be given, what purpose does
the laying on of hands serve? . . . In what respect, then, will these actors
[Catholic bishops] say they are following the apostles? They should have
brought it about with the laying on of hands, in order that the evident power
of the Holy Spirit might be immediately expressed. This they do not accomplish.
(Ibid., sect. 6)
These passages reflect both the truth and
tragedy of the Reformation. Alvin’s critical observations are true, and today
even Catholic theologians would agree with many of them. Yet Calvin could not
see past the problem of the Bible’s original intention. There is no evidence
that Calvin ever attempted a simply laying on of hands or an anointing with oil
in faith for healing. He assumed the theology of cessationism to be correct,
and from that untested assumption developed his doctrine. That doctrine doomed
Protestantism to a long period of healing powerlessness.
Radical Cessationism
Calvin extended cessationism from Augustine’s
early understanding that healing and miracles were no longer operative to a
broader concept that practically all spiritual experiences were also not proper
for the current age. This expansion happened for several reasons. Calvin was
anxious that Protestantism not follow the Catholic mystical tradition of
spirituality. Like healing payer, Catholic contemplative prayer had become
debased to a point where many monks and nuns were confusing the frequency of
spiritual experiences with progress in the spiritual life (similar to the
Gnostic acceptance of all spiritual experience as good). Combined with the
asceticism of the Desert Fathers this produced a form of spirituality that at
times lacked discernment and even common sense . . At the same time Alvin accepted
the contemporary Catholic philosophy pertaining to the mind and soul. This was
the Christian materialism of St. Thomas Aquinas which stressed the role of the five
physical senses . . . In deference to Catholic mystical tradition St. Thomas
had accepted the spiritual abilities (faculties) of the soul and the “graces of
prayer” (Catholic terminology for the gifts of the Spirit). However, those
graces were given little attention in St. Thomas’s writings . . . On the
contrary, Calvin felt no need to give legitimacy to the spiritual giftings of
individuals or the Catholic understanding of the graces of prayer. Calvin’s
purposes of discrediting the Catholic mystical tradition were better served by completely
denying the spiritual gifts and accepting the five senses and reason as the
only reliable way to know truth.
Thus for Calvin, the only manner in which one
could discern God’s will and voice was in the reading of Scripture and through
the inner witness of the spirit. In fact, practically the only spiritual experience
permitted to Christians by Calvin’s cessationism was the experience of being
converted. Such experiences as revelatory dreams and visions were reserved for
biblical persona only.
By default, the conversion experience became
the center of the Christian’s life. Witnessing about it became an item of major
importance in Calvinist and eventually evangelical churches. This led in its
extreme form to the tragic developments in New England Puritanism, where church
membership became smaller and smaller because conversion testimonies had to fit
the mold of the traditional conviction-salvation experience . . . Calvin’s
expanded cessationism unintentionally destroyed the capacity for spiritual
discernment in Reformed Protestantism. That is because discernment implies that
some spiritual experiences (visions, prophecies and so forth) can be from the
Lord, whereas others may be from demonic or fleshly sources. In Reformed
theology no present-day spiritual experiences such as visions or prophecies
would be of the Lord, so that such experiences were either delusions
(enthusiasm) or entrapments from the devil. One can even further appreciate the
originality of Jonathan Edwards, who invented the first Protestant literature
on discernment as a by-product of his defense of the Awakening.
The tragedy of Calvin’s attempt to reformed
medieval Catholicism was that in negating Catholic quasi-Gnosticism (the
overestimation of spiritual experiences), he hell into quasi-Pharisaism (the
premature rejection of most spiritual experiences). (William DeArteaga,
Quenching the Spirit: Examining Centuries of Opposition to the Moving of the
Holy Spirit [Lake Mary, Fla.: Creation House, 1992], 80-83)
Such of this
opposition to the post-apostolic continuation of the spiritual gifts informed,
in part, the Reformed opposition to modern (general) revelation and their
formulations of sola scriptura. For a sustained critique, see:
On the topic
of anointing the sick and James 5, see:
For a book
on the gifts of the spirit in this dispensation, with a focus on prophetic
dreams, see:
Mary Jane
Woodger, Kenneth L. Alford, and Craig K. Manscill, Dreams
as Revelations
