Friday, April 17, 2020

William DeArteaga on Calvin's Radical Cessationism


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