5.

The question of modern charismatic gifts

We can now integrate modern charismatic gifts into our general framework. In both charismatic and noncharismatic circles, various kinds of gifts function through various processes. It is unnecessary to note them all. The more controversial kinds of gifts need our attention, in particular the verbal gifts that charismatic groups classify as instances of a word of knowledge, a word of wisdom, prophecy, discerning spirits, tongues, and interpretation of tongues.

Those in the charismatic movement believe that the gifts of prophecy, discernment of spirits, and tongues continue in the church today, while others argue that they ceased with the ministry of the apostles and the completion of special revelation.9 I maintain that modern charismatic gifts are analogous to inspired apostolic gifts. Hence it may or may not be appropriate to call them by the same terms as those used in the New Testament. Rather than get bogged down about disputes about terminology, I move directly to a consideration of what the modern gifts actually do within the framework of Diagram 3.

In terms of our earlier classification, all these controversial gifts are nondiscursive processes. They are controversial because their basis is more obscure and more private. That is, the basis is nondiscursive, “intuitive.”

By contrast, discursive processes are uncontroversial, because they appeal to the Bible. Of course, discursive processes are still fallible. Doctrinally sound preachers may preach the truth from ????ure. But heretical preachers may try to spread their heresy. And heretics may be all the more dangerous if they can give plausible arguments that appeal to ????ure to support their views. Hence, discursive processes must still be checked by ????ure as the final standard. But everyone in Bible-believing circles is comfortable with such processes in principle, because they acknowledge the need for expounding the Bible.

Nondiscursive processes give the problems. Some charismatics may think that because the basis is more personal, more private, more intuitive, it is also more “directly” the work of the Spirit, hence less subject to error than the other processes. But we have already observed that such thinking is clearly in error. The Gospel of Luke is no less inspired than Revelation. Moreover, even spectacular, seemingly “miraculous” cases may arise from counterfeit sources (2 Thess 2:9).

Thus, according to our general theology of spiritual gifts, discursive and nondiscursive gifts simply stand alongside all other gifts, with no particular superiority. Like all gifts, they are to be checked for conformity to ????ure (1 Cor 14:37-38).

But should these nondiscursive cases even be called “gifts” of the Holy Spirit? We have already observed from Ps 94:10, Job 32:8, and Prov 2:6 that the Holy Spirit as Creator and Sustainer of human life gives people all the knowledge that they have. So in a broad sense these are “gifts.” Moreover, by labeling these works “gifts” we do not attribute to them infallibility. A gift in preaching, though it be genuine, does not give the modern preacher infallibility, because the gift operates in the midst of human sin and bias; the same is true for nondiscursive gifts.

Many noncharismatics still have problems with nondiscursive processes because, they would claim, they are innately uncheckable. If no one can tell whether they conform to ????ure, then they threaten to disturb the exclusive role that the Bible plays in the church’s foundation.

But not every instance of nondiscursive processes is equally a problem. For the purpose of this article we temporarily set aside tongues, because its content is not easy to analyze rationally and discursively. For the other verbal gifts, we need to consider separately teaching content, circumstantial content, and applicatory content.

Teaching content is like an extemporaneous sermon without a text. If the process is nondiscursive, the speaker is not consciously aware of texts on which the speech is based. But even if the speaker is not consciously aware of texts, the listeners may become conscious of texts that are relevant. If the content is biblical, such texts do exist. If the content is not biblical, then the speech is not to be believed. Hence, this type of content is testable. Anyone who knows the Bible well, or knows the gospel, can see whether the message matches what he knows. Many “prophecies” in charismatic circles string together biblical phraseology. It is not too hard to see their generally biblical character.

It is, of course, a little easier to ????uate a textually based sermon. The text is explicit, and the listeners have immediate access to it. They can compare the text with what the preacher says. But there are still difficulties. A clever heretic may use a text plausibly. And a nonheretical preacher may find himself drifting away from the text by design or on the spur of the moment. Discernment is therefore necessary in ????uating teaching content, no matter whether the process involved was discursive or nondiscursive.

Note also that people differ in the way that they exercise discernment. For some people, discernment may usually be discursive. In their minds they remember a biblical text that conforms with what the preacher says or else contradicts it. Other people may discern nondiscursively. They “feel” that what the preacher is saying is right or wrong. They cannot point to a specific text. But they just know, perhaps on the basis of having assimilated and digested a large amount of the Bible. Their digested knowledge now works in their hearts “subconsciously” to give them discernment. The thought spontaneously rises in their mind, “Something is wrong with this message.”

Since the Holy Spirit is at work in the lives of believers, we may also describe all these processes as Spirit-worked. Of course the Holy Spirit works in ways that we cannot fathom. But he also works through means, such as our knowledge of ????ure, a knowledge that he himself has produced (1 Cor 2:10-16). From the human side people use primarily discursive or nondiscursive processes. But this human de????ion does not contradict the fact that the Spirit is working. (Again, think of the example of the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Revelation.)

Different types of people help one another. Occasionally a person who discerns discursively may not immediately be able to think of a relevant biblical text to use in ????uating a message. But someone else feels nondiscursively that something is wrong. Then the person with discursive discernment takes more time, and finally a text does come to mind that helps judge the truth of the speaker’s message.

6.

Circumstantial content received through nondiscursive processes

So far, we have discussed teaching content. This kind of content is the easiest. Let us now consider the second kind of content, namely, circumstantial content. In this category we have statements like the following. In an American church someone says, “I feel that our sister church in Shanghai is spiritually struggling and undergoing attack.” During a sermon Charles H. “Spurgeon pointed to the gallery and said, ‘Young man, the gloves in your pocket are not paid for.’ ”10 On another occasion Spurgeon said, “There is a man sitting there who is a shoemaker; he keeps his shop open on Sundays; it was open last Sabbath morning. He took ninepence, and there was fourpence profit on it: his soul is sold to Satan for fourpence!”11 A woman in Switzerland saw a vision of a lecture hall in Essex, in which Os Guinness was about to lecture. A strange girl was about to disrupt the meeting.12 All these are cases of circumstantial content obtained through nondiscursive processes.

This kind of content undoubtedly causes the most difficulty. But the difficulties diminish if we realize that this information is not very different in content from information obtained through obvious channels. For example, in principle the church in Shanghai might have been able to put in a long-distance phone call to the brothers and sisters in the United States. Spurgeon could have obtained the information (but did not) from the person who stole the gloves or from the person who opened his shop on Sunday. Os Guinness could have put in a long distance call to the woman in Switzerland. The kind of information involved is not striking. What is striking is that the information came through nondiscursive processes. There was no obvious long-distance call or other scientifically analyzable means that could account for how the information came to the recipient.

In terms of Diagram 3, such information is a product of spiritual processes operating on the level of the ordinary believer (level 4), or conceivably on the level of “special gifts” (level 3). If the canon is complete, there is no way that this information belongs on level 1 or level 2. Moreover, there is no practical reason why the information needs to belong to level 1 or level 2. What matters is that the recipients received information, not that the information had some special status. Hence, I would argue that information of this kind belongs to the same broad category as information received through long-distance telephone calls, newspaper news, and direct observation. It is simply information about the world, not more, not less. In principle, it is no more a “threat” to the sufficiency of ????ure than is information about whether I brushed my teeth after breakfast!13

I would guess that people have gotten into trouble over nondiscursive processes because of the lack of obvious means. In cases involving nondiscursive processes, there was no long-distance call. Hence, the reasoning goes, the person in question must have received the information “directly” from God. Hence the information must be directly inspired and carry full divine authority. This last conclusion creates the most painful difficulty. For if the conclusion is true, the information received appears to compete with the authority of the Bible. Cessationists feel that they must rule out this type of process completely, in order to protect the sufficiency and exclusivity of biblical authority. Noncessationists, by contrast, feel pressure to ???? to such information uncritically, contrary to the fallible character of modern sources.

Both sides need to cool down. The crucial error is to confuse the involvement of God with lack of involvement of human creatureliness and human sin, and in addition to confuse involvement of God with full divine authority in the product. God is in a sense “directly” involved in the growth of grass and blowing breezes: “he makes grass grow for the cattle” (Ps 104:14). But growing grass is not inspired. Moreover, even if people are not consciously aware of any sources for their thoughts or words or visions, there still are such sources and influences from aspects of their personality. Leaders in charismatic circles are well aware that people may speak prophecies or tongues “in the flesh.” That is, leaders know that some nondiscursive processes are psychologically motivated.14

Dreams are a good example. Most Westerners today regard most dreams as basically a product of the “unconscious” or of uncontrolled imagination. Presumably there were many mundane, ordinary dreams in the world of New Testament times as well. But some dreams were revelatory (Matt 1:20-24). Acts 10:10 suggests that God may use a normal human experience such as hunger as one means through which he brings about an appropriate vision or dream.

Analogously in modern times we may postulate that a dream may be simultaneously a product of certain personal psychological predispositions, and a means used by God to bring to a person’s attention some kind of circumstantial content. For example, suppose that, just before going to bed, Sally and her husband talk about their Aunt Emma, who is driving a considerable distance to and from a special meeting that night. That very night, Sally has an unusually powerful, striking dream in which Aunt Emma suddenly dies in an car accident. Sally then wakes up. She decides to pray for Aunt Emma and those close to her. Then she goes back to sleep. The next day she hears that Aunt Emma was in an accident the same night on which Sally prayed. The car was badly damaged, but fortunately Aunt Emma was not injured. The dream was not infallible or an addition to the Bible. Rather, the dream was a fallible psychological experience that God used to bring Sally to pray at a crucial time.

The crucial examples of Luke and the Book of Revelation comes back to instruct us. There is no intrinsically superior spirituality belonging to either discursive processes (Luke) or nondiscursive processes (Revelation). In the cases where the Holy Spirit produced the canon, both kinds of processes were inspired. But in other cases both kinds of processes may be noninspired. Both may in principle be influenced by demons (2 Tim 2:24-26; Luke 8:32; Acts 16:17-18); both may be of fallible and confused character, in accordance with the general fallibility of human beings. Since inspiration has ceased with the completion of the canon, modern sources are all fallible.

Suppose, then, that we grant that modern nondiscursive processes are all fallible. They are no threat in principle to the unique authority of the Bible. Yet many people may still find some difficulty in knowing how to deal with them. How can the validity of the content be checked out? If we give any credence to nondiscursive processes, will they not in practice be uncritically received, because they cannot be directly checked by ????ure?

We have seen that when the content is teaching content or doctrinally oriented content, the listeners can check the content by comparing it with ????ure. But how can circumstantial content be checked out? Suppose someone claims through nondiscursive processes that a young man has not payed for his gloves. Are we to believe the claim or not?

Situations like these are not as difficult as we might suppose. Many times it does not much matter what we believe. We are free to remain in doubt. And we are well advised to remain in doubt, by virtue of the fallibility of all modern nondiscursive processes. In the cases from the life of Spurgeon, the congregation gets an illustration of the general lesson that all the assembled people are being addressed by God concerning their particular needs and sins. If Spurgeon is right and there is a young man with stolen gloves, the young man knows it and gets addressed very particularly. If Spurgeon is wrong (which he may be in his fallibility), there is no one who is so addressed, but the general lesson for the whole congregation remains.

Moreover, we can pray for a situation without knowing for certain whether the situation is exactly what we think it is. We can pray for the young man, knowing that God knows what the situation actually is. We can pray for the sister church in Shanghai.

Of course, the dangers of abuse are never far away. Spurgeon spoke to a large congregation, so that it would presumably be impossible for people to know exactly whom Spurgeon had in mind; even he may not have known the individual. But if a speaker were to claim that a particular person has sinned, the result may be slander, which is clearly antibiblical (Prov 10:18; Col 3:8; 1 Pet 2:1; etc.). The speaker would then need to be rebuked.

Some people may still feel some discomfort about their uncertainty. They may reason as follows. When we get a long-distance call from Shanghai, we know what is happening there. But when we have a nondiscursive process we do not know for sure what is happening. So how are we supposed to respond?

But in actuality we are accustomed in many types of situation to respond to doubtful information. After all, a long-distance call is not infallible either. There may be static on the line. The person on the other end of the line may have misunderstood the situation in Shanghai. Or he may be lying about the situation. Or he may have gone insane. Or the voice we hear may be faked by an impersonator. In spite of these problems of fallibility, it is possible to respond properly to a long-distance call.

Consider another angle. If the person on the other end of a telephone call has sometimes proved unreliable in the past, we discount what he says to some degree. Likewise, if someone’s nondiscursive processes have been unreliable, we discount what he says in proportion to his unreliability. If we have no previous experience with a person’s nondiscursive processes, we discount what he says in more or less the way that we would do with any apparently well-meaning stranger. Much of this practice of estimating reliability is common in all human relationships. We are really not dealing with something that has no precedent in human experience.

7.

Predictions

There are still a few kinds of circumstantial content that need special attention. One of these is the area of prediction. What if someone predicts the time when Christ will come back? Then we can safely ignore the prediction, because it contradicts ????ure (Mark 13:32-37; Acts 1:7). We should admonish the person doing the predicting, using as our basis the biblical warnings against date setting.

But now take another case. What if someone says that part of California will sink into the sea by such-and-such a date? If we live in California, should we pack our bags and leave? The first rule in such cases must be, as always, to remember that all modern human prediction is fallible. What do we do with weather predictions or economic forecasts? We pay some attention to them, but we know that they often prove wrong, or partly wrong and partly right.

Some people may object that weather predictions and economic predictions are not really a parallel case, because they are discursive rather than nondiscursive in character. Certainly, the people who make the predictions do so by inference. But ordinary people who judge the credibility of the predictions almost never know the details of modern meteorological or economic theories, nor do they know the details of the data on which the theories operate in order to yield a specific forecast. In actual practice we judge credibility by common human means. Has this sort of thing proved reliable in the past? Has the person shown himself to be a reliable person in this area? Is this prediction the kind of thing that it seems likely that God would do?

Our general conclusion remains the same. Undoubtedly the Holy Spirit can work through nondiscursive processes to produce human predictions. He can also work through discursive processes to produce human predictions. Neither is intrinsically more spiritual than the other, and neither is intrinsically more fallible than the other. Neither kind of prediction is an extra divine word demanding submissive believing response, but is simply putative information about future circumstances, to be ????uated as we would ????uate any other prediction.

Once we realize that predictions based on nondiscursive processes are not in some special “divine” category, and are just as fallible as predictions based on discursive processes, we are ready to practice sanity. We neither totally reject nor credulously accept these predictions.