Where have all the miracles gone?

Thanks Briefing team; my wife and I grab whatever copies we can whenever we're in Australia. It's great reading, and alway thought-provoking. The article by John Woodhouse on miracles was well-argued and particularly relevent for our current situation. I was disappointed in one aspect though: there was a question that I think required evaluation: “Does God still use men as a means of performing miracles in a manner similar to that seen in the New Testament?”. This is, I think, one of the main differences between the views of modern evangelicals and the charismatic church. Thanks, and keep up the great work.

Peter Riley of China (28/04/2010)

Randy Clarke defines ‘soft cessationism’ by describing churches he once attended:

The pastors, churches, and congregations believed God could heal today. The Holy Spirit could, in his sovereignty, move in answer to prayer and heal the persons we prayed for as a congregation. There were no healing services …The soft cessationist belief held that gifts of healing no longer existed in the church, the office of healer no longer existed and tongues, prophecy, words of knowledge, working of miracles, had all ended.

John Woodhouse, in his essay ‘Where have all the miracles gone?’ (Briefing #379) seems to go close to this position. He does not lead us to “eagerly desire spiritual gifts” listed in 1 Corinthians 12:8-10, nor does he suggest a need for teaching or discipling in the use of these gifts, implying that they have ceased. It explains Mark Driscoll's diagnosis of Sydney evangelicals as ‘cessationists’.

This can be a contentious topic, I know—exacerbated through impersonal letter writing. Let me heed Ephesians 4:1-6.

Woodhouse quotes Jack Deere's claim that “The doctrine of cessationism originated in experience”. Deere argues that cessationists claim to reject the continuation of miracles on theological grounds, but that the real basis is experience—namely, their lack of it. Woodhouse later says, “And indeed, it is rare these days to find even unsubstantiated reports of miracles of the same order as the mighty works of the New Testament” (p. 18). How rare is “rare”? Heidi and Rolland Baker document countless contemporary miracles in Mozambique—the blind seeing, with milky irises clarifying to brown in front of them; the deaf hearing; and over a hundred cases of the dead raised. The fruit of these healings in remote tribal Muslim areas has resulted in the planting of more than 6000 churches. Brother Yun, in his autobiography The Heavenly Man, describes (among many powerful miracles) his miraculous escape from a Chinese high-security prison. I've read this account to my Sunday school class and Bible study group, then followed it with Peter's prison escape in Acts 12. They each marvelled at the parallels. In March this year at Castle Hill, Bill Johnson led a series of talks and healing meetings, with many people testifying to major healings.

I've been surprised by the ready availability and volume, diversity and detail of testimonies like these. Either there's a conspiracy of deception or delusion crossing continents and cultures, or Jack Deere has a point.

I agree with Woodhouse that we need to be discerning. I also appreciate his effort to hold the tension of the ‘now but not yet’. It's worth noting, though, that perhaps there's no symmetry between under-realized and over-realized eschatology. The latter is, by nature, visible because it involves excess (e.g. triumphalism, perfectionism, demonic or fleshly counterfeits), whereas the former is less obvious, being the absence of something (e.g. experience of God, manifestation of his power, fruit). The risks of over-realizing could, therefore, be misread as greater.

On page 20, Woodhouse writes, “God has neither promised to so act today …”. I think if you're going to make a statement like that, you're under some obligation to present the cessationist interpretation of John 14:11-12!

Thanks for taking up this important topic. May it not be your last word on miracles.

Mark Elkington of Lapstone NSW AUS (13/05/2010)

In the Up front section of the April 2010 Briefing, Sandy Grant asked what anniversaries evangelicals would be celebrating in 2010. One of his points was early planning.

Therefore, may I suggest that people get onto the idea early of next year (2011) as ‘The Year of the Bible’? 2011 heralds the 400th anniversary of the ‘Authorised Version’ of the Bible, which will be marked in various ways across the UK. There's a trick to be made somewhere here by evangelicals who are Bible people. Perhaps they need a Year of the Bible; surveys reveal that in all the churches, Bible reading is in sharp decline.

There are two UK initiatives I know of. One, which is a bit more heritage, institutional and top-down, is the 2011 Trust (www.2011trust.org). The other, which is more hands-on and local church-up, is Biblefresh (www.biblefresh.com), sponsored by very many Bible organizations and coordinated by the Evangelical Alliance. (A workbook is due out in May.)

I commend this opportunity to all ministers and local churches. It could shape and galvanize a whole year's program for a church and local community. It could stimulate networks of churches and even denominational structures to take the Bible seriously in church and nation.

We have had the Bible in English for well over 400 years. But we need another reformation to get it back into people's hands, minds and lives.

David Banting of Harold Wood, Essex, UK (13/05/2010)

I found John Woodhouse's article ‘Where have all the miracles gone?’ really helpful in pointing out the dangers of both extremes of Cessationism and Continuationism. My issue with it is that I don't recognize the cessationist view that is being outlined. I'm sure that I have a lot less understanding and experience than John Woodhouse, and I know that my reading on the topic has been very narrow. However, Richard B Gaffin Jr, for example, who would, I believe, consider himself to be a cessationist, does not seem to me to fit the view outlined in the article.

For example, Woodhouse says: “‘There are no divine miracles today’ is a dogma of Cessationsim” and that “Cessationism insists that miracles cannot happen”. This clearly implies that to hold a cessationist position, you have to believe that there are no divine miracles today and that they cannot happen. Gaffin, clarifying the debate in a footnote to his article in Ordained Servant, states that

Even less is the issue that all who hold to the cessation of gifts, like prophecy and tongues, do so because they are trapped in an Enlightenment, deistic mind-set that has no place for the direct, supernatural activity of God in creation or within believers.¹

Clearly he is distancing himself from this view, even though he holds a cessationist position. This seems to me to contradict Woodhouse's statements above.

Either I've misunderstood Gaffin, or he is not really a cessationist, or the view put forward in the article makes some over-generalizations that may be true of one proponent (i.e. Warfield, who is often quoted), but that are misleading about other, I think, credible cessationist positions.

¹ Gaffin, Richard B Jr, ‘Challenges of the Charismatic Movement to the Reformed Tradition, Part 2’, Ordained Servant, Oct 1998, 7:4, pp. 69. Part 2 of a paper delivered at the ICRC in Seoul, Korea, on October 20, 1997. Emphasis mine.

Adrian Taylor-Weekes of Bath, UK (14/05/2010)

My wife and I read John Woodhouse's article on Cessationism vs. Continuationism in #379 keenly. We found his treatment of the subject balanced and biblical, and could not fault his position.

On reflection, I found myself thinking that although many evangelical Christians may, along with Woodhouse, profess belief in the theoretical possibility that the more remarkable gifts may, from time to time, be manifest today, they nevertheless do not allow for the remarkable activity of the Holy Spirit in practice. We might call these people ‘practical cessationists’. They are a little like ‘practical atheists’—in other words, folk who profess belief in God, but live their lives as if he does not really exist.

A church may adhere to ‘practical Cessationism’ if, for instance, it never allows for a time of public prophesying in its Sunday meetings (with the requisite ‘weighing up’ of the prophesies, of course). This would apply to almost every one of the dozen or so churches I have ever visited, where meetings are tightly regulated and every aspect of the service is pre-determined and ‘risk-free’. You have to ask the question “Do the people really believe that the Holy Spirit may act in a special, ‘unnatural’ way?”

Perhaps (and this is just a guess) Mark Driscoll's criticism of Australian evangelicals (referred to by Woodhouse on page 11) may still have some validity because, although many of us have a space in our minds for the special working of the Spirit, that space never translates into actual reality, thus betraying the true nature of our deepest convictions—just as practical atheists are, more often than not, actual atheists.

Jereth Kok of Croydon North, VIC, AUS (14/05/2010)

Can I thank you very much for the clear and helpful article by John Woodhouse, ‘Where have all the miracles gone?’ (Briefing #379)? I personally found this very helpful for understanding both sides of the argument, and I appreciated John's biblical middle line.

One thing I would value is some exegetical input on two verses used by the continuationists that, to my surprise, were not mentioned in the article. The first is the last part of Mark's gospel (16:15-20), which suggests signs will accompany the preaching. (Even if this was not written by Mark, it surely demonstrates the beliefs of the early church.) The second and more significant one is John 14:12 where Jesus says, “Truly, truly [or ‘verily, verily’, underlining the importance of the statement], I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father”. Here, the context is the coming of the Spirit and the prayerful obedience of those who believe, and it is clearly not just about the apostles. This alone would suggest that Jesus was a continuationist! Please comment.

George Newton of Aldershot, UK (14/05/2010)