Many “New Calvinists” are under the impression that their theology is “charismatic” and not “cessationist” because they would say “yes and amen” to a few confessional statements regarding the Holy Spirit (“We believe that all of the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit remain active in the Church until the day of the Lord’s return”, etc). I’m glad for such confessions — they’re a good place to begin a conversation. However, I worry that in many such churches the conversation is short-circuiting in one or more fairly predictable ways. Let me point out one that I’ve only recently put my finger on.
It’s possible to read Oliver Twist, and to be able to correctly answer a battery of questions about all of the horrible injustices and cruelties visited upon poor Oliver, but to completely miss that Dickens is commenting on the economic brutality of 19th century British industrialism. This is why theologians make a distinction between exegesis (the correct reading of the words in a particular text) and hermeneutics (the interpretation of those texts in the context of the whole of Scripture) — to remind us to look not only for trees, but for the forests they belong to. This is the first short-circuit of many would-be charismatic New Calvinists: they are content to be exegetical charismatics, but the hermeneutic which they apply to the remainder of Scripture — including many texts which refer to the Spirit directly — is still dominated by the categories and principles of cessationism.
For example, an old-school cessationist will insist that the New Testament’s exhortations to “prophesy” really mean to “carefully prepare a sermon, and then deliver it publicly”. In spite of centuries of prestigious written tradition backing it up, such a reading is hopelessly unfaithful to the text, so a New Calvinist rightly concedes that Scripture says what it says, that there must be some sort of place for prophecy (an unpremeditated utterance under divine unction) in the believer’s life. But he moves on to 1 Cor 14:26-31 and is at a loss as to its application, because he has taken the command for an “orderly” Church gathering below (1 Cor 14:32) and read into it ideas from Congregationalism, or Baptist tradition, or the regulatory order of his Presbytery, which esteem formal reverence and despise anything which smacks of spontaneity. Because he has not yet kneaded the idea of prophecy as corporate ministry into the dough of his thinking, he fails to recognize that the Lord gives us prophecy for an essential and integral part of orderly worship, and not as an exception to it or violation of it.
This is often a throughgoing problem with our New Testament scholarship and preaching. Cessationist tradition has taught us to treat “The Spirit” as a gloss for the Bible, or for self-discipline, or for education, or for the ordinances of the church, or for perseverance, or for maturity of mind or heart; but if we confess that the Holy Spirit is a person, then every time we encounter a reference to Him in Scripture we must immediately think of Him as “Him” — a personality, a will, a doer, an agent, an active participant. I found this exercise illuminating: read Romans 8 or Ephesians 5, and every time you come across a reference to “the Spirit” write down everything you’ve been told (in sermons, bible studies, books, blogs, etc) that is referring to. If you’ve been around the Christian block a few times in virtually any protestant circles (charismatics included, sadly), you will be shocked by just how many times and in how many ways you’ve been told to substitute some instrument, action, technique, idea, or inscrutable truism for the Spirit Himself as our constant companion, helper, and sanctifier.
And all of this is not to say that I’ve arrived at a correct pneumatology, by the way. This is not a true/false criterion, it’s a journey of discovery and a discipline of learning and experience that, if all goes well, will span the rest of our earthly lives. This is just a brother pointing out a stumbling block in the hopes of helping others clear it.
