Now and then
Are Miraculous Gifts for Today? Four Views
Edited by Wayne Grudem
IVP. 368 pp. £8.99
ISBN 0 85111 179 3
This is an important book. Four respected and articulate evangelical scholars (Richard B. Gaffin, Robert L. Saucy, C. Samuel Storms and Douglas A. Oss) offer carefully argued and eirenically expressed defences of their own views, interact with each of the others' viewpoints and offer a concluding reflection. Wayne Grudem helpfully sets the scene and offers a few concluding remarks.
The four views are the cessationist, (Dr. Gaffin), 'Open but Cautious' view (Dr. Saucy), 'Third Wave' (Dr. Storms) and Pentecostal (Dr. Oss). Several features characterise the volume. Each contributor demonstrates a desire to genuinely understand the other views and to eschew the fabrication of 'straw men'. In particular, the cessationist view advanced by Gaffin is not caricatured as it so frequently is in other literature of this sort. Equally manifest is a deep and genuine desire to be faithful to Scripture and this is accompanied by careful and scholarly (but readable) exegesis, exposition and application. A particular strength of several contributions (not least that of Dr. Oss) is the attempt to root discussion in a biblical theology.
No scholar changed his position as a result of the exercise! What is, however, obvious is that their commitment to this task and to one another as brothers in Christ did lead to a growing understanding of one another's viewpoint and to a recognition (expressed by Saucy) that 'the church must continue to study communally the remaining issues' (p.341, his emphasis).
In fact, the authors discovered a great deal of common ground. Thus Grudem, in his final summing up, can refer to a common commitment to Scripture, to fellowship in Christ, the importance of experiencing a personal relationship to Christ and 'a measure of agreement on specific details about miracles and the work of the Spirit' (p.342). Correctly, he notes that all agreed that 'God does heal and work miracles today' (ad.loc.), that the Holy Spirit does guide his people today, that he does empower for specific ministries and does 'bring to mind specific things' (p.343).
Substantial (and not so substantial) differences, however, still remain, including the levels of expectation one might have of the miraculous, to what extent seeking the miraculous is appropriate today, what terminology should be used to label certain phenomena, the main purpose of miracles, whether there is a single post-conversion empowering of the Spirit and to what extent the NT church's experience should be a model for today.
Fundamental to the different conclusions reached are the emphases of Storms and Oss on continuity between the apostolic and post-apostolic era, and that of Gaffin and Saucy that, in fact, a degree of discontinuity must be given full recognition. Interestingly, was the fact that although, superficially, the two 'sides' of the argument were Gaffin and Saucy in 'opposition' to Storms and Oss, the situation was rather more complex. It might be truer to suggest that Gaffin and Oss offered thesis and antithesis (a fact clearly recognised by Oss who made it clear that his theological paradigm was irreconcilable with that of Gaffin) while the other two sought to offer some form of synthesis. This is not to suggest that the synthesis is, necessarily, likely to provide the true answer. The impression remains, however, that Saucy and Storms were both trying to acknowledge that element of truth that lay in the 'opposite' viewpoint and to work out a comprehensive theology of the miraculous which avoided pressing the Scriptural data into a framework that effectively ignored the strengths and biblical emphases of the other.
A stimulating book which should encourage genuine, thoughtful, eirenical and, above all, biblical debate on this subject.
Dr. Stephen Dray,
Moorlands College
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