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Did Protestant Reformers Believe in Spiritual Gifts? Luther, Calvin, Wesley & More · The Remnant Radio's Podcast

• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Hey guys, welcome back to the wonderful world of Remnant Radio.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Joshua Lewis, and in this program, I'm going to attempt to answer a question.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I would like to continue to do this.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you're out there and you have a question theological, maybe it's pertaining to spiritual gifts or some other theological category, and you want the remnant host to kind of weigh in on that, uh, please type out your question, but make sure that you write question and then put a colon down so that when I'm in the back end of my YouTube channel, I can find your questions quickly and try to address them as soon as they come in.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Tom Perkins asks a question.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: He watched the Responding to Cessationist documentary part one, where we respond to the Cessationist movie and we give it a review and engage with the arguments step by step.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: He went on recently, it's an older video, but he went on recently and asked this question a few days ago.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, a few days ago from when I'm taping this video.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: He says, first, since I'm assuming the majority of continuationists in the Charismatic Church are Protestant, are there any early Reformation scholars, like Knox, Calvin, Wesley, Luther, etc., or councils that wrote or made doctrinal statements that agree or promote the continuationism of miraculous?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I would technically argue they're all miraculous spiritual gifts.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Second, are there any seminaries that agree with and teach y'all's doctrinal position on continuation?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And if so, why does it seem so very few, if any, major leaders within the movement have made the scholarly investment to pursue an MDIV or a PhD from said seminary?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Third, do you think that a lack of denominational oversight and accountability within the major charismatic congregations had anything to do with the length, the breadth, the depth of some of the scandals y'all have discussed?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Last, are those that agree with continuation doctrinal beliefs primarily Arminian versus Calvinist in their approach to justification and sanctification?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Tom, thank you so much for your question.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of assume, even in the way that the question is worded, that you're probably more on the cessationist side.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Perfectly fine.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the water's warm, come on over.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but if you want to stay there, you can you can be a cessationist and watch the channel.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: We hope you enjoy the content.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Since you asked the question in four parts, I'll attempt to answer the question in four parts, starting with the very first question about Protestant reformers.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now, everyone is going to have a different definition of what constitutes as early Protestant reformers.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of quibbling over the details, I'll just use the timeline we recommended.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: You defined the window as Luther, born 1483, to Wesley, who died 1791.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: So let's stay within that window.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: When you bring up those dates, the first thing that comes to my mind is the Scottish Reformation and the Scottish Reformers.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, their stories alone give quite a bit of detail about supernatural gifts that took place in their day.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: George Wishert is credited for uh publicly uh predicting Cardinal Beaton's death from the pulpit, which would soon come to pass afterward.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Concerning John Knox, uh James Melville called him the prophet and apostle of our nation, noting that Knox predicted the fate of uh Kircaldi of Grange in a specific, verifiable detail, which was then recorded amongst those who heard.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Concerning John Welsh, there is an account of him raising a man from the dead after physicians pronounced him dead.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Welsh prayed, the man recovered.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Rutherford himself calls Welsh the heavenly prophetical and apostolic man of God.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Robert Bruce's biographer, named Robert Fleming, documented healings from epilepsy, mental illness, and insisting that these accounts were attested by sober and grave Christians.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Then there was John Davison, who foretold political and ecclesiastical events before they ended up happening.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, these are not theological statements per se.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: However, we do have a robust record here in the stories of John Howie's Scotsworthies that was originally published in 1775.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to read up on some of these stories, that's the best place to look.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: A little bit more of that in a moment.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's what's most relevant about your question about doctrinal statements.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's a man by the name of Samuel Rutherford, who's one of the architects for the Westminster Confession itself, and he didn't just tolerate prophetic claims among the covenanters.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: He developed a four-part test for testing and evaluating these prophetic words.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: First, they must not contradict scripture.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Second, they must come from godly people, speaking of their morals and their character.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: The person must not claim that their word carries the same authority as scripture.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And four, they must not compel obedience to these prophetic words.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that's not just a charismatic running loose.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's a Westminster divine doing careful pastoral theological conclusion about weighing and testing prophecy.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's the right response, not eliminating it altogether.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: From the primary sources on all of this, again, the single best place is John Howie's Scotsworthies.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: It documents these men's, their names, their dates, and the corroborating eyewitnesses.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: One note of caution, though, is to seek an unedited version.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: I've been told, and don't know this to be a fact, but I've been told that Banner of Truth, the version that they publish, actually omits a significant uh amount of miraculous deeds that appear in the original.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's worthy of tracking down a fuller text that isn't cutting out some of those uh passages before you kind of come to any kind of conclusions regarding the Scotsworthies.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, to question two, uh, you stated, second, are there any seminaries that agree with and teach y'all's doctrinal position on continuation?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And again, we would say continuationism, but neither here nor there.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And if so, why does it seem so very few, if any, of the major leaders within the movement have made scholarly investments to pursue an MDIV or a PhD from any seminary?
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: To answer the question about seminaries, I would absolutely answer, yeah, absolutely.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the premise that continuationism lacks institutional academic representation is simply not accurate.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh here's a short list.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: You got Asbury Theological Seminary, Regent University School of Divinity, Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, Vanguard University, Fuller Theological Seminary, then you have uh Southeastern University School of Divinity.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, these aren't like a fringe list, those are actually accredited institution providing MDIVs, PhDs to graduates who hold to continuationist positions.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now, will any of these seminaries agree with me on every aspect of continuationism?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Almost certainly not.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and that's probably true of everyone, not just continuationist.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: A Reformed Baptist is going to struggle to find a seminary that will agree with him on every point of ecclesiology and soteriology and eschatology simultaneously.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a continuationist problem.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's just the nature of theological education.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to bump into individuals who really disagree with you on various things.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: But now to part two of your question, why don't any of your leaders pursue these degrees?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, to answer that second part of the question is like, why aren't our leaders pursuing education?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think that they are.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: If the implication is that charismatics and continuationist ministries have sometimes operated with a suspicion of formal theological training, I think historically that's probably a fair critique in many cases, and it's worthy uh of us owning that as part of our own history.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but credentialed, academically rigorous leadership, I think matters in the body of Christ.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the origins of the kind of charismatic Pentecostal anti-intellectualism does go way back.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and most of these denominations really find their origins back in something called the Azusa Street Revival.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: This revival caused quite a bit of speculation and even slander towards those inside the movement.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Many mainline denominations called those in the revival mentally ill and at other times even called them demonized.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Those at Azusa actually saw this as like a rebirth of these uneducated fishermen of Jesus' day, going to battle with the religiously elite of their day in the Pharisees.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what actually caused the anti-intellectualism inside of the Pentecostal movement that would one day become the larger charismatic movement.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that anti-intellectualism was rooted in the early space because here are the educated who can't do the miracles, and we're over here.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: We are uneducated, but we can do the stiff.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't know why they didn't have that accent.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, some of this still continues.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I think by and large, the more and more uh in the Pentecostal charismatic streams have actually been pursuing higher education.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Additionally, there are many scholars who are theologically continuationist, but don't actually have origins in the cultural trappings of the Pentecostal Charismatic stream.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: We actually have massive representation of continuationist in theological seminaries.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: We have the giants, right?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: You've got the Craig Keener's and the JP Morelins, the D.A.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Carsons, the Gordon V's.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: And one might argue, Josh, that's only a few names.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: You only gave me a few seminaries earlier.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Fair enough.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Here is a list of continuationist scholars that come from Dr.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Craig Keener's book, Spiritual Hermeneutics.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: I had to remove quite a few of the names because the list was just so massive.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: This list includes uh evangelism, missiology, and global Christianity, practical theology covering subjects like communication, homiletics, leadership studies, and liturgical studies, reconciliation studies, I don't even know what that is, and spiritual formation.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Then you've got a list in here about the religious history or church history, and you've got ethics, theology, and philosophy, and then the largest list found in New Testament studies.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: The original list includes 163 names from 90 different institutions.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: And these are just the folks that Craig Keener knows about.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: He admits in this list that as a continuationist scholar, it would be even more robust.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: But because his field is specifically in New Testament studies, you'll notice that the list on New Testament studies is larger than the rest because that is his field of study, and he's most familiar with scholars in that space.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: One more point that I think we need to mention.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Most serious seminaries aren't hiring faculty based on whether they're continuationist or cessationist.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, most seminaries are gonna be kind of open to this position.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Consider like Biola or Talbot, just as an example.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the faculty is gonna be continuationist, the other cessationist.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Good institutions are gonna expose their students to strong arguments across the orthodox positions in order so they, the students, can work that out.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's actually a healthy means uh of what it looks like in Christian formation and discipleship, rigorously training people on both sides of the aisle and allowing them to kind of vet those ideas on their own.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: So when you asked specifically for continuationist institutions, that would be institutions that have official statements about the gifts being pro-gift, but most institutions aren't going to pigeonhole themselves like that.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to be open to both sides of the aisle.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: I would actually say it would be harder to find institutions that require cessationism for those who attend their schools because they're actually open to those positions.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: So a little bit different.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the third part of your question states as such, says third, do you think that the lack of denominational oversight and accountability within the major charismatic congregations had anything to do with the length and breadth and depth of some of the scandals y'all have discussed?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, a lack of accountability has contributed to scandal, but denominational membership isn't automatically the fix.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Look at what denominational oversight has actually produced in several major bodies.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: The Episcopal Church, the PC USA, or the uh, I think that's Presbyterian Church USA, the United Methodist Church, the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, these didn't resist moral drift because of their denominational structures.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: In many cases, the denominational machinery actually accelerated the drift, uh, because whoever's at the top actually controls the whole structure of the denomination.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: So oversight cuts both ways.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: On the other side, there are bodies like the Missouri Synod, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the Global Methodist Church denominations, that their denomination actually functions in a meaningful accountability structure, removing ministers, disciplining churches, appointing new leaders after moral failures.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Some of this structure isn't inherently useless, right?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: It actually depends entirely on the people who are running uh that ministry, if they're God fearing or not, which I think points us to the real issue as far as I can tell, which is ecclesiology.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: If a local church has biblically qualified elders, genuinely mutually submitted elders, and real checks and balances operating on the local level, that structure will actually catch and address moral failures failures far better than a kind of distant denominational body who stands by as man shifts happen depending on who holds office in that denomination.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: The problem isn't primarily the absence of denominational oversight, it's the absence of robust biblical church governance on the ground level.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: And again, that's just my own personal opinion.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think the model I would point to that's causing a lot of corruption is the CEO pastor model.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, one man at the top that's functionally accountable to no one with celebrity status reinforcing isolation.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that really creates a recipe for disaster.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not just a charismatic problem specifically, it's a Western church problem.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: When you begin to isolate yourself and you've got the celebrity status, it produces narcissistic tendencies.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: And these narcissistic tendencies left unchecked is the environment where we see the recipe for the exact kind of scandals that we're talking about.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And this model, again, shows up in Reformed Baptist circles, non-denominational circles, and anywhere popularity and celebrity is allowed to survive.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is also not a new problem.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think throughout church history, it's actually littered with these kinds of moral failures from every tradition and every century and every ecclesiastical structure.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Framing it as a continuationist problem uh doesn't actually help to serve and bring solutions to that problem.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't, I don't think you're doing this in your question.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to make sure I get out ahead of it and say, look, there are moral failures taking place everywhere.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think even in those places the denomination is necessarily the fix.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think the answer is a particular denominational label.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's again God-fearing elders with genuine accountability and a willingness to actually apply discipline when it costs something.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Let's close off looking at your final question.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: You write, last, are those that agree with continuationism doctrine that these beliefs primarily Arminian versus Calvinist in their approach to justification and sanctification?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Tom, this is actually a really interesting question, and the data gives a more uh complicated answer than most people expect.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I actually had to look this up myself because if I had to assume uh that continuationists are going to be closely tied to Arminianism opposed to that of Calvinism, but that doesn't actually hold up demographically and theologically within the data.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: Among charismatics and Pentecostal denominations, they're generally viewed as coming from a Wesleyan holiness tradition that would be inherently Arminian.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: So think of denominations like the Assemblies of God, the Vineyard, the Foursquare, and the Church of God Cleveland.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I actually disagree with these categories.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: The Vineyard Church was actually pastored by a Calvinistic man and had a lot of Calvinistic leaders inside of the Vineyard Church.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think it's considered Pentecostal.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um they would be much more on the charismatic stream.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't believe in initial physical evidence, but regardless, uh, the Assemblies of God, the Vineyard Church, the Fours Square, and the Church of God Cleveland were actually done a comparison, uh theological comparison, looking at their beliefs on soteriology.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: A full 31% of pastored identified as Reformed or Calvinistic in this Barna research.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's a significant number inside of a tradition that most people assume is ultimately Arminian.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, more broadly, the new Calvinist movement uh is broadly continuationist.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, think of John Piper, Wayne Grutom, D.A.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Carson, they're all continuationists.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: And even Mark Driscoll, who no longer claims to be a Calvinist and says he never was a Calvinist, you and I both know that he once did, has gone as far to describe cessationism as worldliness.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: One helpful contrast is that classical Calvinism is largely cessationist.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: New Calvinism or Neo-Calvinism, as seen in Grutom and Piper and Matt Chandler, leans continuationist.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, in short, continuationism is not primarily an Arminian position.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: It spans both camps.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: What you're really looking at is a position that cuts across the Calvinist-Arminian divide entirely.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: What is actually part of what makes this all pretty interesting.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: The question on whether the gifts continue is largely independent from the question of justification or election.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: People on both sides of the suteriology debate have landed on both sides of the aisle when it comes to the gifts.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: The clearer way to frame it is to say that cessationism leans reformed, but continuationism leans Armenian.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: But again, I bet it's close.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: Probably.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, Tom, I hope this video is helpful to you.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're out there, you enjoyed the video, and maybe you even have a question about something Tom asked, or uh you have an additional question for me, I'd encourage you to put it down in the comments below.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure to write out the word question with a colon.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be able to find it in my search on the back end.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: Guys, thank you so much for tuning into this episode.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: I hope it was helpful.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see you next time.