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You say you believe “the perfect” is the completion of Scripture. Would the Corinthians have understood this though? Was there any mention of a collection of New Testament books or a New Testament canon anywhere in the context of 1 Corinthians 13? This idea is completely foreign to the context. If there had been, and if Paul made it clear that the last book of the canon would be written in AD90, would it have been persuasive to argue: “We know that love will never end because it will last more than 35 years”?
It is rather clear from other parts of the epistle that this interpretation of 'the perfect' is wrong. In the first chapter, Paul writes, "So that ye come behind in no spiritual gift, waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." During the time they are waiting for Jesus to come back, Paul doesn't expect them to lack any spiritual gift.
Also, Paul has 'long thoughts' going through his epistles. He'll refer to later themes earlier in the epistle. Consider some topics raised in I Corinthians 13 compared with the subject matter in chapters 14 through 15.
I Corinthians 13 I Corinthians 14-15
Tongues and prophecy------------------------------>Tongues and prophecy
The coming of the perfect-------------------------->The state of believers in the resurrection
The context requires us to understand that the perfect is the age to come. You wanted us to consider the views of the Reformers. When considering the “completed canon” argument, Calvin wrote in his commentary on 1 Corinthians, “It is stupid [sorry Wolf, his word, not mine] of people to make the whole of this discussion apply to the intervening time.”
The time before either the return of Christ or the believer's death in Calvin's thinking. I don't see why he'd mention death. That sounds like RCC traditional influence.
Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes of another difficulty with your view: “It means that you and I, who have the Scriptures open before us, know much more than the apostle Paul of God’s truth. It means that we are altogether superior even to the apostles themselves, including the apostle Paul! It means that we are now in a position in which ‘we know, even as also we are known’ by God. Indeed, there is only one word to describe such a view, it is nonsense.”
Very great point. Before the perfect come, Paul's speech, thoughts, and understanding were like a child's. After it comes, he will be like an adult. So if we have the perfect, Paul's knowledge when he wrote the epistle was like a child compared to our much superior spiritual understanding. We don't become perfect in our adult understanding by reading kindergarten books about Jack and Jill. The idea that the Bible is 'the perfect' spoken of in this particular passage is rather insulting to the Bible if you think about it.
And yes, we dont have the experience and knowledge as Paul had. But he revealed what he should reveal. I dont know he knew about that what God revealed to John in revelations, but since we have the canon we have the full will from God to us.
If Paul's knowledge is childish in comparison to ours, since we have scripture, then we should all fully understand all the mysteries he understood. And if he were the man caught up into the third heaven, we should know what he saw, too.
The fact of the matter is that individual believers, as we read Paul's writings, can gain deeper and deeper insight into what he was saying all the time, progressively gaining a better understanding of what he knew. I'm sure many other posters have experienced this reading Paul's writings and other books of the Bible. This is inconsistent with the idea that his understanding was childish in comparison with ours.
Some Pentecostal groups going so far to say, that without speaking in tongues a Christian has not the Holy Spirit, means is not a Christian.
That is a very small minority, generally those who are from the Oneness movement that deny the Trinity. The
Well what we can see, is that speaking in tongues has ceased after a while. It was not used from the official church. But we found it in different groups like the Montanists (in minor Asia and Northafrica).
That's not totally accurate either. Ireneaus lived around 200 AD, and he was certainly seen as a champion of orthodoxy, writing against the various heresies. He wrote of brethren who spoke in tongues, raised the dead, prophesied, had foreknowledge, cast out demons, etc. He even considered rejecting the use of the gift of prophecy as one of the characteristics of the heresies.
And when we found speaking in tongues ore prophecie in church history after the early church record, it was always connectet with sects, groups with non biblical teachings, and in the Mystik f.e..
If you do a bit of reading, there are occasional references to it among more mainstream church men. Btw, I read a blog that recorded that one of Calvin's friends wrote of Calvin praying in some language he was not familiar with. He was concerned that he may have been praying in a pagan language, a Canaanite language, perhaps. As far as earlier history goes, if church liturgy did not make room for tongues and interpretation or for the operation of the gift of prophecy, it makes sense that it would be pushed to the fringes, and seldom recorded.
In the newer church history we found it by the early Quakers(Edward Burrough), among Mormons; Irvingians (New apostolic church; Church of Jesus Christ of latter - day saints;
I recall reading in The New Charismatics II of speaking in tongues in a Methodist revival in either 1801 or 1802 near the University of Georgia. Aside from beliefs about apostleship, Irving and the Catholic Apostolic Church's beliefs were probably fairly mainstream. Their beliefs about apostles was the main point of contention others had with them, probably, that and perhaps their eschatology. There were also 'gift people' in Maine who were reported to have spoken in tongues and exercised other gifts in their churches in the 1870's.
Also we find speaking in tongues as esoteric speech in greco-roman literature (sometimes called as angelic divine language)
"According to Dale B. Martin, glossolalia accorded high status in the ancient world due to its association with the divine.
Alexander of Abonoteichus may have exhibited glossolalia during his episodes of prophetic ecstasy.[SUP]
[15][/SUP]
Neoplatonist philosopher
Iamblichus linked glossolalia to
prophecy, writing that prophecy was divine
spirit possession that "emits words which are not understood by those that utter them; for they pronounce them, as it is said, with an insane mouth (
mainomenό stomati) and are wholly subservient, and entirely yield themselves to the energy of the predominating God."
This seems rather tenuous at best. Is there any evidence they called this glossalalia? The oracle at Delphi was supposed to have muttered something only the person that received the message could have understood in some myths. At certain times, the oracle may have been huffing volcanic gases that seeped up into the shrine there.
'Glossalalia' has been redefined by academics, too, to refer to some kind of incoherent speech that doesn't mean anything. In the Bible, languages understood by the listeners were also called 'glossalalia'. Nowadays, some academics would call that xenoglossia. There is no reason to think that the glossalalia of the apostles was the same thing as the utterance of pagans in ecstacies.
Also you find speaking in tongues in paganism and shamanism, in spiritistic groups; in Hinduism (India), in voodoo(Haiti);
Again, there is no reason to think this is the same thing. I've heard people try to compare it to Buddhist throat singing, but it isn't the same, and different parts of the brain go off, I've read.
What then was the source of speaking in tongues in Montanism? A very big group, believing in Jesus Christ with strange teachings and false Prophets? probably exist from 170 till 4th ore 5th century. Was it the Holy Spirit who gave them the gifts of prophecy and speaking in tongues?
I don't know. It could be the whole group was way off. It could be that the movement in the east led to some interest and seeking God for genuine manifestations in the west. The movement did not split from the mainstream church in all parts of the west like it did in the east. We should be open to the idea that Montanus could have also gotten a bad rap and that some of his sayings were distorted. Tertullian became a Montanist at some point. I found his arguments against widows and widowers being allowed to marry based on supposed Montanist revelations to be concerning.
But we should also be aware that if one actually reads the writings of Montanist's critics, repeatedly they affirmed the contemporary gift of prophecy. This is certainly true based on the writings compiled by Eusebius' in his Ecclesiastical History. They would affirm prophecy, give examples of recent prophets, and then argue that Montanus was prophesying by the wrong spirit, not according to church tradition.
Eusebius recorded a debate from much later, after Montanus, Maximilla and Priscilla had died. A man from the Montanist group argued that the gift of prophecy ceased with Montanus. The man from the main, regular church argued that the apostle taught that prophecy would continue until the Lord returned. Maybe he's referring to I Corinthians 1:6 or interpreting I Corinthians 13.
Apparently, the Montanists were the first to argue for cessationism based on I Corinthians 13, seeing Montanus or the revelations that he ushered in as 'the perfect'. The orthodox believers believed that prophecy continued until the Lord returned. Some of Irenaeus comments may refer to Montanism, accusing someone of the irremissible sin for calling a man the paraklete, for example. But Irenaeus considered rejecting the gift of prophecy in his day and age to be a trait of the heretics.
