His Article:
Of straw men and slippery slopes part 2 of 2
His First Argument:
1. If anyone puts the word down he is putting down the Word’s self testimony
a. Or, put this in two phrases, the Word’s self-testimony puts itself on the highest of planes
b. To put the Word any lower than the highest is to deny that
2. Charismatics do this by accepting modern-day revelation
3. To deny the Word’s testimony is clearly to deny God’s will
4. This is sinful – you’re wrong/not a Christian
My Rebuttal:
I think this is identical to the first argument that I dealt with. But let me rake Dan over the coals a bit more. Again, I think he is completely correct here in his view of the Bible, but he is mistaken in applying it to charismatics across the board. Putting down the sufficiency of scripture is not an issue of charismatic gifts/no charismatic gifts. The charismatic who judges all experiences and revelations by the Word of God holds the Bible on the same platform (I argue actually a higher platform) as the cessationist who judges all doctrine and practice by the Word of God.
What it is a matter of is pride and humility. Paul himself was incredibly filled with the power of Spirit and received revelation from God, but certainly we would not say that we hold a higher view of Scripture than he simply because we believe that revelation is finished!
In no way does accepting modern revelation necessarily cause one to put down the Word’s self-testimony. I hope I demonstrated this in my first argument and I hope you have seen as I have continued my defense that my only desire is to truly let the Word inform everything that I believe, and were anything to contradict the Word, it would be thrown out in an instant. Unless, of course, I was a proud charismatic then perhaps I would take my own revelations as somehow superior to the written Word of God. Just like a proud cessationist takes his own interpretations as superior to the full-counsel of the word of God.
His Second Psuedo-Argument:
1. Ignorance, laziness, unbelief, or a combination are the sources of continuationism (or, as you say in your article, anyone who rejects sola scriptura, which for you includes continuationists)
2. These things are all bad
3. Continuationism must be bad
My Rebuttal:
I understand that this is not precisely an argument against continuationism, rather an argument against any straw man presentation of sola scriptura, which Dan holds to be equivalent with cessationism. But he does have a steady stream running through his writings that as a cessationist, he must have a more intimate knowledge of the Bible and a closer walk with the Lord because that’s all he has, whereas charismatics can be ignorant, lazy, and unbelieving because they have this personal revelation that trumps the Bible.
I’m sure you have gotten the point by now, but I will just state it again briefly to ensure that it is not missed in this instance. Receiving extra-Biblical revelation demands that you be more informed more proactive in your faith and more believing in God. Why? Because, as I’m sure you would agree, with extra-Biblical revelation there is much more danger to stray from God’s path, therefore we must be even more on-guard and in-step with the Lord in order to rightly discern dreams/visions/prophecies/interpretations of tongues/etc.
The true source for continuationism is simply a belief that the Word of God means today what it meant for the original recipients of the writings and that God’s relationship to his people was established by the death and resurrection of Christ, not by a new law (Gal 3:1,2), therefore, just as it was for the first Christians, so should it be with us.
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