phil johnson has gone charismatic

Phil Johnson has posted Here's Mud in Your Eye examining Jesus' startling behavior recorded in John 9.6-7. This is the story of the blind man healed by Jesus on the Sabbath. The interesting piece is that Jesus used mud made from dirt and His own spit. I love this comment by Johnson.

It's remarkable that the blind guy submitted to such a remedy. If you go to a charismatic optometrist and he proposes something like that as a treatment for your nearsightedness, my advice is to find a cessationist doctor.

Charismatic or not, isn't this how most (if not all) of us would respond? Too many of us simply dismiss all things supernatural or that doesn't fit within the closed-system of a world that we have created in our minds. But beyond that, there are a number of us that claim to be open to all that God wants to do yet our love for Scripture and our fear of error has closed our hearts to anything we haven't yet read in the Bible. In fact, I'd venture to say we are closed to a lot of Bible stuff.

I like this caution from my friend Robert Ivy in his excellent post on which way Scripture points.

It is curious, then, how some cessationists claim that charismatics err in making much of the Spirit while cessationists make much of a work of the Spirit.

As we read, meditate, devour, pray over Scripture, are we seeing it as a text book with formula, historic facts, tips for living, prophecy, warnings, etc? Or do we see it as a God breathed inerrant communication from God pointing back to God?

When read wrongly, we get tangled up in Scriptures such as John 9. When read properly we realize that there is likely some "spittle" coming our way. Johnson did a nice job with this text.

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