timmopussycat
Puritan Board Junior
Can anyone answer this:
For purposes of the question, let us assume:
1) "speaking in an unknown tongue," as part of corporate worship is not taken as new revelation of biblical doctrine of any kind
2) "speaking in an unknown tongue" requires an immediate "gift of interpretation" to follow it immediately in corporate worship
What would be the corporate worship purpose now?
timmopussycat
Revelaing the secrets of a visitors heart could be done by this means to give one example. Or encouraging the faith of a Jewish convert as may have happened in the Smith case previously mentioned.
Are you saying something like, in a corporate worship service, a tongue and interpretation would be used to disclose:
1) possible sin of someone there (like Ananias and Sapphira)?
2) exhort (encourage) with God's Word a new believer in the faith?
Both are possibilities.
-----Added 3/2/2009 at 06:03:17 EST-----
A couple thoughts and a question
timmopussycat
This argument is actually very strong. If God had limited himself to the framework of human logical expectations, Jesus would never have healed on the sabbath - to give but one examaple. The law says don't work on the sabbath, the Pharisees deduced that healing was work.
Yes, but neither premise was correct according to God's Word as it existed at that time- Healing, as an action, was not "work" ever prohibited by the forth commandment and, Jesus was in fact the Son of God with authority to heal.
So Pharisees had simply made up laws pertaining to righteousness, there was no problem with God's original revelation through Scripture, nor any limitation imposed by it.
Granted that the Pharisees had misunderstood healing to be a work when it is not and that Jesus was the Son of God with authority to heal: neither of these points are at issue. The question is does God always follow human logic and the answer is clearly "No" because he dissents from the Pharisees logic.
The claim that neither premise of the Pharisaic syllogism is correct is wrong. "Work" was specifically forbidden under the law. See e.g., Exd 20:10 But the seventh day [is] the sabbath of the LORD thy God: [in it] thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that [is] within thy gates. See also Ex 23:12; 31:14, 15; and Ex 35:2 which notes that anybody who works on the Sabbath is to be put to death.
So the Pharisees began with one correct premise "work was forbidden on the Sabbath" and one incorrect one, that healing was unacceptable because it was work. It was the incorrect second premise that nullified their logic.
Notice how the structure of the argument that Eph 2:20 prohibits situational revelation is the same. Let me adjust a previously made remark to emphasize the point
Premise 1: The NT says that canonical revelation is foundational for the church, [correct premise].
Premise 2: Cessationists premise that situational revelation must expire together with canonical revelation. It is this second premise that must be proved by GNC before one can use Eph. 2:20 to prove the cessation of the spiritual gifts.
It is difficult to understand this because, based on discussions about it, "cessationism" seems to be understood in different ways. Nobody really asserts miracles have ceased, or that God is in any way limited in causing them.
Agreed.