Wallace is another cessationist.

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Wallace is another cessationist.

Forum: Theological Expressions
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"Impartation" theology
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For those interested only - On Cessationism. (Christopher Yip)
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For Christopher (Bill )
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Bill, Read Powell's Article (Christopher Yip)
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Reply for All to Read (Bill )
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Let's Return to Cessationism. (Christopher Yip)
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I will read Powell - Will you read Wallace ? (Bill )
Date: 2001, Jul 09
From: Christopher Yip CKHY

Bill,
I'm surprised you brought in Daniel Wallace because he is without doubt a cessationist. Charles Powell, Thomas Edgar, Daniel Wallace are all cessationist scholars from Dallas Theological Seminary.
Powell's article is considered basic exegesis, Wallace goes even futher in support of the cessationist's case. The link you provided is NOT Daniel Wallace's full article, just a portion on the pitfalls that cessationists should avoid. I believe the site is by a non-cessationist Robert Longman Jr.
The site with many of Wallace's articles on cessationism can be found here:
http://www.bible.org/docs/soapbox/soaptoc.htm
under the section "Spiritual Gifts"
There are 4 articles there. I have read all of them. I would give brief quotes from each.
1. The Uneasy Conscience of a Non-Charismatic Evangelical
This contains an interesting biography of himself and it is from this that Rober Longman Jr quoted. In fact, if you read what Longman did not quote, you'd be surprised at Wallace's experience with charismania! Quite true that cessationists need to be reminded that God is a person, not a book, and that He is alive and working in our lives, but this is different from saying that sign gifts still exist.
The following quote is right before Longman's quote:
"I believe that in North America today, there are two brands of conservative Christianity, neither of which is wholly satisfactory. There is charismatic Christianity--the free spirited, right brain, experiential roller coaster. And then there is the evangelical rationalism--uptight, left brain, logical, talking head, argumentative. Neither of these is adequate. Don't get me wrong: I'm a fully committed cessationist. I believe that the sign gifts ceased in the first century. But I think that cessationists need to begin doing serious business with God. We need a deep-rooted repentance--both individually and communally.
I want to offer you eleven suggestions, eleven challenges--eleven theses if you will--that we need to address. I don't yet have 95 of them--and this isn't the Wittenberg Church. And, as I said at the beginning, this list is in a seminal stage. These theses are in a somewhat random order."
2. Charismata and the Authority of Personal Experience
"Why are scholars suddenly becoming charismatics? What has happened in the last few years to attract the intelligentsia to this group?
We can give both a short answer and a long one. The short answer is that many Christian scholars have for a long time embraced a Christianity that is almost exclusively "from the neck up." That is, theirs is a cognitive faith, one where reason reigns supreme. They are usually fine exegetes and theologians, able to defend the faith and articulate their views in a coherent, biblical, profound, and logical way. But (without naming names) many of these savants have lost their love for Christ. They love the Bible and know it inside and out. But their soul has become impoverished. They love God with their mind only; that is the extent of their spiritual obligation as they see it. In fact, for them, personal experience--especially of a charismatic sort--is anathema. It has no place in the Christian life. Study of the Bible so that they can control the text is what the Christian life is all about.
But when crisis comes--such as the death of a loved one, a teenage daughter's pregnancy, or some major upheaval in their church ministries--their answers appear shallow and contrived, both to others and themselves. They have the inability to hurt with the hurting, though they know all the right verses on suffering! They begin to search for answers themselves, answers of an entirely different sort. Often, in the crucible of the crisis, they attend a charismatic meeting. And there, a "prophet" reveals something about their life. They are both amazed at the prophecy and deeply touched at the perception into their own condition. (Of course, cognitive types almost always marvel when other, more sensitive people, intuitively recognize traits and characteristics, internal workings and struggles in others.) Their souls get drenched with an emotional infusion that had been quenched for too long. It doesn't take long before they hold hands with those whom they used to oppose, even to the point of now leading charismatic groups. They in fact become the theologians of a new breed of charismatic, giving a rather sophisticated rationale for charismata. In the process, they have gone through a paradigm shift: their final authority is no longer reasoning about the Scriptures; now it is personal experience.
Because of a crisis, personal, spiritual experience has replaced reason as the authority that guides their lives. They have exchanged, in some measure, their heart for their mind.2 That's the short answer."
3. Two Views on the "Sign Gifts": Continuity Vs. Discontinuity
Herein is the argument from the close of the canon. For those interested in the cessationist's argument from the close of the canon should read this. It also talks about how "normative" the book of Acts is (I am using "normative" here as "authoritative").
"There are others who argue that, with reference to these gifts, there is greater discontinuity than continuity. (They are called cessationists or non-charismatics.) Part and parcel of this argument is the nature and purpose of these gifts. This view claims that these gifts were essentially poured out on select individuals for the purpose of authenticating that God was doing something new. Surely the coming of Christ and the doing away with the Law and the inclusion of uncircumcised Gentiles into the spiritual community was radical stuff. When Jesus cleansed the temple and when he taught, his religious opponents wanted a sign. They knew that he was challenging the status quo. He had better back up his message with some miracles. So he gave them one big miracle: his own resurrection. End of discussion. Something new was afoot in Israel. God authenticated his message by raising him from the dead. Jesus invested supernatural authority in his own apostles (Matt 28:16-20) to bring this good news to the world. These apostles and certain others in the early church had a measure of some of these gifts. Whether they represent all Christians of all time or whether theirs was a special time and a special gift is the question.
I belong to the latter group. That is, I believe in a sufficient amount of discontinuity to warrant speaking of the sign gifts as having ceased. I will argue, in fact, that every true Christian has to belong to this latter category to some degree. I will offer two theses below, followed by several specific arguments backing them up."
4. Hebrews 2:3-4 and the Sign Gifts
"In the sometimes heated discussions over the question of the duration of certain spiritual gifts, one argument has persisted from the side of charismatics: There is no prooftext that any spiritual gift has ceased. As impressive as this argument sounds, a couple of responses should be given. First, if the NT was written by men who in fact exercised these sign gifts, why should they say that such had ceased? It would be difficult to find a text in which this point would be explicit. Second, the NT apostles by and large expected the Lord’s return in their lifetime (cf. 1 Thess 4:15: “we who are alive, who are remaining until the coming of the Lord”). Hence, we should not expect them to make any statements regarding the cessation of gifts, since that would presuppose that they knew the Lord’s return would be delayed. In order to find such a statement, we would need to construct the following scenario: A member of an apostle’s band writes a letter after that apostle had died. Further, in the letter he finds some reason to explicitly mention something about sign gifts.
Such a scenario is difficult to imagine. Happily, the NT provides not only one, but two books that fit such a picture: Jude and Hebrews. And both address--to some degree at least--the issue of gifts and authority. Our purpose in this paper is to look more closely at one text, Hebrews 2:3-4."
Finally, I understand the charismatic and non-cessationist's complaint about the coldness of the rational and bookish view of the cessationists. I agree with Wallace very much that cessationists need to be reminded that Christianity is not about the book but the Person, hence, for me, prayer is something very important in that balance. Wallace sums it up well:
"In reality, both personal experience and reason are part of proper human existence. Like fire, they can be used for good or evil. When they take on the role of supreme authority, consciously or not, they destroy.4 "I know" and "I feel" must bow to "I believe." (When either one is elevated above revelation it produces arrogance.) The cognitive content of that belief is the revealed Word of God. It requires diligent study to grasp its meaning as fully as mere humans can grasp it. But it will not be believed unless there is a personal experience with the Risen One. Thus, the trilogy of authority can be seen this way: both personal experience and reason are vital means to accessing revelation. We are to embrace Christ, as revealed in the Word, with mind and heart.5 When either reason or experience attempts to escape the supreme sovereignty of the revealed Christ, the individual believer starts down a path of imbalance. Tragically, his service to the Lord Christ is thereby increasingly curtailed.6"
And to put things in proper perspective, let me also say with Wallace:
"Having said all this, a word of counsel must be added. Some readers will surely read into this piece an angry tone or a statement that their entire spiritual experience is illegitimate. Neither could be further from the truth. My concern for believers is borne of pastoral motives; it does not come from a a vendetta. I am deeply concerned about postmodernism's impact on the Church with its elevation of personal experience as the final authority for life. At the same time, I believe in the bigness of God. He is sovereign over all the affairs of life. None of us has it all together. No one has a corner on the truth. I think that charismatics do a lot that is right and cessationists do a lot that is wrong. We can learn from each other. I have already addressed this in brief;4 I plan to suggest some other, very specific points in later essays (some of which may well surprise my cessationist friends). But suffice it for now to say that if someone has embraced Jesus Christ as his or her Savior, then that person is in the universal body of Christ. And that means that we have much more in common than not."
Regards,
Christopher