Cessationists and Hebrews 2:1-4
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| A stained glass representation of confirmation in the Lutheran Church. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
While it is correct that Heb 2:1-4 talks about the validation of the apostles message, it does not necessarily restrict the signs, wonders, and spiritual gifts to the apostles. The use of the aorist tense cannot be used to argue that this "confirmation" is restricted absolutely to the past. First, the aorist is probably constative, which views the action as a whole. It does not focus on the beginning or the end of the action. It merely states that the action happened without any comment on its completion.51 Second, even if the aorist of ejbebaiwvqh did have the nuance of a completed past act, its reference is "to us" (eij" uJma'"). So it is past only to the Hebrew readers. Finally, if you press the cessationist perspective to its logical conclusion then the aorist tense of ejbebaiwvqhimplies that either the apostles have died off by this time, or that they have stopped preaching the gospel. While most of the apostles may have died off by the time Hebrews was written, John was still alive and still preaching the gospel. Therefore both conclusions are invalid and cessationism has lost its argument.
The point of the passage is an incidental concern to cessationism here. The mention of miracles and spiritual gifts as past events may only indicate the author's need to strengthen his parallel with the (lesser) angelic initial confirmation of the Law and that of the gospel. Certainly the charismatic (i.e., prophetic and miraculous) confirmation of the Law was not restricted to within a generation of its appearance (cf. Isa 59:21 ; Jer 32:20 ) any more than spiritual gifts were restricted to the first generation of Christians. To say that God bore witness to the gospel with miracles in the past is not to say that He could not continue to do so.52
Moreover, the present participle (sunepimarturou'nto") may actually indicate an action continuing into the future from the time of the aorist main verb, hence the meaning, "[the salvation] was affirmed to us by those who heard Him, God also continuing to confirm with miracles."53 This passage warrants further study with respect to cessationism, since it can be shown to parallel such passages as 1 Cor 1:4-8 insofar as they deal with testimony of Christ, his hearers, and the continuing confirmation of each member in the church communities via the spiritual gifts until the end of the age.54
The preaching of the gospel to the Hebrew Christians by the apostles is past tense. But the preaching of the apostles (and thus the confirmation by miraculous gifts) was still going on. Hebrews 6:4-5 indicate that these miraculous gifts were still being manifested in the church long after the apostolic preaching.55
