Why Reformed Cessationists should stop using Church history as support
Although it is common for my Calvinist, non-charismatic friends to point to church history in support of their cessationist position, it’s really a mistake for them to do so. A big mistake. Church history actually works against them. The first reason is the most obvious. Reformed cessationists, like me, are in the Protestant, rather than Catholic, camp of the church. That means that we believe that, in some very fundamental ways, much of the church lost its way through history, because of which a massive reformation was needed. Many Reformed Christians even argue that Roman Catholics are not Christians at all, meaning that roughly half of all professing Christians today are de facto disqualified. On what basis, then, does a Reformed cessationist appeal to church history, when so much of that history is rejected from the outset? If the argument is that the miraculous gifts of the Spirit which were normative in New Testament times gradually disappeared from church history, what do these ...