Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 63:1 (Spring 2001)
Article: The Scottish Presbyterians And Covenanters: A Continuationist Experience In A Cessationist Theology
Author: Dean R. Smith

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WTJ 63:1 (Spring 2001) p. 39

The Scottish Presbyterians And Covenanters:
A Continuationist Experience In A Cessationist Theology

Dean R. Smitha

I. Introduction

An object of continuing discussion among evangelicals and within the Reformed community is the continuation today of the spiritual gifts mentioned in the New Testament. The discussion has been evidenced in recent years in the debates at the Evangelical Theological Society regarding the continuation of prophecy between Wayne Grudem of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and Richard Gaffin of Westminster Theological Seminary, as well as the publication in 1996 of Are Miraculous Gifts for Today? Four Views.

Generally, Pentecostals and charismatics have argued for the continuation of all the spiritual gifts mentioned in the New Testament. (Unfortunately, the term “charismatic” has been used in a broad sense to include not only doctrinal beliefs, but also particular worship and ministry styles. In order to narrow the focus to the theological/doctrinal issues of the discussion, the term continuationist will be used in this paper.) Cessationists have argued that certain miraculous spiritual gifts ceased when the apostles and their immediate associates died and the canon of the Scripture was complete.

Cessationists include those from the Reformed perspective and the dispensationalists. Among the Reformed, B. B. Warfield’s classic work Counterfeit Miracles has been viewed as setting forth not only a Reformed perspective, but the Reformed perspective. Warfield states his position very clearly:

These gifts were not the possession of the primitive Christian as such; nor for that matter of the Apostolic Church or the Apostolic age for themselves; they were distinctively the authentication of the Apostles as the authoritative agents of God in founding the church. Their function thus confined them to distinctively the Apostolic Church, and they necessarily passed away with it. Of this we may make sure on the ground of both principle and fact; that is to say both under the guidance of the New Testament teaching as to their origin and nature, and on the credit of the testimony of later ages as to their cessation. … In the process of this examination occasion will offer for

WTJ 63:1 (Spring 2001) p. 40

noting whatever is needful to convince us that the possession of the charismata was confined to the Apostolic age.1

It is important to note for this discussion that Warfield’s argument for the cessation of the charismata is really a historical survey rather than an analysis of biblic...

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