Satisfied by the Promise of the Spirit: Affirming the Fullness of God's Provision for Spiritual Living Review

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Satisfied by the Promise of the Spirit: Affirming the Fullness of God's Provision for Spiritual Living ReviewThomas Edgar has put forward this effort as an attempt to argue for the ceasing of certain spiritual gifts such as tongues, miracles, healings, etc. In the process, he critiques some of the positions held by prominent folks in the charismatic camp who believe these gifts are still operative today. While still not personally convicted of cessationism, I think Edgar does advance some very good points for this position.
First of all, I want to comment on Edgar's theological bent for those who might be concerned about it. It is true that Edgar is a dispensationalist who teaches at a heavily dispensationalist seminary. But for the most part, I found that this book really did not heavily emphasize dispensationalism per se. So for those who might be concerned about reading this book because of the possibility that it would be Walvoordian in terms of being soaked with dispensationalism, I personally don't think this book does that, which I consider a plus.
The clear strength of the book is Edgar's Biblical exegesis of various contentious passages in the spiritual gifts debate, most notably Acts 2 and 1 Corinthians 12-14. His conclusion that the contemporary charismatic view and practice of tongues bears almost no resemblance to the authentic gift discussed in Scripture is very persuasive. I also felt that he made a very strong argument relative to the elimination of the 'office' of apostle shortly after the end of the first century, and thus the uniquely apostolic gifts ceased with them. This is a powerful argument, especially since the charismatics in the operative camp tend to rely heavily on experiential arguments to advance their cause, but run up against difficulties in explaining the lack of documented and authenticated experiences of spiritual gifts throughout church history. This is a strong point in Edgar's favor.
Edgar also does a good job of critiquing the musings of Wayne Grudem relative to his theory of reduced, or 'fallible' gifts still being operative today. Grudem is a highly respected scholar and someone I personally respect a great deal, but I think Edgar does a very good job of invalidating Grudem's hypothesis here.
Edgar is less successful in his extensive critique of Jack Deere. Now while I don't have any particular allegiance to Deere or his views, I felt that Edgar was being terribly inconsistent in his treatment of Deere. Edgar chides Deere for his emphasis on experience rather than sound Biblical exegesis, arguing that experience is not a valid barometer of truth. Fair enough. The problem is that Edgar himself puts forth an experience argument in favor of cessationism in this book, in addition to his Biblical exegesis argument. Edgar spends one chapter arguing that church history supports cessationism. But what Edgar is really doing here is relying on experience, or a lack thereof, throughout church history in order to make this case. So in this respect, he is violating his own scholarship standards. Now, to be fair, Edgar obviously knew that he was going to be vulnerable to such a charge, which is why he spends quite a few pages early on in the book trying to define what he means by 'experience' in such a way as to exclude his historical argument from being an argument from experience. But in an effort to wiggle around in such a way as to supposedly immune his historical argument from the experience emphasis upon which he then criticizes Deere, I found his definitional gymnastics to be decidedly unpersuasive. The bottom line is that when Edgar decided to offer up an experience argument of his own, he lost quite a bit of credibility to then turn around and criticize Deere for doing the same thing. This represents a formidable weakness in this book in terms of sound and consistent scholarship.
But nonetheless, I give the book 4 stars because I do think the section on Biblical exegesis goes a long way towards rescuing the cessationist perspective he's trying to defend. Edgar clearly should have stayed away from his historical argument due to the compromising position it puts him in relative to critiquing others with scholarship standards he exempts himself from. If a cessationist believes that the weight of church history favors cessationism, he can use this point without formally advancing it as part of his own apologetic. If Jack Deere or Wayne Grudem believe in the current operativeness of charismatic gifts and rely disproportionately on experience for their argumentation, the cessationist has every right to ask these folks (as opposed to themselves) to go through church history and show the alleged continuity of the gifts they believe in. If church history favors cessationism, the charismatic will have a hard time demonstrating this, as has already been proven by the number of alternative gift theories that have been advanced by charismatics in order to try and get around the church history issue. But we need to be honest in our scholarship. A church history argument is an experience argument and it does not serve the cessationist camp well to try and argue that it isn't, which Edgar unsuccessfully tries to do here.Satisfied by the Promise of the Spirit: Affirming the Fullness of God's Provision for Spiritual Living Overview

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