Okay so hopefully this won’t go on much longer. I’m not sure I can count past five in French any more.
So Steve pointed out that I made a big time overstatement in part the second. I said “While God used a variety of means to communicate to people over the ages it always got written down, at least so far as we know.” and even with the qualifier it doesn’t work. Now I could qualify that yet again and say that while God used a variety of means to communicate to people over the ages it usually got written down, at least so far as we know. I could say that God made sure that the parts he wanted to pass on to future generations got written down. I’ll say that. I feel good about it, especially since I think we can agree that at least the Old Testament has given us everything we need to point to the coming of Christ. I think the same can be said to be true of the New Testament as well.
Granted not everything that Jesus said is in the Gospels. I don’t think it needs to be. As John wrote, “If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” So God spoke to us through his son. And God also spoke to us through Paul. God in the person of the Holy Spirit continues to speak to us through the Bible. The idea that God speaks new things to us today is something that we have to be careful with I think. That idea has resulted in all sorts of troubling doctrines and “prophesy”. While it might be true that not everything God has to tell us is in the Bible, we have warnings against false prophets and teachers who will come in the last days. I’m sure Steve agrees that as the Bible teaches we must test every word that someone claims is coming from God. What do we compare them against? I would say the Bible.
Steve says “So the speaking to us through Jesus goes beyond words on a page.” and I would like to know what that means to him. He also says “God seems to want something much more personal than written communication alone.” Certainly I agree. We speak to God through prayer. He answers those prayers. He’s never answered me verbally. I don’t know of anyone whom I trust that has gotten a literal spoken word from God. So what sort of personal communication is Steve talking about? If it is, as Jesus promised us, the helper so that we may interpret what God has given us then we’re on board.
I don’t think anyone’s disputing that God wants a very intimate relationship with us. Why else would he choose the most intimate relationships as the metaphors he uses to describe it? The question is if Jesus is God with us and we have his words and the Spirit’s guidance, what more do we need as the penultimate communication before Heaven? I do think that it’s fairly natural to talk about this in relation to cessationism vs. continuationism since if we’re talking about wholly new revelations then we’re definitely in the continuationist’s territory. If we aren’t talking about new revelations then what do we have beyond the Bible and the Spirit? How is God communicating to us today?