Correct. I am not an Apostle of Christ therefore I don't preach the Gospel as an Apostle, therefore I don't manifest those gifts.
Well, I hope you don’t see the peaching of the gospel as an exclusive thing to an apostle only.
So I am sure you agree that all believers must preach the gospel, right?
Paul told the Corinthian church to imitate him just as he imitated Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1).
Paul said woe unto himself if he did not preach the gospel (1 Corinthians 9:16).
Jesus implied the gospel in Luke 9:62 in that if we look back (at our old life or way of doing things) vs. putting our hand to the plow we are not fit for the Kingdom of God. Meaning, we are not fit to enter the kingdom.
Anyways, speaking of apostles: We know Scripture implies that Paul is the last apostle (1 Corinthians 15:8). For one of the qualifications of being an apostle was to have seen the risen Lord (1 Corinthians 9:1). The saints are built upon the foundation of the prophets and the apostles (Ephesians 2:20). So there are no more apostles.
But lets say for the sake of argument that you think that there are apostles today. Have you seen apostles raise the dead and cleanse lepers? Or was it just hearsay?
Side Note:
If they do raise up the dead, can they always continue to do this?
Where are they today?
Can I meet them?
Can they demonstrate this for me?
You said:
I go along with this, that someone speaking in a foreign language which no one understands the person is a foreigner to us. Paul's view of "barbarians" were those who were not Roman who spoke Latin. The Barbarians spoke their own articulate expressive languages, and not gibberish in itself, in the same way that Hindu and Chinese speak in language quite foreign to us. But I disagree that the foreign languages are baby languages. The languages are mature, well developed region languages which may sound like gibberish to us because we don't understand them.
Not so. Paul's theme in 1Corinthians 13 is a totally different topic, and at the start of 1 Corinthians 14, he links love with the desire for spiritual gifts, preferably prophecy. There is no direct link to tongues at this stage.
There are technically no chapter breaks in the Bible (Although I do believe they were later added as a part of God’s plan for believers today). Anyways, Paul starts his speech on the spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12, then he warms that speech up with how if we speak with the tongues of angels, and have not love, we are nothing (1 Corinthians 13:1-2). For the speaking of the tongues of angels and yet not having love is in reference to how the church is not edifying (loving the church) by having an interpreter when one speaks in tongues (1 Corinthians 14). Paul’s whole point was to rebuke the Corinthians on the misuse of tongues in
1 Corinthians 13-14.
As for the babbling like that of babies: Again, while foreign languages may be intelligent, they do not sound like they have any meaning to us. It’s why there was a Tower of Babel. God confused the languages and nobody could understand each other because it just sounded like a bunch of babbling nonsense to each other. The same is true when a baby makes babbling noises. It does not make sense to us and it is also just babbling noises. I referenced babbling of babies because as I pointed to you before, Paul says, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” (1 Corinthians 13:11). This is obviously again a future foreshadow to his point of speaking in tongues without an interpreter in 1 Corinthians 14.
You said:
But I do agree that general speaking in tongues without interpretation does cause confusion, as we can see in video clips of ultra-charismatics doing the same thing.
Do you believe in a private prayer language of speaking in tongues?
If so, where is the biblical proof of this?
You said:
The Canaanite woman and Jesus had nothing to do with tongues. It was about persistence in making requests known to God.
You do not seem to understand why I brought up the Canaanite woman, my friend. One lesson we can learn from the Canaanite woman is that we know that we can make real world examples or parables like Jesus can so as to parallel spiritual truth. We know that she was able to add on an extended real world example about how even the dogs eat the crumbs from the master’s table. This is a real world example that paralleled a spiritual truth of the Kingdom. Jesus was saying that He came for the lost house of the tribe of Israel. But the Canaanite woman knew there was a law of exception to this and she used a parable or real world example to illustrate that fact. Jesus did not correct her and say He could only make parables, but He commended her for her faith.
So my point about babies babbling is that they make noises that sounds like babbling to us.
We don’t understand the noises made. The same is true with foreign languages. It sounds like we are at the Tower of Babel. It’s why it’s called babbling. Noises that do not make sense. That is at the heart of what I am getting at and it ties in with 1 Corinthians 13:11. I was making a comparison or real world example.
You said:
Paul said nothing about the completion of a canon of Scripture when he taught about spiritual gifts.
One can say the same about Messianic prophecies. Do you think all the authors of OT Scripture who wrote Messianic prophecies were aware of how Jesus would die upon the cross, He was buried, and He would be risen three days later for man’s salvation? Sure, they may have recognized some Messianic prophecies and tied it to some future Messiah, but I don’t think they had the details (except maybe Abraham and a few select others who were really great in the faith in the OT).
You said:
This is adding a 19th Century theory into the chapter. None of the church fathers mentioned the cessation of the gifts upon the completion of the canon of Scripture, and even as late as the 16th Century, Calvin did not have that view of why the gifts ceased. In fact he says that 1 Corinthians 13:10 refers to the believer's death or the day of judgment for the cessation of the gifts.
This is extra-New Testament theory which may or may not be valid.
Not true, friend.
Chrysostom (347-407), a name that means “golden mouth” as he was an eloquent speaker, had a cessationist perspective. He was a contemporary of Athanasius’s later life, was Archbishop of Constantinople and defender of orthodoxy. He wrote of spiritual gifts as being obscure in his understanding. In his homily on 1 Cor. 12:1-2, He wrote, “This whole place is very obscure: but the obscurity is produced by our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation, being such as then used to occur but now no longer take place. And why do they not happen now? Why look now, the cause too of the obscurity has produced us again another question: namely, why did they then happen, and now do so no more? [6]
St. Augustine, bishop of Hippo in northern Africa. He wrote that “in the earliest times, ‘the Holy Ghost fell upon them that believed: and they spake with tongues’, which they had not learned, ‘as the Spirit gave them utterance’. These were signs adapted to the time. For there behooved to be that betokening of the Holy Spirit in all tongues, to shew that the Gospel of God was to run through all tongues over the whole earth. That thing was done for a betokening, and it passed away”.[7]
Sources:
[6] “Homily 29 on First Corinthians”, available at:
CHURCH FATHERS: Homily 29 on First Corinthians (Chrysostom) .
[7] Augustine,
Homilies on the Gospel of John 6:1-14, in
The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers [7:497-98].
You said:
I am enjoying our discussion and we don't have to agree to have great fellowship. I'm sure that some time when we meet in eternity we'll have a good laugh about it when both us may be proved wrong, or right, as we complete our knowledge of the things of God.
I am glad you are enjoying the discussion (even though we may not agree on this topic).
May God’s love, peace, and strength always be upon you and your family.
Oh, and I do pray and hope that we could look back at all this in the Kingdom and reflect as friends in Christ. But ultimately it is up to God and His Word that can decide such things (of course).