Evangelicals and Cessationism
Where did Evangelicalism start?
Several sources state that this movement began when Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Thesis to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg, Germany to protest the selling of indulgences to finance the Catholic church. This sparked the Reformation, which taught people that salvation was by divine grace, rather than good works.
“The word evangelical comes from the Greek (euangelion) and Latin (evangelium) words for “good news,” which evolved into the word gospel, and has long been in use. In the 16th century Martin Luther and his followers, who stressed justification by faith in Jesus Christ and based their faith on Scripture alone, were known as Evangelicals. During the Reformation, the term distinguished the followers of Luther from those of John Calvin, who were known as Reformed.” https://www.britannica.com/topic/Evangelical-church-Protestantism
How did Cessationism become imbedded in Evangelical doctrine?
John Calvin and Martin Luther are both said to have believed that “special revelation” no longer occurred and that the main reason they promoted this idea was because they were skeptical of all miracles claimed by the Catholic church. In other words, the downplay of miraculous signs was primarily motivated by a desire to be distinguished from the Catholicism they were opposing.
“In the 1700s and 1800s, suspicion of claimed miracles was connected to anti-Catholicism. Protestant critics saw the Catholic tradition as riddled with fake claims of miracles. Ridiculing the fake miracle claims of Catholics (such as icons bleeding a liquid that turned out to be cherry juice) became a staple of Reformed polemics against the Catholic Church. So when seemingly miraculous events happened in Protestant churches, even sympathetic observers warned against the threat of bogus miracles.”
“To eighteenth-century Protestants, miracles were too closely associated with Catholicism, and anti-Catholicism served as an essential component of British Protestant identity. Opponents of the revivals attempted to associate the revivals with Catholic superstition whenever extraordinary claims surfaced. For New Englanders no worse aspersion could be cast on the revivals than to associate them with Catholic supernaturalism and gullibility.”
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/evangelical-history/brief-history-cessationism/
Isn’t this just one of those things that people disagree on, like speaking in tongues, and it doesn’t matter that much?
Unfortunately, no. The consensus seems to be, among those who hold the view of Cessationism, that while miracles can still happen, there are certain kinds that have ceased and were only intended to help establish the credibility of the original apostles. My observation is that the gift of tongues has been sort of the “poster child” of this controversy, which is unfortunate, because it has overshadowed gifts like prophecy, healing, wisdom, discernment, and knowledge. In other words, because tongues is the gift that everyone argues about, we don’t realize our ignorance that the loss of the others has cost the Body of Christ tremendously. I believe this was a shrewd strategy of our enemy to give attention to the sensational gift as a distraction, and we fell for it. Because of the fear of being duped by fake manifestations of the Spirit, the whole category has been thrown out, leaving us without the Christ-given gifts needed for deliverance, wisdom, discernment, and healing among other things. Worse, these origins of our very persistent bias against miraculous gifts are based not in scripture, but in anti-Catholic pushback. This is ironic because one of the main pillars of evangelicalism is the centrality of God’s word. What surprised me in this discovery was the absence of any biblical evidence that directly states some gifts will end. There isn’t even a pretense of it. This has cost many believers the help and healing they need, and made the church weak in spiritual power to build for the Kingdom and to fight against evil.