Is Hyper-Cessationism a Fair Term? Part Two

I am encouraged by the amount of interest my article on hyper-cessationism has received. It has reinforced my suspicion that the Reformed world is hungry for warmer expressions of orthodoxy, and that our spark has been waiting for us all along in the original material of the 16^th and 17^th centuries. It has also confirmed that people are excited to admit that today’s presentation of cessationism can at best be described as stuffy and ahistorical, and at worst, deistic. Tim Challies linked my first article with the words, “I share many of his concerns with what he calls hyper-cessationism.” (link: https://www.challies.com/a-la-carte/weekend-a-la-carte-august-24-2024/) He isn’t alone.

            Not surprisingly, the article also had its detractors. While I intentionally refrained from pointing fingers at any specific person or group in the first article, I do so here only as a way of responding to specific critics. I have no animosity towards my critics, and I appreciate that they are wanting to protect the sufficiency of Scripture. This is admirable and something I also hold dearly. Before we get into the specifics, the crux of my argument is this: the version of cessationism that is in vogue today is stricter and more hardline than what the term historically meant, and thus, it merits the term “hyper-cessationism.”

To establish this claim, let us look at some rebuttals from my loudest critics, the G3 guys. For example, Scott Aniol in an article published at G3 takes issue with my claim that cessationism means that God will not give any more infallible revelation, which he takes to imply that God is still giving “fallible” revelation. He rejects the idea that such a belief could be consistent with what it means to be a cessationist. He claims, “Denton is defending a two-tier definition of revelation that was invented by conservative, ‘open-but-cautious’ charismatics who would never claim the label ‘cessationist.’”

But here Aniol has opened himself up to a significant historical quandary. My so-called defense of a two-tier definition of revelation comes not from modern day charismatics, but from the very people who gave us the term “cessationist” in the first place—the Puritans and Covenanters. Garnet Howard Milne, whose work we will come back to, says so in definitive terms: “When the divines penned their cessationist clause, they were operating with a conscious distinction between two types of revelation, one of which they deemed had ceased and one of which continued” (287).

Thus, back to my main point, if it can be demonstrated that the divines held to a “two-tier” system of revelation, and Aniol finds himself disagreeing with them on this point and others (such as their view of prophecy), is it appropriate to call his position “cessationist,” since these are the people who gave us the term in the first place? Wouldn’t something like hyper-cessationist be a more fitting term? But Milne is not the only historian to note this. J. I. Packer agrees: “Personal informative revelations…was the standard Puritan view, as I have observed it—they weren’t cessationists in the Richard Gaffin sense.”[1] Michael Haykin shared my original post on this subject with the words, “Totally agree.” (link: https://www.facebook.com/ryan.denton.3958/posts/pfbid02aNQAQs7mmeGDdXaGU...)

Their observations are coming from sources such as William Bridge, a prominent member of the Westminster Assembly: “But, you will say, may not God speak by extraordinary visions and revelations, in these days of ours? Yes, without all doubt he may: God is not to be limited, he may speak in what way he pleases.”[2] George Gillespie, another Westminster divine, said that John Knox, John Welsh, Robert Bruce and others were “more than ordinary pastors and teachers, even holy prophets receiving extraordinary revelations from God, and foretelling strange and remarkable things, which did accordingly come to pass punctually, to the great admiration of all who knew the particulars”[3] Although I mentioned all of this in the first article, perhaps Aniol missed it. There is also this from John Knox in a sermon delivered on August 19, 1565: “I dare not deny (lest that in so doing, I should be injurious to the giver,) but that God hath revealed unto me secrets unknown to the world; and also, that he hath made my tongue a trumpet, to forewarn realms and nations; yea, certain great revelations of mutations and changes, when no such things were feared, nor yet were appearing; a portion whereof cannot the world deny (be it never so blind,) to be fulfilled, and the rest, alas!”

This “two-tier” form of revelation which these historians recognize in the works of the divines, and which Aniol is adamantly opposed to, is described by Milne as immediate and mediate revelation. Immediate revelation is the type that the authors of Scripture received when they set down the Word of God. This type is infallible. Milne says it was revelation “equal to Scripture in authority and that it contained new extra-biblical revelation of either doctrine, ethics, or other forms of divine guidance” (287). Mediate revelation, on the other hand, could include revelation such as those given by dreams, “which were widely considered to be sometimes used by God in concurrence with some text of Scripture to give guidance to a believer” (287-288). Such revelation was not on the level with Scripture, and it did not contain new doctrine or ethics, but it was certainly a widespread belief among Puritans. Such revelation was to be tested by Scripture, but it was revelation, nonetheless. It was thought that even angels could “impress the faculty of the imagination and move the thought processes in such a manner that secrets could be discovered concerning contingent events” (288). This is what John Owen was describing when he said, “To say God does not or may not send his angels to any of his saints, to communicate his mind to them as to some particulars of their duty according to his word or to foreshadow to them his own approaching work, seems to unwarrantably limit the Holy One of Israel.”[4]

But such a view begs the question: how can one receive revelation from God and yet that revelation not be infallible, nor compete with the sufficiency of Scripture? Vern Poythress is also a proponent of this “two-tier” type of revelation, if that is what we are calling it, and he supplies us with the best answer I have come across: “I explain how partly by distinguishing teaching content from circumstantial content. Teaching content must not add to Scripture, but can only rephrase what is already there in Scripture. Circumstantial content has the same status as information received through a long-distance telephone call—that is, it has no special claim to authority. It is therefore obvious that neither type of content threatens the sufficiency of Scripture.”[5] He says elsewhere, “modern gifts are all fallible. They are all dependent on Scripture and do not add to the biblical canon.” Revelation in this sense is fallible because it comes to a non-apostolic individual who is prone to sin and biases, and who must still check said revelation against Scripture.

Thus, although we could quibble over whether we agree with the divines on this issue, or whether we agree with Poythress’ understanding of how it all works, it is clear that the "circumstantial" usage of revelation was a recognized fact in the 17th century Reformed world. There was a type of “two-tier” revelation going on. Important for our argument here is that this is the environment out of which came the WCF & 2LBCF (1689), which gave us the term cessationism in the first place. This last point is important because Aniol routinely insists that our authority is Scripture, not past theologians. This is something all sides agree on. But when we are using a term like “cessationism” that was coined in a specific cultural milieux, it is important we use the term the way it was intended to be used or come up with our term.

This brings us full circle. Does the view of cessationism espoused by Scott Aniol and G3 comport with the beliefs of the 17^th century divines and covenanters, or is it more hardline and rigid? I think the answer is obvious. In fact, Aniol seems to admit as much, contending that none of the quotes cited above from Bridge, Gillespie, and Owen “are grounded in Scripture,” and thus “the statements quoted are merely conjecture or based on personal experience.” This is his way of dismissing such views. While I would contend that there is plenty of Scripture dealing with revelation, dreams, prophecies, and the like, and that the divines were especially steeped in Scripture, what it demonstrates is that Aniol rejects the claims of the divines and covenanters as it pertains to cessationism. He claims it is his reading of the Bible which makes him disagree, which is noble enough, but the problem is that his interpretation of what the Bible teaches regarding cessationism differs from the very people who gave us the term cessationism. Thus, we are dealing with two different versions of cessationism.

One last point. Aniol insists that I want to bring Wayne Grudem and Sam Storms into the fold of cessationism. This is almost too preposterous to take seriously, but I will respond. First, they themselves would reject such an offer even if it was on the table. Second, as mentioned in the beginning, this is a matter of faithfulness to the historical data. If you say you are a cessationist, but your cessationism is more extreme than the ones who gave us the term in the first place, your cessationism has indeed “morphed into something dark and suffocating,” as I said in my first article. To say we need to reassess our cessationism so that it more accurately reflects the historical view is not the same thing as saying historic cessationism is synonymous with modern day continuationism.

I have no personal animosity towards Scott Aniol, G3, or anyone else promoting their version of cessationism. But I am concerned that such a view is moving the needle in the Reformed community towards a more deistic way of viewing the world. I do not believe these men are deists. I don’t believe these men are intentionally doing this. I believe they mean well, and the Lord has used G3 for much good. But there are consequences to ideas, and this is especially so when our attempt to reinterpret terms, confessions, and historical figures inadvertently places us in a situation where we risk quenching the Spirit. It is certainly an issue worth pondering, and a debate worth having, albeit with grace and tact.