This is part 2 of a 2-part miniseries. Part 1 is here:
8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known (1 Cor 13:8-10).
i) Along with Acts 2:17-18, this is the major prooftext for continuationism. Although it gives an expiration date for tongues and prophecy, most modern scholars think the Second Coming is the event which terminates tongues and prophecy.
I'm going to reserve that argument for a prior post (see above).
ii) A cessationist alternative is to claim that Paul is alluding to the closure of the canon. Once Christians have the complete canon of Scripture at their disposal, the need for revelatory gifts like tongues and especially prophecy will be moot.
This interpretation has generally fallen out of favor in scholarly circles, but it still has defenders in some cessationists pockets. For instance, Bruce Compton of Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary tries to rehabilitate this interpretation. Let's call this the "canonical interpretation" of 1 Cor 13:8-10).
iii) I think the canonical interpretation is exegetically dubious. However, let's concede, for the sake of argument, that Paul is alluding to the closure of the canon. Does that give cessationists what they need?
Fact is, even if you grant that interpretation, it leaves the situation highly unstable and open-ended. It fails to solve the problem which the cessationist posed for himself.
iv) To begin with, it relocates the issue to the question of when the canon was closed. On cessationist grounds, what event counts as the closure of the canon?
After all, this was debated in the Reformation. So you could say the canon wasn't settled until the 16C, with the Westminster Confession and the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion. If that's the terminus ad quem, then you'd have ongoing prophecy through the patristic era, Middle ages, and Renaissance. Clearly that's far too late for cessationists.
v) Let's consider a much earlier terminus ad quem. On the basis of manuscript evidence, David Trobisch has argued that the NT canon was effectively closed by the second half of the 2C AD. His basic argument is the NT manuscripts copy the books in a stereotypical order. But you can only copy something in that sequence if that sequence is already established in the exemplar. That's what scribes do: they don't originate, they copy. So he infers that the stereotypical order of books in NT manuscripts presupposes a standardized canon at that early date. They were using a template.
His thesis is controversial, and some of his supporting arguments are weaker than others. But his basis thesis is defensible. Cf. A. Köstenberger, L. S. Kellum, & C. Quarles, The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown (B&H 2009), 23-25.
That's a very conservative date for the closure of the NT canon. I don't think an earlier date is realistic.
But even if we accept that date, the timeframe is very problematic for cessationism. After all, the mid-2C is also a period during which the NT apocrypha were beginning to proliferate. If a cessationist takes the position that prophecy continued until the mid-2C, when the canon was effectively closed, then it's going to be harder to claim the NT apocrypha are…apocryphal. That cut-off allows for bona fide prophecy to be operative during this period. But in that case, why can't some of the NT "apocrypha" be product of genuine prophets?
Remember, a major objection which cessationists have to continuationism is the cessationist contention that ongoing revelation results in an open canon. That jeopardizes the sufficiency of Scripture and the boundaries of the canon, for new prophecies supplement or compete with older prophecies.
Cessationists reject the efforts of evangelical charismatics and continuationists to treat prophecy as a sub-canonical genre. But if their canonical interpretation of 1 Cor 13:8-10 forces them to push prophecy into the mid-2C, there will be serious additional contenders for the NT canon. How can they eliminate the rivals?
vi) In fairness, it might be said that this overstates the extent of the problem. There was a sizable core canon from the outset, including the four Gospels and the Pauline epistles. These were undisputed from the get-go. So Christians always had a substantial, partial NT canon.
But although I think that argument is historically sound, that falls short of the cessationist argument. According to that argument, it's precisely the completion of the canon which takes the place of living prophecy. Once Christians have the complete inscripturated revelation, then, and only then, have prophets outlived their usefulness.
vii) But there's another problem with this argument. Thus far we've only been discussing the formal closure of the canon. Yet the cessationist argument demands more than that. It's not enough for the canon to be complete on paper. It must be accessible to Christians. According to the canonical interpretation of 1 Cor 13:8-10, Christians no longer need living prophets once they have the NT in hand. But that assumes the availability of the NT.
Yet until the advent of the printing press, the Bible wasn't widely available to lay Christians. And even then, most Christians were illiterate. So the cessatioist argument either proves too much or too little.
viii) Perhaps this could be offset by distinguishing between private and public reading. Christians could still have access to the Bible through the public recitation of the Bible in church lectionaries. The Bible was read aloud in church.
And there's doubtless some truth to that contention. But it's not without difficulty. For one thing, that requires vernacular lectionaries. For instance, the public reading of the Vulgate would be incomprehensible to parishioners who didn't know Ecclesiastical Latin.
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