The term "cessationism" comes with different shades of meaning. For instance, Classical Cessationism denies the continuation of the prophetic and revelatory gifts while Full Cessationism denies every charismatic gift. However, all these imply one thing in common "cessation" of something. In that case, both Pentecostals and Charismatics who believe in the Final Authority of the Canon and the cessation of Special Canonical Revelation after the Apostles or the completion of the New Testament would be cessationists in that sense of the term; though they would fully disagree that the gifts of the Holy Spirit had ceased since then. Obviously, those who contend that canonical revelation is not closed but continuing are erring; for, all present prophesying even in modern times is called to be evaluated on the basis of the Written Word. The Scripture is Final Authority indeed. Also, teachers on the revelatory gifts would agree that these ministerial revelations are partial and not complete and one's comprehension of these is not always perfect. But, the Scripture is perfect, infallible, authentic, and complete.
Published in REVIVE, May 2012 (Malayalam Edition) A simple and literal definition of “theology” would be “the science of divine things”. It comes from two Greek words theos meaning “God” and logia meaning “discourse or speech”. In modern times, it is the stream of knowledge that differentiates the secular pursuit of knowledge from the sacred one because of its starting point: all secular studies begin with reason and experience while theology begins with faith. The starting point for all extra-theological studies is the world (Latin: saeculum); the starting point for theology is the Word of God. So, while one may say that theology is the study of God, the factual definition would be that theology is the science that rationally pursues the understanding of the self-revelation of God in the Scriptures. It would be interesting to note that many of the universities had originally begun as seminaries and theology was once known as the Queen of Sciences. However, with the dawn of theAge of E...
Comments
Post a Comment