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A Fundamentalist Objection

This Rock Volume 11, Number 12   December 2000     Frontispiece By Karl Keating   Letters   Apologist’s Eye   Scientific Faith By Nicanor Austriaco, Jr., O.P.   Thought That Will Not Go Away By Rev. Thomas M. Santa, CSSR   Why Miracles Can Happen By Mark Brumley   A Fundamentalist Objection   An Abomination to the Lord By Fr. Mitch Pacwa   Of Water and the Spirit By Alex Jones   Step by Step Can Infants Be Born Again? By Jason Evert   Fathers Know Best Where The Field Is Eager to Destroy the Fruit   Brass Tacks Big-Picture Apologetics By James Akin   Classic Apologetics The Divine and the Human By The Catholic Evidence Guild   Quick Questions   Sound Bites The Spirit of the Liturgy By Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J.    Subscribe    Permissions

An objection to a certain kind of miracle comes from an unexpected source: Fundamentalist Protestantism. Some—though certainly not all—Fundamentalists reject what is sometimes called the gift of miracles. This is one of the charismata, or charistmatic gifts, mentioned by Paul in 1 Corinthians 12:9–10. It is a transient power some people are given to work miracles, usually as a sign of credibility of revelation or authority but also as an expression of God’s love. The apostles and many other saints have possessed this gift.

Such Fundamentalists don’t object to miracles as such but to the idea that contemporary individuals are given the gift of miracles. They believe the gift of miracles was limited to biblical times or even certain periods in biblical times. They argue that the gift of miracles was necessary to validate the claims of Christ and the Apostles but that, with the end of the Apostolic Age and the establishment of the New Testament writings (perhaps even up to the settling of the canon in the fourth century), the gift of miracles ceased. Modern claims of the gift of miracles they dismiss as frauds, superstition, or demonic counterfeits.

There are two ways to reply to this objection. One is to defend otherwise well-founded historical and present-day examples of the gift of miracles against a priori objections that they must be frauds, superstition, or demonic counterfeits. Since this would require going through each contemporary claim, it can’t be done here.

The other way to reply to this objection is to show that there are no theological grounds for limiting the gift of miracles to biblical times. While it is true that miracles were signs of the Kingdom’s inauguration and that the Church is the beginning of the Kingdom on earth, it doesn’t follow that miraculous signs must have ceased with the establishment of the Church. For one thing, the Church has continued to be "established" in the world from age to age and from place to place. If God used the gift of miracles to confirm the gospel and the Church in the early days, why shouldn’t he continue to do so today?

Another argument is that the gift of miracles was given only to validate apostolic authority in the early Church. As Protestant theologian B. B. Warfield maintains in his classic study, Counterfeit Miracles, miracles "were distinctively the authentication of the Apostles. They were part of the credentials of the Apostles as the authoritative agents of God in founding the church. Their function thus confined them to distinctively the Apostolic Church, and they necessarily passed away with it" (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1972 edition, 6).

The biblical evidence—not to mention the overwhelming historical evidence for post-apostolic miracles and miracle-workers—argues against Warfield’s contention. Mark 16:17–18 lists various miraculous signs that will accompany believers, and nothing in the text suggests such signs were to cease with the close of the Apostolic Era. In 1 Corinthians 12:28–30, Paul distinguishes between Apostles and miracle-workers. Thus there seems to be no biblical basis for limiting the gift of miracles to the authentication of apostolic authority (as Warfield held) or to the Apostolic Age. One might argue, given the special nature of the Apostolic Age, that there were more people then who possessed the gift of miracles or even that a greater number of miracles occurred then. But that doesn’t mean the gift of miracles has ceased.

According to 1 Corinthians 13:8–10, prophecy and speaking in tongues will cease "when the perfect comes." Some Fundamentalists interpret that to mean Paul expected the gift of miracles to end with the close of the New Testament canon, which these Fundamentalists consider to be "the perfect" to which Paul refers. But the context suggests that the "perfect" is the fullness of the Kingdom at the parousia of Christ. Yet even if, per impossible, "the perfect" did refer to the New Testament canon, the text speaks of the end of prophecy and tongue-speaking—not miraculous signs in general or the gift of miracles in particular.