Will Wonders Never Cease?

St. Augustine on Pentecost and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit

On Pentecost Sunday, the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles describes how the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles, enabling them to speak in the different languages of all the “devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem” at that time (Acts 2:5, NAB). In the second reading from 1 Corinthians 12, Paul alludes to other gifts of the Spirit listed elsewhere in the chapter, including not just speaking in tongues, but also interpreting tongues, prophesying, healing, “mighty deeds,” and discerning spirits, and others. Paul teaches that these different gifts are bestowed for the benefit of the Church.

Among Protestant Christians, there is a long-standing debate over whether these gifts of the Spirit, and even miracles more generally, ceased with the death of the apostles, or if God continues to bless the Church with these gifts through the present day. On the one hand, those who argue that these gifts disappeared at the end of the apostolic age are known as “cessationists.” On the other, the awkwardly-named “continuationists” insist that the Holy Spirit persists in bestowing these gifts to bless the Church.

This debate may seem strange to Catholics. Our tradition is replete with healers, visionaries, and other miracle-workers whose deeds we believe are real, although extraordinary, signs of the Spirit’s presence in our midst. The debate, however, has its roots in Catholic anti-Protestant polemics at the time of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. As Carlos Eire explains in his excellent history of levitation, bilocation, and other unusual miracles in the Catholic tradition written for Commonweal last September, by the High Middle Ages, miracles had come to be seen as evidence of a person’s sanctity, leading to the popularity of accounts of the miracles performed by saints (including levitation and bilocation). At the advent of the Reformation, Catholic polemicists argued that the absence of miracles among the Protestants should be counted against them, especially when compared to the miracles performed by the Catholic saints; if the Protestants’ teachings were true, God would have provided them with miracles to confirm their credibility.

The most well-known rejoinder came from the Reformer John Calvin. Calvin agreed that the purpose of miracles is to give divine sanction to the credibility of a witness, but he turned the Catholics’ argument on its head. He argued that miracles had accompanied the testimony of both the Old Testament prophets and the apostles in the New Testament, but that testimony is complete and its credibility has been adequately attested to by the miracles of the apostles. There is therefore no need for any further miracles, and indeed post-apostolic miracles would suggest some new teaching had been given, which is impossible. Calvin, however, argued that supernatural happenings remain possible, but only at the hands of demonic spirits. He went on to claim that the miraculous events recounted by Catholics were fabrications, frauds, or demonic interventions meant to mislead the faithful. Calvin’s views on miracles remained common in the Reformed tradition, but other Protestant traditions maintained a more open perspective on miracles.

The issue came to the fore once again centuries later with the advent of the Holiness movement in the United States in the nineteenth century, and especially with the emergence of the Pentecostal movement at the beginning of the twentieth century. Pentecostals insisted not only that the Holy Spirit continued to grace people with gifts, but that the manifestation of these gifts, particularly speaking in tongues, was a necessary sign of one’s having received the Holy Spirit. These events changed the tenor of the debate over the gifts of the Spirit. Not only was it now an intra-Protestant debate, but the central issue was now primarily over the role of the gifts of the Spirit in the life of the Church. For example, today many cessationists would say that they do not deny that God performs miracles, but only that individual persons do not receive specific supernatural gifts, such as healing or prophesying. A handful, such as the 20th-century American Presbyterian R.C. Sproul, however, have maintained Calvin’s strict position against miracles.

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A great irony surrounding this debate is that, since the participants are all committed to the principle of sola scriptura, the discussion centers around attempting to prove from the Bible what happened once the period in which the biblical witness was given had ended. I suppose such a task is not impossible; Scripture might provide clues as to whether the gifts of the Spirit mentioned in the New Testament were intended only for that time and place or as ongoing signs of the Spirit’s work. Regardless, advocates for both sides do nevertheless appeal to other sources and authorities, including the Church Fathers, to bolster their arguments.

The great bishop and theologian St. Augustine (354-430), for example, is often cited as supporting the point of view of the cessationists. A key text is the sixth of Augustine’s Homilies on the First Epistle of John. This homily covers 1 John 3:19 through 4:3. At first glance, it may be surprising that Augustine tackles the question of the gifts of the Holy Spirit here since the First Letter of John does not address the events of Pentecost nor the gifts of the Spirit. The passage at hand does, however, briefly touch on the Johannine theme of Christ remaining, or abiding, in us and our remaining in Him, saying: “Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them, and the way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit that he gave us” (1 Jn 3:24). Augustine focuses on the concluding phrase, asking, if the way we know Christ remains in us is from the Spirit, then how do we know if someone has received the Spirit? Is it by their receiving the gifts of the Spirit enumerated by Paul? Augustine’s question is not all that different from that raised by modern-day Pentecostals and their theological opponents.