Are there any Christian churches that believe in both Sola Scriptura and Continuationism?

Upvote:0

Christchurch, Cottingham, England is a Church that believes in Sola Scriptura and Continuationsm.

Church website: https://www.cccottingham.org.uk/.

In that Church they believe that the Bible is the authoritive written source of information regarding our Christian existence. They also believe that God continues to communicate personally and through messengers both spiritual and physical today.

In that Church they also believe that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are available to the Body of Christ today, because in Mark 16:17-18, we read:

17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18 they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”

Now in 2 Timothy 3:16, we read:

16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

And so we see that ALL scripture is given by God. That means we cannot deny that Mark 16:17-18 and 1 Corinthians 12 apply to the Body of Christ today!

Upvote:2

In the Reformed Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) “Of the Holy Scripture” paragraph 10, it states:

The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.

Here "private spirits" are placed on the same level as "decrees of councils," "opinions of ancient writers," and "doctrines of men." All of these are to be subordinate to "the Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture."

According to author Byron Curtis, "...in mid-seventeenth-century England there was an established meaning to the phrase ‘private spirits' denoting personal revelations." Curtis notes evidence from literature close in time, showing that the term "private spirits" was commonly understood to mean "personal revelations" that people received from the Holy Spirit. 

Around that same period of time, the Lutherans agreed with that understanding. For example, Johannes Andreas Quenstedt (August 13, 1617 – May 22, 1688) was a German Lutheran dogmatician in the Lutheran scholastic tradition. He writes:

We must distinguish between revelations which pertain to, or attack, an article of faith, and those which concern the state of the Church or the State, social life, and future events; the first we repudiate; the latter, however, some hold, are not to be urged with any necessity of believing, nevertheless are not to be rashly rejected. (Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, Vol. 1, p. 211)

More post

Search Posts

Related post