There is much discussion about the gifts of the Spirit that are active for the church today or whether some of the gifts have ceased with the Apostolic Fathers. Modern denominations are formed on the basis of this continuation of gifts. Revivals and massive gatherings center on the speaker being able to perform "miracle healings". How much of this should we accept as biblical and authoritative? Better yet, did the Early Church continue the practice of all of the spiritual gifts after the time of the Apostles?
To explore this we first need to agree on our language. The "gifts" of the church are called "charismata" by Paul (although he will also call them "pneumatika"). This "charismata" is where we get the word charismatic. Today we are just as likely to use this word for a group speaking in special tongues or other miraculous manifestations or to describe the compelling personality of a person. The word "charismata" was used often by the Early Church but many scholars looking to defend their practice take every reference without searching for specific content. The Early Church used "charismata" to refer to God's gifts of material possession that were intended to be shared, the wisdom to be shared, and the help the strong could lend to the weak. Only once is a reference using "pneumatika"made in the Apostolic Fathers to refer to a spiritual gift (Epistle of Barnabas).
Here are some of the gifts that are associated with the modern pentecostal movement treated in light of the Early Church:
Apostles:
The Didache uses the word "apostle" to denote a missionary or an "appointed messenger". The document uses the words prophet, teacher, and apostle interchangeably for its instruction about testing them. The Early literature quickly began to use the singular expression of "apostle" to refer to Paul. Very early in the tradition the church began to hold the term to refer to activity located around the twelve. There is no suggestion of some succession from the Apostles themselves.
Prophecy:
This is impossible to treat in a paragraph without making sweeping statements so we will treat this in a later post specifically. However, here we can say that the early Christians saw prophets the same way they did in the Old Testament, they were a mouthpiece for God and proclaimed forth his "word". These proclamations were sometimes predictive in nature but were usually relevant observations based on the general revelation given of God's will to a specific situation. There was a sect of early Christians called the Montanists that were a prophetic movement following Montanus that came up around 172 AD in Phrygia. There is much made of the Montanist movement by pentecostal scholars. It is important to note that the "prophets" of the Montanist movement were predicting the return of Christ. They were repeatedly revealed to be false prophets when the return of Christ did not manifest. Even though Tertullian joined this Montanist movement in his later teaching, the sect was made distant from the Orthodox teaching of the early Christians. Again, we will return to this later.
Tongues:
Tongues as a spiritual gift were primarily a marker of the movement of the gospel into other nations and people groups. This word "glossolalia" has the potential of four meanings:
1. to speak a human language that one has not learned (Acts 2)
2. to speak a non-human language (1 Cor. 13:1)
3. to speak in unintelligible words that need interpretation
4. to utter sounds in musical cadence
Early references to speaking in tongues outside of the New Testament are extremely sparse. Irenaeus refers to the use of tongues as a move of the twelve and Paul in line with foreign languages, not at all like modern glossolalia. He also uses the term to refer to frivolous or silly speech as opposed to speech that is unintelligible. The lack of mention of the occurrence of speaking in tongues in the second century has been interpreted as being so common that it need not be mentioned. However, the controversy surrounding the Montanists provided the opportunity for it to be reflected on. The reason they were not mentioned could also be because they has ceased.
