Agreeing with Wayne Grudem on Something

Well, I wasn’t sure it would happen, but it has. I agree with a portion of Dr. Wayne Grudem’s comments in the seventh part of Adrian Warnock’s interview with him, Things We Can Agree to Disagree About?

Of course, he reaffirms the key points on which I disagree profoundly, namely that making penal substitutionary atonement the key meaning of the atonement is the heart of the gospel or that male authority is somehow a substantial part of the gospel message. Nonetheless, I take it as a good thing that he sees the fairly clear (in my opinion) meaning of 1 Corinthians 13:10, which does not mean that miraculous gifts cease in the church at some artificial point prior to the realizaiton of the kingdom.

He also notes what I believe is the key problem with charismatic gifts in the church today, and that is careless implementation of the gifts in a congregation. It is absolutely critical that if you are going to have various people speak in church, for example, and claim it is God’s word, that leadership be willing both to affirm and deny. The tendency of many to affirm a true word (according to their discernment) and just be quiet when they think there’s a problem, is very damaging. The key is 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22, which not only tells us to accept the good, but also to keep away from every type of evil.

Dr. Grudem comments:

On the other hand, it seems to me that the vast majority of younger seminary students and recent seminary graduates today, while they may not call themselves charismatic or Pentecostal, will generally say, “Well I’m certainly not a cessationist because I can’t see proof for that view in Scripture. But I haven’t seen many good examples of how these things actually work either.” So they often fall in what I would call an “open but cautious” category