The New Testament spiritual gifts—especially prophecy, tongues, and interpretation, along with healing—continued to manifest themselves in the life of the church up to and beyond the fourth century. Evidence in the literature from this period indicates that these gifts were respected among the “established” church leadership, referred to by important theologians, and practiced especially throughout the “underground” church.
The question of spiritual gifts in worship has become a crucial issue as a result of the rise of the twentieth-century Pentecostal and charismatic movements. Prior to the twentieth century, most scholars and pastors relegated the spiritual gifts to the first century and explained them as witnesses to the supernatural character of Jesus’ ministry. It was argued that the gifts ceased to be available to the church at the close of the apostolic age.
Research into the writings of the first three centuries of the church demonstrates that this presupposition regarding the gifts of the spirit to be inaccurate. This chapter presents material from church Fathers representing different ecclesiastical centers, all of whom refer both directly and indirectly to the experience of charismatic gifts.
Gifts of the Spirit in the Earliest Church
The New Testament Christian community was keenly attuned to the Holy Spirit. Jerusalem, Caesarea, Antioch, Ephesus, Thessalonica, Corinth, and Rome all had seen dramatic spiritual power demonstrated among Christians. In addition, the Petrine community and that behind the letter to the Hebrews were familiar with experiences of the Spirit. In New Testament Christianity, the spiritually extraordinary was commonplace.
The central passages of Scripture on the spiritual gifts are Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12–14. One can define a gift of the Spirit as an occasional, unusual ability, given by God, which enables a person to minister effectively and directly in a particular situation. It is a moment when God’s presence and compassion are manifested by God’s responding to human needs through another human being.
In exploring the life of the church between approximately a.d. 90 and 320, one dominant observation regarding the gifts of the Spirit emerges: evidence of the ongoing presence of spiritual gifts among Christians appears at least until the middle of the third century
The life of the church up to a.d. 150 was in a state of creative flux. In the midst of dispersion and growth, Christians grappled with issues of social status, community structure, doctrine, and worship. Throughout it all, the gifts of the Spirit continued as a feature of corporate experience.
The general tone of Christianity in Syria is expressed in the Odes of Solomon. This second-century document is a creation of rich poetic expression. More importantly, the Odes have a decidedly prophetic tenor. There is an intense feeling of rapture about the Odes. The author had experienced ineffable encounters with God, but felt constrained to share the impressions gained through those experiences. The author was conscious of having received a “word” from God that she or he must relate to others.
A similar spiritual climate is to be found in the Didachē, which arose from approximately the same time and place as the Odes. However, the Didachē does not enshrine the exuberance of an enraptured soul the way the Odes do. The Odes are an individual expression, whereas the Didachē is an ecclesiastical manual. There is a concreteness about the Didachē, a narrowing of focus, and the appearance of structure within the Christianity of a particular area.
There were itinerants who were identified as prophets, and their ministry was valued highly. In the context of the Eucharist, prophets were to be permitted to “ … give thanks as much as they wish” (Didachē 10.7), and when they were “ … speaking in the Spirit” (11:7), they were not to be judged. However, besides them existed locally chosen bishops and deacons (15:1–2), and the prophets were already encountering suspicion (1–2, 8).
At Antioch in Syria, the impulse of structure and the impulse of the Spirit were wedded in the person of Ignatius. As bishop of the church in that city, Ignatius argued for the recognition of the episcopal office and also spoke prophetically (Philadelphians 7.1–2). The church in Syria was working through a structural metamorphosis while at the same time being prodded and stirred by spiritual gifts.
Conditions in the West were comparable. From Rome, Clement strongly advised the church in Corinth to respect its leaders. In the same letter, he urged it to recognize what God might do through people by means of the gifts of the Spirit (I Clement 38.2). The enigmatic Shepherd of Hermas contributes to the pictures by showing that distinguishing among prophets was a major issue among second-century Roman Christians (43.1–21).
These admittedly sparse sources from the church of the first half of the second century do give glimpses of the Christian experience. They show that worship and ministry under the direction of the Spirit were well known by many Christians.
Gifts of the Spirit and the Church “Establishment”
The term established is hackneyed, but it arouses the correct images: the official world of power, decisions, and patriarchal control. The issues that concerned the establishment centered around identifying truth and then guarding it. This was precisely the world we today regard as inimical to extraordinary spiritual phenomena and behavior. In the second and third centuries, it was not.
The list of people relevant here includes Irenaeus, who defended the faith against second-century Gnosticism in what is now France; Hippolytus and Novatia, third-century conservatives who both led factions that split from the “progressive” Roman church; Cyprian, the Carthaginian martyr, and ecclesiologist; Dionysius, irenic late third-century bishop of Alexandria; and Firmilian, third-century bishop of Cappadocian Caesarea.
The information they provide is fascinating. Irenaeus knew of healings, prophecy, tongues, exorcisms, and even resurrections from the dead (Against Heresies, II, 49:3 and V, 6:1). He thought one could not begin to count the number of spiritual manifestations that occurred among Christians. Both Hippolytus (Apostolic Tradition 15.1 and 35.3) and Novatia (Concerning the Trinity 29) were familiar with spiritual gifts. They talk about tongues, healing, and prophecy.
The mid-third century Carthaginian church was charismatically alive. Its bishop, Cyprian, was known as a prophet (Letter 78, 2), and he valued dreams, visions, and prophecy (Letters 16, 4, and 66, 10 and Concerning Mortality 19). Dionysius and Firmilian do not bear conclusive witness to ministry through spiritual gifts, but they demonstrate that an open climate persisted in their parts of the church. Down to the middle of the third century, the ecclesiastical establishment showed a remarkable degree of comfort with the gifts of the Spirit.
Gifts of the Spirit in the “Underground” Church
Beneath the official world of the ante-Nicene church was a vibrant but (to us) invisible Christianity. These people have been banished to the shadows by history for many reasons: the fact that their ideas were, in varying degrees, unusual and different from those of other Christians; a perceived threat to the developing authority structures; and the greater role given female leadership.
The first part of this underground Christianity to note is a movement known as Montanism. This movement alarmed the second-century church in what is now central Turkey. The sources show that it had extreme views on certain issues, but it is difficult to find any real heresy.
Montanism was a prophetic movement led by Montanus, Maximila, and Priscilla whose view of prophecy was, in fact, not greatly different from what was common in the church at large. The Montanists also spoke in tongues.
Flourishing at the same time as Montanism were the people who produced what we know as the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. A strong case is currently being made by several authors for the female authorship of these documents. Whichever the gender of their authors, these rough echoes of the canonical Acts lift the lid off the “shadow” church.
There is little that is truly historical in these moralistic novels, but they open windows into the vivid religious imagination of the ordinary Christian of the era. What one sees is a mind completely comfortable with the unapologetically fabulous. Here are wonder-working apostles, magnificent female heroes, and particularly germane to this study, prophecy, tongues, and healings.
The last person to be considered here is Theodotus. He illustrates just how marginalized non-conforming Christians became. Belonging to a syncretistic, exotic Gnostic group known as the Valentinians, he wrote in the second century. His work has largely vanished; scraps of his thinking are preserved only in the notes someone made while studying him. What is of importance is his clear statement that prophecy and healing were common within the group of which he was a member (Clement of Alexandria, Excerpts of Theodotus, 24, 1).
The picture that emerges from the “shadow church” is intriguing. Theodotus was active in the second century; the Montanists and the apocryphal Acts appeared then, then continued into the third. They, and others, constituted a heterogeneous but vibrant strain of Christianity that was gradually forced to the periphery. However, these Christians were most comfortable with spiritual gifts and extraordinary acts of God.
The Theologians and the Gifts of the Spirit
The last stream of early Christianity to be tapped is composed of the theologians who were unconsciously forging that ambiguous relationship with the church in which theologians have found themselves ever since. The church has never stigmatized the following three theologians as heretics, but it has accepted them only with reservations. Their restless minds led them into strange places. Justin wanted to baptize Socrates; Tertullian embraced a wild-eyed rigorism and “the new prophecy” (Montanism), and Origen speculated about the pre-existence of souls. All three knew the gifts of the Spirit.
Justin’s work clearly records the gifts as parts of his second-century church. He even tendered some theological reflection upon them. The gifts of the Spirit had been gathered from the Jews, localized in Christ, then distributed among Christians (Dialogue with Trypho, 87 and 88).
Tertullian provided solid evidence for the widespread practice of the gifts among Carthaginian Christians in the early third century. Evidence for the gifts of the Spirit come from all parts of his literary career, early and late. If there was a “conversion” to Montanism for Tertullian somewhere in mid-life, it did not change his thinking or his observations about the place of spiritual gifts.
Finally, Origen provides considerable information about Christian religious experience in a work known as Against Celsus. Celsus, a pagan philosopher of the mid-second century, had met Christians who spoke in tongues and prophesied (Against Celsus 7, 9). He worked his experience with these people into a scathing attack on Christianity.
Around a.d. 248, Origen responded to Celsus’ comments about these Christians. As he did so, he demonstrated that the gifts of the Spirit were known in the third century over the wide geographical area with which he was familiar. Origen talked about “traces” of spiritual gifts, but occasionally, he indicates that these traces were substantial in reference to miracles, prophecy, and exorcism. (Against Celsus 1, 2; 2, 8; and 7, 8).
Like the “shadow Christians” and those who bore the burden of leadership, theologians among the early Christians were touched to varying degrees by the charismatic phenomena. The cumulative weight of the evidence available from the late first century to the early fourth century would suggest that throughout this period the gifts of the Spirit played a significant role in the Christian experience.