The church that I attend is a member of the IFCA and my Pastor attended the conference this last week.  He and I are good friends so I pretty much have gotten the full scoop on what went on.  I found it interesting that they would have booked a speaker without doing any investigation as to what his beliefs are, it seems that there is a pretty good amount of information out about him. 

My pastor stated pretty much the same things as you with regards to the seminars, He said that the first three seminars were very timely and appropriate with regards to events that are taking place in the body of Christ today, the infiltration of post modernism, the emergent movement etc....  He was not nescessarily shocked by session 4, although he thouroughly disagreed, he did say that it was profitable in that this is a good example as to how prevalent this type of teaching is today, and how if we are not aware of the truth this improper teaching can slip right past us into our own local bodies!  My pastor is very gracious in what he has said about Dr. Moreland, He sees him as a conflicted man and I would have to agree with that assesment.  I would also have to add though that the reason that he is most likely so conflicted is because he has deviated from the truth of the scripture, most likely he does not rely upon it as his sole life guide and he has been spoiled by the pursuit of the wisdom of man. 

Thanks for your comments, whomever responded to the post. I would agree, I think, with your pastor's assessment of Dr. Moreland, although it is difficult to tell with just listening to him for four sessions. 

He made the claim that a person who believed the sign gifts had ceased could believe what he said about the third wave, which I thought was a fascinating claim. I think I disagree with him, although I can understand what he is saying. I pray that people will be healed by a miracle, but I frankly don't expect it to happen often. He just thinks that this is the way it is supposed to be: people should be getting healed often, although not necessarly by a person with the gift of healing. I still disagree with him, but it is an interesting thought.  

Brian, the way it came about was that the host pastor went to Dallas Seminary with Dr. Moreland back in the day. Because he went to Dallas, he was considered "safe." The disputed part of his teachings on the third wave were not a part of Dr. Moreland's teachings until about 2 or 3 years ago when he joined a Vineyard church, which was not found out by the IFCA leaders until about half way through the conferance. So it is somewhat understandable because these views are very new for Moreland. But when they googled him, they did discover it. Part of the problem is that he has written so much material both in hard copy as well as on the internet it is hard to sort through it all looking for things that one disagrees with. And one expects a speaker not to bring up issues like without first mentioning what he is going to say. So, in summary, the leaders did not know what they had coming.  

I appreciate many of the comments on here, but find it a little strange the quick dismissal of much of Moreland's signs and wonders presentation.  I'm aware of much of Moreland's reasoning on this issue and would not arrive at the same conclusion some of the commentators here have.  For example, I'm unsure why "going into experiential mode" should count as a reason against believing someone's view.  Of course experiences can be wrong sometimes, but that's no reason to think citing one's own experiences shouldn't count as evidence. I take experiences to be veridical, generally speaking, and I suspect every person who has contributed to this blog thus far does as well.  In other words, it should not be the M.O. of the church to ditch "going into experiential mode". Heck, I want to maximize my true beliefs, regardless of where it comes from!

Furthermore, I'm not so sure the "white male obssessive compulsive type-A" comment is unique to Moreland.  Dan Wallace the respected intellectual at cessationist DTS made very similar comments about 15 years ago at an ETS conference.  It seems to fit.  I know I'm one! 

Thanks for your comments. I mentioned the change in MO to experiential mode because it was such a drastic change from the previous three presentations he had given. He had been very rational and focused upon philosophy, but then the fourth presentation he started talking like he was a totally different person. I agree that experience can be very helpful, but it (and also philosophy) must be interpreted in a Christian worldview, which is derived from Scripture. So I am not dismissing his views because it was based on experience, I was just highlighting the drastic change in style.

You also know your sources very well! Moreland was indeed quoting Wallace at this point, from a recently published book "Who's Afraid of the Holy Spirit?" which includes an essay that started out life as the ETS presentation you spoke of.  The reason I had a problem with the comment was not so much the content of the comment, but the manner of presentation. Wallace (a cessationist) saying it in a book is one thing, but Moreland (a third-waver) saying it to a group of cessationists with whom he has not established a good friendship is another thing. We need correction and rebuke, but there are good ways and bad ways to rebuke people. People must know that we love them and we need to establisht legitimacy before we rebuke. 

It's been a little while...I'm the one who posted on June 14...been tied up for a couple weeks...

Regarding the "marginalization of cessationism" remark, the intent is not to be mean-spirited, but it's simply a call for cessationists to reconsider just why the view is being marginalized, as it seems to be.  (Moreland was either a cessationist or "open but cautious" until just a few years ago, by the way, so to label him 'third-wave' may too quickly cause one to forget the sort of credibility he has had with cessationist audiences for many years).  To elaborate a bit, when there occurs scholarly backpedalling from a certain view, although it tells one nothing about whether the view is, in fact, true, it should, at the very least, cause proponents of the view to go back, check the books, and recrunch the numbers, if you will, to find the reason for the disfavor.  (By the way, all this is from his book called "The Kingdom Triangle" in which he states what he means by such claims, and similarly, gently, exhorts non-cessationists and even charismatics in necessary growth areas! And hey, even Wallace himself gives a hearty recommendation for the book!) I am not sure how much more gently he could have stated the rebuke, if it is as stated in that book, but I was not there at your conference, so, of course, the appropriateness of the exhortation for that instance is something I cannot weigh in on.

Charlie, I understand better now that you brought up "going into experiential mode" only to note the drasticness of the change from the earlier philosophical emphasis of his talks. However, even if there is a drastic difference between the rational/philosophical and personal experience, why does such a difference bear so negatively upon your evaluation of his claims?

By the way, please forgive any infelicitous wording.  I don't mean to sound like I'm picking a fight, I simply think this is very much worth talking about and invite anyone interested to join! I will post as I am able.

Let me give you a little more background from my end. I agree with a large measure of your thoughts. I think we do indeed need to reevaluate cessationism, both the grounds for it as well as what it means practically. The IFCA especially needs this type of examination. JP Moreland is not the usual type of speaker at an IFCA conferance, and I think that type of speaking would be helpful in the long run. The philosophical bent of the first three lectures is needed to help the IFCA pastors think more clearly and understand where the world is going. But most of them are going to be somewhat opposed to what Moreland said in those first three lectures because of how little Scripture he used. But because of the fourth lecture (dealing with the Spirit), many of the pastors wrote off anything Moreland said. A chain of reasoning would be: look at where thinking philosophically makes you end up: in experience only and anti-IFCA doctrine. So his fourth lecture caused any learning that could have happened from the first three lectures to be short-circuited. I hope that this makes my complaint a little bit more understandable.

And as far as his critique of cessationism itself, I think that type of thing is needed. But it must come from the right source in the right way. If the IFCA had asked Moreland to come in to speak to them on the Spirit, it would have been an excellent lecture. But they didn't. They wanted to be encouraged with a message from the Bible. It would be like me coming to a Mennonite conferance and giving a strong presentation of a just war theory when they weren't expecting it. Or preaching an open theist position to a group of strong Calvinists.  This is not the way to help people think through positions, it just polarizes the issues. A book like Dan Wallace put on is the proper way to investigate these topics, I think. I just read it recently and I will be putting up a review on it soon: keep tuned. 

I appreciate your clarifying the nature of the objection, Charlie, and I appreciate your irenic tone, as well. It seems to me that our disagreement boils down to whether it was appropriate for that individual to share that information in that way with that audience. I imagine we both probably agree it takes wisdom.  I don't have a strong beef with whether it was appropriate or not, so I'll leave that issue alone at this point.

 My original interest in this forum was actually sparked by something rather different than the propriety of the Moreland talk. He simply served as a springboard to catch my attention.  Over the last several years I have been increasingly interested in the role experience should play in our interpretation of Scripture, our conclusions about theology and doctrine, Christian praxis, and our spiritual growth.  With the rise in my own curiosity, I have become more attentive to the strength of certain claims made by fellow brothers and sisters with regard to the role of experience.  So for example, John MacArthur in Charismatic Chaos makes the claim that, (1) basically, that there are only two ways to live one's life: the scriptural way, characterized by trusting in what Scripture says, and the mystical way, characterized by trusting in one's experiences. He continues, saying (2) knowledge by experience is important perhaps as some sort of after-effect, but the "engine" doing all the real work for guiding one's life is knowledge gained from Scripture.  The pastor of my own church has recently claimed made almost identical claims, employing the claims for much the same purposes as MacArthur.  

I have heard similar claims in many other venues.  So this seems a not unusual view among Christian leaders.  Enter the comments in this forum on Moreland's discussion.  I have actually heard the talks to which you refer. It seemed to me that the common factor in critiques of the conference, especially of talk #4 (e.g. that it was a disaster, or that this is the result of people living their lives by the wisdom of man rather than by the word of God, etc.) centered on his appeals to experience, or at least his lack of appeal to biblical references. I was wondering such critiques arise from the same rationale evinced in MacArthur or even my own pastor.  If anyone is interested, I am interested particularly in THIS aspect of the debate, because I think so much hinges on it. I hope a few more contributors will jump in, too. 

I read the link you recommended.  Thank you.  It gives me some background insight into this forum. I also stumbled onto Professor Wilsey's paper on the possible benefits of postmodernism and perused it a bit.  And by the way, I am happy to see a fellow disgruntled MacArthur reader. 

 With regard to the issue of experience, the questions you pose are worthwhile. Before we go straightaway into epistemology, let me say that my interest in experience is just this: For all intents and purposes, I lived as a cessationist for nearly all of my life until a couple of years ago and have recently been changing.  That is, I never took a strong stance either way on the spiritual gifts debate, but in practice, lived as if cessationism were true.  A couple years ago, the issue became more important in my life. People whom I barely knew started receiving "words of knowledge" that applied directly to various circumstances in my life with uncanny precision. It happened over and over and over. They were often answers to unspoken prayer, they were sometimes guidance and direction with a particular decision, but most often, they were specific and timely encouragements in my walk with the Lord.  Though this is just one of the factors that precipitated my journey out of de facto cessationism, what I've written thus far is perhaps enough to get us started.

This story hopefully provides you with the background necessary to understand my particular interest in the role of experience: When someone, such as a trusted pastor, claims that God only speaks today through the Bible, and yet when one's experience strongly suggests otherwise, what ought the believer to do? 

I imagine common pastoral wisdom on this issue will be to check experience against Scripture. But there are at least two things one could mean by "check it against Scripture."   The expression could mean (1) "distrust the experience if it's not permitted or explicated in Scripture" OR it could mean something like (2) "trust the experience in the absence of some clear Biblical prohibition on such experiences."  This should be a familiar distinction. Another way of stating this distinction is the difference between (1) "guilty until proven innocent" OR (2) "innocent until proven guilty".  The difference between these two senses of "check it against Scripture" makes all the difference in the world toward how one in my shoes would be advised to proceed theologically.  Yet many brothers I have known either fail to note the distinction at all or actually do note it, but take (1) to be the Biblical position, which is pretty near self-refuting.  In speaking with others about this,  others commonly fear they would risk deceiving themselves. (A related concern to self-deception is often expressed in the claim, "That's pretty subjective.") 

 I am increasingly puzzled by such responses (all of which were part of my repertoire against the charismatic). But what's more, since God has profoundly used these experiences in my own life, this has taken on more than academic significance for me.  Now that you have the background to understand my interest in the subject, is this hitting any of your areas of interest?  If not, we can always proceed to the epistemological issues you raised.

I've been out of commission for a while, and so I'm much too late, and much too unaware of our friend JPM to discuss most of what has been said, but I wanted to jump in on Mr. Anonymous' discussion about experience.
I have been curious about the same sort of question, namely, What can I expect God to do in my life through experience?  I am a pastor, and most of my spiritual life has focused around reading and studying scripture.  I pray much less than I should, though I have been attempting to pray more (on my own, with my wife and daughter, etc), and as I have been doing so I've noticed a pattern.  Frequently now, I will say to my wife, "I've been praying about x & y, and I'm beginning to think we ought to do x," to which my wife will respond, "I've been praying about that, too, and I've come to believe the same thing."  Sometimes she throws in that she recently read something in scripture that led her mind in a certain way.  We never had those discussions before I began working on prayer.
Now, what do I make of that?  I have begun to conclude that as I pray, seeking God's best in different situations, he is actively (though quietly - no voice booming from Heaven) leading me in the way I ought to go.  But notice that we are not trying to develop theology from our experience...and I'm not telling people that because I am led a certain way, that they ought to do the same.  I have met many people who have an experience that they then try to legislate for others, or that promptly turns their theology on its head (and when confronted by scripture the voids the accuracy of their interpretation of the experience, hold to the experience because it feels "real").
Regarding the two responses to experience, I'm not sure we must live our lives with one or the other.  If one is well-grounded in scripture, and attempting to grow in the life-applied-knowledge of the Lord, there will be experiences that clearly pass through as innocent, some as guilty, and some as curious (read that as suspicous if you tend to be a pessimist).
Well, I'm not sure if I made things worse, better or neither...but there it is.

(Mr Anonymous...I think you should be able to type a name for yourself in the Title field, have you tried that?  We may need to consult Brian on this one.)

Well, this is the best I can do with overcoming the title "Anonymous". I don't generally use my real name online, at least in public forums. Maybe it's paranoia! I'm happy to use my real name in private communication however, if you want a real name.  Anyway...Sam, welcome to the discussion.  I noticed on the "Healer" thread that we share a lot of the same concerns about being more bold in prayer and expecting to see more people healed than we in fact do.  Charlie, I think somewhere I saw similar sentiments from you, too on that issue, so please forgive me if I've implied that cessationism necessarily requires an attitude of resignation toward God's regular and spectacular intervention.  Certainly there is room for pneumatic or progressive cessationism as a subset of cessationism.  And praise God for that!  My calling myself a former de facto cessationist was a quick-and-dirty label (and possibly a misleading one).  Richard Mayhue, from The Master's Seminary recently summed up my former view when he said, “I believe the Bible teaches that God can sovereignly choose to heal whomever and whenever, but it will not be a frequent occurrence…."  (From a 2003 online issue of The Master’s Seminary Journal). It sounds like all of us here agree that that statement does not represent our views, despite the fact that we disagree (perhaps) on the continuity of, say, healing as a spiritual gift.  So, as we progress in this discussion, I hope it's clear I'm not making this a cessationist/continuationist issue - it need not be that - but rather, a kingdom of God issue.  By the way, I found this recent audio interview with Moreland at Converse with Scholars, a great theological education website run by a few DTS grads, in which he emphasizes and defends that very point (that such positive expectation is a kingdom of God issue rather than a gifts issue), and he even fields a few questions from the audience on the nature of theology and experience. It's an hour and a half, and the Q and A is at the one hour mark, if you care to listen.  I think it’s exceptional stuff.   I’ll write more a little later as regards the other comments in Sam’s post.

if one is well-grounded in scripture, and attempting to grow in the life-applied-knowledge of the Lord, there will be experiences that clearly pass through as innocent, some as guilty, and some as curious

I think this is correct that there will be some experiences within each category, but I was asking a different, and probably rather convoluted question. Maybe a clearer way to ask what I'm getting at would be by using the following illustration: say I have some experience (perhaps even one that is seen as controversial) that "feels" like the Lord is in it (possibly even one I have intentionally sought out in order to reassess my beliefs), how should I proceed in light of this experience as regards my beliefs (even the theological ones)? Suppose further that I can find no prohibition in Scripture on experiences of that sort, but no clear permission of them either. Either way, I can’t arrive at an immediate way forward purely from biblical direction. The situation is one in which I do not yet know whether the experience and the resulting beliefs it has brought about are “innocent”, “guilty”, or “curious”. It seems I would need a way forward out of the mess. I'd need some sort of interim position – a time and manner in which I could sort things out and perhaps even “run experiments” in some fashion.  But in the meantime, say, in the intervening 12 months, I would have had this experience that I'm unsure whether to take as veridical.  There seem to be only two methodological stances possible in such situations: "innocent until proven guilty" or "guilty until proven innocent."  It can't be both. It can't be neither. I don't think there is a third option.  Therefore, it must be one or the other. I think it's innocent until proven guilty. Provided I have done a better job describing the situation, which of the two do you all think it should be?

One final question. Sam, you said:

 But notice that we are not trying to develop theology from our experience 

Sorry for the lengthy delay...I've been enjoying some time off. 

I am not sure I am fit to decide which approach is better (guilty or innocent until proven otherwise).  I might suggest two approaches.  First, I would approach a spiritual elder to get their take on your experience.  Understanding reality is something that comes with spiritual maturity.  Hopefully, we are never going to be the most spiritual person we know...God designed us to live in community so that we can strengthen, protect and correct one another.  In my experience as a pastor, I've noticed that those who hold to and rely upon some past experience (seeing a vision, having met Jesus, etc) tend to be Lone Rangers [this might be an interesting topic for a future post...]. 

Second, you would need to know what kind of a person you are.  Do you tend to be too closed minded and opportunities of blessing, or do you miss those opportunities by being too casual with spiritual issues?  Once you know your weakness, I might suggest you attempt to lean the other way during a "trial period."  I guess I still hold to the possibility of a middle way, the "curious" approach.  If we really don't know whether an experience was good or bad, then we should not sell out to it until that answer is found.  While it is subject to final judgement, we need to be in much prayer for God's guidance from his sure source, scripture.

 Regarding the second comment you quote.  What I mean is that you are never going to find an item on my doctrinal statement (written or mental) that knowingly has its only basis in experience.  My goal is that my theology comes from scripture.  Experiences may cause me to question or re-evaluate what I think I know, or they may be a source of affirmation of what I believe, but they will never be the source of my theology.  Now, before anyone tries to call me on this, let me say that I am sure that I do not succeed in this all the time, but it is my goal.