Skip to content

Reference: Index

The first seven sections of this casebook make an argument. This one is the apparatus behind it: the vocabulary, the passages, the Greek, the books, the short answers, and the map of the positions. Nothing here is a new argument. It is where you check the argument you have just read, or find the page that makes it at length.

The seven pages

Page What it is Use it when
Glossary Thirty-five terms, defined in a sentence or three, from ainigma to word of wisdom. A word in the argument is doing work you have not seen defined.
Scripture Index The passages the case turns on, with the pages that discuss each one. You want to know whether a text has been answered, or where.
Greek Notes Lexical notes on fourteen words, each with usage, a gloss, and a warning against word-study fallacies. Someone has told you what "the Greek means."
Reading List An annotated, categorized list — the cessationist case, the continuationist case, history, evidence, commentaries. You want to read a book, not a webpage, and want to know which one.
FAQ Fifteen short answers to the questions that come up first. You have a question and want the short form before the long one.
Comparison Chart Five positions compared across seven rows, from hard cessationism to continuationism. You suspect the two sides are not actually disagreeing about the same thing.
What This Site Does and Does Not Claim The limits of the case, stated plainly. You want to know what is being argued and what is not.

How to use it

If you are checking a claim, start with the Scripture Index. Most objections to continuationism are attached to a verse, and the index tells you in one line whether the verse has a page and which one. The index is not a concordance; it lists the passages the argument actually turns on, not every text that mentions the Spirit.

If you are checking a word, use the Greek Notes. The notes give the form, the gloss, the usage, and — the part usually left out — what the word does not prove. A lexicon can tell you the range of a term. Only context can tell you which sense is in play, and the notes try to keep those two things apart.

If you are checking a person, use the Reading List. It names the strongest book on each side of each question and says who should read it. Where this site paraphrases an author rather than quoting him, the Quotation Notes record the policy and the sources.

If you are checking the shape of the debate, use the Comparison Chart. "Cessationism" is a family of five positions, and an argument that refutes one may leave another standing. The chart shows which premise each position actually needs.

Conventions

Scripture is quoted in the ESV unless another translation is named. Greek is transliterated and glossed. Citations give author, title, publisher, and year, but not page numbers: editions and printings differ, and a page number that is right in one printing is wrong in the next. No external link appears on these pages unless the destination is a stable, canonical one.

The reference pages are descriptive. Where they touch the argument, they point to the page that makes it. The case is in the case, the texts are in the proof texts, and the evidence is in the source library.

See also