Speaking in Tongues: The Evidence, Part 3 of 7
Two friends are sitting across from each other. One of them opens a Bible app, slides the phone across the table, and says:
“Right here. First Corinthians 13. ‘When the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.’ The perfect is the Bible. We have the Bible now. So tongues are done. Case closed.”
The other one thinks for a second.
“Do you see God face to face right now?”
Silence.
That one question is where the most popular argument against speaking in tongues starts to fall apart.
The Verse That Launched a Thousand Debates
If you’ve ever been told spiritual gifts like tongues and prophecy ended in the first century, you’ve almost certainly heard someone quote 1 Corinthians 13:8-10. It’s the go-to text. The big gun.
Here’s the passage:
“Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.”
The cessationist reading (the view that miraculous gifts stopped) goes like this: “The perfect” (Greek: to teleion) refers to the completed New Testament. Once we had the full Bible, we didn’t need tongues or prophecy anymore. The partial gave way to the complete.
Done.
Sounds clean. Sounds logical. But keep reading.
Paul Won’t Let You Stop at Verse 10
He kept going. And what he wrote next makes the “completed Bible” interpretation very difficult to defend.
Verse 12:
“For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”
Read that again.
“Face to face.” “Know fully, even as I am fully known.”
Do you see God face-to-face right now? Do you know fully the way God fully knows you? Has every mystery been resolved?
If you’re honest, the answer is no. Which means “the perfect” hasn’t arrived yet. Which means this passage almost certainly isn’t talking about the Bible.
And then there’s Paul’s analogy in verse 11: “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.”
He’s describing a massive transition: from the limited, partial experience of the present age to something so radically different it’s like growing from infancy to adulthood. Having a completed Bible in AD 397 (when the canon was formally recognized) versus AD 55 (when Paul wrote this letter) is not that kind of cosmic shift.
But standing face to face with Jesus at His return?
That’s the shift Paul is describing.
Most Scholars Agree (Even the Ones Who Disagree on Everything Else)
And it’s not just Pentecostal scholars saying this. Scholars with no stake in defending tongues looked at the Greek text and landed in the same place.
Gordon Fee, one of the most respected New Testament scholars of the twentieth century, is emphatic: “The term ‘the perfect’ has to do with the Eschaton itself, not some form of ‘perfection’ in the present age.” The Eschaton. Fancy word for the end. Christ’s return. Fee also borrows a vivid image from Karl Barth: “Because the sun rises, all lights are extinguished.” The gifts don’t stop because something lesser replaces them (like a completed book). They stop because the full, blazing glory of Christ’s return makes them unnecessary.
You don’t need a flashlight when the sun is up.
D.A. Carson, Reformed, not Pentecostal, not charismatic, and one of the most widely cited evangelical scholars alive, agrees. Carson argues that if “the perfect” meant the completed Bible, Paul would be guilty of “the wildest exaggeration in verse 12.” Seeing face to face? Knowing fully as you are fully known? That’s absurdly overstated language if Paul just meant “once the last New Testament book gets written.”
Carson isn’t defending tongues here. He’s defending responsible interpretation of the Greek text.
Anthony Thiselton, a conservative evangelical Anglican, wrote the most detailed commentary on 1 Corinthians in the English language. Over 1,400 pages. He firmly rejects the cessationist reading of this passage and concludes that no New Testament text warrants expecting the gifts to cease.
And then there’s the one that should stop the conversation.
The Concession That Changes Everything
Richard Gaffin is widely regarded as one of the most rigorous cessationist scholars alive. He’s the guy other cessationist scholars cite. The academic backbone of the position.
And even Gaffin concedes that the canon view of 1 Corinthians 13:10, the idea that “the perfect” means the completed Bible, “cannot be made credible exegetically.”
Read that one more time.
The top cessationist scholar in the world says the most popular cessationist argument doesn’t work exegetically. That’s not me saying it. That’s not a Pentecostal pastor at a revival saying it. That’s one of the other side’s best scholars admitting the text doesn’t support their most-used claim.
Thomas Schreiner, another serious cessationist scholar, also concedes that “the perfect” refers to Christ’s return. He builds his cessationist case on other grounds entirely (Ephesians 2:20), precisely because he knows 1 Corinthians 13 won’t carry the weight.
So What Is This Passage Actually About?
But in all the arguing over when gifts end, people miss what Paul is actually saying.
Go back to verse 8. The very first line.
“Love never fails.”
That’s the point.
The whole chapter (1 Corinthians 13, the passage people read at weddings) is about love. Not about the expiration date of spiritual gifts. Paul mentions tongues, prophecy, and knowledge ceasing to make a contrast: these things are temporary. Love is eternal. These gifts serve us now, in this in-between age, while we see dimly and know partially.
But love? Love outlasts everything.
Paul isn’t writing an essay on cessationism. He’s writing a hymn to love.
Being Honest About What This Doesn’t Settle
I want to be straight with you. Dismantling the 1 Corinthians 13 argument doesn’t end the whole debate. Other cessationist arguments exist. Gaffin’s redemptive-historical framework, for instance, argues that the gifts were tied to the unrepeatable founding events of the church. That’s a more sophisticated argument, and it deserves a serious response. We’ll get to it in this series.
But the single most popular argument used to tell 600 million Christians they’re wrong? The one your friend quotes at the coffee shop, the one that shows up in every online debate? It doesn’t hold up under close examination. And it’s not just continuationists saying this. It’s Fee. It’s Carson. It’s Thiselton.
It’s even Gaffin.
The passage most used to silence the gifts is actually a passage about love outlasting everything.
And the gifts? Still here. Serving us, building us up, pointing us to Christ — until we see Him face to face.
That day is coming.
But it hasn’t come yet.
Sources
The following scholars and works informed this post:
- Gordon Fee, God’s Empowering Presence (Hendrickson, 1994)
- D.A. Carson, Showing the Spirit (Baker, 1987)
- Anthony Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NIGTC, Eerdmans, 2000)
- Richard Gaffin, Perspectives on Pentecost (P&R Publishing, 1979)
- Thomas Schreiner, Spiritual Gifts (B&H Academic, 2018)
Full citations with page numbers are available in the free research guide, which you can download from the overview post.
Next week: What Do Non-Pentecostal Scholars Say?
This post is part of the “Speaking in Tongues: The Evidence” series. For the full overview, the free research guide PDF, and links to every post in the series, visit the overview post.
