Speaking in Tongues: The Evidence, Part 3 of 7
Two friends are sitting across from each other. One 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 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 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 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 goes like this. “The perfect” (Greek: to teleion) means 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. But keep reading.
Paul Won’t Let You Stop at Verse 10
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.”
Face to face. Know fully, even as I am fully known.
Do you see God face-to-face right now? 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 isn’t about the Bible.
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 cosmic 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 shift.
Standing face to face with Jesus at His return? That’s the shift Paul is describing.
Even Scholars Who Disagree on Everything Else Land Here
It isn’t just Pentecostal scholars saying this. Scholars with no stake in defending tongues looked at the Greek and ended up 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, a 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, 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 wildly overstated language if Paul just meant “once the last New Testament book gets written.”
Carson isn’t defending tongues here. He’s defending a 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 end the conversation.
The Concession That Changes Everything
Richard Gaffin is widely regarded as one of the most rigorous cessationist scholars alive. The academic backbone of the position.
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.
The top cessationist scholar in the world says the most popular cessationist argument doesn’t work exegetically. That’s not a Pentecostal pastor saying it. That’s the other side’s best scholar admitting his side’s most-used claim doesn’t hold up.
Thomas Schreiner, another serious cessationist scholar, also concedes that “the perfect” refers to Christ’s return. He builds his cessationist case on completely different ground (Ephesians 2:20), precisely because he knows 1 Corinthians 13 won’t carry the weight.
What This Passage Is Actually About
In all the arguing over when gifts end, people miss what Paul is actually saying.
Go back to verse 8. The first line.
“Love never fails.”
That’s the point.
The whole chapter, the passage people read at weddings, is about love. Not about the expiration date of spiritual gifts. Paul mentions tongues, prophecy, and knowledge ceasing in order to make a contrast. These things are temporary. Love is eternal. The gifts serve us now, in this in-between age, while we see dimly and know in part.
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. Taking apart 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 later 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 isn’t just continuationists saying so. 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 are 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
- 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 in the free research guide.
This post is part of the “Speaking in Tongues: The Evidence” series. For the full overview and the free research guide PDF, visit the overview post.
Next: What Do Non-Pentecostal Scholars Say?
