I agree with you that perhaps we shouldn't be following the Corinthian Church ("there is a kind of immorality among you not even found among the pagans, that a man has his father's wife. And you are arrogant! Shouldn't you rather mourn? etc.")
BUT -- regarding "Paul only wrote to Corinth about tongues"; I say with Garfield the Cat, "Big, Fat, Hairy Deal." The Pauline epistles (ducking arguments on pseudepigraphy for conciseness) are those of exhortation and reproof: that is, for each church, he is correcting their errors. Look for example at Galatians who felt they had to obey the Mosaic Laws to attain salvation: but avoiding their mistake doesn't mean we are called to anomie.
Secondly, if you are going to claim that the presence / absence of the fruit, or of chaos, etc., means the gifts in that same group of people are necessarily false -- do you then deny that the tongues and other manifestations in Corinth are thereby demonic, on those grounds alone? And if not, by what rule *do* you distinguish true actions of the Holy Spirit from demonic deception, or people faking it under pressure or excitement, or even taking what is at base the Holy Spirit but adding a lot of their own efforts to it?
Cheers!
INDEED.
THX.
I don't recall that anyone said that those things don't happen today, that there are no miracles. It's what's passed off as the gifts today that we take exception to. The teaching on them is not Scripturally solid, the practice of them for the most part does not follow scriptural instruction, they especially tongues, are used as signs to believers, which Paul clearly and specifically says they're not- they are signs to unbelievers, there is no follow up on prophesies to see if they come to pass and the person doing the prophesying is a true prophet by being accurate 100% of the time, and the fruit of the Spirit is too often not even talked about or mentioned, and yet Jesus says that by their FRUIT we shall know them.
God can certainly heal and have someone speak in tongues as needed, but that is different from it being the norm in the church.
Secondly, if you are going to claim that the presence / absence of the fruit, or of chaos, etc., means the gifts in that same group of people are necessarily false -- do you then deny that the tongues and other manifestations in Corinth are thereby demonic, on those grounds alone?
That's a very interesting question. I don't know how they were practiced by that church and so can't make any judgment as to their authenticity. But since the gifts were known to be operative in those days, my guess is that there was a much higher likelihood that they were authentic. However, all Paul addresses is how to exercise the gifts correctly, not what they were doing wrong.
And if not, by what rule *do* you distinguish true actions of the Holy Spirit from demonic deception, or people faking it under pressure or excitement, or even taking what is at base the Holy Spirit but adding a lot of their own efforts to it?
Whether it is practiced in accord with direction in 1 Corinthians 14.
The practice of the gifts needs to line up with Scriptural instruction. Any practice of gifts that doesn't ought to be immediately suspect and be investigated further and that would include looking at the life of the person practicing the gifts.
Yes, God can use people who have sin in their lives, as we all do, but when there's blatant fraud and immorality, and unbiblical teaching, then I wouldn't trust them to be correct on this one issue when they're wrong on so much else, just because I happen to like that area. IOW, just because I might believe tongues are for today, doesn't mean I should accept someone like Benny Hinn's teaching on tongues as being correct when the rest of what he teaches is off base. If everything else someone is teaching/practicing is wrong, then tongues must be suspect as well, even if it's my favorite gift.
One of the things that I see is that it would be extremely difficult for someone who has spoken in tongues to admit that the experience wasn't a genuine Holy Spirit one, that they were faking it or deceived, because then they'd have to admit that they were deceived and that's not an easy thing to admit to. Nobody wants to admit that they were that susceptible to deception or peer pressure. That would be quite a blow to their pride.