Over the next few months, en will be running a series of articles written by Adam Ramsey, of Liberti Church, Gold Coast, Australia, exploring what we can learn from Martyn Lloyd-Jones today about the questions set out in the headline. The essays, of which there are five in total, need to be taken together. They are taken from original, yet-to-be published research undertaken by Ramsey for his Doctor of Philosophy thesis. They also, we hope, represent something of the generous-hearted, thoughtful, Biblical approach that en was founded 40 years ago in 1986 to embody.
Introduction
During the 20th century, it was no secret that Calvinists and Charismatics frequently viewed one another with mutual suspicion. Rarely would those who affirmed a high view of God’s sovereignty in salvation in the Reformed tradition, and those with a high experiential expectation of the Holy Spirit’s direct and supernatural activity, find themselves worshipping in the same church. Or, for that matter, even cooperating outside of their respective churches.
Those who held to a broadly Reformed theology during this period of time were largely cessationist in their orientation toward the more supernatural elements of Christianity, being pneumatologically-shaped by B.B. Warfield’s assertion that, while miraculous expressions of Christianity were still possible (since God can do as He pleases), spiritual gifts and supernatural phenomena, however, were confined to the Apostolic Era of the church as a foundational and unrepeatable authentication of the apostolic witness.1
