Where Did Charisma Go?

Abstract

The cessationist view expressed by John Chrysostom at the end of the fourth century — that the spiritual gifts were no longer evident, and that they were so obscure as to be foreign to contemporary Christianity — became the prevailing line within the church. Yet Paul’s charismata had conveyed significant spiritual charge in the first century, which was not entirely dissipated in the second, and lingered into the third and even the fourth. While the church succeeded in curbing the supernatural charismata — along with other mystical tropes — by the fourth century, there remains the issue of that spiritual charge and its residue. Where did the energy and mysticism associated with Pauline charisma go?