Hi Dillon,
Calvin’s comments are quite good (surprise, surprise). From my cursory reading I think he gives the most sufficient explanation. You can compare him to John Piper. The relationship of ‘quenching the Spirit’ and ‘despising prophecies’ is an important one which Calvin explains well. Piper doesn’t explain what he thinks ‘prophecies’ are in that link, though I am curious what he would say. O Palmer Robertson gives a good explanation of despising prophecies (quoted below). I would also check out the use of the Greek word for ‘quench’ in Scripture (you can find a list here). Your question reminds me of a similar question you made a year ago (almost to the day!) here on Santiyville. The resources suggested there would be helpful on this question.
That being said, here are my thoughts on the passage:
We need a theology of the Spirit. He is a person that we can love and obey, or ignore and push aside. He will never be at variance with His Word. He dwells in us and leads us all the time day-by-day. Since we have this promise that He dwells in us (2 Cor 6:16-18), we are to ‘cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God’ (2 Cor 7:1). If we are not doing this then we are quenching the Spirit, despising His good gifts, gifts He expects us to use for His glory. To quench Him is to do the very thing we are supposed to be doing to ‘all the flaming arrows of the evil one’ (Eph 6.16) – remember, we are at war, you’re either quenching the devil or quenching the Spirit, plain and simple.
One particular way someone may quench the Spirit is by disobeying His ministers. To spurn warnings, reproofs, and rebukes from your pastor is to pour water on the Spirit’s fire. His fire provides light we need to walk by, but if we refuse that light and walk by our own fire we will lie down in torment (Isaiah 50:10-11).
From O Palmer Robertson’s The Final Word (pg 116-9):
Only one other passage requires serious consideration with respect to the proposal of a different kind of prophecy in the experience of the new covenant community. In the earliest of Paul’s writings, a statement occurs which requires some consideration. The first letter to the Thessalonians concludes with a string of admonitions: ‘Do not put out the Spirit’s fire; do not treat prophecies with contempt. Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil’ (1 Thess. 5: 19-22).
Paul says that prophecies are not to be treated with con-tempt. Literally he states that they must not be regarded as though they were nothing. Why would the apostle feel compelled to give this kind of directive? What kind of situation should be envisaged in which prophecy is at risk of being treated as nothing? This admonition makes good sense in the light of the early date of Thessalonians in the development of the new covenant community. For four hundred years the prophetic gift had not functioned. The written Torah had been the only source of revelatory data in the life of God’s people for centuries. It is quite reasonable, then, that the new community of believers would be extremely suspicious of claims that new revelations were coming in the form of contemporary prophetic utterances.
Their natural inclination might well have been to treat them as though they were nothing. In their minds, contemporary prophecy did not exist. So Paul instructs them in this element of the newness of the new covenant era. They should expect that fresh words from the Lord will come through prophetic instruments, just as they came in the days of the old covenant. Only then would they be able to comprehend the full significance of the coming of the Christ. They must not despise these contemporary proph-ecies, since they come as inspired from the Lord.
But what then is the meaning of the admonition that they are to ‘test everything’? What are they to test if the prophet’s words are inspired of God? Does not this admonition presuppose that these new covenant prophecies involve a mixture of the good and the bad? The experience of God’s people under the old covenant would point in another direction. It was normal procedure for the words of a prophet to be tested. It needed to be ascertained that the prophet spoke in accord with previous revelations (Deut.13: 1-5; 18:21-22). Only then could his word be regarded as authoritative for the people of God.
The counter-proposal is that under the old covenant only the prophet himself was to be tested, not his message (p. 105f.). Therefore this new covenant admonition presupposes a new kind of prophecy, a legitimate prophecy that must be tested because it contains a mixture of good and bad, of truth and error. But the suggestion that under the old covenant only the prophet’s person was tested, not his message, contradicts the explicit instructions of the Lord to Israel: ‘If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken’ (Deut. 18:22). The book of Deuteronomy even goes so far as to envisage a case in which the word of the prophet comes to pass, but his message also includes a contradiction of the teaching of Scripture (Deut. 13:1-3). The total message is to be rejected, not merely the portion found to be in error, since any error in a prophecy indicates that the prophet has spoken presumptuously.
It may be suggested that the case has not been made for a completely new category of prophecy in the new covenant era, prophecy that is legitimate even though it mixes truth with error. The distinction between an infallible, foundational ‘apostolic prophecy’ and a legitimate ‘ordinary congregational prophecy’ that is both fallible and based on divine revelation has little basis in the evidence of Scripture. Rather, there is good reason to repeat our assertion that the hypothesis that the new covenant documents present a kind of prophecy that differs from old covenant prophecy hangs on an exegetical string. Neither in Corinthians nor in Acts nor in the other epistles of Paul does adequate evidence support this proposal. Prophecy in the new covenant age is linked directly with the same phenomena of revelation that occurred under the old covenant. Peter’s indicator on the day of Pentecost establishes the line of continuity from old covenant prophecy to the new. Little evidence in the documents of the new covenant supports the rupture of that connection. No adequate basis may be found in the documents of the new covenant that would sanction a special kind of ‘prophecy’ in the worship services of the church that originates in a revelation from God but is mixed with error as it is delivered.
Blessings,