1 Cor. 13: what ceases when?

I… am a… slow… thinker. So it took me a little while to figure out what was wrong with this line of reasoning, gleaned from the PyroManiacs' conflab about miraculous gifts, which has rumbled interminably for months.The reasoning presented below is not a full argument, but rather the bare bones picked up from a few different sources, of an apparently plausible, but ultimately unsatisfactory, line of reasoning. It may help first to remind ourselves of what the relevant portion of 1 Cor. 13 has to say.

As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Okay, so here goes.

1. The apostle James uses the analogy of a mirror in the first chapter of his epistle.
2. On the principle of Scripture interpreting Scripture, it would be reasonable to expect Paul to be using his imagery in the same way.
3. Hence, the "perfect" is the completed canon.
4. Since signs cease with the arrival of the perfect, miraculous signs are not for today.

Except that there's a couple of problems. In statement 2, the analogia fidei does not require us to suppose that the imagery is the same, although I'll grant that it is a very real possibility. There are worse problems, though, and for any who arrive at statement 3, no matter whether they buy the logic from 1 and 2.

One of the big questions that this passage asks us to work out for ourselves is this: what, or whom, is it that we see in a mirror dimly? On any reading of this partial/perfect business, I suggest that this will be Jesus. Do then the propounders of a "completed canon" view suggest that we now see Christ face-to-face in Scripture? Far more likely, to my mind, is the suggestion that we now see Christ through a glass darkly in the pages of Scripture, and that at his glorious Second Coming, we shall see him face-to-face. It is at that Second Coming that his kingdom will be consummated and finally completed, it is at that Second Coming that we shall know fully, even as we have been [are presently] fully known. Maranatha!

Incidentally, although this passage doesn't explicitly state that the signs will continue until the Second Coming, it would be a fairly tortured reading, particularly in context, which tried to make out cessation to be the case.