This book written by Berding is a must read for anyone who is looking to broaden their education on Paul's theology and teaching on the "so called" spiritual gifts. This is a book that expressed in a lot of ways my own personal thoughts, questions and concerns about spiritual "gifts" that I have had for sometime now. I can remember the first time taking one of these tests that was to help me "discover" my gifts/abilities and to be quite honest I was really excited about it. And rightly so, who wouldn't be. Anyone who has been around church or church people of any length of time has heard the phrase "discovering one's spiritual gifts" and the importance of "discovering" to help edify the body of Christ. That everyone has a gift or gifts and some have yet to be discovered or manifested but that they are in you given to you by God.
Basically the essence of Berding's book is that these lists found in Paul's writings in Romans 12, Ephesians 4 and I Cor 12 should be view in light of Pauline theology as a whole as Spiritual Ministries verses Spiritual Gifts partly because of our monolinguistic understanding of the word "gift or gifts". Berding does a great work here with the original languages showing a wide range of use of the word Charismata outside of I Cor. 12. in other scriptures, and the contrast between Charismata and Pneumatika with I Corinthians. Overall this book is well worth the reading, he did a great job at presenting both views (spiritual gifts vs spiritual ministries) in both the technical sense as well as the most practical one also addressing the many questions I had trying to embrace the conventional view of the "gifts", such as, natural abilities vs. special abilities? Comprehensive vs. Representative? One Ministry or Many? Discovering your spiritual gits? These were just some of my questions that the author address throughly in this book.
No comments:
Post a Comment