What Are Spiritual Gifts?
Posted by eutychus in Biblical Theology, Books and Other Reading, Discipleship, PastoralYesterday, on the way home, I started yet another book: What Are Spiritual Gifts? Rethinking the Conventional View, by Kenneth Berding, professor of New Testament at Talbot Theological Seminary. Berding challenges what he calls the conventional view:
Let’s begin by looking at the conventional approach to the so-called spiritual gifts. . . . This approach says that the spiritual gifts are abilities or enablements, given by the Holy Spirit to individual believers to help them serve others. There are three main components in any conventional definition of a spiritual gift: (1) the entity itself is an ability or enablement; (2) it is given by the Holy Spirit; (3) it is to be used in building up the community of believers. . . .
In this approach, every believer who has a relationship with God through Jesus Christ has been given at least one special ability that he or she is to discover and use in building the community of faith. [pp. 25-27]
Berding claims that nearly all discussions about the spiritual gifts begin without defining from scripture what a spiritual gift is. That is, all spiritual gifts are assumed to be abilities that are supernaturally given by the Holy Spirit. Here Berding describes an alternative understanding:
In this alternative approach, the so-called spiritual gifts are not special abilities; they’re Spirit-given ministries. According to the contextual evidence in the letters of Paul, the so-called spiritual gifts should be viewed as the ministries themselves. Every believer has been assigned by the Holy Spirit to specific positions and activities of service, small and large, short-term and long-term. These are ministry assignments that are given by the Holy Spirit to individual believers and, in turn, these individuals in their ministries have been given as gifts to the church. [p. 32]
Berding asserts that this is not a charismatic vs. non-charismatic issue in that both parties believe that spiritual gifts are abilities given by the Holy Spirit, it’s just that they disagree on whether the Holy Spirit still gives miraculous gifts, such as speaking tongue, prophecy, etc. [p. 29] In arguing for the ministry-assignment view, Berding concedes that some ministries such as prophecy, but not all ministries, would have required a supernatural enablement. [p. 34]
Berding argues that in Paul’s usage of the Greek word, charisma, every usage of the word can fit the concept of ministry, and that in a number of cases, that is the only viable meaning for the term. The heart of the book, chapters 5 through 14, lay out Berding’s argument, but I have only read through chapter 7.
There are a number of practical implications if this view is correct. For one, there would no longer be any need for believers to seek to discover just what gift or gifts they have been given by the Holy Spirit. The believer merely need to seek where God would have him minister. This could come in the form of some sort of inner confirmation by the Spirit, but it would also be informed by the believer’s identification of needs in the church, and wise counsel from others. In addition, one would not be limited by the lists of so-called spiritual gifts found in Ephesians 4:11, Romans 12:6-8; 1 Corinthians 12:8-10; and 12:28-30. They would be taken as a representative, and not exhaustive, list of ministries. [p. 49]
I know that in my own preaching and teaching I have emphasized that every on has a spiritual gift that they need to put to use in the kingdom work of the local church. But I have not been helpful in showing how our church members are to identify those gifts. I’m beginning to think that I should modify that to say that every believer has been called to at least one ministry in the local church. I think it would be easier to give guidance to those who respond to such exhortations and who want to know what to do next.
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