Are Miraculous Gifts for Today?: 4 Views

by Zondervan, Wayne Grudem (Editor), Robert Saucy (Contributor)

462 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 11, 2011

About the author

Zondervan is an international Christian media and publishing company. Zondervan is a founding member of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA). They are a part of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc. and has multiple imprints including Zondervan Academic, Zonderkidz, Blink, and Editorial Vida. Zondervan is the commercial rights holder for the New International Version (NIV) Bible in North America.

Reviews

[Dale Hagwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this to be a really helpful book, having always held a cessationist view but this actually helped me see the miraculous gifts question differently. I found the open but cautious view more compelling than strict cessationism and more biblically faithful (and realisitic) than Third Wave/Pentecostal/Charismatic views. The biggest challenge I had reading the book is after reading the Third Wave view and then going into the Pentecostal view, I felt as though I were reading essentially the same thing. The biggest differences between the Third Wave and Pentecostal views seem more semantic, rather than the actual nature of, concerning second experience Spirit Baptism. I found little to distinguish the Third Wave and Pentecostal views besides that. Nevertheless, the actual biblical evidence doesn't, to me, seem to support strict cessationism. The ultimate issue for the "open but cautious" view seems more to be about how "open" or "cautious" one is concerning the spiritual gifts. Nevertheless, Scripture offers the normative way to understand the gifts and how to understand them in the world we live in today, and roots us from excess. This is a very helpful book if you want an overview of different views that are seeking to be faithful to Scripture.

[Colby Kleinsasser · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a well structured discussion of specific issues surrounding the question named in the title. Each contributor wrote a 50-page position paper, 8-page response to the other contributors’ papers, and a final conclusion paper after a 2-day conference to discuss the topic.

Each contributor explain their view as thoroughly as the page constraints allowed and provide ample biblical evidence for their position. My initial reaction is that I’m left wanting more (which could be both good and bad). I think they were hindered by the scope of the project which limited the depth and very specific questions they were able to dig into.

Something commendable about this project is that amidst the vast differences amongst their views, the unity as brothers and sisters in Christ underpins the contributors’ work.

Post reading, I’m left wanting to gather all the biblical evidence and write my own position paper as well.

[Andrew Gates · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some pretty decent thoughts but not spectacular. I still don't know where I land but was particularly struck by some of the newly-framed thoughts I heard from Gaffin.