Jeff Ragan’s Reviews > The First Epistle to the Corinthians > Status Update

"The analogy is clear. Speaking in tongues in the community at worship...is like the harpist running fingers over all the strings, making musical sounds but not playing a pleasing melody, or like a bugler who blows the bugle without sounding the battle cry. In both cases sounds come from the instrument, but there is no tune or melody; thus...they do not benefit the listener. So it is with tongues" (736).

"Contrary to the opinion of many, spiritual edification can take place in ways other than through the cortex of the brain. Paul believed in an immediate communing with God by means of the S/spirit that sometimes bypassed the mind; it is only at a later period in history, conditioned by the so-called Enlightenment, that people in the Western world would think otherwise" (728).

"Love does not eliminate the gifts in the present; rather, it is absolutely essential to Christian life both now and forever. The gifts/manifestations, on the other hand, are not forever; they are to help build up the body in the gathered assembly of God's people - but only in the present, when such edification is needed" (717).

"...Paul's description of love begins with this twofold description of God, who through Christ has been shown to be forbearing and kind toward those who deserve divine judgment. The obvious implication, of course, is that this is how God's people (i.e., the Corinthians themselves, not to mention all others who would claim to belong to Christ) through Christ and the Spirit are to be toward others" (705-6)

"...what is involved here are two opposing views as to what it means to be people of the Spirit. For the Corinthians it meant 'speaking in tongues' & having wisdom & knowledge...without a commensurate concern for truly Christian behavior. For Paul it meant...to be full of the ...Holy Spirit...to behave as those 'sanctified in Christ Jesus & called to be his holy people' (1:2)...to 'walk in love'" (698).

"Tongues are fine, he will go on to affirm, provided they are interpreted. But not everyone should speak in tongues when the church assembles for worship. That makes everyone the same, which is like a body with only one part" (689).

"'If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?' This interchange of the sense organs makes it clear that Paul's point is not the 'inferiority' of one to the other. The point is the need for all members; otherwise some function of the body would be missing" (676).

"Paul saw the Spirit as the key to everything in the Christian life. It seems mandatory that such prevail again if there is to be effective Christianity in our day. But let the one who says that not force their own brand of 'spiritual unity' on the church as simply another human machination. Our desperate need is surely for a sovereign work of the Spirit to do among us what all our "programmed unity cannot" (673).

"Indeed, the truly remarkable feature of this catalogue is the attribution to 'each one' of a whole gamut of supernatural activities in the same matter-of-fact way that contemporary church leaders would list positions on an organizational chart!" (655-6).

"All of this suggests not only that we do not have here a systematic presentation of 'Spirit gifting,' but also that there is some doubt as to whether the apostle himself had precise and identifiably different manifestations ('gifts') in mind when he wrote these words" (650).