The Holy Spirit and Spiritual Gifts - Then and Now

The Holy Spirit and Spiritual Gifts - Then and Now
By Max Turner
Paternoster Press. 374 pages. £17.99
ISBN 0 85364 758 5

This is a scholarly book on an immensely important subject. Dr. Max Turner is a lecturer at London Bible College, a Baptist minister and a speaker at Spring Harvest.
He has written this book in response to an invitation from the Open Theological College to write a half module for its third year BA course. He has drawn on lectures and articles that he has previously written in a carefully researched area of Christian doctrine and practice.
So this book is not a light read; but it is worth using as a study book to gain a comprehensive and biblical view of the subject, and as an aid to evaluate the many claims made concerning spiritual gifts in the church today. The book is divided into two parts. Part one begins with a brief summary of Old Testament and inter-testamental views on the Holy Spirit and goes on to explore the significance of the gift of the Spirit in the New Testament. Turner argues that at the start of the New Testament period the Spirit was largely understood as 'the Spirit of prophecy enabling revelation, wisdom and inspired speech'. In the New Testament itself he argues that these gifts of the 'Spirit of prophecy' were not for 'empowering alone, but also as the very life of the restored community and the power of its holiness'. In chapter 10, he argues against the classical Pentecostal two-stage view of the reception of the Spirit, and for 'a more broadly charismatic one stage conversion - initiation model'. He acknowledges that he has limited his enquiry to three major sources, namely Luke - Acts, John and Paul. Nevertheless, part one includes much careful biblical exegesis.
Part two focuses on three particular gifts - prophecy, tongues and healing. It discusses both their New Testament significance and their meaning, purpose and validity today. To do this, Dr. Turner discusses and argues against the claims (associated with Dr. B.B. Warfield among others) that these 'gifts' were primarily for divine attestation to Jesus and the apostles as the bearers of divine revelation, and that they ceased with the death of the apostles and their co-workers (cessationist view).
Once he has established the view that we should expect to see these 'gifts' exercised in the church today, he suggests a way of understanding them which seeks to hold together the best of the charismatic and reformed traditions in the church today.
So he concludes that: 'Several forms of modern 'prophecy' correlate well in mechanism, content, function and purpose with some types of New Testament prophetic speech.' He is also clear that such prophecy (of the inspired speech variety) has 'at most a secondary place within the tasks of teaching, building up and challenging Christians today'. He argues that the revelatory gifts of 1 Corinthians 12.8-10, including prophecy, still have contemporary relevance. Dr. Turner adds (p. 328): 'The pastor or leader today is as much in need as ever of such immediate charismata of wisdom, direction and heavenly knowledge - occasions where he is aware of these things breaking in on his existence as events of the Lord's grace and guidance, given specifically in answer to prayerful seeking or sovereignly in response to a prayerful life.' He adds: 'Where more traditional (non-Charismatic) Christians seek the Lord this way, the difference between them and Pentecostal/Charismatics on the issue of the relation of theology and revelatory events is minimalised.'
Dr. Turner's treatment of healing and speaking in tongues is careful in its biblical understanding and its contemporary application. Always he seeks to find a via media in spirituality between Pentecostalism and the more traditional forms of Christianity. He concludes his last chapter by stating: 'The positive way forward for the church lies in the combining of the wisdom of both sides not in the often arrogant and alienating polemics between them ...'
We may not always agree with Dr. Turner's conclusions, and there are some areas of present-day practice which warrant more critical evaluation; but we can all applaud his scholarship and the biblical irenical thrust of his argument. This is a book that would repay serious study by Christian leaders in local churches or at a ministers' fraternal as well as by the individual Christian. It should contribute towards a greater understanding of two different emphases in the evangelical constituency.

The Holy Spirit and Spiritual Gifts - Then and Now

Gordon Bridger

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