Guardian Judith Maltby Face to Faith is about listening.
The Times Lavinia Byrne The Spirit is benign, subtle, toxic – and can be found in the back of a cab
Telegraph Christopher Howse The letters on the brick wall
And, from the Tablet an article by James Alison The wild ride
I enjoyed the articles covering the Pentecost. One of the insights from Judith Maltby’s article was that there was “the audience” who could hear and understand the disciples as they spoke. In recent readings of the bible, I could not help but contemplate that God seems to relish diversity and be opposed to monolithic overwhelming structures. There is the obvious Tower of Babel imagery, there are others relating to Tyre, Abraham and references to diversity and hospitality. It also leads me to ponder that God has formed humanity to have “free will” to make choices on whether or not to… Read more »
Wow thanks so much for the new James Alison link. I am a dizzy fan, to say the least.
Plus many thanks, too, for the links to Dr. Maultby and Lavinia Byrne. It is still completely beyond me why anybody would not wish to have the gifts, obvious intelligence, and leadership that both women contribute to our global common conversation and discernment – freely given without institutional limits or prejudices or unequal restraints, and for me at least, welcome. So thanks for the Pentecost nourishments. Far better than the little stale cookies that sometimes pop up at coffee hours in ECUSA.
Dr Byrne writes that she has been praying for ‘the gifts of Spirit . . . According to Galatians v, 22-23, these gifts are “love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance'”. These important works of the Spirit are, of course, described in Galatians as ‘fruits’. But the Pentecostal cab driver could have told Dr Byrne that the ‘gifts’ of the Spirit include those mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12.8-10. “To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same… Read more »
I read Maltby’s column and tried to post this following comment on the Guardian’s site. In referring to a gift of the Holy Spirit of speaking in tongues, Dr. Maltby stated, “There is not much point to the gift of tongues if there is no one to listen.†Dr. Maltby forgets that the Lord God is always listening. There is more than one type of the gift of tongues than in the example given from the book of Acts chapter 2, wherein the diverse multitude in Jerusalem could each hear the apostles’ praises to God each in their own native… Read more »