The Nature of Enthusiasm

This section addresses a new topic, namely, spiritual gifts (or the spiritual gifts of the spiritual ones). The modern reader of this passage may miss simple elements of Paul’s discussion because of the distance between the worldviews of the first century and the present day. No matter what one thinks about such matters at the turn of the twenty-first century, from what Paul wrote, it is clear that he assumed the reality of extraordinary spiritual experiences and understood that his readers would agree. If later readers have difficulty making this assumption, they should recognize that the difficulty is a hermeneutical problem for themselves, not for Paul and his original readers.

At this point in the letter, Paul battles a particular theological explanation that…