Abstract

VAN ALTEN, H.H.. John Calvin on the gifts of the Holy Spirit in his commentary on Acts. Koers (Online) [online]. 2017, vol.82, n.2, pp.1-13. ISSN 2304-8557.  http://dx.doi.org/10.19108/koers.82.2.2350.

John Calvin is often considered to have taught the cessation of the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit. This certainly does not give the complete picture of how Calvin wrestled with those passages from Scripture which deal with the extraordinary gifts. In his commentary on the book of Acts Calvin makes a conscious effort to show that in most of the cases where the gifts of the Spirit are mentioned, the focus is not on the gifts in a general sense, but in an extraordinary sense. These extraordinary gifts had been limited to the initial phase of the church. The reasons that Calvin provides for this cessation is somewhat ambiguous. On the one hand Calvin indicates a very specific, divine purpose for the gifts, which limits its usefulness and existence until the point when the purpose had been achieved. However, there are also passages where one gets the impression that the cessation of the gifts was not necessarily divinely intended, but was due to human error. Of great importance is the way Calvin subsequently applies these texts to the readers of his own day

Keywords : John Calvin; Acts of the Apostles; Gifts of the Spirit; Prophecy.

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