Mark

HI Cheryl,

I would like to comment to your above response where you say i am ‘noodling’ with the greek in Eph 4:11. What i find interesting is your lack of actual greek exegesis in this verse.

First you asked if i see it as a combo type deal and thus dont believe in the gift of ‘teacher’. I do believe in the gift of teaching, but however in the Eph 4 verse i do believe it is tied up with the ‘pastor’ gift. Now if you wanna discuss corinthians that would be different, but here in Ephesians Paul definately combines the two.

Now about the greek! Before the gifts of apostles, evangelists and prophets we get the word ‘some’ but this is not repeated with the pastor/teacher grouping. On top of that both pastor and teacher are governed by the one article (it appears before pastor but not teacher) aswell as the ‘and’ (kai) differing from the rest in the verse (de). Now it is evidently clear that a proper reading of the greek here shows that Paul has the two gifts in mind as a combination or as some commentators put it, one ‘office’. There is plenty in the grammar here to come to the conclusion that this is a combination.

Again pointing out that a pastor is a shephard, and likewise so is an elder, what do we have here in Ephesians? A complete parallel with Pauls other teaching on elders/teachers aswell as his direction for only male elders. Some shephards are gifted also as teachers.

You should not claim that i am noodling under an assumption of yours. I am not ‘noodling’ with the text, rather the complete opposite, being faithful to it. Eph 4:11 should not be used by you or others in an attempt to prove your argument about spiritual gifts. THere is simply too much against your argument. You fail to correlate a shephard to an elder, thus removing Pauls teaching on eldership which has a massive bearing on any leadership discussion. You may want to fall back on me restricting the holy spirit, but you are not providing good biblical arguments for your position. I will look forward to your response.