spiritual gifts

I’m interested in hearing different beliefs/experiences of those who consider themselves part of the emerging/emergent church when it comes to God the gifts of the Holy Spirit and signs and wonders.

As someone who is exploring all things postmoder and emerging I find it hard to see any writing or concrete comment on this subject (maybe conrete isn’t the correct word - as I’m learning there is a lot more grey than black and white).

The Post-eschatological charismatic thread has got rather long, so I have responded to a question posed by Virgil about prophecy and the parousia separately.

The preterist approach to prophecy as Virgil has described it seems to me too rigid and artificial. I would give precedence to the (historical) narrative and ask how this contextualizes prophecy. I think that much of what the authors of the New Testament say about the future has to do with the rather immediate circumstances of conflict in one form or another with Rome, and I would hesitate to make these particular prophecies work outside that relevant and realistic historical framework. But that is a contextual argument. It does not entail the absolute corrollary that prophecy ceases to operate altogether outside that historical framework.

What can we say about the so-called ‘miraculous gifts’ in light of the post-eschatalogical situation. What is the place of the ‘miraculous’ gifts in New Testament spirituality? The paradigm shifting that is underway opens an opportunity for fresh commentary on this, and those of us hammering out a theology of/for/with the emerging church just might be in the grace-infused historical moment within which the boorish and constipated controversies of the past can be transcended.