Talk:Seven gifts of the Holy Spirit

Untitled
moved from article, not by me: Johnbod 22:10, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Language?
I was glancing at this profile to read the first line of the profile on April 14, 2010 at 3:06PM. I was suprised.. It read: "''The seven giftslayed to my daughter who was trying to complete a conformation test using the wonderful wikipedia network. BTW-Thanks.

Looking at 1 Cor 1-14 in verses 8-10 we see that there are actually 9 gifts listed, The word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, faith, gifts of healings, working of miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits; diverse kinds of tongues;  interpretation of speeches. Then in verse 31 Paul encourages us to be zealous for or to covet the best gifts. Continuing on to verses 11-14 if we leave off tongues and the interpretation of speeches we have an incomplete body. We must covet or be zealous of all the gifts, the best ones would be the ones needed at the required time.

I'm not sure why the above graf even needs to be considered part of the discussion on the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit; the writer simply has confused the gifts of the Holy Spirit with the charismata. Shaun G 12:42, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Naming conventions for the seven gifts?
User 70.230.240.66 recently changed some of the more traditional names of these gifts to conform to more modern equivalents ("Counsel" to "Right Judgement" and "Fear of the Lord" to "Wonder and Awe"). In sources like the Catholic Encyclopedia, the more traditional names are used, but I seem to recall that the more modern names are now being used in Confirmation classes, which I think might give weight to them being the "primary" names, with their traditional equivalents listed afterwards in an "also called" or "also known as" parenthetical.

However, this presents problems. For example, the name "Fear of the Lord" is, I think, more widely recognized than "Wonder and Awe," so it seems like it makes sense to prefer the traditional term for it to the modern term (especially because "Fear of the Lord" has its own Wikipedia entry, while "Wonder and awe" does not).


 * Whilst wonder and awe of God is a good thing, it is not the same as Fear of the Lord, and whilst it may be a gift of the spirit, it is one of the seven which Thomas Aquinas identifies as aids to the practice of virtue, which these seven are.
 * Luke 12:5 "But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him."
 * Oliver Low (talk) 03:52, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

What do the rest of you think? Can we come to some sort of agreement on which terms to use? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jawns317 (talk • contribs) 13:37, 28 March 2007 (UTC).


 * I'd query these are more modern, except in the sense that the C17th is more modern than the Middle Ages. I suspect this is a Catholic/Anglican division.  The article says it deals with the Catholic & Anglican traditions (there is a more Pentecostal version somewhere).  If there are two well-established sets of names in English, I think both should be given.  Counsel & Fear of the Lord still seem to be the Catholic favourites.  The very poor comments afterwards ("God goggles" indeed!) should be removed, and if necessary expanded on below, in an encyclopedic manner.   Johnbod 15:02, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Let's stick to the names in the English version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, as this is the most widely accepted authority. Oliver Low (talk) 03:46, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree that we should stick with the names used in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC). Attempts by "liberal" theologians to change "Fear of the LORD" (F/L) to "Wonder and awe in His presence" (W&A) were (I suspect) thwarted by John Paul II (the mastermind behind the CCC), who probably realized this constituted a watering down of the very biblical concept of F/L. But the damage was already done to the revised (English-language) liturgical rubrics for Confirmation, which were set in cement once the USCCB accepted the revisionist "W&A" advocated by the ICEL (International Commission for English in the Liturgy).FXMcHugh (talk) 20:44, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Authoritative sources for names/definitions of gifts
I have updated the names of the seven gifts to correspond to the names listed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and I have used St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica to define the gifts.

I think these are probably as authoritative as sources can get for this topic, outside of the Bible. Thus, I respectfully ask that if anyone decides to change the names or definitions of these gifts, that they justify their changes using sources that are at least as authoritative. In other words, don't just change "Fear of the Lord" to something other than "Fear of the Lord" because you think it happens to sound better.

That said, I think the definitions could still use some polishing. But I would recommend that if you are going to try to improve the definitions, you rely on authoritative sources such as Aquinas -- don't just say that "Wisdom" is like "God goggles." Jawns317 17:32, 19 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I've revised the definitions of each gift to conform to Aquinas' definitions. I encourage other users to refine these definitions and make them easier to understand -- but please keep them in conformance with Aquinas's definitions, or use another authoritative source.  Don't just try to define the gifts yourself.  That's not authoritative. Jawns317  —Preceding comment was added at 12:55, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

In 2006, the “orthodox” Catholic magazine “This Rock” published an article of mine on the Seven Gifts (accessible at http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2006/0612uan.asp ), in which I summarized Aquinas’ definitions of the various gifts as follows: In the same article, I also gave my own “take” on the seven gifts, from a more “biblical” perspective, as follows: The seven gifts are designed to be used in the world for the purpose of transforming that world for Christ. Isaiah 11 vividly portrays what these gifts are to be used for: to do what one is called to do in one’s own time and place to advance the kingdom of God. The specific, personal details of that call do not come into focus until one has realized his very limited, ungodlike place in the scheme of things (fear of the Lord), accepted one’s role as a member of God’s family (piety), and acquired the habit of following the Father’s specific directions for living a godly life (knowledge). This familiarity with God breeds the strength and courage needed to confront the evil that one inevitably encounters in one’s life (fortitude) and the cunning to nimbly shift one’s strategies to match—even anticipate—the many machinations of the Enemy (counsel). The more one engages in such "spiritual warfare," the more one perceives how such skirmishes fit into the big picture that is God’s master plan for establishing his reign in this fallen world (understanding) and the more confident, skillful, and successful one becomes in the conduct of his particular vocation (wisdom).FXMcHugh (talk) 21:07, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Wisdom is both the knowledge of and judgment about "divine things" and the ability to judge and direct human affairs according to divine truth (I/I.1.6; I/II.69.3; II/II.8.6; II/II.45.1–5).
 * Understanding is penetrating insight into the very heart of things, especially those higher truths that are necessary for our eternal salvation—in effect, the ability to "see" God (I/I.12.5; I/II.69.2; II/II.8.1–3).
 * Counsel allows a man to be directed by God in matters necessary for his salvation (II/II.52.1).
 * Fortitude denotes a firmness of mind in doing good and in avoiding evil, particularly when it is difficult or dangerous to do so, and the confidence to overcome all obstacles, even deadly ones, by virtue of the assurance of everlasting life (I/II.61.3; II/II.123.2; II/II.139.1).
 * Knowledge is the ability to judge correctly about matters of faith and right action, so as to never wander from the straight path of justice (II/II.9.3).
 * Piety is, principally, revering God with filial affection, paying worship and duty to God, paying due duty to all men on account of their relationship to God, and honoring the saints and not contradicting Scripture. The Latin word pietas denotes the reverence that we give to our father and to our country; since God is the Father of all, the worship of God is also called piety (I/II.68.4; II/II.121.1).
 * Fear of God is, in this context, "filial" or chaste fear whereby we revere God and avoid separating ourselves from him—as opposed to "servile" fear, whereby we fear punishment (I/II.67.4; II/II.19.9).

Isaiah 11:2-3
I'm only counting six, how do you get seven? 1.Chochmah (wisdom) 2.Binah (understanding) 3.Atzah (counsel) 4.Gevurah (might) 5.Daat (knowledge) 6.Yiras Hashem (fear of the LORD) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.170.70.61 (talk) 10:24, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

St. Thomas counts seven (Summa Theologica Q68) reflecting the Vulgate: "et requiescet super eum spiritus Domini spiritus sapientiae et intellectus spiritus consilii et fortitudinis spiritus scientiae et pietatis et replebit eum spiritus timoris Domini ...". In this 'Piety' is counted separately from 'fear of the Lord'. dbrookman 14 July 2009 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dbrookman (talk • contribs) 03:16, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Here's an extract from my article "How We Got the Seventh Gift of the Holy Spirit" (published 5/24/07 in THE MONITOR, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Trenton, NJ, USA):

Biblical scholars have long pondered why the Greek version of this passage lists seven “gifts” while the original Hebrew lists only six. Was Isaiah ignorant of the existence of a seventh “gift” of the Holy Spirit? Did the Greek translators of the Book of Isaiah have a more advanced understanding of what Isaiah was trying to say than Isaiah himself did?

Truth is, neither Isaiah nor those Greek translators had the faintest inkling of any of the Seven Gifts as we understand them today. Isaiah was addressing a nation on the brink of invasion, and his vision of a wise, insightful, decisive, courageous, law-abiding, and God-fearing future King of Israel was intended primarily as a source of encouragement for the Israelites through the coming years of exile in faraway Babylon. These six hero-ic qualities were simply the noble character traits that Israelites looked for (but seldom found) in their kings.

Five centuries later, the Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria, Egypt, were addressing a different need — the preservation of the Jewish Scriptures and Tradition in a culture that viewed Judaism as just another exotic Eastern cult to be absorbed into the melting pot of Alexander’s Hellenistic empire. These translators had to make many linguistic judgement calls as to which Greek idioms would best translate certain Hebrew idioms that were more or less alien to the Greek mind. One such idiom was the phrase “fear of the Lord,” for which there were actually two corresponding Greek idioms — theo-phobia (literally, “god-fearing”) and eu-sebeia (literally, “healthy fear”). Sometimes the translators chose the one, sometimes the other. In Isaiah 11:2-3, they chose both! And this Greek translation of the Old Testament was the version that most of the early Church Fathers (2nd–6th centuries AD) preferred over the original Hebrew, which very few of them could read anyway.

Greek eusebeias, like its Latin equivalent pietas, meant not only reverence towards the gods, but also respect for one’s earthly superiors (parents, magistrates, kings, etc.). Thus, it was not only a religious but also a socio-political concept. Roman emperors from Augustus to Constantine were portrayed by their propagandists (on public in-scriptions and coins, in epic poems and philosophical tracts) as the very incarnation of eusebeias/pietas. Such imperial “piety” consisted chiefly in building temples in honor of the gods, in officiating at state-religious festivals, and in ensuring that the Roman family remained intact (and fruitful). The Church Fathers must have been delighted that the concept of eusebeias/pietas, so central to the pagan world they were trying to convert, had been attributed to Christ by so prominent a Prophet as Isaiah! The Fathers must have realized that if they could somehow “corner the market” on pietas, somehow convince their contemporaries that Christ rather than Caesar was the epitome of this prime Graeco-Roman virtue, the Kingdom of God would be one step closer to realization.

As the theology of spiritual gifts gradually developed in the Church, Isaiah’s list of heroic messianic virtues — unwittingly expanded from six to seven in the Greek translation — came to rival the more spectacular “charismatic” gifts discussed repeatedly by St. Paul (Romans 12:4-8; 1 Corinth-ians 12:1-12 & 14:1-5; Ephesians 4:11-12). Whereas the Pauline charismata were extraordinary gifts given and withdrawn by the Spirit at His discretion, the several “powers enumerated by Isaiah” (as St. Justin Martyr referred to them, circa 161 AD) came to be seen as the common, ordinary patrimony and permanent endowment of every baptized Christian.FXMcHugh (talk) 04:31, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Which altogether is not that much of a problem if we believe what we do, that the Inspirer of the Bible may at least sometimes in some places, in a possibly even nonmiraculous way, have the prophets and Bible authors uttered words the full meaning of which they themselves did not know. Thus even in a (seemingly at least) less spiritual matter, Moses or whoever else was the writer of Genesis may have been quite surprised himself that light preceded the sun, and later theologists helped themselves by saying light denoted the Angels or Grace or something alike, and only due to modern physics, we know it is true even in the literal sense (which does not say that what the theologists say was not true too). --84.154.74.108 (talk) 11:54, 31 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Btw, the concept of Piety was not so much stressed as you think asby simitude and extension, possibly also mean to worship God which he prefers to call Religion. He takes piety, agreeing with all ancient sources, as fulfilling duties to the parents, and patriotism. If you are interested in the interpretation he gives why piety is in the catalogue of the Gifts: it somewhat replaces justice, a cardinal virtue, in this list, as piety is also a virtue annexed to justice, and can be taken as including Religion as the first of these virtues annexed to justice; and in the catalogue is not justice, whereby a man acts from his own rectitude (more fitting for the definition of a virtue), but piety whereby a man acts from reverence towards another (more fitting for the definition of a Gift) and not religion but piety since the thing that makes it a gift as opposed to something "only" virtuous is to worship God as a father. --84.154.99.24 (talk) 16:40, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Offices of Christ
Doesn't the Holy Spirit also have an equivalent role to that of the Offices of Christ. It sems that some also believe Him to be Priest, Prophet and King. ADM (talk) 22:50, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

ENGVAR
For the record, the first edit (ok, non-vandal edit) to have a UK/US English difference is here in March 2007, using "judgement", which is certainly UK English. So we go back to that per WP:ENGVAR. Johnbod (talk) 02:31, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

British English-vs-American English again: consistency within articles is mandatory
One of the many past contributors for this article (and, seemingly, one of the conscientious editors who is willing to act as a caretaker for many articles) is User:Johnbod, whom I have accidentally offended by attempting to return this article to a state which would be at least somewhat consistent with the original content of this entry, including the style format which was adopted by this article's original writers.

Less than one out of 10 British citizens (now, there's a safe statement – by this point in history, the real statistic is probably that less than one in 20 or 25 British citizens is an active member of any of the 21 or 22 rites which make up the Catholic Church) is even a baptized and registered member of the Catholic Church, but, at the same time, well over one in every five Americans is a registered Roman Catholic (to say nothing of those Americans who are members of the other rites within the Church as an entirety). The point is that one of Wikipedia's editorial style guidelines is that the variety of English which is used in an article should be decided, at least in part, by which English-speaking nationality has the strongest demographic or cultural ties to the subject matter of that encyclopedia entry.

If anyone who reads this talk page thinks logically, it will not be hard to visualize the pattern of questions which would inevitably come next: (1) What about the 45% of Canadians who are Catholic? (There are only about 30 million Canadians, so we are only talking about approximately 13 million Canadian RCs), (2) What about Australian Catholics? (Out of 20 million Australians, only about 5 million of them are Catholic – we can add them to the other 5 million Catholics who are British), (3) What about Lutherans?, (4) What about Anglicans?, etc., etc., etc.

Add up the 65 million registered American Roman Catholics (again, ignoring the 20 or 21 other rites of the Catholic Church) with the 8 million American Lutherans and the additional 2 million Americans who self-identify as Episcopalian or Anglican, and the arrival at the conclusion that all, or nearly all, of the Lutherans, Anglicans, and Catholics who are citizens of all of the other major English-speaking nations are outnumbered by the (approximately ) 75 million American Lutherans, Episcopalians, and Catholics by a factor of 2 to 1 is inescapable.

This article entry was started in April of 2005. Throughout 2005, 2006, and 2007, nearly all of the editors who helped with this entry were American, not any other nationality, and it is clear from actually reading those earlier versions of this article that most editors were writing from a Roman Catholic, American perspective. The fact that the attempt is being made at this late date to introduce Britishisms into an article that has been written in American English violates more Manual of Style guidelines than I can keep track of.

I will have more to address here later – those who would like to find out more should check the history page of this article and follow the appropriate links. 198.252.12.202 Talk 03:58, Friday April 10, 2009 (UTC)
 * Any attempt to claim that this article, on a universal aspect of Catholicism, has "strong national ties" to the US, is a complete and gross misleading of WP:ENGVAR. As to "Throughout 2005, 2006, and 2007, nearly all of the editors who helped with this entry were American", how can you possibly know? In fact the article had only about 5 significant enduring editors in this period, and no particular style or national "perspective" is evident at the start - it would be absolutely inappropriate for the article to have "a Roman Catholic, American perspective" anyway. The first distinctive style elements were introduuced in March 2007 (not by me) and were British, & were there until this anon ISP tried to remove them yesterday.  According to the policy, that should remain the style. Johnbod (talk) 14:06, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Oars on a Boat
Unless somebody can find a source for the sentences regarding the oars and sails being the virtues and gifts the HS, I think it should be removed. Also, the sentence is simply confusing structurally. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.5.114.142 (talk) 02:38, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Nine Spiritual gifts not 7.
The bible says there are nine not seven. Hamburgerhound (talk) 20:50, 16 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Please read the article. What you are talking about are the spiritual gifts. Ltwin (talk) 00:29, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Material for denominations other than Roman Catholicism?
My girfriend was asking me about the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit instead of looking it up herself, and was a bit miffed when all I found on Wiki was Roman Catholic material, insisting that the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit are Protestant as well. It strikes me that there is something wrong with an outline that goes:


 * 2 In Christianity
 * 2.1 Roman Catholicism
 * 2.1.1 The Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit
 * 2.2 Aquinas
 * 2.3 Augustine
 * 3 See Also

It should be:


 * 2 In Christianity
 * 2.1 Roman Catholicism
 * 2.1.1 The Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit
 * 2.1.2 Aquinas
 * 2.1.3 Augustine
 * 2.2 Something about Christianity other than Roman Catholicism
 * 3 See Also

Or, if Roman Catholicism really is all we got:


 * 2 In Roman Catholicism
 * 2.1 The Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit
 * 2.2 Aquinas
 * 2.3 Augustine
 * 3 See Also

Pciszek (talk) 20:43, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Please fix the vandalism in the lead!
Replace it with Piety, as it should be. The Holy Spirit is Lord. Jesus is Lord. :-) 208.104.68.14 (talk) 21:20, 26 November 2021 (UTC)