The Call By Os Guinness Chapter Summaries

Instead of, 'You are what you do,' calling says, 'Do what you are.' (p47) The Protestant distortion of 'calling' was a secular form of dualism - to elevate work to the status of vocation calling was simply a job.Ī test for spiritual gifts that ignores natural gifts points people to use their discovered gifts in their churches, not in secular contexts and therefore deepens the Catholic distortion. The Catholic distortion of 'calling' was to define vocation as pertaining to priests, monks and nuns everyone else had 'work' (a spiritual form of dualism). They are our personal answer to God's address, our response to God's summons.' (p24f) The are 'callings', rather than the 'calling'. We can therefore properly say as a matter of secondary calling that we are called to homemaking or to the practice of law or to art history. Our secondary calling, considering who God is as sovereign, is that everyone, everywhere and in everything should think, speak, live and act entirely for Him. 'Our primary calling as followers of Christ is by Him, to Him and for Him. In this context, calling is overwhelmingly God's calling people to Himself as followers of Christ.' (p22f) calling gains a further characteristic meaning in the New Testament. 'naming-calling', a very different thing from name-calling is the fusion of being and becoming. Such decisive, creative naming is a form of making. This type of calling is far more than labeling, hanging a name-tag on something to identify it. 'To call means to name, and to name means to call into being or make.

The Call By Os Guinness Chapter Summaries