DISTINGUISHING SPIRITS (διακρίσεις πνευμάτων). A manifestation of the Holy Spirit in some believers, as a gift, enabling them to discriminate what is genuinely of God from what is of demonic spirits or merely the human spirit. The primary v. is 1 Corinthians 12:10. The verb for “discerning” (KJV), diakrino, means “to pass judgment” or “make a distinction,” as when a believer having the gift of discernment tells what is really of the Spirit from words of different speakers (1 Cor 14:29). False prophets were a threat to doctrine and practice in the Early Church (2 Cor 11:12-15; 1 John 2:19; 4:1; 2 John 7, 10, 11; Rev 2:2). Many regard this gift, like apostleship, as temporary to meet this Early Church peril only (Walvoord, p. 188). It supplied, in gifted persons, what was later available through a completed NT, an authoritative standard. Not the gifted only, but all believers must exercise discernment to some degree, then as now (1 Cor 2:14, 15; 1 John 2:20, 27; 4:1-6; cf. Phil 1:10). They need caution against evil spirits using false doctrine and also counterfeits from man’s own deceitful impulses and emotions.

Bibliography A. R. Hay, The New Testament Order For Church and Missionary (1947), 189, 203-207; J. F. Walvoord, The Holy Spirit (1954), 188; A. Bittlinger, Gifts and Graces, A Commentary on I Corinthians 12-14 (1967), 45-47.