Many, Many Questions

My thoughts have been awhirl the last few weeks, as it seems like somehow my ability to contemplate one idea at a time has been completely robbed, and instead a dozen different issues are all bouncing around at once. Here recorded are some ponderings or questions, any of which I'd welcome dialogue on.

1. The New Perspective on Paul. Depending on the day, I feel like I'm somewhere between buying it without hesitation and burning Tom Wright at the stake. Okay, that's an exagerration, but I've realized that, at the least, I need to figure out my theology of imputation, deal with the fact that Wright is correct, at least to some extent, in how much Paul's letters are concerned with ethnic exclusivism rather than legalism, and decide what importance a "general gospel" of Christ coming as the Davidic messiah and building a kingdom and a "specific gospel" of justification by faith have in Christendom.

2. The Church and Church Discipline. Why do we allow gossip, divisiveness and other more internal sins in the body when Paul says to have "nothing to do with them"? What are the grounds for church discipline, really? Is the PCA practice of "barring people at the table, not the door" a good and biblical way to allow sinners to still hear the gospel or a dangerous underestimation of the effects sin and false doctrine can have on the corporate body? How much doctrinal truth, and in what areas, do people really have to have to avoid being a false teacher?

3. Spiritual Gifts. I've come to realize I can't buy cessationism, at all. If I'm right, what is a good model for the exercise of spiritual gifts like tongues, prophecy and miracles? What do these things even mean?

4. Biblical vs. Systematic Theology. Is the distinction really valid? How do we approach them with balance, with systematics teaching us how to interpret scripture while still keeping scripture as a whole body in authority over systematics?

5. Evangelism. What the heck is it? Why don't I do it? Do I do it, and just don't feel like I do because I have too narrow a definition and am still in the thrall of the fundamentalist-revivalist-parachurch reductionist gospel (my phrase)? For that matter, what is the gospel? What truths have to be communicated? Is it about justification, or the person of Christ, or what?

6. Other random questions. How do believers truly obtain assurance? What does it look like to have a humble and gentle insistence on orthodoxy? What exactly happens in the sacraments? How valid is a Christological interpretation of the Old Testament, and how does this work?

Any thoughts any of you have would be welcome.