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God: The Holy Spirit
#47691
12/21/05 07:08 PM
12/21/05 07:08 PM
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OP
Banned Member
Full Member
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Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 178
Deer Park, WA
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SDA Fundamental Beliefs 2 & 5:
2. The Trinity:
There is one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a unity of three co-eternal Persons. God is immortal, all-powerful, all-knowing, above all, and ever present. He is infinite and beyond human comprehension, yet known through His self-revelation. He is forever worthy of worship, adoration, and service by the whole creation. (Deut. 6:4; Matt. 28:19; 2 Cor. 13:14; Eph. 4:4-6; 1 Peter 1:2; 1 Tim. 1:17; Rev. 14:7.)
5. The Holy Spirit:
God the eternal Spirit was active with the Father and the Son in Creation, incarnation, and redemption. He inspired the writers of Scripture. He filled Christ's life with power. He draws and convicts human beings; and those who respond He renews and transforms into the image of God. Sent by the Father and the Son to be always with His children, He extends spiritual gifts to the church, empowers it to bear witness to Christ, and in harmony with the Scriptures leads it into all truth. (Gen. 1:1, 2; Luke 1:35; 4:18; Acts 10:38; 2 Peter 1:21; 2 Cor. 3:18; Eph. 4:11, 12; Acts 1:8; John 14:16-18, 26; 15:26, 27; 16:7-13.)
Some of our early pioneers did not believe in the Holy Spirit as a distinct, 3rd person of the Godhead, but rather as the power of God. Some, interpret Jesus' discourse on the Comforter (parakletos) as referring to when He would come to the disciples in the form of the Holy Spirit. In other words, the Comforter and Jesus are one and the same Person. The Holy Spirit is the shared Spirit between the Father and Son, the only 2 divine beings in the universe.
What is the truth about the Holy Spirit. Is HE a person of the Godhead, or is IT merely the breath and power of God?
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Re: God: The Holy Spirit
#47692
12/21/05 09:04 PM
12/21/05 09:04 PM
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Active Member 2012
Very Dedicated Member
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Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 1,826
E. Oregon, USA
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quote:
Some of our early pioneers did not believe in the Holy Spirit as a distinct, 3rd person of the Godhead, but rather as the power of God.
What is the truth about the Holy Spirit. Is HE a person of the Godhead, or is IT merely the breath and power of God?
To your last question, why not both?
You've asked several key questions, so here goes.
Actually, the pioneers always believed that the Holy Spirit was a person, but early on were extra careful not to identify the Spirit of God as the same kind of person as God or Christ are, and so avoided stating God's Spirit to be a person. God's influential presence and power in the universe through his Spirit is clear to understand, after all; thus we experience God first hand, as well. Later, when questions to the church leaders about the personhood of the Holy Spirit persisted, the answer given clearly stated that God's Spirit isn't a person like God is, while yet having individual personality, separate from God's own person.
quote:
Some, interpret Jesus' discourse on the Comforter (parakletos) as referring to when He would come to the disciples in the form of the Holy Spirit. In other words, the Comforter and Jesus are one and the same Person.
The passage about the Comforter wasn't explained by our pioneers as the Spirit of Jesus and Jesus being the same person. Jesus' Spirit goes where Jesus cannot physically be, and represents him to his people. They are separate persons, like God and Jesus are, but the Spirit is absolutely not a person in the same way that Father and Son are persons: The Spirit of God and of Jesus carries their power, love, and righteousness everywhere since he doesn't have a body like they have and thus isn't physically limited.
quote:
The Holy Spirit is the shared Spirit between the Father and Son, the only 2 divine beings in the universe.
Why shouldn't the Spirit be shared between God and Jesus, and be the divine Spirit that both have? That's the basis of their divinity and harmonious holiness, isn't it? Where does it say in the Bible or the Spirit of Prophecy that the Spirit is a being? She's clear to state that the Father and Son are the only beings in heaven to share God's counsels.
Since the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, it isn't a being (ie. body) but is a mysterious person with a known personality.
You set the stage well for discussing this living personality of the heavenly trio, so what of my response?
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Re: God: The Holy Spirit
#47693
12/21/05 10:11 PM
12/21/05 10:11 PM
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Greetings,
Ezekiel 8:1 And it came to pass in the sixth year, in the sixth [month], in the fifth [day] of the month, [as] I sat in mine house, and the elders of Judah sat before me, that the hand of the Lord GOD fell there upon me.
8:2 Then I beheld, and lo a likeness as the appearance of fire: from the appearance of his loins even downward, fire; and from his loins even upward, as the appearance of brightness, as the colour of amber.
8:3 And he put forth the form of an hand, and took me by a lock of mine head; and the spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heaven, and brought me in the visions of God to Jerusalem, to the door of the inner gate that looketh toward the north; where [was] the seat of the image of jealousy, which provoketh to jealousy.
In Ezekiel 8:3:
We have a form of an hand that is visible, and then we read that the spirit lifted him up between the earth and the heaven. That hand is also being referred to as Lord God in Ezekiel 1:8; yet later it says that this is the spirit that lifted him up.
Your Sister in Christ Jesus,
Cheri Fritz
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Re: God: The Holy Spirit
#47694
12/22/05 12:26 AM
12/22/05 12:26 AM
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Active Member 2012
Very Dedicated Member
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Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 1,826
E. Oregon, USA
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Thank you, Cheri, for that text. The Spirit of God takes any variety of forms when appearing to believers: dove is the most famous, but Pentacost involved tongues of fire on their heads. Most dramatic was the pillar of fire or cloud in the exodus.
This Ezek text is very dramatic, and the glory covering the appearance of a man's body. Could the spirit take the appearance of a person? Or there's only a hand that the spirit took the form of.
So, is this the form that the spirit chose to appear in?
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Re: God: The Holy Spirit
#47695
12/22/05 10:55 AM
12/22/05 10:55 AM
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Greetings Brother Colin,
I truly believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
So my faith says, that the Holy Spirit has a form and has the power to change form. Just as God the Father has power and Christ the Son has power.
The God I know is full of love and compassion. They work in harmony so well together that they share names.
What truly concerns myself is that I heed the education of the Holy Spirit for the Holy Spirit teaches God's own Holy Word. That my eyes are pointed to Christ Jesus always. There is very little time to remember our true education "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls." Matthew 11:29.
To me it is not a great concern what God looks like, we have descriptions enough. Christ came to give the understanding that God is love. And that His appearance was only His appearance and not the understanding of who God is.
Peace be with you,
Your Sister in Christ Jesus,
Cheri Fritz
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Re: God: The Holy Spirit
#47696
12/22/05 02:26 PM
12/22/05 02:26 PM
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Active Member 2011
3500+ Member
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Joined: May 2002
Posts: 3,965
Sweden
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I agree with Cheri. God is triune, Fater, Jesus and Spirit, coequal and coeternal. The question of what form or shape each of these chooses to be known to man under is, (would the correct english idiom be "red herring"?, a smokescreen, a diversion).
Also in this thread and in the one about Jesus, I cannot understand the preoccupation with what some people 150 years ago thought and teached about it. Sure, they where the founders of our denomination but as far as I understood their work, if they had gone about the same way we have been doing in these threads, there would be no SDA church today. These people studied the bible as thoroughly as they possibly could, or so it is told. Had they spent most of their time studying what their church founders, Withfield, the Wesleys, Luther, and whomever the founders of the Baptist church was, what these other people tought and teached, we'd most likely still be baptist and methodist and lutheran.
I am not saying that it is wrong to study the works of SDA pioneers nor methodist or baptist pioneers (I enjoy reading about these people myself at times), but all such study should come secound to the bible. Especially when studying such a foundational topic as this one, who God is.
/Thomas
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Re: God: The Holy Spirit
#47697
12/22/05 07:39 PM
12/22/05 07:39 PM
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Active Member 2012
Very Dedicated Member
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Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 1,826
E. Oregon, USA
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Thank you, both. Yes, the premis is negligently taken for granted: God is love, so much so that he gave his only begotten Son for the sin of our world - the only planet of his living creation that has rebelled after being deceived and 'bribed' by Satan. "'bribed'" in the sense that Adam faced a dilemma: lose Eve or lose fellowship with God, and his instinct kicked in...I'm not losing sight of the great controversy.
And, Thomas, our theological roots in Methodism make a very important contrast to lutheransim, as Ps Larry Kirkpatrick has brought out in his study on the children's Sabbath School Gracelink Curriculum's ideology, now 10 years underway. His study confirms our pioneers' advance on Wesley which today we are letting go of bit by bit in favour of Lutheranism's differences to Wesley: Luther's followers did him an injustice, and eventually abandoned faith that works in obedience as the heart of the Gospel. God did lead the SDA pioneers, but it's a Bible and history lesson.
The Spirit is always assumed to be God's or Christ's. That all are divine isn't the issue, but how the Bible presents the Spirit. The Spirit of God doesn't have a body in the Bible, but frequently adopts a temporary shape. We used to exclude any possibility of a regular bodily shape like a person, but now it is allowed by emphasis on the Spirit's personhood without reservations about its wholly unconventional personhood as we properly used to do. It is equally unbiblical to exclude the Spirit also being God's own invisible power and influence in us or throughout the universe.
"Triune" isn't precise enough, despite being a sincere abbreviation for us laity. A little study and thought covers the divine reality of the Father, his Son and their Holy Spirit. The Spirit is our communication link to God's throne in Jesus' name, and he teaches us of God's truths. We just mustn't make the Spirit out to be more than the Bible reveals.
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Re: God: The Holy Spirit
#47698
12/22/05 09:07 PM
12/22/05 09:07 PM
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Active Member 2012
14500+ Member
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Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 14,795
Lawrence, Kansas
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She says the Holy Spirit is a person, right? How can someone be a person without being a being?
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Re: God: The Holy Spirit
#47699
12/23/05 02:50 AM
12/23/05 02:50 AM
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Biblical evidences that the Holy Spirit is a Person:
He moves -- Genesis 1:2
He comes upon people -- Luke 1:35
He dwells -- John 14:17
He teaches -- John 14:26, 1 Corinthians 2:13
He testifies -- John 15:26
He reproves -- John 16:8
He guides into truth -- John 16:13
He speaks -- John 16:13, Acts 8:29, Acts 10:19
He glorifies Christ -- John 16:14
He gives utterance -- Acts 2:4
He can be lied to -- Acts 5:3
He catches away -- Acts 8:39
He commands -- Acts 11:12, Acts 13:2
He sends forth -- Acts 13:4
He forbids -- Acts 16:6
He suffers not -- Acts 16:7
He bears witness -- Romans 8:16
He helps our infirmities -- Romans 8:26
He makes intercession for us -- Romans 8:26
He groans -- Romans 8:26
He has a mind -- Romans 8:27
He searches -- 1 Corinthians 2:10
He knows the things of God -- 1 Corinthians 2:11
He divides to every man severally as He will -- 1 Corinthians 12:11
He can be grieved -- Ephesians 4:30
He can be vexed -- Isaiah 63:10
He renews -- Titus 3:5
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Re: God: The Holy Spirit
#47700
12/23/05 04:26 AM
12/23/05 04:26 AM
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Active Member 2012
Very Dedicated Member
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Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 1,826
E. Oregon, USA
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From Tom quote:
She says the Holy Spirit is a person, right? How can someone be a person without being a being?
You're not being a devil's advocate here, are you? ![[Wink]](images/icons/wink.gif) To answer your one liner shall take a few more lines, but they're worth every line. And I'm highlighting that sentence so you spot it immediately. Your question is asked frequently.
The Holy Spirit just isn't a being, but has the personality of a person, since so much the Bible has revealed, and Ellen White stays true to that revealed limit. She doesn't just write that it is a person.
Acts of the Apostles, p.51,52 quote:
It is not essential for us to be able to define just what the Holy Spirit is....The nature of the Holy Spirit is a mystery. Men cannot explain it, because the Lord has not revealed it to them. Men having fanciful views may bring together passages of Scripture and put a human construction on them, but the acceptance of these views will not strengthen the church. Regarding such mysteries, which are too deep for human understanding, silence is golden.
Here she resists the hypothetical question of "what the Holy Spirit is", and discourages Christians from putting uninspired, human explanations to the mystery of the Spirit of God.
Special Testimonies Series B No.7, p.63, has that statement that deserves to be memorised like Scripture. quote:
The Father is all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and is invisible to mortal sight.
The Son is all the fullness of the Godhead manifested....
The Comforter that Christ promised to send after He ascended to heaven, is the Spirit in all the fullness of the Godhead, making manifest the power of divine grace to all who receive and believe in Christ as a personal Saviour.
Notice she only describes the Spirit as manifesting God's power and divine grace in believers - his work is our concern (of course) since we are God's instruments, but there's no licence in the Bible to make the Spirit a being.
All her contemporaries backed her view of Scripture, with the exception of John Harvey Kellogg.
While Kellogg is now infamous for advocating pantheism in 1903 or so, his mistake was principlly teaching that the Holy Spirit was a being. The leading brethern rejected the notion of the Holy Spirit as a being, and Ellen White's Special Testimonies Series B - much of it written for the Kellogg crisis - clearly refutes a belief in the Spirit being a being, as excerpted above.
Kellogg wrote to A G Daniels (then GC President) in Oct 1903 quote:
As far as I can fathom, the difficulty which is found in the Living Temple, the whole thing may be simmered down to this question: is the Holy Ghost a person. You say no. I had supposed the Bible said this for the reason that the personal pronoun he is used in speaking of the Holy Ghost. Sister White uses the pronoun he and has said in as many words that the Holy Ghost is the third person of the Godhead. How the Holy Ghost can be the third person and not be a person at all is difficult for me to see.
After much face to face discussion between the leading brethern and Kellogg, G I Butler (a former GC President) wrote to him in Apr 1904 quote:
...it (referring to the Holy Spirit) comes forth from the Father and the Son. It is not a person walking around on foot, or flying as a literal person, in any such sense as Christ and the Father are - at least, if it is, it is utterly beyond my comprehension of the meaning of language or words
Back to Ellen White's other contemporaries, Uriah Smith, Editor of the Sabbath Review & Advent Herald for a long time, wrote in a 'Review' article in 1890. quote:
Christ is a person, now officiating as priest in the sanctuary in heaven; and yet he says that wherever two or three are gathered in his name, he is there in the midst. Mt. 18:20. How? Not personally, but by his Spirit.
In one of Christ's discourses (John, chapters 14,15, and 16) this Spirit is personified as 'the Comforter,' and as such has the personal and relative pronouns, 'he,' 'him,' and 'whom,' applied to it. But usually it is spoken of in a way to show that it cannot be a person, like the Father and the Son. For instance, it is often said to be 'poured out' and 'shed abroad.' But we never read about God or Christ being poured out or shed abroad. (Review and Herald, Oct. 28,1890).
J A Morton wrote in 1891, regarding the Spirit's divinity quote:
The Holy Spirit is divine because it proceeds from divinity. You can no more separate divinity from the Spirit of God and Christ than you can separate divinity from God and Christ. It is, therefore, the presence of the Spirit in the words of God's promises which enable us to receive the divine nature from those promises." (Signs of the Times, Oct. 26, 1891, p.342).
John N Loughborough, our first missionary beyond North America's shores, wrote in 1898 quote:
The Spirit of God is spoken of in the Scriptures as God's representative- the power by which he works, the agency by which all things are upheld. This is clearly expressed by the Psalmist...Psa. 139:7-10. We learn from this language that when we speak of the Spirit of God we are really speaking of his presence and power." (Review and Herald, Sept. 13, 1898, p. 690).
Mrs S M I Henry wrote quote:
Q. Do you think the Spirit of God is a person, or is it simply the power by which God works, and which he has given to man for his use? "A. The pronouns used in connection with the Spirit must lead us to conclude that he is a person,-the personality of God which is the source of all power and life." (THE ABIDING SPIRIT, 1899)
and denotes the Spirit's person as "the personality of God which" - divine nature has a personality which is non-personal: the third person of the Godhead.
M C Wilcox, Editor of Signs of the Times for 22 years, wrote quote:
28.THE PERSONALITY OF THE SPIRIT Ques. 1. Some say the Holy Spirit is a person; others say He is a personality; and others, a power only. Till how long should this be a matter of discussion? Ans. 1. The personality of the Holy Spirit will probably be a matter of discussion always. Sometimes the Spirit is mentioned as being 'poured out,' as in Acts 2. All through the Scriptures, the Spirit is represented as being the operating power of God ... The reason why the Scriptures speak of the Holy Spirit as a person, it seems to us, is that it brings to us, and to every soul that believes, the personal presence of our Lord Jesus Christ...
Wherever God's children are, there is the Spirit - not an individual person, as we look upon persons, but having the power to make present the Father and the Son. (Questions And Answers Vol.11, 1919, 1938 editions, p.37-39. In the 1945 edition p.33-35)
Again there's this nugget from M C Wilcox (not the 'Wilcox' who was editor of the Review) quote:
Ques. 187. The Holy Spirit and Ministering Spirits "What is the difference between the Holy Spirit and the ministering spirits (angels), or are they the same? Ans. The Holy Spirit is the mighty energy of the Godhead, the life and power of God flowing out from Him to all parts of the universe, and thus making a living connection between His throne and all creation. As is expressed by another: 'The Holy Spirit is the breath of spiritual life in the soul. The impartation of the Spirit is the impartation of the life of Christ.' It thus makes Christ everywhere present.
To use a crude illustration, just as a telephone carries the voice of a man, and so makes that voice present miles away, so the Holy Spirit carries with it all the potency of Christ in making Him everywhere present with all His power, and revealing Him to those in harmony with His law. Thus the Spirit is personified in Christ and God, but never revealed as a separate person. [That is, as we think of persons]
Never are we told to pray to the Spirit; but to God for the Spirit. Never do we find in the Scriptures prayers to the Spirit, but for the Spirit." (Questions And Answers Gathered From The Question Corner Department Of The Signs Of The Times, Pacific Press, 1911 p.18-182).
The Spirit brings the presence of Christ (but not his physical person, obviously), in the name of the Father, to the spiritual awareness of believers, but he himself is only personal perhaps in manifesting the presence & power of Christ: The manifestation of the presence of God's power and grace with the personality to testify of Christ's truth and make God's mercy & righteousness felt. Thus the world can sense that we have been with Jesus, after a spiritual experience.
How's that then, or am I still alone in the dog house? ![[Animated Laughter]](graemlins/laugh.gif)
[ December 23, 2005, 12:10 PM: Message edited by: Colin ]
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