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Re: God: The Holy Spirit
#47721
12/26/05 08:08 PM
12/26/05 08:08 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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I think the main issue is weather or not the Holy Spirit derives His existence from the Father.
Good quote Mountain Man. Here is another important quote:
"It is not essential for us to be able to define just what the Holy Spirit is. Christ tells us that the Spirit is the Comforter, "the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father." It is plainly declared regarding the Holy Spirit that, in His work of guiding men into all truth, "He shall not speak of Himself." John 15:26; 16:13.
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." {AA 52.1}
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Re: God: The Holy Spirit
#47722
12/27/05 02:57 AM
12/27/05 02:57 AM
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"....Regarding such mysteries, which are too deep for human understanding, silence is golden."
Is it possible that Mrs. White is telling us that this subject should be off limits? Just asking, not suggesting nor implying anything.
Redfog
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Re: God: The Holy Spirit
#47723
12/27/05 05:30 AM
12/27/05 05:30 AM
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SDA
Charter Member
Active Member 2019
20000+ Member
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 22,256
Southwest USA
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We can know as much about the Holy Spirit as has been revealed. One thing is clear and certain - He's as much a person as God is a person.
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Re: God: The Holy Spirit
#47724
12/27/05 07:01 AM
12/27/05 07:01 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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quote:
Originally posted by Mountain Man:
We can know as much about the Holy Spirit as has been revealed. One thing is clear and certain - He's as much a person as God is a person.
Absolutely, while God's personal presence among us and within us, as produced by the power of his Spirit, necessarily means he cannot theologically, scientifically, and 'biologically' be just the same kind of physical person as God is a physical person.
Divinity is self-existent by nature, but the Spirit's divinity isn't based on eternal, separate self-existence from the Father and Christ, because the Spirit proceeds from them as their divine Spirit of their own, divine self-existenting nature. Where's the problem? ![[Confused]](images/icons/confused.gif) ...Have we made the divine trio more 'strained' than they really are, allowing our theologians to be scholarly in their detail with God rather than simply Biblical as our Bible teachers were until into the 1920's, and leaning on that scholarship ourselves?
The Spirit is divine, having proceeded from divinity, and is a person like God is but not a person just like God is. God's agency can't be both, as it powerfully upholds all of creation and he dwells in us spiritually, bringing us God's presence - which Jesus himself couldn't do, as a person just like God.
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Re: God: The Holy Spirit
#47725
12/28/05 04:49 AM
12/28/05 04:49 AM
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SDA
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 22,256
Southwest USA
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Colin, it is obvious to me that your view of the Holy Spirit is at odds with the Bible and the SOP. I contrasted your view and the view of the SOP (see above). Your attempt to harmonize the expression "who is as much a person as God is a person" with your view does not make sense to me. How can you say a disembodied thing is like a physical thing - but not just like it?
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Re: God: The Holy Spirit
#47726
12/27/05 05:17 PM
12/27/05 05:17 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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quote:
Colin, it is obvious to me that your view of the Holy Spirit is at odds with the Bible and the SOP.
What's the point of a comment like this?
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Re: God: The Holy Spirit
#47727
12/27/05 05:23 PM
12/27/05 05:23 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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I wrote earlier: quote:
"Person" by its very meaning implies individuality and the ability to act independently. One cannot speak of the "three persons" of the Godhead if there are only two. If when the Godhead meets in counsel there are only two minds present, then there are only two inviduals present as well, and hence only two persons of the Godhead.
Colin wrote that the Holy Spirit is a person as much as God is, but not a person just like God. I agree these are two different things, but this seems to be scratching where it doesn't itch. The word "person" connoates an individual being with the ability to act independently. Take this away and you don't have any sort of person, it appears to me.
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Re: God: The Holy Spirit
#47728
12/27/05 07:19 PM
12/27/05 07:19 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:
Originally posted by Mountain Man:
Colin, it is obvious to me that your view of the Holy Spirit is at odds with the Bible and the SOP. I contrasted your view and the view of the SOP (see above). Your attempt to harmonize the expression "who is as much a person as God is a person" with your view does not make sense to me. How can you say a disembodied thing is like a physical thing - but not just like it?
Thanks for trying to get to grips with what I wrote, since you come from the opposite direction... ![[Big Grin]](images/icons/grin.gif) I shall endeavour to forget that you wrote that first sentence. ![[Wink]](images/icons/wink.gif) ![[Roll Eyes]](images/icons/rolleyes.gif)
Your big question is of your own making, as you are putting words into my mouth. My view is not that the Spirit is "like a physical thing - but not just like it": I wrote that the Spirit is a person with a personality like God is, but not at all a physical being like he is.
The string of exerpts from our pioneers that I posted earlier are consistent in this line. Sister White accepted that line from her contemporaries since she was careful to express herself only in broad terms - which were the framework for the consistent line of her day, and took golden silence as her part in the more detailed advice published for the church, etc.
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Re: God: The Holy Spirit
#47729
12/27/05 08:12 PM
12/27/05 08:12 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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But, Tom, it itches with you, though you haven't noticed it: you just wrote quote:
The word "person" connoates an individual being with the ability to act independently. Take this away and you don't have any sort of person, it appears to me.
Since you say you agree with my basic point - your opening line, is your understanding of "being" the Spirit's possession of his divine identity "in the fullness of the Godhead making manifest the power of divine grace to all those who receive and believe in Jesus as a personal Saviour", with a personal intelligence to testify of Christ's truth, etc, but not a 'being' as we understand human beings having bodies?
Your difficulty with a person not having a being sounds vaguely similar to the very confusion I quoted from Kellogg earlier, where he found himself resisted by the leading Brethern and Sister White for publishing that the Holy Spirit was a person with a body just like Father & Son.
On a connected, but unrelated point, which has grown beyond what I'd anticipated.
Which reminds me, since this thread is about Kellogg, actually, Kellogg made two mistakes: attributing a body to the Spirit, and thinking that God's presence as well as his power is manifested by the Spirit in sustaining all of inanimate & animate nature in creation and not just manifesting his power in doing so, while indeed bringing God's presence to his people through his Spirit. Perhaps Kellogg had no theological acumen for understanding the Godhead, as he couldn't intellectually separate God's presence and power with his people by the power of his Spirit from God's creative power upholding nature without God's presence also being manifested in naure.
This was the beginning of his mistaken view of God. Is it the case that today we have gone beyond SOP counsel, as here, in warning against the detail of Kellogg's book, quote:
I say, and have ever said, that I will not engage in controversy with any one in regard to the nature and personality of God. Let those who try to describe God know that on such a subject silence is eloquence. Let the Scriptures be read in simple faith, and [Ilet each one form his conceptions of God from his inspired word[/I]. (Spalding and Magan’s unpublished manuscript testimonies 1985 (SPM.328-9))
...by the very attempt at an Adventist trinitarian formulation. Weren't the recorded consensus statements drafted by Uriah Smith in line with simple faith and its expression of Bible points? - while today we try too hard to be precise and overdo it spectacularly: hence the uproar of the last 20-30 years.
Let's let it be simple, and be satisfied with that, regardless of complaints about unorthodoxy from other denominations, since a bible study would settle the dispute.
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Re: God: The Holy Spirit
#47730
12/27/05 08:14 PM
12/27/05 08:14 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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But, Tom, it may even itch with you, though you haven't noticed it: you just wrote quote:
The word "person" connoates an individual being with the ability to act independently. Take this away and you don't have any sort of person, it appears to me.
Since you say you agree with my basic point - your opening line, is your understanding of "being" the Spirit's possession of his divine identity "in the fullness of the Godhead making manifest the power of divine grace to all those who receive and believe in Jesus as a personal Saviour", with a personal intelligence to testify of Christ's truth, etc, but not a 'being' as we understand human beings having bodies?
Your difficulty with a person not having a being sounds vaguely similar to the very confusion I quoted from Kellogg earlier, where he found himself resisted by the leading Brethern and Sister White for publishing that the Holy Spirit was a person with a body just like Father & Son.
[ December 27, 2005, 07:46 PM: Message edited by: Colin ]
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