by Amazing1914 26 Replies latest jw friends
Jim,
Acts 13:2 in the NASB, "While they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, 'Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them."
Taken alone this verse shows that the HS uses personal pronouns and has the authority to not only send out ministers but to call them for a particular work it itself identifies.
IW
IW,
Bravo! You are the first one who was able to answer a simple question. If one reads the context surrounding the verse, and reads various commentaries and theological works, there is nothing to suggest a meaning other than what you have provided.
Many thanks to you. You have managed to shake off the JW dust from your thinking ... something that we all struggle with even after years of being out of the JWs.
Jim Whitney
PS: I forgot to add in my initial post that the verse was from Acts 13:2. I tried to edit it later, but the edit deadline passed.
Jim,
I find your comment that somehow I am still indoctrinated by the WT insulting! You don't know all my experiences. I left the Roman Catholic Church at age 12 Because I did not believe in the Trinity. The WT has nothing to do with it at all. One of the reasons I studied with the JWs was because we had this belief in common. Believe it or not Jim, MANY christians do not believe this teaching.
Many here have given good responses but you are hell bent on proving the trinity. In another thread you said it was not essential for our salvation, but in this thread you are saying it is important to view the holy spirit as a person. Which one is it? If we say it is a person, we must accept the trinity. Many of us do not accept that. Like greendawn said, there are many scriptures in the NT that refute this teaching.
I thought I made good points. You have no proof either way as to what the early bible writers were trying to prove by writing in the first person in that one verse. It is a non essential issue.
I was absolutely correct when I said no one will be able to satisfy you with an answer. You want a certain answer which is that everyone agrees with you. You want us to say, "oh my God, you are right, I now believe the holy spirit must be a person". Well, you aint getting it from me. I have refuted this belief since I was 12, I will be 37 on May 14th. No WT org. nor Catholic Church, Nor family pressure has been able to change my view.
You are the one acting like you are indoctrinated because you are trying to prove you are right and we all are wrong. If it is not essential, in the spirit of love, why do you not let it go and thank people for their responses and just agree to disagree?
To all who responded, you gave some great responses. But as our friend Jim said, people will believe what they want. And some people cannot let things go.
Peace to everyone, I cry uncle, uncle, uncle and I give up!
Lovelylil,
I included and continue to include myself among those who still have JW dust afecting our perceptions, and to some degree, controlling our reactions and responses. IW was the first to really get respond to the question without finding it necessary to add in a pile of other stuff. That is all I meant, and nothing in my comments were directed at or to you. I too left the Catholic Church at age 17, so we have a similar issue. Among the reasons I left was that I did not like the Trinity and I liked the simplistic material offerred by Jehovah's Witnesses.
I am not trying to prove the Trinity or anything. What I was wondering is whether anyone had the ability to answer a simple question with a reasonable response, regardless of what the outcome was. Instead, I get a lot of other "jibber-jabber." - Boston Legalese You are afraid of the Trinity because you, like me, do not like the concept. So anything at all that even remotely approaches the possibility that it maight have some basis, threatens your world view, and you are not able to keep your responses intellectual. I do the same thing at times. That is one reason why I stopped talking about politics, because I fall into the same traps sometimes. Why in the hell do you feel the need to fight me at every turn on this? Why can't you accept me with the benefit of the doubt that I have no agenda to prove anything. My entire series of postings was to elicite ex-JW non-Trinitarian responses. I did this in several ways in order to verify my hypothesis about ex-JW views. I will post a summary of my series with respect to its purpose and its findings for all to follow just where I was headed. Perhaps then, if not now, you might see just what I was trying to accomplish. Finally, if you had really read what I wrote you would not have made such inane allegations about my views. I donb't give a rip what you believe or do not believe. And, other than stating that I affiliate with the Orthodox (free classes in Koine' Greek), I have not stated whether I am even an atheist. I have been closer to what some call "Christian Agnostic." There is even a website dedicated to that cause. All the emotions and presumptions are on your part. You made up your mind decades ago, and will not open your mind. And frankly, "Scarlet, I don't give a damn!" - (Gone with the Wind)Jim Whitney
Jim,
A fatal problem with your reasoning imo is that you still have not defined what a "person" is, (1) in common usage and (2) as a technical term of trinitarian theology (i.e. as a fixed equivalent of Greek hupostasis and Latin persona). You seem to assume that definitions # 1 and 2 are identical, which I doubt.
But let us stay with # 1 for a little while. In general usage, a "person" is an individual of the human species -- in opposition to "things" or "animals". If we call God, angels or aliens "persons" we do so in a derived sense, by extrapolating human characteristics (e.g. life, language, consciousness, intelligence, feelings, memory and will) to other beings. It is analogical thinking -- one of the most blatant cases of anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism: we would call a "person" any potential being we would deem to be like us enough.
The personality ascribed to "God" in monotheism (and before that to the gods and goddesses of polytheism) is unseparable from anthropomorphical speech in theology and mythology. Monotheism taught us to dismiss the corporeal anthropomorphisms about "God" as mere figures of speech (Yhwh's "arms," "hands," "fingers," "nose," "mouth," "eyes," "feet" etc.) but to retain the "intellectual" or "moral" ones as somehow "literal": God's "will," "memory," "word," "wisdom," "love" or "hate" are not considered as metaphors. This is quite arbitrary if you think of it but never mind. Let's assume "God" and "angels" are "persons" -- morally human-like, corporally non-human-like, non-humans.
So "God" and "angels" -- "persons" by this somewhat painful definition -- are called "spirits". From this you seem to jump to the conclusion that the word "spirit" means or implies "person"! All you can really conclude from this premise (fwiw) is that a "person" can be called "a spirit," or "a spirit" can be "a person". Whether it can only be a "person" is a quite different matter. When the Bible speaks of people's (human) spirits does that mean a person within the person? What about the animals' "spirits" which are generated by God's "spirit" in Psalm 104 for instance?
Qualifying "God" as "spirit" is definitely not qualifying him as a person -- this task is done by our selective acceptation of anthropomorphisms: God is not a person because he is called a "spirit," he is a person because we ascribe him life, intelligence, will, feelings, etc.
As you know the main antithesis to "spirit" in the Bible is not "thing" but "flesh". "God is a spirit" tells us strictly nothing about his "personality" but means he is not fleshly, material or physical. That's about all. And stepping back (semantically) it is almost the opposite. When I call God a "person" I suggest he is somehow "like me"; when I call him a "spirit" I affirm he is "not like me".
So what about the NT "Holy Spirit"? Is it "something" or "someone"? To answer that question we should consider all NT uses of pneuma (neuter); the obvious conclusion would be that "personal" or "anthropomorphical" suggestions are the exception (mostly limited to Acts) rather than the rule. That doesn't mean they should be explained away (although, as I said and maintain, the personification of Wisdom in Luke, where it has no obvious christological nor pneumatological role, should incline the reader to caution). But even we should conclude that some NT texts treat the Holy Spirit as a "person-like-us" that would not warrant reading this representation into the rest of the NT.
Let me add (once more) that admitting that, by and large, the NT doesn't depart too much from the overwhelmingly impersonal use of to pneuma in Greek doesn't rule out considering the Holy Spirit as a divine hupostasis (a very abstract term) or persona (the comedian mask, hence role or character) by Trinitarian definitions. Those are not about persons in the ordinary sense, but divine "dimensions" or "modes of being" (Karl Barth). What if the word pneuma's resistance to anthropomorphism was precisely helpful to remind that "God" cannot be reduced to the anthropomorphical notion of "person" -- being ultimately both personal and impersonal?
Narkissos,
Thank You, thank you, thank you,
I really enjoyed your last post. It made perfect sense to me and you explained it so much better than I could have. You put a smile on my face! Lilly
Narkissos,
You are making this far too complicated. Had the verse said, " And as they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the John Smith said, "Separate me Barnabus and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them." - KJV / AV If John Smith said those words, would you have any question about a "person" speaking? Or would you simply think that some bloke named "John Smith" was speaking?
Let's try this exercise, " And as they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, God said, "Separate me Barnabus and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them." - KJV / AV" If God the Father said those words, would you get all complicated trying to parse out the meaning of the word person, or would you read the verse as God speaking?
My point is that when it comes to the Holy Spirit, JWs and many ex-JWs seem to have a built in paradigm which demands squirming and wiggling to find another meaning other than what the text simply says. I said nothing about the Trinity. I could care a less about all the legalistic parsing. My goal was to see how people in certain traditions cope with certain phrasing, especially when that phrasing may not match their built-in paradigms.
Thanks for your post, it was very helpful and informative.
Jim Whitney
