Who is the Holy Spirit?

[marco]

The Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit inspires folk. The Muses had that role too.

Is the Spirit a reality outside of our reality, one who can - like Proteus - appear in different forms as the notion takes him? Divinities in Classical mythology had their functions: they oversaw the arts, or healing or war. What would be the point of the Holy Spirit? If God wished to inspire fisher folk he could do it instantaneously by a moment's thought; instead we have a curious waiting period, then comes the Spirit into a room and literally inspires. Are we not just a little suspicious that this is a borrowing from an existing mythology, a dramatic explanation of Christ's propaganda?


Is there sense in the Holy Spirit being some divinity? Or is he a personification of inspiration? How do we view him?

[bluethread]

If the spirit is a poetic term for inspiration then we have sense. If he's 0.3333333..
of a God and also a whole God, we must scratch our heads and read our newspaper, to get back to reality. Go well.

That is a mathematicians analogy. If one is going to work off of any analogy, I think the one suggested by the Hebrew is the best; Ha Ruach HaChedosh, the Holy Breath. How does one define one's breath? Is my breath part of me? Yes and no. It is not part of my physical body, but is made up of parts of my body being expelled and provides a means by which I can communicate. On the up side, the concept behind CPR and, on the down side, the killing of vampires, includes this imagery. When one reads through the Scriptures on a systematic basis and is paying attention, this kind of imagery is pervasive. The Ruach Ch'i is the source of life and it its the Ruach that parted the Sea of reeds.

[Pipiripi]

The Holy Spirit is the live and power of Jesus Christ himself, which He has received from God the Father...………….. ....The Holy Spirit that Christians have in them is NOT ' an other third being'. We have the Spirit of God the Father, which is manifested truth His Son, Jesus Christ.

And thus you believe, while I think something else and yet others think other things. We can read biblical verses and take an interpretation from them. Who is to say this interpretation is correct? Do we seek out really clever people and ask them for their opinion and then believe what they say? Does the Holy Spirit guide such people?

The problem here is that people forget that the Bible interpreted itself. Everything I wrote is from the Bible, and with the helping from the one that God has filled with knowledge. If you will more just ask.

[marco]

The problem here is that people forget that the Bible interpreted itself. Everything I wrote is from the Bible, and with the helping from the one that God has filled with knowledge. If you will more just ask.

Thank you but the best you can do is give me your interpretation of what a text means. I can struugle with what brain I have to find an interpretation too and who is to say that I have not, amazingly, hit on the right meaning? As a child I learned that:
"This is my body ---do this in commemoration of me" offered priests the miraculous power to transform bread into Christ's body. Millions believe this and the words seem to say this.

When Christ said "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church" he may well have been instituting the Roman Catholic Church, with Peter as its first Pontiff.

Did Christ intend deliberately to confuse when he said:
"I tell you this day you shall be with me in Paradise." Does "this day" refer to Christ's telling or to Christ's occupation of heaven?

So much theology creaks under the weight of such interpretations. If you have been lucky enough, on every conceivable text, to extract the intended meaning then I am filled with admiration. Allow me mine, uninspired as it may be by the Spiritus Sanctus.

[Pipiripi]

The majority of Christians today, believed that the Holy Spirit is a 'third being' of the Godhead. They believed that the Holy Spirit is a separate being from God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son of God. But is this truth? Does the Bible really teach this? You may be surprised to learn that the Bible does not teach this. So who or what is the Holy Spirit? The book of Revelation holds the key to this question.
Revelation 5:1,6,7.....'And I saw in the right hand that sat on a throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals....and I be held, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood A LAMB AS IT HAD BEEN SLAIN, having seven horns, AND SEVEN EYES, WHICH ARE THE SEVEN SPIRITS OF GOD SENT FORTH INTO ALL THE EARTH. And he came and took the book out of the right hand of him that sat upon the throne.'
This is a very revealing verse regarding the Holy Spirit. Notice that the Lamb, which is Christ has 'seven eyes, which are the seven Spirit from God to send forth in all the earth.' This is a reference to the Holy Spirit, and who is that HAS the Holy Spirit to send? It is Christ, 'the Lamb.' And this lines up with is revealed in Revelation, chapter 1 and 2.

I will leave it till here and i will heard what you think. Go and studied for yourselves because the time is near.

[Pipiripi]

The problem here is that people forget that the Bible interpreted itself. Everything I wrote is from the Bible, and with the helping from the one that God has filled with knowledge. If you will more just ask.

Thank you but the best you can do is give me your interpretation of what a text means. I can struugle with what brain I have to find an interpretation too and who is to say that I have not, amazingly, hit on the right meaning? As a child I learned that:
"This is my body ---do this in commemoration of me" offered priests the miraculous power to transform bread into Christ's body. Millions believe this and the words seem to say this.

When Christ said "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church" he may well have been instituting the Roman Catholic Church, with Peter as its first Pontiff.

Did Christ intend deliberately to confuse when he said:
"I tell you this day you shall be with me in Paradise." Does "this day" refer to Christ's telling or to Christ's occupation of heaven?

So much theology creaks under the weight of such interpretations. If you have been lucky enough, on every conceivable text, to extract the intended meaning then I am filled with admiration. Allow me mine, uninspired as it may be by the Spiritus Sanctus.

My friend if you and me don't go back 2000 years and lived the lives they have live in their time. We will never understand the scriptures. When Jesus was talking to His disciples, about the future, he cannot tell them how the future become to like. Because they don't known the future. But we from the future well can undestand the living of the past. The BIBLE is a true story evidence. It is just like seeing a movie. Aslong you don't put yourself in the story, you cannot enjoy drama. When you read your BIBLE go into the future and get in the shoes of everybody who is listing to Jesus teaching. And when you have understand what was happens there, then you can come and bring it in our time. This is the way you will quide by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus and His Father.

[marco]

'And I saw in the right hand that sat on a throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals....and I be held, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood A LAMB AS IT HAD BEEN SLAIN, having seven horns, AND SEVEN EYES, WHICH ARE THE SEVEN SPIRITS OF GOD SENT FORTH INTO ALL THE EARTH. And he came and took the book out of the right hand of him that sat upon the throne.'

Do you suppose God would communicate in riddles? Is he a magician? If he wants people to follow his commands, do you suppose he would talk about lambs, beasts, seals and seven eyes? This is the stuff that rises from superstition, not truth.


This stuff does not honour God. If one wants to accept a God, surely one must endow him with wisdom....and the basic ability to communicate to rich and poor, clever and foolish. Revelation does not do that.

[marco]

My friend if you and me don't go back 2000 years and lived the lives they have live in their time. We will never understand the scriptures. When Jesus was talking to His disciples, about the future, he cannot tell them how the future become to like. Because they don't known the future.

But, my friend, I can go back 2000 years by reading the beautiful works of people who lived then. They ate our food and felt our pleasure and our pain. Here is Horace, worrying that he is growing old, and soon to die: "Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume labuntur anni...."

"Ah, Postumus, Postumus, the swift years are slipping away from us."

Or Catullus visiting the grave of his dead brother, and weeping:

" atque in perpetuum frater ave atque vale!" And so for ever, dear brother, hail and farewell.


I respond to this and read Revelation - sadly - with a touch of contempt.

[bluethread]

I respond to this and read Revelation - sadly - with a touch of contempt.

It is understandable that you might consider the Revelation to be less than literary excellence. I personally find it a bit tedious. Also, the various attempts by the antipapists, dispensationalists and others to identify a magic code that makes it work as a stand alone work, are little more than myopic cheats, IMO. What gives it more value to me is to look at it as an eclectic representation of the imagery one finds throughout the Scriptures. Though I am not dogmatic about the RCC/Protestant canon, it does provide an interesting bookend comparable to Genesis.

[marco]

I respond to this and read Revelation - sadly - with a touch of contempt.

It is understandable that you might consider the Revelation to be less than literary excellence. I personally find it a bit tedious.

You are remarkably generous towards it.

What gives it more value to me is to look at it as an eclectic representation of the imagery one finds throughout the Scriptures.

This is its artificiality, dsigned to give fragments of truth. It is an ignis fatuus to attract and mislead. The priest who suggested it was written by a drunk underestimated its magnetic power over those who want to see their God in a grain of sand, or in a quagmire.

[bluethread]

This is its artificiality, dsigned to give fragments of truth. It is an ignis fatuus to attract and mislead. The priest who suggested it was written by a drunk underestimated its magnetic power over those who want to see their God in a grain of sand, or in a quagmire.

In what way is it misleading? What, in your opinion, is the point of the Revelation? As with all mystic literature, outside of it's cultural context, it is easily misunderstood. We see this in the Disney retelling of the mystic tales of the past. They are rewritten to support modern romanticism. The Brother's Grimm were hardly romantics. Also, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz were social commentary written in the guise of children's mystic literature. Nearly all, if not all great mystic literature is allegorical social commentary and thus closely tied with the times and cultures into which they are written.