Spiritus Sancti

[jb_farley]

I’ve never quite grasped the Holy Spirit, even with 12 years of Catholic schooling and continuous churchgoing. Can’t get my head around what the hell he’s supposed to do. I mean, I know the whole “He has spoken through the Prophets” and proceeding from the father and the son.

Anyway, that’s not the point. Not exactly.

What I would like to know is thusly:

Where the hell is the Holy Spirit in the Bible? Is the Holy Spirit in the Bible? Was it a creation of the early Church, or of the NT, or the OT?

If it is a culmination of ideas originally espoused in the OT, what are the relevant passages? How do Jews interpret them differently from Christians?

thanks,

jb

[lno]

For more information than you would ever want to know, along with cites galore from the Bible, check out the Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on the Holy Spirit.

I warn you, it’s pretty wordy.

[tomndebb]

We also had a lively little discussion that was able to stay in General Questions without getting booted over to GD, just a few months ago:
Where did the Christian concept of a triune God come from?

[jb_farley]

Oh sweet lord, LNO, you weren’t kidding. My brain tried to jump outta my left ear a few paragraphs in. For a Catholic Catechism inspired by God, it sure sounds a lot like Peace. And I quoteth: “And as he dwells in our bodies sanctifies them, so will and them he raise them again, one day, from the dead.”

I mean, except for Pentecost and Jees’ baptism, you never hear that much about the big H.G. Just vague phrases such as “the power of the new life, the miraculous potency of the Kingdom of God”. 'TF?!??

So if God is a Triune God, why was it not seen fit to mention that until the NT?

[tomndebb]

You don’t have to wait for the appearance of the Spirit to ask that question, jb_f. Any Christian perception of Jesus being announced in the OT is only done with hindsight. There is no reason to believe that any Jew (however devout, however “far out”) would have read any of their Scriptures and predicted that God would take on the form of a man to provide salvation. Therefore, if the Christians are correct, then God has an “unfolding” plan that was not recognized until Jesus came or, if the Jews are correct, the Christians have just twisted the message of God based on a set of beliefs about the man, Jesus. And if the atheists are correct, we (religious types) have all been getting into the psychotropes, again.

[More_Cowbell]

But didn’t God warn his people in the OT. I forget the exact verse, but basically God said if someone comes along, and even performs miracles and talks about God, and then encourages others to follow a God different than the one revealed to the Jews, to NOT follow that person. Don’t you think Christianity falls into this category, including it’s theology on the trinity (aomong various others)?

[jb_farley]

Very good points, Tom, but I was thinking more of the Holy Spirit. Why wasn’t it brought up specifically in the OT?

As to the God as man, why wasn’t the coming Messiah revealed to be a part of a Trifecta?

Don’t get me wrong, I have an idea as to why (evolution and subjectivity of religion and all of that). Any idea what theologians have weighed in with?
jb

[MEBuckner]

But didn’t God warn his people in the OT. I forget the exact verse, but basically God said if someone comes along, and even performs miracles and talks about God, and then encourages others to follow a God different than the one revealed to the Jews, to NOT follow that person. Don’t you think Christianity falls into this category, including it’s theology on the trinity (aomong various others)?

Deuteronomy 13:1-5:

If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a miraculous sign or wonder, and if the sign or wonder of which he has spoken takes place, and he says, “Let us follow other gods” (gods you have not known) “and let us worship them,” you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. The LORD your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul. It is the LORD your God you must follow, and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him. That prophet or dreamer must be put to death, because he preached rebellion against the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery; he has tried to turn you from the way the LORD your God commanded you to follow. You must purge the evil from among you.

(The case of a prophet whose prophecies do not come to pass is covered in Deuteronomy 18:20-22.)

C K Dexter Haven discussed the history of Jewish reactions to the Trinity a bit in the Where did the Christian concept of a triune God come from thread Tom linked to above:

As a side note, Jewish rabbinic thought said that one may break any commandment to save one’s life, except for three: idolatry, adultery, and murder. If the Nazi holds a gun to your head and says, “Kill that person,” one accepts martyrdom rather than commit murder. The rabbinic question at the time of forced conversions was whether Christianity would be viewed as “idolatry” on account of having three gods and lots of statuary. The initial rabbinic decision was that Christianity was indeed idolatry, and therefore Jews should accept torture and martyrdom rather than forced conversion to Christianity. Islam, on the other hand, with an insistence on a single god and absence of statues or pictures, was NOT idolatry, and one should accept forced conversion to Islam rather than death.

The Christian leadership protested strongly, of course, and the rabbinic ruling was later reversed. However, the Jewish (outside) perspective of Christianity is still somewhat dubious. [snide] If it looks, walks, talks and smells like three gods, what’s the difference if the clergy says it’s only one? [/snide]

OK, I’ll stop, other events this morning have me in a nasty mood, and I humbly crave pardon from my Christian friends.

Just to play, ahem, “God’s Advocate” for a bit, some Old Testament verses which Christians would no doubt point to as referring to the “Holy Spirit” of their Trinity include Numbers 11:25-26, Judges 13:25, 1 Samuel 10:10, and Isaiah 30:1. That’s a pretty random list of passages, but it does show that the idea that there’s a “Spirit of God” which can “descend upon” people to inspire (as it were) them to prophesy and so forth is a pretty common one in the OT. That’s not quite the same thing as the Christian Trinity of course, but the earliest Jewish Christians didn’t have to make up their Paraclete out of whole cloth.

Notes the Britannica:

Christian writers have seen in various references to the Spirit of Yahweh in the Old Testament an anticipation of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The Hebrew word ruah (usually translated “spirit”) is often found in texts referring to the free and unhindered activity of God, either in creating or in revitalizing creation, especially in connection with the prophetic word or messianic expectation. There was, however, no explicit belief in a separate divine person in biblical Judaism; in fact, the New Testament itself is not entirely clear in this regard. One suggestion of such belief is the promise of another helper, or intercessor (paraclete), that is found in the Gospel According to John.

The definition that the Holy Spirit was a distinct divine Person equal in substance to the Father and the Son and not subordinate to them came at the Council of Constantinople in AD 381, following challenges to its divinity. The Eastern and Western churches have since viewed the Holy Spirit as the bond, the fellowship, or the mutual charity between Father and Son; they are absolutely united in the Spirit. The relationship of the Holy Spirit to the other Persons of the Trinity has been described in the West as proceeding from both the Father and the Son, whereas in the East it has been held that the procession is from the Father through the Son. – from the article “Holy Spirit”

[Polycarp]

Talking about the Holy Spirit is somewhat akin to observing the lens/mirror of a telescope, instead of using it to observe heavenly bodies, or even astronomically.

It is that “aspect” of God (getting slightly modalistic for purposes of clarity) which indwells the believer, mind-melds with him if you’ll forgive the Star Trek-ism, and leads him to better know the will and love of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. As such, it functions as an independent person of God the Holy Trinity. (Yeah, I know, but He’s God; He can get away with confusing things like that!)

Probably the best description of what He does (set in the future tense for obvious reasons) is Jesus’s discourse on His planned departure and sending of the Spirit in John 14. That’s the key point; the Aristotelian/Aquinan categories of a separate hypostasis subdwelling in a single ousia (which doesn’t come much clearer in Latin or English) are simply technical analyses of the structure in which He works, and capable of being ignored by those to whom they don’t make sense. (Which covers most of us, I think.)