The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #68750   Message #1160437
Posted By: Kent Davis
12-Apr-04 - 11:58 PM
Thread Name: BS: The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost
Subject: RE: BS: The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost
Dianavan, there is more to say than could be said in a quick email in a discussion forum. However, since you asked, I'm a plain Christian, no denomination, not Protestant, not Catholic, not Eastern Orthodox. I was raised as a United Methodist and became a member of the church of Christ 23 years ago. The Holy Spirit is famously difficult to describe. That's not too surprising really. Quantum physics, Relativity, and even folk music are difficult to describe. Why should the Divine Nature to be easy to describe?
Nevertheless, we can learn a lot about the Holy Spirit by examining what the prophets say about the subject. For example, the very beginning of the Torah, Genesis 1, describes the Holy Spirit as active in the creation of the world. In Exodus 31:3, the LORD (i.e., YHWH, the Father) tells Moses that He has chosen a man named Bezalel to be "filled with the Spirit of God" to enable him to design and make beautiful art to be used in worship. In Numbers 24:2, "the Spirit of God came upon" Balaam, enabling him to prophesy.
There are hundreds of other examples. I choose these because they all are unquestionably older than the Nicene Creed of 325 and also because they predate Christianity. The Holy Spirit wasn't invented by Christianity. It was much the other way around.