Is the Spirit a person seperate of God?

 

This a post from the site Eclectic Christian and my response to it.  If time allows please visit there site and read through the rest of the series.

From Eclectic Christian;

Reflections on the Deity of Christ – Jesus is not the Father

We do not mean that Jesus is the Father. The New Testament is very clear to distinguish between God as he is revealed as Father, and God as he is revealed as Son.

Although it is very difficult to use a two dimensional diagram to describe what God is like, this diagram may help.  Although we say that the Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, it is clear that we do distinguish between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

Writers in the early church compared God to a river.  Each stage of a river is different, from where it may start as a spring bubbling out of the ground, through the meandering in may experience through the countryside, to  the delta it forms as it empties itself into the ocean.  We would not try to say that the start of the river is indentical to the end of the river, and yet we would say that each part of it is the river.

If a guide takes me to the head of the Amazon river, he would say “that’s the Amazon river.”  When he takes me to the middle of the Amazon river,  he would say, “that’s the Amazon river.”  When he takes me to where the Amazon river empties into the ocean, he would say, “that’s the Amazon river.”  Each part of the river is called the river, and yet each part of the river makes up the river as a whole.

That being said, every analogy of the Trinity will break down if stretched too far. This is simply as a result of not being able to describe the infinite with finite language.

As Joshua Hearne, a co-author of Eclectic Christian notes in the comments:

The problem with the river image is that a particular section of the river is not simultaneously source and delta. We must be careful not to slip into modalism and assert that each of the three coequal persons of the trinity are one God serving/manifesting in three different roles. This is a similar theological problem to what we end up with when we look at “forms of water” or “the egg.”

I agree that you can’t limit the Trinity to the roles that are played within the Trinity. Each of the three persons of the Trinity have different roles to play, but their interdependence is so much greater than the roles they play. The river analogy breaks down when you consider that a river can have many sources. Take away one source, and you still have a river. A river may, or may not have a delta. Not having a delta does not detract from the fact that it is a river.

The same can not be said for the Trinity. I believe that there is an interdependence in the Trinity that is not properly captured in the river analogy. I wanted to conclude my series looking at the interdependence of the persons of the Trinity, but I will try and change around my original posting plan so that I look at it first and use it a framework on which many of the other posts will hang.

It is very difficult (if not outright wrong) to put God into a box. It is impossible to describe the infinite in finite terms. So understand that I am not trying to delineate the edges of the box, rather it is my attempt to say, “Here is what we do know about the deity of Christ. Please understand that our knowledge is imperfect, and our understanding of the topic is imperfect, but we present it as best we can so as to improve your knowledge and understanding.”

 

My response;

 

I don’t think it worth while to comment on the arguments of the popes and church fathers concerning the nature of the Trinity since this is mostly post-Biblical thinking, and as an old country pastor once said “where the scripture is silent we should be silent.” Any how my areas of study are in Biblical thinking and its precedents not Catholic and Orthodox apologetics.

In the three persons mentioned above, the most mysterious to me was the Holy Spirit. Jesus has a well laid out personality, and if the Father was the guy who spoke to Moses at Sinai, it seems like we have an idea of Him to. The Spirit always seems like something God owns and not like a person. I mean you have a soul, but it’s not really a person separate from you.

If the Bible says that the Spirit of YHWH enters a prophet or Judge, I think that means that YHWH’s power is entering him, but not YHWH Him self. YHWH is not a little man that enters the bodies of Judges or the mouths of prophets. YHWH’s nature is such that you don’t get to interact with Him. It is not Him but His glory that inhabited the temple. YHWH cannot be said to be contained in anything. I think his glory and his spirit are effectively the same thing. God does thing by way of his Spirit as we do things by way of our hands. God doesn’t have hands as we do he has much more, he has his Power(Spirit).

But is this a person separate of Him? Are me and my body different people? I can understand why this could be an issue. If we are to worship YHWH only, would worshiping His Spirit or His Wisdom be idolatry? If someone cut off my hand and then took it for a party at Chucky Cheese, it would be honoring my hand but not me.

I think we can speak of YHWH’s Wisdom, Spirit, or Glory as people in poetry but I’m not sure how they would qualify for actual person hood. Jesus said Wisdom is proved right by her children, but does Wisdom really have children like mothers have children?

When Jesus says that unless He goes away the Advocate (Holy Spirit) won’t come, or the Father will send the Holy Spirit on behalf of Jesus, does he mean another person? I believe that nothing happens by YHWH to a person unless the Spirit brings it about. It is only by the Spirit that YHWH does things. If Jesus sent the Father, it would still be the Spirit we talk to. You never talk to “me”. You talk to my ears and they pass the message along. Of course Jesus doesn’t send the Father or His Spirit. It is the Father that does all the doing. He gives the orders.

 

P.S. I wrote this before reaserching Philo’s Logos. In light of that, it would seem that the Spirit may be something like an angel consisting of several spirits, each with some aspect of Gods power or being.  It is like the Kabbalah concept of God, the Tree of Life.