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Hello, I'm responding to your request that I post in this thread. Augustine said of the Holy Spirit, "In no other subject is the danger of erring so great, or the progress so difficult, or the fruit of a careful study so appreciable." The Greek word pneuma, which literally means wind or breath, designates the Spirit. He is also called the Holy Ghost, and he is the Third Person of the Trinity, also called the Paraclete. Our triune God is so foundational to Christianity that most of the early conflicts were about his precise nature. The NT holds that the Spirit descends on someone upon baptism; in all four gospels, when Christ is baptized by John, the Spirit descends upon him "like a dove". Because the Spirit is a person, and is God, one should refer to him using the pronoun "he" instead of "it." The Spirit also came to the disciples at Pentecost, giving them tongues of fire so that they might preach God's holy truth. Christ says that blasphemy against the Father or the Son will be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be. The Old Testament refers to the holy Spirit as the voice of the prophets, and indeed, the prophets often spoke as God himself. In the first person, they would lay down His holy judgments to anyone in the Temple grounds who would listen. Therefore, I think it most sensible to see the holy spirit as referring to words spoken as God by holy people, such as Christ or the prophets, but also to the holy feelings and intuition within them that inspired righteous words of divine truth. GAINING WEIGHT... posted:How does this happen? Is the Holy Spirit giving different advice, or are people simply making mistakes in interpreting it? Second, how does one figure out who is actually correct in their revelations? And lastly, if what I'm referring to as "personal revelation" is such a poor and inaccurate method of obtaining information, why does anyone rely on it? The truthful answer, although most won't like to hear it, is that someone may claim that they are speaking from the Spirit, and even believe it on some level, but they are actually being misled by the devil. The Spirit never contradicts himself. If you want to know what the orthodox teaching is on a subject, there are readily available and more informative resources than simply intuition. Proper education is essential to having a coherent theology, as is an earnest willingness to appreciate God's will. In your heart, you probably have an inkling when you are trying to distort the teaching to accommodate some desire. Tell Satan to go away! quote:My question is more within just one religion: how can there be disagreement if the information is coming from the same divine source? Don't you have to kind of believe that you, alone, are infallible in interpreting the Holy Spirit to really believe you are right about your entire belief structure? I mean, if someone has to have made a mistake, couldn't it have been you? If you could be wrong, why aren't you in this case? There is a lot of disagreement because people refuse the truth. Honestly, this is kind of a Protestant conception of the Spirit; a Catholic mindset accepts Church authority, and finds time-tested doctrine challenging but rewarding to learn. This isn't to say one loses all sense of individuality, or that one has no doubts about teachings, but rather that one views their personal intuition as suspect. It is a self-doubt and a self-criticism. It was when I realized how non-traditional and unique and full of logical holes my "personal interpretation" was that I saw it as only a shadow of Christianity, and decided to learn about the real deal, which is surprisingly coherent. quote:Am I wrong in any of my assumptions? Are there no true disagreements among Christians? Are there ways of verifying revelation that I'm not seeing? Would God have different rules for different people, and if so, why write the Bible and fill it with so many seemingly universal laws? We are all unique, so there are innumerable disagreements! But people try to agree on sacredly held doctrines which have been well debated and passed down by believers since the time of Christ. At the very least, they make an effort to understand it and try to accept it. Kyrie eleison fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Nov 23, 2014 |
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Nov 23, 2014 03:57
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CharlestheHammer posted:though for some reason this did not apply to women, who were banned completely. It applies to nuns.
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Nov 23, 2014 07:22
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Mornacale posted:OP, you seem inclined to look at religion in pragmatic terms, so think of the Bible as a collection of literature. Christians, then, are essentially an organized group of fans that has been around for a couple thousand years. I have sometimes thought myself, with some amusement, that Christians, like Jews and Muslims, are basically a really dedicated fan club. In my opinion, having read the Bible, I don't really need to read anything else. I've already read the best book of all time. Nothing can possibly compare. Everything else I've read just seems like a path I've followed to get to the Bible.
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Nov 27, 2014 19:20
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Miltank posted:Yeah Kyrie seems to be an uncharacteristically evangelical catholic. I've been assuming that he is an ex-protestant probably from the US. There is nothing "anti-Catholic" about the supremacy of holy Scripture. You guys really think Protestants own the Bible or something? We have four readings at every Mass. Again, I remind you all that Catholics compiled the Bible, and are the only ones who have interpreted it holistically.
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Nov 30, 2014 18:57
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nucleicmaxid posted:I have no idea, I'm not a Christian. I'm just presenting their arguments to the thread because their arguments were asked for, and they seem to be the basis of some of the OP's claims. I'd consider replying to this thread, but I already have a thread about Christianity, and see this thread as redundant (as well as the other one about God). I regret writing the earlier reply on the first page.
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Dec 4, 2014 22:42
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