Question on the Holy Spirit and Biblical Interpretation

[The Liturgist]

That's probably correct to say, but with a lot more mysticism.

Indeed.

Oh yes.

And thanks for the kind words.

I love the 1928 BCP so much, it represents to me the apex of liturgical development in American churches (I would say the 1962 Canadian BCP likewise represents the apex of Canadian liturgy).

But even more important than beautiful prayers are the beautiful souls of the people who pray them beautifully, people like you and our other Christian brethren on this site and in our churches who make me feel so blessed and overawed with the love of God for me as expressed by the loving nature of wonderful pious Christians like you. I felt it was really important to share that with you, because sometimes you and I have had intense debates due to different churchmanship, but I wanted you to know how much I appreciate you as a brother in Christ despite the lack of entire uniformity in our perspectives on things.

 

[The Liturgist]

I think for the same reason that four Gospel writers wrote about the same life of Jesus in four different ways.

This is an excellent point excellently made.

 

[Daniel Marsh]

This is mainly for protestants as the High Church folk believe that the Spirit guides their church hierarchy into all truth rather than the individual. What I do not understand and would like a well-reasoned answer to is that if the Holy Spirit guides us into all truth then why do two genuinely Spirit-filled believers come to differing interpretations of the Bible and theology? Related to this, why do genuinely Spirit-filled believers seem to come to interpretations that are objectively wrong? How does the Holy Spirit guide believers into truth and what role do reason, study, and Biblical scholarship play in all of this?

My position is the Holy Spirit teaching humans was to the Apostles and not to anyone else. This includes Church leaders and individual Christians. The best we can do is study Early Church History(churh fathers, councils, Scriptures), Culture and History surrounding Biblical times & peroids, Biblical Languages and when possible stand on the shoulders of scholars who have gone before me. I recognize that I can be wrong on minor doctrines like when Jesus will return. On Major theology, I rely on those theologians and scholars of the early church.

 

[Daniel Marsh]

so I am to tolerate false teaching? if there is a diffference then they are either both false or only one is false as there is only one truth

depends if it is major theoology like who and what Jesus did & who he is. Or, minor theology like all christians must speak in tongues, when Jesus will return, how to conduct church, so on.

 

[Daniel Marsh]

start at #21

 

[SkyWriting]

so I am to tolerate false teaching? if there is a diffference then they are either both false or only one is false as there is only one truth

The Bible has 40 authors...so you are barking up the wrong tree. There are at least 40 truths. And each one approaches God from a different viewpoint and a few different centuries.

 

[The Liturgist]

The Bible has 40 authors...so you are barking up the wrong tree. There are at least 40 truths. And each one approaches God from a different viewpoint and a few different centuries.

All forty were informed in their content by the Holy Spirit, which is why we call them Inspired, and the early Church, in selecting the canonical scriptures, only selected those writings that were consistent with the Gospel received from the Apostles and their successors, which is why our Bibles do not contain books like the Pistis Sophia, the Tripartite Tractate, or the Gospel According to Judas. Much to the regret of the likes of Elaine Pagels, Bart Ehrman, Karen King and Hal Taussig, one might suppose.

 

[Original Happy Camper]

depends if it is major theoology like who and what Jesus did & who he is. Or, minor theology like all christians must speak in tongues, when Jesus will return, how to conduct church, so on.

2 Timothy 3:16 KJV
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:

 

[enoob57]

This is mainly for protestants as the High Church folk believe that the Spirit guides their church hierarchy into all truth rather than the individual.

There should exist no division in God's body of believers... individual to collective body~ however God does speak from all facets of His creation and all of it is significant as from God...

What I do not understand and would like a well-reasoned answer to is that if the Holy Spirit guides us into all truth then why do two genuinely Spirit-filled believers come to differing interpretations of the Bible and theology?

The subtlety of sin brings confusion... Jesus is the only One Whom did it right and never let sin into His Being! To know that 'all' have this problem this
1 Corinthians 8:2 (KJV)
[2] And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.
[3] But if any man love God, the same is known of him.

Related to this, why do genuinely Spirit-filled believers seem to come to interpretations that are objectively wrong?

There is a process called hermeneutics and it's design is to gather substance of grammar, contextual aspects of the time and people through culture, historical, political, religious, etc. and then to take the conclusion through the entire sieve of Scripture. Anyone should see this is of no simple matter and work is the constant necessity to arrive at 'thus saith The Lord' / don't do the work and you will arrive at something less...
2 Timothy 2:15 (KJV)
[15] Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

How does the Holy Spirit guide believers into truth and what role do reason, study, and Biblical scholarship play in all of this?

Seeing how The Scripture has been written to all times and epochs we must conclude one truth from One God to all peoples... do the work for the result would be to know God and to know God results in loving Him!

 

[SkyWriting]

All forty were informed in their content by the Holy Spirit, which is why we call them Inspired, and the early Church, in selecting the canonical scriptures, only selected those writings that were consistent with the Gospel received from the Apostles and their successors, which is why our Bibles do not contain books like the Pistis Sophia, the Tripartite Tractate, or the Gospel According to Judas. Much to the regret of the likes of Elaine Pagels, Bart Ehrman, Karen King and Hal Taussig, one might suppose.

40 inspired writers with different points of view of what is true. Thanks.

 

[The Liturgist]

2 Timothy 3:16 KJV
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:

No one disagrees with that.

 

[The Liturgist]

40 inspired writers with different points of view of what is true. Thanks.

Ummm no, there really aren’t forty competing versions of truth in Scripture. Firstly, in Christianity we understand Truth is personified as Jesus Christ, and at the end of the Gospel of Luke, he “Opens the Books” and shows the Eleven Faithful Disciples how all of the Old Testament is about Him. Secondly, for the most part, the Bible is internally consistent; in the few cases where there are apparent disagreements between different texts, for example, between the geneaologies in Matthew and Luke, it tends to be both inconsequential and also subject to reconciliation and was not of major concern to the Early Church Fathers.

No texts which materially deviated from the rest of scripture exist in Protocanon; the only material that is slightly tricky might be some parts of 1 Enoch, which is canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and which we still should regard as deuterocanonical because St. Jude quotes it in his Epistle, however, this is again, an extremely minor problem.

A desire to only have writings of assured Apostolic origin and an honesty about this caused the fathers to leave out several psuedepigraphical texts which support doctrines of the Early Church, for example, the Gospel of Nicodemus and the Infancy Gospel of James, and other texts which were important but not actually of apostolic origin, like 1 Clement, the Ignatian Epistles and the Shepherd of Hermas (which St. Athanasius did approve of in his Canon for catechetical use, but not reading in Church).

 

[Randy777]

I believe you misunderstand what the Eastern Church teaches about the Holy Ghost, as my Eastern and Oriental Orthodox friends @GreekOrthodox @prodromos @dzheremi and @Pavel Mosko can confirm.

The Holy Spirit is not an attribute of Jesus Christ, but rather one of three divine persons of the Holy Trinity. The primary creed in the Eastern churches is the Nicene Creed (although there is a version, I suspect the original version, of what we mistakenly call the Athanasian Creed, without the filioque, which appears in some Eastern Orthodox prayer books), and it says this about the Holy Spirit:

We believe (in one God, the Father almighty...and in one Lord Jesus Christ...and) in the Holy Spirit, (John 14:26)
the Lord, (Acts 5:3-4)
the Giver of Life, (Genesis 1:2)
Who proceeds from the Father; (John 15:26)
Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; (Matthew 3:16-17)
Who spoke through the prophets. (1 Samuel 19:20 ; Ezekiel 11:5,13)

So, it can be very helpful I think to remember you have God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, who are yet One God, the Holy Spirit and the Son being of one essence with the Father, uncreated and coeternal and coequal. The Father is unoriginate, and the uncreated Son and Holy Ghost are uncreated, and these three Persons share one essence, and as Metropolitan Kallistos Ware wrote, exist eternally in a union of perfect love, which we are called to iconographically emulate in our own relations with other humans, in our families, in the Church, and in Society as a whole.

Did the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father or Father and Son according to the eastern church?

 

[The Liturgist]

Did the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father or Father and Son according to the eastern church?

The Eastern church rejects the filioque, but respectfully, since you apparently either reject or do not understand the Nicene Creed, unless we are misreading your posts, what difference does it make?

 

[Randy777]

The Eastern church rejects the filioque, but respectfully, since you apparently either reject or do not understand the Nicene Creed, unless we are misreading your posts, what difference does it make?

It makes no difference but my understanding would the Spirit of God is the Spirit the Father calls His own. Therefore the Spirit would have the Fathers nature. Divine and eternal.

I don't reject the teaching from the head of the body of Christ. The Father is the only true God and His God.

The eternal life in Jesus is the Father not His own.
Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.

col 1:19


God makes his angels become like winds. He makes his servants become like flames of fire.”.

But God gave His firstborn the name Mighty God.
It is the Fathers Deity in fullness that dwells in Jesus. In that gifting Jesus is all that the Father is, (God), and He and the Father are one.

And this also speaks of another in regard to Jesus - "all things were made through Him and for Him"

That leaves me with
yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

That's how it was in the beginning.
Jude
To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy— 25to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore!

 

[The Liturgist]

It makes no difference but my understanding would the Spirit of God is the Spirit the Father calls His own. Therefore the Spirit would have the Fathers nature. Divine and eternal.

I don't reject the teaching from the head of the body of Christ. The Father is the only true God and His God.

The eternal life in Jesus is the Father not His own.
Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.

col 1:19


God makes his angels become like winds. He makes his servants become like flames of fire.”.

But God gave His firstborn the name Mighty God.
It is the Fathers Deity in fullness that dwells in Jesus. In that gifting Jesus is all that the Father is, (God), and He and the Father are one.

And this also speaks of another in regard to Jesus - "all things were made through Him and for Him"

That leaves me with
yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

That's how it was in the beginning.
Jude
To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy— 25to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore!

So I am having trouble figuring out based on this - do you agree with the ChristianForums Statement of Faith (I hope?)