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(00:02) our topic this evening is one that we have had as a listener request for over a year what is the holy spirit or maybe who is the Holy Spirit we'll see which of those is right or maybe both so we've talked many times about how early Christians fought over christology that is to say the formulation the theological formulation of how Christ God's logos relates to God the father and so this is a depiction of the staunchly or Orthodox St Nicholas the uh precursor or of Santa Claus punching Aras uh a priest from Alexandria and the

(00:56) father of aryanism which was declared a heresy at the Council of NAA in 3:25 so they are fighting over christology where Aras um has formulated what was then the main alternate idea than than what the Proto Orthodox had the Trinity so christology is the attempt by Christians to understand the Divinity of Jesus as the Messiah as as the Christ as the Son of God as God's glory as Lord all of those different formulations that actually exist in scripture Christians nevertheless are monotheists who believe that there is

(01:45) but One Source One first cause or one prime mover of the whole universe which we use the word God to name and so therefore Christian struggled to Define Jesus role you know within that idea that there is only one God Jesus himself prays to God the Father how does that work so Aras proposed the idea that Christ is divine but limited so therefore Christ is we might say a God or a Godlike being a Divine being the son of God the very next most amazing being in the universe after God but since only God the father is in infinite there is there is

(02:42) therefore an infinite um step down to get to Christ in the formulation of Aras and so this idea is rejected at the Council of Nia this very first time when under the sponsorship of the Roman Emperor under the the sponsorship of Constantine who has converted to Christianity and is now trying to figure out what this religion is all about and brings the Bishops together who had more or less all had relatively autonomous churches that are now brought together into a unified what becomes what is emerging as a hierarchy and is also

(03:25) identifying or defining its identity during this new thing of a universal ecumenical Church Council so out of ncia one of the famous things is that comes is a Creed which is to say a formulation of beliefs that all Christians were supposed to be able to say in order to explain um the very complicated beliefs that include uh being monotheists but beleving in a trinity uh as well and so the nyine Creed that we have it now is actually um a later evolution of the Creed the original Creed that was promulgated in 325

(04:16) read we believe in one God the Father Almighty maker of all things visible and invisible and in one Lord Jesus Christ the son of God begotten of the the Father the only begotten that is of the essence of the Father God of God light of light very God a very God begotten not made consubstantial with the father of one substance with the father by whom all things were made both in heaven and on Earth who for us men and for our Salvation came down and was incarnate and was made man he suffered and on the third day he rose again ascended into

(05:00) heaven from then he shall come to judge the quick and the dead and then they say after that's first person second person and now we get to the third person and in the Holy Ghost so and we believe in the Holy Ghost that's it no no more explanation than that in the original ning creete and then they go on to further fight out um the christological battles by by having a counter or negative Creed those who say there was a time when he was not that is to say when Christ was not and he was not before he was made and he was

(05:39) made out of nothing or he is of another substance or Essence or um the Son of God is created or changeable or Al or alterable they are condemned by the Holy Catholic at Apostolic church so the idea is uh that Aras has is that maybe uh Christ is the first uh created being the first creature and that this is anathematized here but again very little attention given to the Holy Ghost um as they're busy fighting over how CH what Christ's relationship is with the father so the Holy Ghost here is just an afterthought okay what is the Holy Ghost

(06:28) is the Holy Ghost a ghost so although the Bishops of NAA like I say were too busy fighting over christology to put much thought into the holy ghost or the spirit in The Next Century or so Christians did put a lot of thought into the idea and consequently fought each over over it and even excommunicated each other over it and so just like we have the word christology for the theological study of Christ and Christ's relationship to the father we also have the study of the Holy Spirit called patology so Numa being uh Greek here for

(07:08) spirit so as I say Numa is the Greek word for initially breath but then by extension it becomes to mean Spirit or sometimes soul and that is the equivalent uh in the Hebrew Bible of Ru which also means breath and it also then means wind and that has the connotation then ultimately of meaning Spirit our word ghost so sometimes U if you're going back for example to King James English um the phrase Holy Spirit was translated Holy Ghost and that still is used sometimes in some Christian denominations um and that comes

(07:53) essentially from the old English word for breath Gast gas which becomes ghost uh gas and as gas become is also could also mean Spirit angel demon uh and even human being and then we also use the word now Spirit which comes from the Latin spiritus which again means breath but also air and then by extension life or spirit so all of these words that came to mean Spirit had this common original meaning breath which presumably derived from the ancient observation that really breathing is what separates a living person from a dead lifeless corpse if

(08:42) you have a person who is on the deathbed and they're speaking their last words to you and then they expire that is the spirit goes out of them what they stop doing is breathing so breath is is understood or was observed to be somehow synonymous with um with what is animating you so tonight what I want to look at first off is the idea of the holy spirit in the Hebrew Bible so as the Old Testament the texts that become the Old Testament of uh the Christian Bible are being assembled what do how do those have you

(09:30) know how does the Holy Spirit figure into those texts by the time then we get to the Christian era the first Christians and the texts that are uh find make their way into the New Testament how is the holy spirit portrayed there and want to look at that um those ideas uh for early Christians in the context that they find themselves in in the Roman world so the ancient Greek religious but especially philosophical ideas about Spirit Soul um life Afterlife and the immaterial and then we'll see how from those um from those references from all

(10:21) of those explanations in scripture how early Christians uh evolved in their understanding of the Holy Spirit and then um we'll just do a brief look forward we'll have to do a second lecture on how did then we get from there maybe to the present and all of the more recent competing ideas about uh the holy spirit so if we're talking about uh the Holy Spirit making appearances in the Hebrew Bible it actually or I might keep saying it for the Holy Spirit the Holy Spirit actually appears you can show how my thinking is on on this Holy Spirit

(11:03) and and the complexity here and one of the reasons why we wanted to do this lecture is um you know how do we conceive of these per this idea personally um and so I guess I'll put this as a question into the into the chats um do you use the pronoun it for Holy Spirit or do you use he or she or they or you try to avoid using pronouns for Holy Spirit I try to to avoid pronouns for God generally so I usually we'll say God and then just talk about Gods as opposed to um having to use a short pronoun like he or they or

(11:42) she even or it or whatever we're going to use um but spirit is a longer word and so I end up falling back on pronouns here so the spirit appears in the very first book of the Hebrew Bible the first verses I mean of the first book in Genesis uh the creation story which reads in the new new in uh uh the NIV version the NIV translation in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth now the Earth was formless and empty Darkness was over the surface of the deep and the spirit of the God was hovering over the

(12:23) waters um but that same passage is translated differently in the new revised standard verse the up updated Edition which reads when God began to create the heavens and the Earth the Earth was complete chaos and darkness covered the face of the deep while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters so we have here from the Hebrew ruach Elohim which is both translated in the one version uh here spirit of God but in the other translation wind from God so it shows that there's a couple ways we can translate uh this

(13:10) idea of the you know the spirit of God the ru Elohim later in Genesis during the flood story when everyone is being killed when All Flesh upon the Earth uh is being destroyed we read everything on dry land in whose nostrils was the Breath of Life died and so this we have as nishmat Rim the breath of the spirit of life I'm butchering of course the Hebrew pronunciation but just the idea here is uh the breath of the spirit of life so there's different formulations of how the spirit is understood on the one hand there's the spirit of God God breathes

(13:57) into um into the nostrils of the man to take him from being lifeless to filling him with with life and that same breath then now leaves all of the uh creatures on land when they're uh killed in the flood another example of the spirit of God found in uh Isaiah in the earlier part of Isaiah Isaiah 11 so as Isaiah is prophesying concerning a future king from the House of David which is called here the stump of Jesse uh taking his name for David's father Jesse um Isaiah talks about uh this Future King and also the spirit of God

(14:48) and Isaiah gives the spirit many epithets so Isaiah says a chute shall come out from the stump of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his Roots the spirit of the Lord the spirit of Yahweh shall rest on him the spirit of wisdom and understanding the spirit of counsel and might the spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord so this of course later is interpreted as a Messianic uh prophecy by Christians um but in any event this is idea the spirit of the Lord the spirit of Yahweh will rest on him so um in the rest of this passage I'm

(15:34) sorry In this passage in Isaiah we have the idea that the spirit of Yahweh will rest on this Future King the spirit is then described as being the spirit of wisdom and understanding counsel and might knowledge and the fear of Yahweh in other words it kind of seems like um the spirit is endowing this Future King with these qualities the idea that the spirit of Yahweh rests upon Israel's Kings is also found in the deuteronomic histories that is the uh books of the Bible that go from uh Joshua Judges 1 and 2 Samuel 1 and 2

(16:17) Kings and so we read in the first book of Samuel chapter 10 that the prophet Samuel anoints Saul to be the very first king of Israel in the story anyway and Samuel predicts after you shall come to gith Elohim that is to say the hill of God at the place where the Philistines Garrison is there as you come to the town you will meet a band of prophets coming down from the shrine with harp tambourine flute and liar playing in front of them they will be in a prophetic frenzy the spirit of the Lord will possess you you and you will be in

(17:00) a prophetic frenzy along with them and be turned into a different person now when these signs meet you do whatever you see fit to do for God is with you so in this case um uh again once again the king here Saul is being possessed by the spirit of the Lord which puts him into a prophetic a revelatory frenzy um and he's turned into to even a different person according to this description of what the spirit of uh Yahweh does later uh King Saul loses God's favor and so we read in chapter 16 now the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul and an evil

(17:49) spirit from the Lord tormented him so we not only have the spirit of the Lord but there are also evil spirits from the Lord which are different obviously ly from the spirit of the Lord at the end of his life Saul's successor King David says that the spirit of Yahweh speaks through him as he's giving his last words so David says the spirit of the Lord speaks through me his word is upon my tongue the god of Israel has spoken the rock of Israel has said to me the one who rules over people justly ruling in the fear of God is like the

(18:33) light of mning so this almost seems like there's like a a little bit of a synonym you know the so the spirit of the Lord is speaking through him and who has spoken is though the god of Israel so um the spirit of Yahweh is animating the King and then we get the words of God God's self so this the same revelatory sense is also found um in the authors who continue the writings of Isaiah writing in Isaiah's name during the second temple period what Scholars call third Isaiah or trto Isaiah and they speak of the spirit of

(19:19) the Lord God coming upon the prophet so in Isaiah 61 we read Isaiah says the spirit of the Lord God the ruach of Adano Yahweh the spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed to bind up the Brokenhearted to Proclaim Liberty to the captives and to release the prisoners so again there's a idea that the spirit of uh God in this case it's of the Lord God comes upon a prophet and he's revelatory or comes upon a king and he becomes revelatory the same revelatory sense is

(20:04) conveyed in a story in numbers this is um a text that's associated with The yahwist The J author and so we read while the children of Israel are wandering in the wilderness Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord the words of Yahweh and he gathered 70 of the Elders of the people and he placed them around the tent that is the where the Ark of the Covenant is kept then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him and took some of the spirit that was on him on Moses and put it on the 70 elders and

(20:46) when the spirit rested upon them they prophesied but they did not do so again later so there is a revelatory sense when these 70 elders are animated by the Spirit uh that the Lord gives them from out of the spirit that had been in fully in Moses um that allows them to prophesy the spirit of Yahweh frequently is said to come upon uh judges which is to say the tribal Chieftains who lead the Israelites in the Book of Judges for example of the minor judge a Neel we read in Chapter 3 of Judges when the Israelites cried out to the Lord the

(21:36) Lord raised up a deliverer for the Israelites who delivered them annel son of canaz Caleb's younger brother the spirit of the Lord came upon him and he judged Israel he went out to War and the lord gave king kushan risham of Aram into his hand and his hand prevailed against over kushan ratham ratham so anyway against the syrians and so um in this case the the leader of Israel a Chieftain a judge um the spirit of Lord comes upon him uh as he's going out to war this also happens in several other cases in judges so for example the great

(22:25) warrior Gideon um we have in chapter 6 in his story The Spirit of the Lord took possession of Gideon and he sounded the trumpet and the abizer ites uh were called out to follow him and so Gideon calls out all of his army but then whittel them down to just 300 Warriors in order to um uh fight off the midianites the current oppressors of the Israelites and he goes down to just 300 Warriors in order to prove that it had to have been a miracle that uh and God was on their side to deliver them but it says here that the spirit of the Lord

(23:06) takes possession even of giban in leading that battle also in the Book of Judges um the uh least intelligent but uh funnest judge maybe Samson the spirit is involved with his Supernatural strength and fighting ability as we read in chapter 14 so when Samson came to The Vineyards of timna suddenly a young lion roared at him the spirit of the Lord rushed on Samson and he tore the lion apart barehanded as one might tear apart a kid a baby goat uh which I I wouldn't do that but I guess it's a lot easier to do to a

(23:50) little baby goat than it would be to a a lion and so the idea is the spirit of Yahweh rushes on Samson and he becomes then um physically powerful as when it also says he massacres the Phil Philistines at ashalon in chapter 14: 19 and also after uh his girlfriend Delilah ties him up with ropes and he breaks free of it the spirit of the God the spirit of the Lord rushes on him in chapter 15:14 um Spirit also acts as a vision guide so in Ezekiel which is um a later Prophet being writing at the second temple period the

(24:35) spirit of the Lord acts as a kind of guide for The Prophet's apocalyptic visions and so it essentially leads lifts him up it carries in places it drops him off places in some ways this is a precursor to the role that Angels play in later apocalyptic texts texts that largely don't make it into um the Old Testament or new testament so the psea books that um are very very popular in the ending period of the second temple period so we read in Ezekiel 11 the spirit lifted me up and brought me to the East Gate of the house of the

(25:18) Lord to the temple which faces East there at the entrance of the Gateway were 25 men and he lists a few of them and the and the angel I'm sorry the spirit says to him mortal uh these actually isn't clear if it's the spirit maybe God says to him he said to me uh mortal these are the men who devise iniquity and who give Wicked Council in this city so the understanding of the spirit of Yahweh picking up conveying and setting the prophet down occurs many times throughout the Book of Ezekiel so in chapter 37 we read the hand of the

(25:59) Lord Came Upon me and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and he set me down in the middle of a valley it was full of Bones he led me all around them there were very many lying in the valley and they were very dry he said to me mortal can these bones live I answered oh Lord God you know so with that kind of brief survey of course there's many more instance is where we hear of the spirit in the Hebrew Bible in the Old Testament but in some the references to the spirit of God or the spirit of Yahweh are pretty

(26:42) widespread in the Hebrew Bible many of these seem to describe humans connecting to God either by prophesying when the spirit comes on them or in some cases becoming endowed with the capacity to lead either as a judge or a king or a general and of course in Samson's case to perform superhuman uh Feats of Strength and although we have the example of Ezekiel talking about being carried around by the spirit en Visions anyway it does seem to be maybe it's the Lord who speaks to him when he's saying mortal say this or that or it's because

(27:24) he answers back to God as opposed to the spirit of God so in short what I would say is the references to the spirit in the Hebrew Bible seem to convey the idea of the spirit as a what a spirit as it rather than a spirit as a who she or he or something like that um as oh the spirit were a kind of divine medium or a like a medium through which God communicates or also um intervenes miraculously with humans and um that sense is um is is pretty much the direction that things go uh for understanding uh the holy spirit in in later

(28:21) Judaism uh you know in post uh in rabic Judaism I mean to say so after the Old Testament uh texts are written during the second temple period um the terminology in Judaism switched you know so Spirit of Yahweh had been the um the most frequently used phrase uh that we were uh finding when we're doing our survey of the Holy Spirit the term Holy Spirit as opposed to Spirit of Yahweh does occur if you times in the Hebrew Bible so for example here in Psalm 51 but during the second temple period there was ever increasing reference for

(29:11) reverence for the name of God the tetragramaton so yhwh which um people ceased to say and they also wanted to write less and so as a result Spirit of Yahweh um went way down in the in terms of the number of usages in Jewish writing and holy spirit gained a lot of attaction and that's happening uh in Judaism generally but then is also the background for um early Christianity which emerges out of second temple Judaism so New Testament authors do occasionally use the phrase Spirit of the Lord um so for example we read in uh

(29:55) a story in Acts that the apostle Apostle Peter who has caught a Christian couple who are holding back some of their property they were supposed to donate all to the poor like all the other Christians are doing and then they donate all their property which is all held in common but uh this couple hold back a little portion of it of the proceeds and Peter confronts them so Peter in Acts 5 says to um this Christian woman safira tell me whether you and your husband sold the land that you had for such and such a price and she said yes

(30:34) that was the price then Peter said to her how is it that you have agreed together to put the spirit of the Lord to the test look the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door and they will carry you out and immediately she fell down dead at his feet and died so in the previous verses Peter had already confronted saphira's husband ananas who similarly fell down Dead uh immediately after after Peter had asked him quote why has Satan filled your heart to Li to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of

(31:10) this land so um this is a a very crazy cautionary tale of of not giving all you know so but the main point I I mention here is that in in talking about the Holy Spirit here he also had talked about the spirit of the Lord so Holy Spirit uh continues here in early Christianity to be synonymous for Spirit of the Lord but holy spirit is now much more frequently employed as the moniker so the spirit is referenced uh more than 90 times so it's the Holy Spirit as opposed to Spirits in general or different kinds of spirits in the New

(31:51) Testament and most frequently as the Holy Spirit although occasionally as we saw the spirit of God or the spirit of the Lord other New Testament phrases include Spirit of Truth or Spirit of Christ and then also The Advocate which is from the um Greek word paraclet a our translation of the Greek word paraclet so many of these roles as we're surveying what is the Holy Spirit and how do we understand it in the New Testament many of the roles are very similar to the Old Testament stories we just reviewed so for example the holy

(32:34) spirit continues to act as a medium for Revelation as we see in the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke where the holy spirit is referenced time and time again so we read there in those days Mary uh the future mother of Jesus set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the Hill Country where she entered the house of Zachariah and greeted Elizabeth so her um relative Elizabeth when Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting the child leaped in her womb so Elizabeth is pregnant uh and will later in the future give birth to a baby who

(33:20) is grow up to be John the Baptist and uh The Unborn Child leaps in Elizabeth's womb Elizabeth we said we read now was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry to Mary blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb so she um receives essentially a revelation that Mary is going to be the mother of Christ Elizabeth's husband also is in that same chapter is said to be filled with the Holy Spirit as he is prophesying so we read in verse 67 then his father that is to say John the

(34:04) Baptist father Zachariah Elizabeth's husband was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied so Zechariah also um his Revelation has also comes when he's filled with the Holy Spirit and he says blessed be the Lord God of Israel for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them he has raised up a mighty Savior for us in the house of his child David so he's also PR prophesying about Jesus coming as the Christ so like in the uh with the judges the Kings and the prophets of the Old Testament um John the Baptist in this

(34:46) same first chapter of Luke uh will be filled with the Holy Spirit according to a prophecy that an angel gives to Zachariah so the angel says your wife Elizabeth will bury you a son and you will name him John you will have joy and gladness and many Will Rejoice at his birth for he will be great in the sight of the Lord he must never drink wine or strong drink even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit he will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God so John the Baptist like the prophets of old like

(35:25) the uh judges and kings um will be filled with the holy spirit so a final example of um the Holy Spirit serving as the medium for divine intervention and and and miracles in Luke 1 is the very famous part of the Christmas story so as she is conversing with the angel Gabriel who tells her Mary that she will conceive and bear a son we read that Mary said to the angel how how can this be how am I going to be able to conceive and bear a son since I am a virgin and the angel says to her the holy spirit will come upon you and the

(36:10) power of the most high will overshadow you therefore the child will be to be born will be holy and he will become called Son of God so the spirit Holy Spirit uh here is in coming upon Mary is the source of of a Divine Miracle so in other roles that are just the same in the New Testament as the old like in the book of e Ezekiel where um the spirit is leading uh Ezekiel around and showing him Visions Jesus is said to be led by the spirit Into the Wilderness after his baptism where we read in um chapter 4 of Luke's gospel Jesus full of the Holy

(36:57) Spirit returned from the Jordan and was led by the spirit Into the Wilderness where for 40 days he was tested by the devil um so in addition though to all of those uh very similar roles that the spirit has and the very similar appearances that the spirit has Old Testament and New Testament there is one very prominent story in which the spirit appears in all four of the go gospels um that is different from what we saw in the Old Testament so in their treatment of the baptism of Jesus all four gospels tell the story of the

(37:43) spirit descending like a dove uh even in the Gospel of John which omits to mention that Jesus is baptized so in the earliest of the narrative gospels uh Mark uh we read the version uh in Mark chapter 1 in those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan and just as he was coming up out of the water he saw the heavens torn apart and the spirit descending like a dove upon him and a voice came from the heavens you are my beloved you are my son the Beloved with you I am well pleased and so um now we have the idea

(38:31) of the spirit in the coming in the form of a dove so as I say that same narrative exists in all of the synoptic gospels Matthews is pretty similar to Marks Matthew uh is using Mark as a source so in Matthew 3 Jesus likewise sees quote God's spirit descending on him like a dove and a lighting on him Luke uh adds a little bit of a an interesting twist or detail in Luke 3 uh we read the Holy Spirit descended upon Him Upon Jesus in bodily form like a dove so the holy spirit is in bodily form like a dove in Luke in John chapter

(39:18) 1:32 where like I say we don't even have a story of Jesus baptism John the Baptist sees a vision of the spirit descending like a JV uh onto Jesus so these stories give us our picture of the Spirit In Dove form and this is how the spirit is almost always portrayed than in Christian art and it comes from here as opposed to any other other precedents there is also sometimes because there is a dove in the Old Testament story the story of of of NOA where um in order to find out if there if the floods have subsided and

(39:56) there's any land Noah sends out a dove who brings back an olive uh Branch uh in his beak then sometimes you see the dove as the Holy Spirit actually carrying an olive branch which sort of reads um the Holy Spirit back into that uh Noah's Arc story but it wasn't meant that way on the original author of the Noah's Arc story so also taking place in the baptism story in the gospels John the Baptist proclaimed cles to his followers the one who is more powerful than I is coming after me I'm not worthy to stoop down and untie the strap of his sandals

(40:38) then he says here I have baptized you with water but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and so this idea that um Jesus's baptism is with the Holy Spirit and sometimes it says the Holy Spirit and fire some of the gospels add this is taken up by the author of Luke in the second half of Luke's work the book of Acts of the Apostles acts so acts is heavily focused on the idea that the early church was animated and led by the Holy Spirit and so this book alone makes some 55 references to the spirit beginning with the very first

(41:18) verse that introduces uh the text so we read at the front of this in the very in the first book you know the book that's now known as the gospel of Luke um the author of Luke here is writing to uh his or her you know the author's Patron Theophilus may or may not be a real individual in the first book Theophilus I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day he was taken up to heaven after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen after his suffering he presented

(41:56) himself alive to them by many convincing proofs appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God while staying with them he ordered them Jesus ordered the disciples not to leave Jerusalem but to wait there for the promise of his father this he said is what youve heard from me for John the Baptist baptized with water but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not so many days from now so again we've already had two references just in the first few verses of Acts to the holy spirit that Jesus is

(42:34) teaching the disciples through the Holy Spirit and he's now promised you know he's referencing um the prediction that John the Baptist had that Jesus uh will baptize them with the holy spirit so this prediction is fulfilled 50 days after the first Easter on the first Pentecost according to to the book of Acts when all of the early Christians said in this text to number about 120 have gathered together in one place so we read in that story in chapter 2 of Acts suddenly from Heaven There came a sound like the rush of a violent wind

(43:17) and it filled the entire house where they were sitting divided tongues as of fire appeared among them and a tongue rested on each of them all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the spirit gave them ability so as the people are caught up in the Holy Spirit speaking languages they do not know outside observers have the impression that this whole Congregation of early Christians has become drunk and this is a uh an observation or a a conclusion that Peter immediately disclaims this is not uh

(43:55) wine this is the Holy Spirit so Pentecost here is the first of five stories in Acts where there are major outpourings of the Holy Spirit described and so there's next ones that take place in chapter 4 chapter 8 chapter 10 chapter 19 so in two of these narratives uh the idea of receiving the whole holy spirit is connected with the apostles laying on of hands and so we read in in chapter 8 when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God they sent Peter and John to them the two went down and

(44:39) prayed for them that they might receive the holy spirit for as yet the the spirit had not come upon any of them that is these new Samaritan Christians they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus then Peter and John laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit the character of the Apostle Paul who is the protagonist of the second half of Acts um and I'm making the distinction here between Paul as a character in the book of Acts and the historical Paul who whose letters we have he does something similar so we

(45:18) read in chapter 19 of Acts that while um the Christian disciple Apollos was in Corinth Paul passed through the interior regions of antolia and came to Ephesus where he found some disciples he said to them did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers they replied no we have not even heard that there is a holy spirit so this is not uh this is news to them about this part of the Gospel so then Paul says then into what then were you baptized and they answered into John's baptism Paul said John baptized with the

(45:58) baptism of repentance telling people to believe in the one who was to come after him that is in Jesus on hearing this they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus and when Paul laid his hands on them the Holy Spirit came upon them and they spoke in tongues and prophesied altogether there were about 12 of them so there a group of people who had been disciples presumably of John the Baptist who now um become Christians under Paul and they not only are baptized uh in the Christian way as opposed to the John the

(46:36) Baptist way but now um the laying on of hands causes the Holy Spirit to happen and we also see that this results in certain spiritual practices so the author of Luke and acts therefore is making a distinction between the kind of baptism that John the Baptist is performing and the kind that the Disciples of Jesus are performing and is also connecting the laying on of hands with uh being able to experience gifts of the Holy Spirit uh different kinds of spiritual practices so if we turn now from um the character Paul in the book

(47:20) of Acts to the historical Paul uh in his writings Paul himself also connects the holy spirit with the idea of spiritual gifts and practices as he writes in his first letter to the Corinthian Christians in chapter 12 he says now concerning spiritual gifts brothers and sisters I do not want you to be ignorant now there are varieties of gifts but the same spirit and there are varieties of services but the same lord and there are varieties of activi ities but it is the same God who give who activates all of them in everyone to each is given the

(48:05) manifestation of the spirit for the common good to one is given through the spirit the utterance of wisdom and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the Same Spirit to another Faith by The Same Spirit to another Gifts of healing by the one Spirit to another the working of powerful Deeds to another prophecy to another discernment of spirits to another various kinds of tongues to another interpretation of tongues so all of these are activated by one and the Same Spirit who allots to each one individually just as the spirit

(48:48) chooses so um this list along with the U precedents that we have in Acts I think have informed diverse Christian spiritual practices and also Divergent spiritual practices um and I think also when we're seeing here that all of these are coming from the spirit but as the spirit chooses we're also getting more of a sense of the spirit as let's say she or or he as opposed to the spirit let's say being it just being a a medium that doesn't making choices right so there's thought of a little bit more um personified

(49:31) here uh of course the stories about speaking in tongues in Acts and descriptions of it in Paul have provided a precedent for this as a spiritual practice among some Christian groups so Pentecostals are especially uh focused on this but also there are some charismatic Christians that do um I'm told in in the old days you know there are still people alive in my church who remember being at church camps where um where like an older member for them long ago now um uh spoke in tongues and then there was then interpretation of tongues and

(50:15) so the idea this is called glossolalia where people are in said to be speaking let's say a tongue that they don't know like ancient Aramaic or something like that in fact they are um speaking sounds that are not in fact an actual language but is understood then as a spiritual practice where then a person is saying things that were almost almost spontaneously okay uh without even feeling like they have any control over it and then another person feels inspired that they understand what it means and give that interpretation

(50:58) so a larger groups of Christians larger Christian groups have used the precedent of laying on our hands that we saw in Acts the idea of receiving the gift of the holy spirit that way in sacraments so for example sacraments of Confirmation and ordination so we have a Catholic bishop here in the picture laying on hands to ordain uh an initiate into becoming a priest um we similarly in my church use the laying on of hands for confirmation and ordination confirmation of membership and we call call it you know giving the

(51:37) gift of the Holy Spirit uh in the Baptist tradition laying on of hands follows a believer's baptism so you need to be um you can't just baptize infants in the Baptist tradition you have to be old enough to be an adult and make a the conscious uh decision that you're able to actually believe uh and have a testimony before that but then following the baptism there's also a laying on of hands using that same precedent out of the book of Acts uh some traditions also imploy laying out of hands for healing and we have that in one of our sacraments in

(52:14) our church too um but this is not from that example this is using an example of Jesus laying out of hands to heal um from the gospels so in addition to Paul talking about uh gifts of the Spirit Paul also has developed what we were calling as you say a new anology which is to say his Theology of the spirit and so just as Paul has already developed a very high christology so high christology is where we are having a more abstract Divine Jesus rather than focus a low christology which is really focusing on a human Jesus um and and Paul already

(52:57) has that developed so very very early after the crucifixion of the historical Jesus Paul likewise already has a pretty high new mythology which is connected to his ideas about Jewish law Mosaic law the old Covenant and so he um talks about that for examp in many places but for example in his letter to the Romans the Christians in Rome in chapter 8 so Paul writes there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus for the law of the spirit of Life In Christ I'm sorry for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set

(53:43) you free from the law of sin and of death for God has done uh what has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and to deal with sin he condemned sin in the flesh so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who are not I'm sorry who walk not according to flesh but according to the spirit this is very complicated but there's obviously a big dichotomy here between the material and the spiritual and um putting the uh equating the law the old Covenant Mosaic

(54:32) law with materiality with the Flesh and also equating with that with sin and having the New Covenant um equating that with the spirit so he continues to set the mind on the flesh is death but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace but you are not in the flesh you are in the spirit since the spirit of God dwells in you anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him does not belong to Christ but if Christ is in you then the body is dead because of sin but the spirit is life because of

(55:17) righteousness so it's a a complicated teaching but but if we want to boil it down Spirit equals life the law the flesh materiality equals Death uh for Paul and so the spirit is therefore very very important so in addition to those examples from the synoptic gospels and and also the elaboration of the idea of the Holy Spirit In addition to those examples from the synoptic gospels and the elaboration of the idea of the holy spirit that we just saw read about in Acts and also in Paul um the Johan community so the

(55:56) community that produced um The Gospel of John the letters of John and it's also related to the The Apocalypse of John uhu maintained a few unique understandings of the holy spirit so as I mentioned Jesus Calls the Holy Spirit the paraclet which is to say The Advocate the counselor the helper only in John's gospel specifying um that The Advocate will come after he after Jesus departs so we read in John 14 that Jesus says I will ask the father and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever this is the spirit of Truth whom

(56:44) the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him you know him because he abides with you and he will be in you so in John 16 Jesus further explains nevertheless I tell you the truth it's to your advantage that I go away for if I do not go away The Advocate will not come to you but if I go I will send him to you and when he comes he will prove the world wrong about Sin and righteousness and judgment he'll do this about sin because they do not believe in me he'll do this about righteousness because I am going to the father and you

(57:27) will see me no longer and about judgment because the ruler of this world has been condemned so the advocate of Truth the spirit of Truth The Advocate uh is going to prove all of these things for you for members of the Jan Community the John Community access to the spirit of Truth allowed them in their understanding to differentiate between spirits that are not from God uh between and those that are as the author of the first Epistle of John explains in chapter 4 he writes beloved beloved people and members of his congregation

(58:07) his community beloved do not believe every Spirit but test the spirits to see whether they are from God for many false prophets have gone out into the World by this you will know the spirit of God every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh flesh is from God and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God and this is the spirit of the Antichrist and so this is the difference between the spirit of truth and the spirit of error according to uh the authors here of the John johanan

(58:43) community so let's let's sum up now um the spirit in the New Testament so in contrast I think to the survey of the spirit in the Old Testament in the Hebrew Bible which was pretty straight forward I think the picture that emerges in the New Testament is a little bit more complicated and a little bit more muddy a little less clear the Holy Spirit I think has clearly increased in importance um especially because the Christian understanding uh is that the New Covenant in Christ is lived in accordance with the spirit and not

(59:20) according to Mosaic law the way the old Covenant had been so in the Old Testament in the Hebrew Bible the spirit is certainly important as uh being revelatory and providing sort of a medium of a bridge of communication between God and humans and even even some Miracles uh but law was Paramount still um the law that uh is received by Moses and and in the Covenant so now however law brings death according to to Paul and we are now in an era when we are living by the spirit in Christianity both Paul and acts understand that the exercise of

(1:00:08) gifts of the Spirit are Central to Christian practice so spiritual practices that are also understood to be gifts of the Holy Spirit the spirit's presence is Central to Christian life so and especially that becomes especially true as far as again the book of Acts is concerned and also the Gospel of John is concerned when the Risen Christ departs from uh the disciples that said it's a little strange and I find this a little bit confusing because the idea that the spirit only you know becomes manifest let's say um you know the spirit is

(1:00:49) coming to baptize Everybody by fire on Pentecost um that may be a new way that the spirit comes among the disciples but nevertheless the spirit of God has already been present in the gospels even as we saw at the very first chapter of Luke the spirit is all over the place and of course it's in uh the spirit of God is in all sorts of biblical narratives that are set prior to um the New Testament times so in Old Testament times um and so so there's clearly some more complicated understand understandings the spirit is something

(1:01:28) that is coming after Jesus uh Earthly Ministry and also something that is only experienced by the Christian Community when obviously um it has a broader experience as described elsewhere finally um one of the things that we begin to have in the New Testament now is the spirit portrayed more as a being so with the appearance of the Holy Spirit bodily in Luke and in the form of a dove in all of the gospels during The Narrative of the baptism of Jesus I think there's a sense uh that is beginning to emerge of the spirit as a

(1:02:10) being and not simply a property or a function or some kind of um component or of God like God's glory but as an actual being and this is perhaps reinforced with the johanan idea that the spirit is being sent as an advocate after Jesus leaves and that what we saw in Paul of the spirit choosing different things so now we're envisioning the spirit as a being in the form of a dove here so how do we get from those first uh ideas about the spirit you know spirit is clearly important for for early Christianity how do we get from

(1:02:58) there to the development of the idea of the spirit as the third person of God in the doctrine of the Trinity well for early Christians even before the idea of Trinity was fully developed long before there was a a complicated U philosophical uh underpinning of a of a Creed and Doctrine Christians in the first century we already calling upon god with the name Father Son and Holy Spirit so I baptize you in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit is a very early um formula and other early first century

(1:03:42) writers are using that same Father Son and Holy Spirit in prayers and also in hymns and thus along with God the father and also along with Christ the son of God the Holy Spirit the spirit of God was already Central to the way Christians thought about the Divine and also was Central to the way Christians practiced spirituality so through what we're emerging as sacraments and other spiritual practices so most early Christ Christians were thus very committed to understanding the Divine in different ways so on the one

(1:04:34) hand through understanding God the Father through understanding Christ and through understanding or experiencing the Holy Spirit but they were nevertheless also committed to monotheism so um there were plenty of biblical statements like that in Isaiah 44 where um Isaiah says thus sayith the Lord the Lord says I am the first and I am the last besides me there is no God so there is only the one God and in addition to that um for the more um philosophically sophisticated uh Christians in their context of the Greco

(1:05:19) Roman world uh they also had access to Greek philosophical ideas about the world having let's say one first cause uh and so therefore um using that to that sort of um philosophical underpinning to to see there being simply one one infinite God possible and so they were mostly committed to monotheism so we've seen there are um minority Christian groups like The gnostics and like uh um uh the groups that were not committed for for example uh to the Old Testament uh the marianites who wanted to Simply get rid of the Old Testament anyway they were

(1:06:02) they were less um they were less worried about these issues but for those that are were committed to retaining the Old Testament what is emerging as the Proto Orthodox group they're on the one hand um committed to the ideas of god father Christ Holy Spirit but also to their being just one God so if we take a look at the um first three centuries here and uh the development I'm just I'm taking this from the year 25 BC to uh the Council of NAA in 325 ad or of the Christian era um and so we have uh you know at the

(1:06:46) very earliest time period here the actual activities of of John the Baptist Jesus Jesus's brother James Paul the um composition of the synoptic gospels and then we can kind of see after the destruction of Jerusalem all of these you know very important early Christian thinkers beginning with people like Clement of Rome polycarp Justin Martyr irenaeus theophilis of Antioch tertullian origin and so on as we're getting into the end of the first century through the 2 Century uh to the end of the 2 Century uh and and the these are the

(1:07:27) folks who are beginning to formulate what do they mean by Holy Spirit and what is the relationship of the Holy Spirit to the father to God how how do we understand the Holy Spirit as uh Divine so Justin Martyr writing at the beginning of the uh 2 century was among the very first Christian philosophers so he is a Christian apologist who uses Greek philosophy to try to understand U Christian Theology and Justin is already using some terms that will later be codified in trinitarian Doctrine so for example Justin says that the Father and

(1:08:13) Son share the same being which is usia but they have distinct faces prosopa and so that's that's not not to the point where he's saying they have distinct hypostases or um we sometimes say Essences but we might say um realities uh so hypothesis is later what's going to happen but he has an an idea that there are distinct um identities here even though the father and the son share the same being the same Divine being and so um Justin Martyr here is already talking talking about this idea uh and finding a place for um ultimately the Holy Spirit to be

(1:09:03) in in included in that the first Christian writer to use the word Trinity was Theophilus the patriarch of Antioch towards this end of the 2 Century Theophilus in commenting on the creation story in Genesis um he takes the three days uh that existed before God creates the sun and the moon and the stars and all the lights he says in like manner also the three days which were before The Luminaries those three days before the sun and the moon and the stars are created are types of the Trinity of God his word and his

(1:09:47) wisdom and the fourth is the type of man who needs the light and so there may be God the word wisdom and man and so we're we can already see here we're having um uh a trinity this is the first use of the word Trinity and the the the wisdom here is the spirit so early Christians were likely to identify the Spirit uh the person of the spirit at with holy wisdom uh in this kind of time period And so and by saying types what they're saying is this is a these three days in creation before the creation of The Luminaries those are a a

(1:10:33) prediction essentially that that's why uh that is explaining the Eternal truth of Trinity is is essentially the argument that uh Theophilus is making Theophilus contemporary irus the bishop of Leon around the same time period the end of the 2 Century has a similar commentary on Genesis he doesn't use the word Trinity but he um talks about uh uh the three uh persons here by the word of the Lord where the heavens establish and by his spirit all their power since then the word establishes that is to say gives body and grants the

(1:11:14) reality of being and the spirit gives order and form to the diversity of powers rightly and fittingly is the word called the son and the spirit the wisdom of God so in talking about this creation story um um this is one of the places where Christians see both God and the spirit of God and the word of God that God speaks to begin creation altoe and already um these early Christian thinkers are identifying these three um entities of God just to say the Father the Son and the spirit the son here is equated with the word or logos

(1:12:04) and the spirit here is equated with the wisdom of God like I say early Christians tended to identify holy wisdom with the spirit and subsequent Evolution Christians have equated holy wisdom and the logos in other words that Christ is Holy wisdom but you can make Arguments for both so origin of Alexandria we have a whole lecture on him where I called him the first arguably the first Christian genius he attempted to formulate the very first systematic Christian theology which led him to significantly contribute to the development of the

(1:12:39) idea of the Trinity and he has in his um uh his theology a kind of a long discourse on how he understands the uh Holy Spirit what he understands the Holy Spirit to be he says we'll talk about this as briefly as possible but he does go on at some length um when he does formulate this idea of Trinity origin who um is deeply influenced by philosophers um sees a hierarchy of divine persons in which the greater ministers to the existence of the lower and so as opposed to how the Trinity eventually will be formulated

(1:13:21) where um you know father word and spirit are co-eternal and are not Superior to each other um there's more of a hierarchy in Origins conception where its father and beneath father is word and beneath word is is spirit so um although most of the arguments though of this era were christological so they were really more focused on fighting over the relationship of Christ and the father some Christians also did fight over the role of the Holy Spirit and it is shouldn't be surprising that this is also the same people that are fighting

(1:14:02) uh Orthodox versus um versus Aryans so a disgraced former patriarch of Constantinople in the 4th Century during the Aryan controversy a patriarch named macedonius I first after he is defro founded a sect that the Orthodox leaders term numat makaki which is to say those who are making war against the holy spirit so while the texts of the namaki and their beliefs have been lost they were destroyed um this group apparently rejected the idea that the holy spirit is God uh and instead see the spirit as a separate creation of God maybe again

(1:14:48) sort of seeing it as sort of like a a function of God once again as oppos and it as opposed to a uh of independent or distinct being so ultimately um as Christians moveed forward and articulated uh the idea the formulation of the Trinity you know as we've mentioned many times this is a formulation that denies or defies logic since you know as you're seeing even in this diagram that the father is not the word the word is not the spirit the spirit is not the father but all three of these hypostases all three of these

(1:15:33) distinct entities or persons uh is God and so as a result there's a paradox at the heart of this that can't be understood literally and I think um probably actually the the main problem that people have is um focusing when people focus on the father and then anthropomorphizing the father and taking the father as very literally as a father a sky father as as essentially Jupiter again uh and also focusing on on the logos the word very literally as Jesus the historical Jesus is what they're thinking of often um and then again

(1:16:16) thinking of God's spirit almost back in that Old Testament way as it as uh as a fun function of God more than as a hypostasis or as an entity distinct entity of God um it's a problem of on the one hand that this conception is complicated but on the other hand um the tendency and the desire of the human mind to want to anthropomorphize uh and literalize so this is um therefore my you know my survey uh of the Holy Spirit especially as uh the idea developed in Old Testament times in New Testament times and then among early

(1:17:03) Christians and like I say we'll have to have another lecture if we're going to talk about all of the later development that has occurred since um since NAA and so I'll allow landro to um see if there's questions and if you questions have emerged about this or if you now are all perfectly all on board and get the Holy Spirit so I want to begin by thanking folks for their support um Jim uh thanks for your support Mark long dartha Rama Dave Anderson uh Phil says uh Greek or Latin which should I learn which is more

(1:17:45) practical so I my my my study has been in Latin that's what I always um had all the way going back to Junior High and I haven't studied Greek which is why my um my Greek pronunciation is terrible as is my as my Hebrew so it depends on what you're what you're interested in so the bulk of my um uh study in graduate school is actually in medieval history although I also do some ancient history but it was focused on the west and so since I focused on the west I've uh I've paid more attention to Latin but once you get into theology it's better to

(1:18:20) know Greek and so I would be nice if I um if I was more familiar with Greek but like I say like a good Latin I say grest non Leger It's All Greek to me is what we say that in Latin so uh thanks to uh uh mbns thanks to medj Mike for your support to Costa ricus looth for your support Costa ricus looth says it appears to me that the holy spirit is more like a catchall than a single entity the Christian Bible gives the Holy Spirit multiple expanding and contrad contradictory character istics which is confusing how do I reconcile

(1:18:58) this well you saw that I I was doing that too right so by by going through them all I I'm saying I find it to be a little confusing and so um I think that the way you reconcile it is probably um dep it depends on what you're trying to do so I'm presuming I guess I'm presuming here that you are um you were saying that how do I reconcile this from a religious perspective from a perspective as of being a Christian and one of the ways um um Christians do that is I think through lived experience so what is your relationship with uh the Holy Spirit how

(1:19:38) do you understand or how do you experience the Holy Spirit what do you understand the Holy Spirit how do you understand the Holy Spirit as God um and so maybe it's a personal exploration um more than a focus on all of the different competing ideas early Christians had so so the the Bible is filled with contradictions because there are different um different writers with different perspectives each one of them is is sharing their idea and their idea is different from one of the other biblical authors and so that's why when

(1:20:13) we take it together and we think of it as one book then it's contradictory but it it doesn't need to be you can instead um pour yourself into thinking about the Holy Spirit let's say the way Paul does if you want to or the way the author of Luke acts does because of how much prominence that is for that um evangelist theology as we see in the book of Acts all right let's get into some of these questions videos for Stuff says um doesn't the title Holy Spirit kind of imply that the other two would be corporeal I know the whole does the

(1:20:53) father have a body thing has a bunch of comp complicated answers over the years so um yeah it doesn't I don't know that it necessarily implies that maybe maybe it does uh maybe it does in its original idea of it it certainly by the time we get to um uh by the time we get to origin when origin is making his Systematic Theology the very first thing that he does is to um to make a argument about why um God in General and God the Father cannot be cor corporeal um and certainly and certainly that's the position that um Christians

(1:21:35) have had um you know very early on is is that uh uh that God the father is not corporeal that God is um of a spiritual is also spiritual although like you say it there's also the spirit of God which is separate from uh God the Father um Christ is corporeal in the sense that Christ is fully human and fully Divine and is also um all of the people are understood to make up um Christ's body and so therefore our uh you know therefore there is a corporeal and also spiritual component to the second person of the Trinity

(1:22:21) according to this formulation uh Phil thank you so much for your support uh o asks why is uh Jesus Lord there seems to be a distinction between a God and a lord so o I think that the um the way that that's understood is um uh that there is in the Old Testament um you know uh the god of Israel and the god of Israel has a name which is uh Yahweh but over time you're not able to you're not supposed to say that name and so the fact that U I say it is because I'm not I'm not um a Jewish adherent I'm Christian and so therefore I'm allowed

(1:23:09) to say that name um but it became a practice in Judaism to instead say Lord when you would get to those four letters that represent God's name and so then the idea um theide aidea that develops uh in and that is even sort of present in helenistic Jews like pho of Alexandria is that um while God the father is unknowable and unseeable that nevertheless you can see God's effects in the world and these These are called in the Bible the glory of the Lord is appearing the glory of the Lord is is visible and and is able

(1:23:55) to be seen and so the glory of the Lord or God's word uh God's logos is then understood to be a a second entity by some uh uh theologians and Paul argues that Christ as the Messiah I'm sorry that Jesus as the Messiah is Lord and so that that entity of God's glory made visible is Lord and so the separation then between um God and Lord here is the separation actually between the father and uh the word so the word is Lord uh but but ultimately when we get to the Trinity uh Lord is God because um you know Jesus is God he's simply not

(1:24:47) the father so it's complicated but that's what how how you formulate it there that's why Jesus is Lord according to Paul so Mary 302 what's the difference between um spirit and soul in a person so this is actually not an easy question because the words um actually have different meanings so it depends on how you define the word Soul so for some um some people spirit and soul is uh are synonyms but there are some um some some uses of the words Soul where uh where it's like uh Aristotle's idea where a spirit and the body actually need each

(1:25:33) other and can't exist separately and so then the spirit and this body together become the soul and so as a result um Souls it it's not necessarily a synonym for for many people it's a synonym and then other others it's a technical difference so darl Scott thank you for your support um darl says what does baptism by the Holy Spirit really mean I think it's um I think it's not necessarily clear because we have uh we have this idea of baptism by the Holy Spirit In The Gospel of Mark and then we don't doesn't return to it so John John the

(1:26:15) Baptist talks about it but then then we don't in the that first narrative gospel we don't have a response to it so um the author of Luke is using Mark as a s source and the author of Luke creates a um creates their understanding of the you know or relates creates or relates maybe it's within the luk and special tradition their understanding of what that means which is this um this moment of the Pentecost where the spirit is poured out on everyone and everyone is able to uh be filled with the Holy Spirit and receive gifts of the holy

(1:26:51) spirit that include things like being able to speak in tongues so being able to speak different languages but also being able to directly um you know give direct have receive direct Revelation from from God through the spirit of God that is filling you up so um I would say that that's how it's uh defined in you know biblically because of uh the book of Acts um telling that story that way um but it's not entirely clear the um uh Paul in his letters at one point says there really is only one baptism and so it's also um you know again

(1:27:34) understood in some Christian sects that the baptism baptism is uh is also a baptism by the Holy Spirit you know when you're doing it in Christ's name um others uh have another Sacrament we do have we have another Sacrament where where we have confirmation which is invoking the gift of the Holy Spirit and and you know giving the gift of the Holy Spirit to the person and so that's how I guess we would Define it so it is a second ordinance that or a second sacrament or ordinance that involves laying on of hands uh but I don't think it you you

(1:28:12) can't nail it down necessarily it's a there are different interpretations uh certified genius says speaking of the Holy Spirit and of angels uh what are your thoughts on near death experience es or Angel visitations by people who claim to have them in general um is there anything to some of them at least so um so I think that um that angel visitations um are are essentially ways that we are en envisioning the Divi Divine so how how anybody is having um Revelation is something I think that can come to all anyone uh and so it is a

(1:28:54) spiritual practice where you are um you are contemplating U let's say trying to discern uh God's path for you how what is God calling you to do so this is a spiritual practice of discernment one of the one of the ways and one of the forms that that practice can take is uh through envisioning uh an intermediary intermediary is as you envision that often is visioned as an Angel that's what the an angel would be a messenger from God that is an intermediary as you are are experiencing the spiritual practice um near-death experiences um

(1:29:37) are things that obviously have a lot of meaning to people who experience them I'm not personally uh I personally haven't had one and I'm not very focused on them or very interested in them nor do I nor is my practice of discernment if I'm doing that um involved envisioning Angelic inter intermediaries but that would be how I describe uh both of those Gabriel Knight is there a conceptual overlap between grace and the Holy Spirit and can they be attained exclusively from one another um so I think there there could be if you were

(1:30:17) kind of the ones that were putting the Holy Spirit as a um something that is more like a Divine attribute than a um a hypostasis or an entity of God and so Grace is instead um you know a function of God or go something that God bestows uh upon creation so um so and so we would have to do I think a whole lecture on Grace too to look at it but uh but I would say that that in general they separ ated in the sense conceptually um you know in terms of Christian standard Christian doctrine or theology but there's an overlap between

(1:31:04) grace and and God in the sense that um uh Grace is given or bestowed by God uh as God's infinite gift that bridges that you know the Mortal with to the immortal um a um I don't read Hebrew and so a a speaker with a with a Hebrew um uh call name has said are you familiar with the Jewish Trinity uh that God Israel and Torah are one um I haven't heard that that um described before as the Jewish Trinity so no I haven't I'm not familiar I guess that with that so that's interesting thank you K Tempest Bradford says why is the holy

(1:31:59) spirit needed why is a trinity needed at all trying to understand why early Christian fathers needed to concretize it the way they did the idea here kest is that um this is by the time the people are concretizing this what they're trying to do is um make sense of what they're already reading about in their texts so um so there already is you know like a formula of Father Son and Holy Spirit in Christian practice before they concretize the ideas right they are already um understanding that they have received gifts of the of the Holy Spirit

(1:32:44) they are already um uh understanding the spirit at work in their lives and now they're trying to uh to describe it understand it and ultimately make a um make a systematic understanding of it that that makes some kind of uh logical sense and so that's why they have it so it's something like you've inherited a bunch of ideas and then you're trying to make sense of them and also make them work some in some way fit together logically Tyson Underwood says one of my theology professors said that Yahweh might be a way of representing the sound

(1:33:23) of breath where is he getting that uh I don't know I guess if we're trying to do this on anim aop poetically so if I'm saying waye something like that is that how we're trying to make that anop anom monop poetically Yahweh representing the sound of breath I'm not sure I've not heard that said before but maybe um that's an idea that I'm just trying to describe what your theology profession's idea is um I'm at Josh Bradford now Josh Bradford uh do you see a link between the Holy Spirit and racial Harmony I'm thinking of Peter and the house of

(1:34:06) Cornelius Quaker abolitionist Etc um you know so this this idea that you're saying in this story when we're talking about the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost um you know this this is immediately kind of describing um the potential for you know not they're not talking about race in the in the first century but they're talking about um ethnicity and different different languages and suddenly everybody all is able to come together and understand each other because of this outpouring and Gift of the Holy Spirit and so

(1:34:44) um you know this is ultimately this idea of of of unity and Oneness that we have um you know being connected through the spirit and then becoming one together in Christ where you're neither uh you know one ethnicity or another ethnicity you're another black or white male or female but you're all one in Christ Jesus um I think that that is an aspirational goal that Christians don't you know or frequently almost always don't live up to but I think that that's something that we should be doing and as you mentioned with the um the

(1:35:19) abolitionists the Quakers the Quakers were wonderful or are a wonderful example there acts in the 19th century in working on uh abolishing slavery um were are a good example of Christians at their best um Leandro says can you speak a little bit about why the fio is such a big controversy what does it mean that the spirit proceeds and then what difference does it make if the spirit proceeds from the father alone or from the father and the son so um so we mentioned that the original Creed just had and we believe

(1:35:59) in the Holy Spirit but later um the Creed is is um amended to say that the uh Holy Spirit proceeds from the father so so this is describing um you know essentially the only the only you know epithet that we have about the different persons of the Trinity so the idea of the son is that the son is begotten right and so it's begotten of the father and so this is a um it's not something that happened at any one time but the sun is is in the Divine present continually being begotten because that is um the uh the nature of the second person of the

(1:36:44) Trinity the the Locos is begotten and so the third person the spirit whether it's also the wisdom or whatever other components of uh the Divine uh are encompassed within the person of the spirit the spirit the the attribute is that the spirit is said to proceed and it and it doesn't necessar it's hard to say necessarily what that even should mean what begotten should mean and what preced should be other than the fact that it's tied up in in the spirit um I would say that the so what ends up happening is that in the

(1:37:21) um initially in the nyine Creed as it evolves in the East um it just says the spirit proceeds from the father but then at a the last Council of the visigothic Kingdom uh in the West in Spain in too um they introduce the idea that the spirit proceeds from the father and from the Son and so this is the word in Latin fqu so Quay is a a suffix that means and and felio means from the Sun and so and from the Sun the felo qu was and so in the Latin West um the Creed people started saying the Holy Spirit proceeds from the father and from the Sun uh and

(1:38:03) so this becomes a big deal because you're saying you're supposed to have one Creed in this church the Creed is what's tying everybody together after all of these christological and pneumological controversies and and now and now people in half the church the Latin half of the church have started saying the Creed differently and so just the fact that it's different that's why it's a big deal um I would say that in terms of why does it make it a big deal it's it potentially an argument can be made that by by having the spirit proceed

(1:38:38) from both the father and the son could almost seem to getting back to that that subordination that hierarchical ISM you know where the father is first then then the the son then the spirit U because the spirit is proceeding from both and so so I think that that's um uh a concern that the Greeks had um that this change May tend to further subordinate the spirit when the spirit is co-eternal and equal with uh the father and the son that's what ex oh yeah and ex exom music is saying that same making that same point so that's

(1:39:20) what I would say too um nevertheless once Western theology got going um they made they started making very serious arguments about why a double procession makes sense and so um one of the great medieval thinkers Anselm of Beck anel of Canterbury writes a whole discourse about why he thinks the double procession is the way to go so all right so we were going to have a um a lecture next week on the um on Christian Zionism but on and this was going to be before I I'm taking a trip that I'm making to um uh the West Bank of Palestine to as part

(1:40:05) of a um an ecumenical group called uh churches for Middle East peace where we are going to talk to um Palestinian groups about the different kinds of you know suffering and Injustice that are happening uh in the middle of this uh War and we're also going to talk to um Israelis who are wanting to be peace partners and are opposing um what their government is doing and so um unfortunately because of this is an ongoing um war zone um My Flights have changed and so I'm going to go a little bit earlier to to Europe so that I can get

(1:40:47) over to Israel Palestine and um so unfortunately we won't be able to have a lecture next Tuesday but there was going to be lots of interesting stuff to come um when I'm back from this trip so thank you all so much and uh we will be in touch soon