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To have a personal something implies ownership or hiearchy, at least it does to me. The kind of thing you might say to a person you wish to mark dominance over when used about a human.
Whatever happened to equality among the Godhead? Or did we have that wrong aswell, having now to adjust to a hiearchy within it?

/Thomas

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Well, yes human ownership is often oppressive in reality, whether of human, animate or inanimate property. While it's worth chuckling for a fleeting moment over the known fact that God is not oppressive over his creation - which he owns, God's Spirit isn't something he owns, surely. He doesn't own eternal life, he has it - he lives it; still, the Spirit of God (which is the Biblical wording much of the time... ) isn't an attribute of God, but an intrinsic part of the make up of divine nature. It exists as divinity exists, and is divinity's constant omnipresence. God's Spirit even maintains the harmony between Father and Son, according to Ellen White, but the divine Spirit doesn't depart from God's will, as it naturally implements that will. it wishes no alternative to its natural purpose: divine persons don't naturally....

Jesus had a choice of God's will or his own will in the Garden of Gethsemane, as throughout his earthly life, because his [I]human will[I] was naturally contrary to God's will. As divinity, Jesus couldn't sin, for God naturally doesn't go against his own will and nothing to force him away from that - unlike our good intentions. But Jesus was righteous by faith as a human being, and that was only possible by the power of God's Spirit in his life, by his choice. Even the decisions in the wilderness temptations, as well as the Gethsemane trial, were by "the faith of Jesus" as a human being.

Rosangela, you asked:

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What is the anti-trinitatrian position: that the Holy Spirit is sometimes the personal presence of just the Father, sometimes the personal presence of just the Son, and sometimes the personal presence of both?

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Just spotted that other question you raised, about the Spirit as Jesus' presence, testifying of Jesus but not of itself. Yes, your sentence made sense... The weirdness of it is solved by realising that the Spirit of Jesus isn't Jesus himself (see, I do acknowledge them as separate persons ), but his divine spirit making his presence spiritually real for us.

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Originally posted by Mountain Man:
Colin, your idea that God's Spirit, unlike our spirit, can think and feel like a person sounds strange to me. It reminds me of the disembodied spirit idea advocated by evangelicals. Are you suggesting that God's Spirit has a life of its own, a conscious non-physical entity, outside of God Himself?

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No, the Bible is: Ezek 36:27 "And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments and do them." God's presence and power manifested in us by his Spirit - not an ethereal person - which is natural, but the divine Spirit itself moving us from within us along God's way and will.

Jn 14:17 even the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him. But ye know Him, for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.

Now, to 'see' the Spirit is clearly spiritual perception of God's presence on our part, rather than noting the physical presence of a person as we understand persons. The Spirit of Christ, of Truth, is with us, is in us: can only be the conscious, non-physical agent of divinity for us.

Rom 8:9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so it be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.

How can the Spirit dwell in us, and we have the Spirit of Christ, if it normally has a body? The comforter Christ sent to us is to get inside our heads as God physically cannot.

1 Cor 3:16 Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?

The "Spirit of God" doesn't just dwell in us, but wishes to fill us as God's temple. The Spirit of God is to God what it is to us: dwelling within to harmonise with God's will.

1 Jn 2:27 But the anointing which ye have received from Him abideth in you, and ye have no need that any man teach you. But as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in Him.

The Spirit of Christ teaches Christ's truth, and we abide in Christ by his Spirit. It is plain to view that the Spirit is as you've heard me present it, but he also manifests God's presence, power and grace to us, for he is God's spiritual presence to God's people.

Is the Bible clear enough? it should make the point rather thoroughly.

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The way Jesus stated it implies the Holy Spirit has the ability to either speak of Himself or not. If it is just a manifestation of Jesus' presence and power, then it has no independent will, so it makes no sense to say that it will not testify of itself. Also this construction would take away from Jesus' point. His point was that being A would not testify of being A, but rather of being B (A being the Holy Spirit and B being Jesus Christ). Now if A is really B, then Jesus is saying is effect is "B will not testify of B, but will testify of B," which doesn't make sense.

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The implication you find in Jesus' statement may well not be proper interpretation, since the Bible elsewhere has the Spirit doing in us the will of Jesus and of God without any of its own agenda. The Spirit is, Biblically, the divine Spirit of Jesus and God the Father, but also the person of their divine presence with us, teaching us of God's truth and leading us into all righteousness.

Isn't it clear that "being" isn't "person" with the Holy Spirit, since the Spirit isn't a person just like God is a person? Our trinitarianism today goes against this clarity, and thus forces your problem with what I'm saying... Since the Spirit has its own personality apart from Jesus, but is Jesus' Spirit, they are not the same person, and the Spirit isn't a person the same way Jesus is but is nevertheless itself a person, as the texts I shared with MM above should make crystal clear.

Since God only speaks the truth, and his Spirit only testifies about God's truth, the only alternative for the Spirit to say anything about - off its own bat, as you are suggesting, would have to be what isn't truth....I fear you're barking up the wrong tree with the notion of the Spirit's own testimony. If it says something other than God's truth of Christ - something of its own, how does it not speak for the Devil? The Spirit must proceed from God as the divine Spirit in order reliably to be God's Spirit, with no room for changing sides - like making divinity what it isn't, even sinful.

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Originally posted by Rosangela:
Colin,

When Jesus says that the Spirit “shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, [that] shall he speak” what is He referring to?

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