Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!att!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: ok@cs.mu.oz.au (Richard O'Keefe) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Trinity Message-ID: Date: 9 Nov 90 05:01:23 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 133 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article , tp0x@spica.fac.cs.cmu.edu (Thomas Price) writes: > I will draw your attention to the fact that in Exodus Moses receives the law > from the LORD, and the LORD there makes statements that only the Almighty could > make (for instance, "I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of > the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other > gods before me -- Ex 20:1,2), but Stephen in Acts (7:38) claims that Moses > received the Law from an angel. Contradiction? Not if we accept the idea that > the Almighty is manifested through his servants the angels who act as his > perfect mouthpieces and wield his authority. We don't have to accept anything of the kind in order to resolve the apparent contradiction. There are two distinctions to be made. The first is the distinction between what the Bible QUOTES and what the Bible TEACHES. Certainly, Acts is here _quoting_ Stephen. Does that necessarily mean that what Stephen said is part of the _teaching_ of the Bible? It probably does, but that _is_ an inference, so if there _were_ a contradiction, one way of resolving it would be to say that Stephen's speech is not authoritative. That would also resolve the apparent contradiction between Acts 5:38 "THE angel which spoke to [Moses]" and Acts 5:53 "[you] received the law by the arrangement of ANGELS [more than one]". The second distinction to be made is between English and Greek. We don't have Stephen's actual words; he probably spoke in Aramaic. What we have is a Greek translation of summary of Stephen's speech. And what _that_ says is not "angel" but "angelos". There's no denying that "angelos" can and often _does_ mean "angel". But its basic meaning is just "messenger", and it's sometimes used of human beings. The English word "angel" has a rather narrower range of meaning than the Greek word it here represents. The translation of "aggelos" as "angel" may be, and very likely _is_, justified, but it is an _inference_, and a theologically motivated one at that. We may resolve the _apparent_ contradiction here by noting that "aggelos" doesn't always mean "angel" and supposing that this is one of the cases where it doesn't. I was taught as a child that where the Pentateuch speaks of "The Angel of the Lord", it was actually Jesus. Who else was fit to represent the Father? Which other person of the Godhead could fitly appear is visible form? That interpretation explains how one and the same thing could be said to be God doing something (after all, the tablets were said to have been written by the finger of God) and by someone God had sent as a messenger. But would it ever be legitimate to call Jesus an "angel"? Well, in one of the pseudepigrapha, the angel Metatron is called "a little YHWH", so if an angel could be called by God's name, why not have God called an "aggelos"? > A careful examination of Genesis > 18 and 19 would seem to bear this out: e.g. Gen 19:13 ("we will destroy > this place") vs. 19:24 ("the LORD rained upon Sodom and Gomorrha brimstone and > fire from the LORD out of heaven.") Ok, _let's_ examine Genesis 19 carefully. "The two angels" (19:1) are described as "men" (19:10). Lot addressed one of them as "Lord". Let's see that in full: "And Lot said, I pray, Lord, since thy servant has found mercy before thee, and thou hast magnified thy righteousness in what thou doest towards me that my soul may live ..." (19:18,19) And the "angel" he addressed replied "_I_ have had respect to thee about this that I should not destroy this city about which thou hast spoken." How are we to understand that? Well, if that angel was just an angel, it would appear to have been disobedient; it has made a unilateral decision to spare one of the cities of the plain. The "angel" didn't say "The Lord has granted your request". It's "I" that decides and acts. The choice, then, appears to be between a disobedient angel, or a member of the Godhead. If "men" is not to be read in the literal sense of the English word "men" (for men are not angels, nor angels men), how are we to insist on the literal sense of the _English_ word "angel" here? I checked this passage in the LXX. If there's someone who reads Hebrew who would care to discuss it, that would be best. > I assert that Jesus was the Son of God, a sinless man who > now sits on the right hand of God and will act as God's viceregent in the > coming Kingdom (the seed promised to Abraham who will sit on David's throne, > etc.) but there is no reason to believe that Jesus pre-existed as part of a > Triune God. Isn't that Adoptionism? How do you get around the classical arguments against that? How do you get around Jesus' claim "before Abraham was, I am"? An inadquate reason, mayhap, but surely not "NO reason". > Related question: What does it mean for the Spirit to dwell in us? > Proposed answer: check out John 6:63 ; 15:3,4,7 . Ok. I did. John 6:63 says nothing about the Spirit dwelling in us. to pneuma estin to zoopoioun | it is the spirit which gives life he sarx ouk ophelei ouden | the flesh is of no benefit ta rhemata ha ego lalo humin | the words which I speak to you pneuma estin kai zoe estin | is spirit and is life The word "pneuma" means wind, moving air, the human spirit or even the disposition of one's character, and can refer to angels, spirits, God in general, or the Holy Spirit. Bearing in mind the CONTEXT of this verse (let's never ignore the context!), which is not concerned with the Holy Spirit, I believe that this verse could be paraphrased as "Your human life is activated by your human spirit, the body alone is fruitless. In the same way, what I'm teaching you is the kind of disposition you should have that will make you really alive." I do not want to defend that paraphrase. I am not asserting that it is better than any others, or even much good. I just want to point out that reading "pneuma" here as a reference to the Holy Spirit is an INFERENCE which I can easily deny while retaining the utmost respect for the text, while indeed believing that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. And even if it _does_ refer to the Holy Spirit, it says nothing about the Spirit dwelling in us. As for John 15:3,4,7; not one of them refers to the Holy Spirit. (The word "pneuma" doesn't appear anywhere in that chapter until John 15:26, which _does_ refer to the Holy Spirit; that's the verse that gives us the bit about the Holy Spirit "proceeding from the Father".) For the most part John 15 is about us abiding in Jesus. Why refer us to verses that don't speak about the Holy Spirit at all in order to answer the question "What does it mean for the Spirit to dwell in us"? The moderator wrote irenically > One could take John 1 and Col 1 as being meant along the line of 1st > Cent. Jewish discussion about the preexistent Torah. This was surely > not meant to be taken literally. They still say "The Torah was not created for the sake of the world, but the world for the sake of the Torah." If we believe that God has foreknowledge, doesn't that compel us to believe that God already knew that the Torah would be needed and what it would say already at the very beginning of creation?