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Originally Posted by zeek
Can you summarize Gaffin's arguments for me so I can see how you arrived at the conclusion that they are close enough to definitely wrong. Having thrown out a sense of the spirit's leading for your stomach as you indicated, it seems all you have to go by is your reasoning alone, and the only reason you have given so far is your vaguely supported judgment that the Holy Spirit is out of context in I Corinthians 15. If as Gaffin supposes, Paul's teaching on the Spirit is tethered to the center/core of his theology, then it would not be surprising if he were to tie all the points of his preaching to the Spirit including those concerning Christ and the resurrection. So, if you would be so kind, present your counter arguments to Gaffin's. I didn't find him easy to refute like you did and I don't want him to lead me astray.
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I think that the problem with so many discussions of things like "sense of the Spirit" is that we want it to stand alone and direct without any grounding in what we objectively know.
I am not saying there is no sense of the Spirit. I am chastised by my feelings often related to my going astray of the path of life. I don't need a scripture verse to tell me. I know it within. And sometimes I know when I have done right by my feelings within. But in no case are the feelings the thing I seek.
I am more impressed with the realization of my failings and the need to repent. I believe it is more important to acknowledge our failings and repent than to gush over our feelings as we get our worship higher and higher. We need a little (maybe a lot of) what the older traditions call the Kyrie. We need to ask for mercy. Pray for it as we give it to others. But instead we sing songs about how it impacts us. How we feel about it.
It doesn't matter how we feel about it. It matters what is right, true, honest, just, trustworthy . . . . the things you think on.
As for detailing what I disagree with in Gaffin's arguments, all I will say is that when I scanned through it previously, I saw nothing that gave me a footing to even bring it into the conversation. It might all be reasonable and sound on its own, without reference to 1 Cor 15:45, but I saw nothing that put it into that discussion. I'm not wasting my time dissecting something that starts with a premise that is just not sound and tends to lead to Lee's (and some other wackos') favorite place — the obliteration of the purpose of Three in favor of "they're just all the same." Maybe Gaffin does not go that far with it. But when the starting point is a kind of equivocation — whether intentional to shoehorn in a ridiculous premise, or by honest error due to lack of clarity — I am not bound to waste my time on the rest of the points.
You think Gaffin has made a valid argument for discussing the Trinity because of this one phrase in one verse in the middle of a different discussion, then lay it out. Unless it is a really good argument, I can only see a decoder-ring effort to find a dog's tail in a box of marbles and then wag the dog and say that it is the thing that they box of marbles is about.
I am not obligated to dissect anyone's discussion of the Spirit. It may be a good discussion. But its connection to 1 Cor 15:45 is tenuous, at best. More like a dog's tail in a box of marbles. If you want to change my mind, you show me how it is connected.
I don't recall Gaffin's arguments at this point. But what I have seen in most who think they are finding something not actually there reminds me a little of throwing gold into a fire and declaring that "out came this calf." So now we all have to worship it. We try hard to refute it.
The golden calf did not just appear. It was fashioned. Someone(s) took some time and effort to make it. And just as Aaron did not have an evil intent, there may have been no intent to twist as "the Son is now the Spirit" was fashioned from 1 Cor 15:45. But 1 Cor 15:45 does not go to that conclusion without contortions and harm.