Quote:
Originally Posted by zeek
Whether the words are capitalized or not is insignificant. Compare Matthew 10:20 "For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you." and Galatians 4:6 "And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." Why, according to your theology, can't the Spirit of the Son and the Spirit of the Father be the Holy Spirit? On the other hand, I find the translation "the last Adam became a life-giving essence" true and without controversy and related to John 12:24 which also suggests that Jesus must be transfigured to become life-giving.
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And that is essentially what I said. The capitalization is not what makes it one way or the other since the underlying text generally has none (at all). We add it as we think is proper according to the formulas of the day for capitalizing deity, or even major nouns in general. And some only capitalize where it is a name.
And even when we have a formulation, it is not patently obvious that "Spirit" in either verse is definitely the Holy Spirit, although it is a definite possibility and no stretch to say it. But neither is it a stretch to say that it is a reference to the very being of the Father and the Son. whose essence is spirit, rather than the third of the Trinity.
But the problem with running to so many other scriptures is that each has a context and a meaning. For these two, it is clear that the S/spirit of the Father and the Son are involved. Whether it is similarly or differently in either place a reference to the essence of the one mentioned coming to/into (or as a fact of being in) the believer or of the Holy Spirit should have no real impact on what it is that is stated in these verses.
And your question as to why it cannot be the Holy Spirit when the S/spirit of the Father and the Son are mentioned is a kind of strawman because I did not ever say that those cannot be. But in so many places the Holy Spirit is specifically mentioned without being an aspect of the Father or the Son, therefore some question as to the meaning of these verses is naturally present.
When Jesus promised "another comforter" he did not say it was his Spirit that was coming. Yet in the same discourse he mentions also coming himself. Is this a form of parallel in which the two are/will be the same? Or is it a reference to the coming fact that God — all Three — will at that time be within the believer? (And yet the God that created it all only seems to give us heartburn or other unsure feelings. Quite a lot of self control being exercised.)
But none of this drives 1 Cor 15:45 since the very use of the word in the context (whether spiritual or spirit) is much more clearly
not a reference to the essence of God or the Holy Spirit, but to the nature of the body that springs forth in resurrection. It is the parallel with the body we will receive that is the point of the passage (many verses, not just a 1/2-verse fortune cookie). So, in the middle of a passage, even the whole chapter (artificial as it is) in which Paul makes no other reference to the Holy Spirit, it is odd that he would suddenly make this obscure one and then fail to enhance it and dwell upon it. Instead he sticks to the discussion of the sowing of the perishable body in death and the resurrection of the imperishable, spiritual body (for any man) in resurrection. It makes the very idea of a statement about the change of the Son into the Spirit so far fetched as to be about as plausible as the very small microburst breaking my car window and sucking the CD 'Days of Future Past" off the passenger seat while leaving everything else in the vicinity alone v the very likelihood that someone simply stole it. (A fictional story borrowed from a book on logic.)
Every time you run to another verse and say "what about here?" I can only deal separately with those passages. Many of them have contexts which would allow for the much more plausible and possible reading that your suggest. But none of those create a pattern of use that is so consistent that we can only read the word "sprit," especially when juxtaposed to "life-giving" as the Holy Spirit. Especially when the context argues that the word is talking about something else. It would take Paul really moving from the spiritual body discussion to the nature of God for more than a three-word phrase to yank this reference from the existing context and start a new one. But that is the end of it. The very next words are back on the original discussion without reference to the Holy Spirit in any way.
This is getting old. For every verse you mention that either could, or does, reference the Holy Spirit, there are others that do not. And there are some that do not reference anything about God at all, but about man, whether the human spirit, or in reference to something like a dynamic, such as a spirit of sonship. There is nothing that forces "spirit" to be read differently than what its context provides. And in some places the context includes the modifier "holy" which we pretty rightly understand to mean that together they designate the Holy Spirit.
What makes this one jump its context? Pointing to a different verse with a different context is not instructive. Try again.