Theodicy of the Spirit

[aron]

I've been trying to follow the thread on "Becoming" or "not becoming" in 1 Corinthians 15:45 ("b"), and someone asked, Well, what is the Spirit? The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit, yes; but what is the spiritual body spoken of in the previous verse, verse 44?

But I wanted to start a new thread because my concepts here are not on Christ the last Adam becoming a life-giving Spirit but on the idea of what is Spirit, and what is spiritual.

And I want to do it in a way different than the discussion on that thread, because I want to have a discussion about experience. I don't think words and concepts will help you at the Judgment Seat, but rather experience. Though words and concepts help us with ideas, and thus shape behavior, and thus affect experience, I want to focus on the experience itself. Even my ideas I want to be from experience. So this is a personal discussion. How does the Spirit affect my life today? How do we experience the Spirit of God?

The idea of theodicy is to explain the existence of evil; why can God allow an imperfect world? I want to explain the Spirit. Not in a definition of a word or concept so much as a discussion of experience.

To me the Spirit is analogous to the Star Wars "force". The Spirit is that which pervades all, sees all, knows all. No one knows the Spirit but the Spirit knows all. Every star is named. Every hair on your head is numbered. Every bird that falls to the ground is reported back to the Father of lights. Every bug that crawls, every thought and intention of your heart, is laid bare. There is no dark hole for you to hide. The light that shines penetrates all.

And yet no one knows where the Spirit comes from, or where it goes. You can occasionally hear the sound of it, like the wind, if you listen carefully. But you really have to be still. If you think that you can join the Shouters and shout the Spirit into existence, you'll be fooled. I know, because I was there; eventually someone shouts something stupid and we all bray like donkeys, "Four legs good, two legs better!" And the Spirit moves on, like the wind. If you think that by shouting Witness Lee's theology you have caught have the wind in your box, then your box is empty. No one can catch the wind. It must move to be.

We, on the other hand, must be still. If we truly desire the "the restoration of the kingdom" (Acts 1:6), then we must "wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit" (v. 5). Then we will have the power to witness (v.8). But first we must wait. Hear of the Father's promised gift, and believe and obey, and wait.

God moves through the Spirit. God sits on the throne, but the whole universe lies open before His Spirit. When the Spirit moves, God moves. When the Spirit speaks, God speaks. The Spirit's moving and speaking is actually God's moving and speaking.

And I say this because of the word 'intention'. God's will is carried out perfectly by the Spirit. There is no distortion, no hesitation, no doubt. We are muddy, fleshy, distorted creatures, buffeted by every wind. We, unfortunately, have intention. The Spirit has God's intention. And that, my friends, is the difference.

[aron]

Originally Posted by aron

So this is a personal discussion. How does the Spirit affect my life today? How do we experience the Spirit of God?

I want to "justify the ways of the Spirit", not in the ways of comprehension but in the ways of obedience, submission, and personal realization. To be baptised is to repent and die and be buried, hoping for a new life and a new way. Jesus promised a baptism in the Holy Spirit. This is not something to analyze or understand. It is just something to be buried in, and raised in, and move in.

But the moving part is hard. Because moving takes intention, and if you derive intention you will distort the Spirit and you will be dropped, like a stone cast deep into mighty waters (Nehemiah 9:11). Down you go... "I saw Satan fall like lightning". The Spirit is a hard path because only the Spirit can take it. You cannot. And yet you must. It is the only way home.

Only the Spirit is the faithful reproducer of God's intention. You cannot and will not. Only when you stop, and wait, will the Spirit be revealed. But when you die, and are buried, hoping for the resurrection, eventually the Spirit will come. Our only real intention is to believe, and die, hoping to share the death and resurrection. Only then will God's intention through the Holy Spirit be manifested.

God doesn't make deals: "O God, give me Your Spirit and I will do 'x', and 'y', and 'z'". God doesn't want your doing. God wants His doing, and God only does it through His Spirit.

Anyway, these are my thoughts. Unfortunately, they are my thoughts, and as such are probably not even worth the trouble of reading them. But I thought it might be fun to type them, anyway. I'm that kind of person, if you haven't already realized.

[aron]

Obedience is hard. But it is not something you do. It is something you see Jesus doing. And it is indeed quite attractive. You are dead, but suddenly you see life! You hear the Father's voice! So you draw near, and listen, and follow. And at some point, like Peter and James and John who wandered up onto the mountain, you will indeed see glory. At some point, like John the Baptist who 'fulfilled all righteousness' and pushed Jesus down under water, you will look up and see the dove. At some point if you follow Jesus you'll see heaven open, and angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.

But obedience is not something you do; it is something that you see Jesus doing, and you recognize the power of God, and you are drawn. And this drawing is nothing less than to be drawn back to the Father's throne, because that is the source of all. The angels ascend because they descend. Jesus went back to the Father because He came forth from the Father. Likewise the Spirit; it runs to and fro across the face of the earth but never leaves the Father. Its intention is pure.

We were the unwilling, the disobedient, the fallen, and the dead. We were given up. But the Spirit comes and breathes life into us, and we are raised to walk in newness of life. But this walk is entirely of the Spirit. It is not an easy walk. But it is the only walk. It is the only thing that is real.

[OBW]

aron,

On your last post, this sounds very good. It is very "inner life" and spiritual.

Yet the record of scripture suggests that it is not some kind of natural, "wow, today I just have this power to do it" thing. It is something you have to set your mind for. It takes a letter full of admonitions, not just for broad statements against the ritualistic OT law, but also that a couple of sisters would quit fighting and get along.

It takes admonitions in several letters from Paul. In letters from Peter, John, James, and others.

The evangelical version of grace, along with the inner-life teachings, leads us to the conclusion that when we finally get there (when we arrive, when we get enough dispensing — to use Lee's words) then we will obey. But why then did Paul constantly tell his readers that the spiritual underpinnings are — not that they will be, or need to be gathered? Why did Peter tell us that we have all things necessary for life and Godliness?

Were they wrong? Or are these teachings that in this life it is simple once we get enough fiber in our diet and take the right vitamins. If it is so easy and natural, there would be no call to "take up your cross and follow." There would be no cross because we would just do it.

And so far, no one just does it. And those that seem to tend to burn out.

It does take something that is in one place called "setting your mind." But that is today for today's trials. It is not for tomorrow's or next week's. Where your mind is set now should be how we operate. It should result in obedience to what our mind is set upon. If we are not yet doing, then the mind is not set because if it was, we would do.

That might suggest that a whole lot of reading and other things that we like to think of as spiritual are not as spiritual as we think.

[aron]

OBW,

All quite true. I am doing a sort of haphazard conjecture of life on the other side of the veil. But on this side, while we still dwell in the flesh, all quite true.

The Spirit has come to be quite an interest of mine. I lived in the Shouter mindset for years. Now I am actually trying to 1) look at the text, absent Lee glasses, and 2) square that with my feeble and shallow experience.

So I am drawn, at least conceptually, to the mystical "I was carried away in spirit and beheld x, y, and z" imagery, but the hard and fast is all of which you speak. I tried to reference that in the Lord's 'wait in Jerusalem for the promise of the Father' in the first 2 posts. But that was certainly not some all-encompassing, comprehensive command.

Nonetheless, when Jesus prayed, "on earth as it is in heaven", shouldn't we consider "as it is in heaven", if we are to square up our earthly journey? That includes visions of angels ascending and descending, and the inexpressible glory of the Spirit, which does indeed go forth from the throne. If Jesus said "You will see this" kind of thing (John 1:51), then I will indeed struggle to obey, and enter. And here especially, "without vision we perish". And if Lee wasn't interested, focusing instead on his masticating his "processed Triune God", then I'm not terribly interested in his so-called economy, nor his ideas on 1 Cor 15:45. Which is sort of why I parked my mystical notions outside that thread. The Spirit is not something we define, or examine. It is something (or rather someone) we find, or rather are found by, and that finding will define us. That finding defines the journey.

Notice that the Jews found and lost again and again. Out of Chaldees, out of Egypt, out of Babylon. Etc. The Spirit is a hard road. But it is the only road.

[awareness]

Originally Posted by aron

God doesn't make deals: "O God, give me Your Spirit and I will do 'x', and 'y', and 'z'". God doesn't want your doing. God wants His doing, and God only does it through His Spirit.

Then it's none of my business. I'll only get in the way.

[awareness]

My question is, why is this thread called Theodicy of the Spirit? Isn't that implying that the Spirit allows evil to exist in the world?

The OP states:

But I wanted to start a new thread because my concepts here are not on Christ the last Adam becoming a life-giving Spirit but on the idea of what is Spirit, and what is spiritual.

So why Theodicy? Did you mean Theology?

[aron]

Originally Posted by awareness

My question is, why is this thread called Theodicy of the Spirit? Isn't that implying that the Spirit allows evil to exist in the world?

So why Theodicy? Did you mean Theology?

Well I was just playing with words. I like to; remember getting excited about words like “processed” and “consummated” and “crystallized”? Well, I still do, and this time I picked “theodicy”. My understanding was that Liebniz, like Irenaeus and Origen before, was not trying to justify the existence of evil, but rather to justify the ways of a powerful and benevolent God in the face of evil. So I wanted to justify the ways of the spirit.

But it was really a play on words, because I feel that any justification of God by us is going to be somewhat subjective. Just as our definitions of “Spirit” and “spiritual” are perhaps arbitrary, because we are neither Spirit nor truly spiritual. So any definition is going to be what we agree on today and not what actually is.

If you asked me, I'd say, “Spirit is how God communicates with the world”. Spirit is God moving, and speaking, and shining forth. But if you asked me in 8 months “What is Spirit” I might give you a completely different answer. My justification of the ways of the Spirit is playing in the sandbox, pushing sand around with my Tonka tractor and pretending that I am trafficking in reality. But I do it because it amuses me.

[aron]

Justification of the ways of God is kind of a goofy premise: I don’t understand God, and God doesn’t need my apologetics. So I was being tongue-in-cheek when I titled this thread “the theodicy of the Spirit”. I instead wanted to examine the ways of the Spirit in a series of ideational vignettes, which are not necessarily any more “real” than someone else's.

For example, what if John’s vision of the seven spirits before the throne in Revelation 1:4 connects to Moses’ golden lampstand? The penultimate image in John’s gospel is perhaps the one at the end of the first chapter, right before the miracles begin: “You will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” This scene conceptually frames the miraculous signs that follow.

So think about this: in the tabernacle, as in the temple, there was a lampstand before the throne, with its seven candlesticks focusing their light together. The lamps’ tubes are hollow, and filled with oil, and the lamps always burning. On each side of the lampstand are two spouts, pouring into the base of the lamp. (See Zech 4:11-14; Rev 11:3-12) Now we know the property of fluid: a u-shaped tube that is open on each end will have resting fluid at the same level in both ends! So you could fill the seven lamps using a spout that was opened at the same height. That way they would always burn, and they would never run out -- the flame would be undisturbed, and yet would always be supplied.

Now, the Spirit is being manifested as seven flames burning before the throne, with oil flowing down, in supply, and flowing up to be burned. It is a very dynamic picture. And it suggests that John the apostle wasn’t picturing a newly-intensified spirit, as there were seven flames already burning in the holiest place, long before Jesus was born! To me John's spiritual significance is that there is imagery of a descending and ascending in both his gospel and in Revelation 1:4, 4:5, and 5:6. We don’t have to invent some new property (i.e. “intensification”) for the Sprit, as Moses had been told to make everything in the earthly temple (including the seven lamps burning) when he received the heavenly vision in Exodus 25. See e.g. verse 9: "Make this tabernacle and all its furnishings exactly like the pattern I will show you."

[KSA]

The idea of theodicy is to explain the existence of evil; why can God allow an imperfect world?

Evil is a construct of human mind. In reality the world is perfect. To me a big part of my spiritual journey was to learn to accept things as they are - to yield to life.

To me the Spirit is analogous to the Star Wars "force".

Another thing to realize is that there is ONLY Spirit. The world is forms and manifestations of the Spirit.