scholarly journals An African Interpretation of Paul’s Understanding of The Holy Spirit

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (32) ◽  
pp. 426
Author(s):  
David T. Ejenobo

The doctrine of the trinity has generated a lot of controversies down the centuries among New Testament scholars. The problem generated by scholars to dissect the Personhood of God has resulted in various shades of interpretations on the relationship between God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is against this background that this paper seeks to examine Paul’s understanding of the Holy Spirit viewed against the backdrop of the doctrine of the Trinity. This study adopted the textual critical method to examine the various nuances of Paul’s allusion to the Holy Spirit with a view to situating them within a proper understanding of the concept of the trinity. The author discovered that for Paul there is no personality distinction between God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, since man encounters these “persons” in the spiritual realm. Applying the hermeneutical method of contextual interpretation, the author is of the opinion that for the African, conceptualizing God within the realm of the Spirithood of God would be a more practical way of describing the activities of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit than the Western conceptualization of the Three Persons in on Godhead.

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-95
Author(s):  
Steven Tubagus ◽  
Timotius Bakti Sarono

The doctrine of the Holy Spirit and its praxis has been controversial among God's people. This controversy has even emerged since the beginning of the church about the person and position of the Holy Spirit with God the Father and the Son. This article aims to briefly explore the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and its praxis into the community of God's people. The writing method used is a praxis systematic critical method to examine the various nuances of the argument against the Holy Spirit with the aim of placing it in a proper understanding of the trinity concept. The result of this writing is the doctrine of the Holy Spirit there is no personality difference between God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, because humans meet these "persons" in every spiritual aspect. By conceptualizing God in the realm of the Spirit of God, it will be a more practical way to describe activities in community life.   Doktrin Roh Kudus dan praksisnya telah memberikan kontroversi selama ini di antara umat Tuhan. Kontroversi ini bahkan sudah muncul mulai permulaan gereja bagaimana pribadi dan posisi Roh Kudus dengan Allah Bapa dan Putra. Artikel ini bertujuan mengeksplorasi secara singkat doktrin Roh Kudus dan praksisnya ke dalam komunitas umat Tuhan. Metode penulisan yang digunakan adalah metode kritis sistematis praksis untuk menelaah berbagai nuansa argumen terhadap Roh Kudus dengan tujuan menempatkannya dalam pemahaman yang tepat tentang konsep trinitas. Hasil dari penulisan ini adalah doktrin Roh Kudus tidak ada perbedaan kepribadian antara Allah Bapa, Anak dan Roh Kudus, karena manusia bertemu dengan “pribadi-pribadi” ini dalam setiap aspek rohani. Dengan mengkonseptualisasikan Tuhan dalam alam Roh Allah akan menjadi cara yang lebih praktis untuk menggambarkan aktivitas secara kehidupan komunitas.


1971 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-200
Author(s):  
Steven Katz

In this paper I would like to discuss what the Old Testament has to say about the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. I take it as agreed that this task is both important and necessary for a real understanding of the New Testament, which by itself, is neither complete, meaningful nor self-authenticating. I do not make any claims to completeness on this crucial topic, but wish only to suggest what I feel are some important points for consideration. I want to discuss the three persons of the Trinity separately, beginning with the Father, then proceeding to the Holy Spirit and then to the Son. My remarks about the Father will be brief. I only wish to make the point that the Old Testament as well as the new Testament is fully aware of God's Fatherhood and alive to the reality that God loves mankind. It is clear that Israel has a special place as indicated by such passages as Exod. 4.22 where God addresses Israel saying: ‘Israel is my first born son.’ Yet at the same time it is basic to an understanding of Old Testament thought that God is the Father of the other nations of the world, though they are not the ‘first born’. This is a cardinal position of Old Testament theology and is based on the belief, given expression in Genesis, that all belongs to and was created by God.


2020 ◽  
pp. 46-48
Author(s):  
Arigala Jessie Smiles ◽  
Potana Venkateswara Rao

Although early Christian theologians speculated in many ways on the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, no one clearly and fully asserted the doctrine of the Trinity until around the end of the so-called Arian Controversy during the 4th century. Arius taught that God the Father and the Son of God did not always exist together eternally. In this context this research article attempts to review the evolution of the concept of Holy Trinity and the Arian Controversy, understand the main differences between Homoousian and Homoiousian arguments with an aim to help the reader understand the divinity of God the Jesus Christ and his co-eternal and co-equal position along with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit.


Author(s):  
Dale B. Martin

When the subject is the Christian view of the holy spirit, it is even more difficult to find an orthodox doctrine of the spirit if the Bible is read only through the method of modern historical criticism. Read historically, the Bible does not teach a doctrine of the trinity, and the Greek word for “spirit,” pneuma, refers to many different things in the New Testament. Moreover, the pneuma was considered in the ancient world to be a material substance, though a rarified and thin form of matter. Yet those ancient notions of pneuma may help us reimagine the Christian holy spirit in new, though not at all unorthodox, ways. The spirit may then become the most corporeal person of the trinity; the most present person of the trinity; or alternatively, the most absent. The various ways the New Testament speaks of pneuma—that of the human person, or the church, of God, of Christ, and even of “this cosmos”—may provoke Christian imagination in new ways once the constraints of modernist methods of interpretation are transcended. Even the gender of the spirit becomes a provocative but fruitful meditation for postmodern Christians.


2003 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-176
Author(s):  
Julian Clementson

This article, by a former Christadelphian, asks how evangelicals can help Christadelphians understand the doctrine of the Trinity. After a brief introduction to the Christadelphian community and a survey of its doctrine of Christ and the Holy Spirit, we evaluate that doctrine with reference to the New Testament and to systematic considerations. We conclude that neither dogmatic formulae nor popular language used to describe the Trinity are helpful to Christadelphians, and that there are more constructive alternatives. We see that both Christadelphians and trinitarians need to compare their faith, not simply with the ancient creeds, but ultimately with the earliest Christian experience implied by the New Testament use of trinitarian language.


Author(s):  
Gilles Emery

Aquinas occupies a prominent place in today’s discussions of Trinitarian theology. Each of the seven sections of this chapter deals with an aspect that is or should be present in any reception of Aquinas’ doctrine of the Trinity: the centrality of Trinitarian faith in Aquinas’ theology; the nature and purpose of Aquinas’ Trinitarian theology; the cardinal place of the economy of salvation; the relationship between Trinitarian processions and missions; the organization of the ‘treatise’ on God in the Summa theologiae; the divine persons as ‘subsisting relations’; the Son as Word and Image, and the Holy Spirit as Love and Gift. In Aquinas, Trinitarian doctrine provides the interpretive framework for understanding all other theological topics (from creation to eschatology).


1993 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 465-495 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. W. Bartel

If proof is required that yesterday's scandal can become today's fashion, we need look no further than recent discussions of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Just a generation ago, Trinitarians typically insisted that the members of the Godhead are not distinct persons in any literal sense. But during the past few years, more and more philosophically sophisticated Christians have unblushingly maintained that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not just different persons, but different individuals – that the Trinity consists of three divine beings.


Author(s):  
David. T. Williams

The emergence of the Charismatic movement has generated a new awareness and interest in the Person and work of the Holy Spirit, but has also brought a realisation that there is a still-neglected Person of the Trinity, the Father. Part of the reason for this lies in the historical development in the doctrine of the Trinity, which led to a belief that external actions of God are not differentiated between the Persons, and also in the fact that the Father only generally acts in the world by Son and Spirit, so has no clear role. It seems natural to attribute creation to the Father, but even here, the Bible sees the Son as the actual creator. Nevertheless, the Father can be seen as the source of the concepts and means behind the material; interestingly there are hints of this in classical Greek thought and other faiths. This is ongoing, perhaps particularly in the evolutionary process of the world. Thus, paralleling the incarnation, the Father is present in the material universe, as its ethos. He can also be seen to be affected by creation, sharing in its nature in his kenōsis, and in its suffering. Creation then inspires a sense of wonder not only from its existence, extent and nature, but from its interactions and underlying concepts; this is worship of the Father. Sin is then when this is overlooked, or when actions disrupt it; these are an offence to the Father.


Author(s):  
Dan Howard-Snyder

The doctrine of the Trinity is central to Christian theology. The part of the doctrine that concerns us here may be stated in these words: although the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are different persons, each is the same God as the other; they are not three Gods, but exactly one God. These words arguably imply a contradiction. For example, if the Father is not the same person as the Son, then the Father is not identical with the Son; thus, if each is a God, there are at least two Gods, which contradicts the claim that there is exactly one God. Analytic theologians have responded to this line of argument and others related to it. Each response aims to model a consistent doctrine of the Trinity, one that provides the resources to reject such arguments while retaining Trinitarian orthodoxy. We can classify these attempts by distinguishing those according to which there is no numerical sameness without identity from those according to which there is numerical sameness without identity. Attempts in the first group tend to raise worries about consistency with orthodoxy. Attempts in the second group tend to raise worries about intelligibility.


2007 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 278-290
Author(s):  
Adam McIntosh

Although Karl Barth is widely recognised as the initiator of the renewal of trinitarian theology in the twentieth century, his theology of the Church Dogmatics has been strongly criticised for its inadequate account of the work of the Holy Spirit. This author argues that the putative weakness of Barth's pneumatology should be reconsidered in light of his doctrine of appropriation. Barth employs the doctrine of appropriation as a hermeneutical procedure, within his doctrine of the Trinity, for bringing to speech the persons of the Trinity in their inseparable distinctiveness. It is argued that the doctrine of appropriation provides a sound interpretative framework for his pneumatology of the Church Dogmatics.


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