Dizerner wrote:Do you think the "Spirit" is always Father+Son or does context determine when it's Father and when it's Son.
1. It seems that the Spirit is sometimes the extended Persons of the Father and the Son:
Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. (John 14:23)
The Father is in heaven with the Son seated at His right hand. So how can They make Their dwelling with their disciples? Is it not through their Spirit which they can freely extend to any point in the Universe?
The Father and the Son are so united in their divinity, in their intents and purposes, in their thinking, their righteousness, their hatred of sin (which I understand to be attitudes and actions which harm others or oneself), that their extended Persons, known as "the Holy Spirit" is indivisible. Jesus said to Philip, "Whoever has seen me, has seen the Father." He didn't mean that He WAS the Father, but rather that He was Another exactly like the Father. We read in Heb 1:3, that the Son is the EXACT IMPRINT of the Father's essence. Thus there is ONE Holy Spirit. (I Cor 6:17, 12:9, 12:13, Eph 2:10, 4:4)
2. Sometimes the Spirit is the extended Person of the Father alone, such as at the baptism of Jesus when the Spirit descended upon Him. While Jesus lived on earth, being completely human, His spirit was confined to His body. Thus it was the spirit of the Father that descended upon Him.
3. Sometimes the Spirit is the extended Person of Jesus alone, as in Acts 16:7 and Phil 1:19.
In the New Testament, we read of "the spirit of God (the Father), and of "the spirit of Jesus." We never read of "the spirit of the Spirit." Why not, if the Spirit is a third divine Person? Doesn't He have a spirit?
We also read many times of prayers addressed to the Father. We also read of a prayer addressed to Jesus (Acts 7:59). If the Spirit is a third divine Person, why do we never read of a prayer addressed to Him?
Since Trinitarianism has bloomed in Christendom since 325 A.D. prayers and hymns have been addressed to the Holy Spirit. E.G. the hymn, "Come Holy Spirit, we need Thee." But this is unheard of in the first two centuries of Christianity.
Paul taught TWO divine Individuals—the one true God, the Father and His Son, our Lord Jesus:
Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. (1 Corinthians 8:6)
For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. (1 Timothy 2:5)