> > The spirit of God worked in them and guided them in the truth, just as
> > Christ promised the Holy Spirit would do. That's not a thing
> > that I expect everyone to believe, but it explains in part why
> > orthodox Christians accept the Trinity even though it is not spelled
> > out clearly in any one Scriptural text. God confirms its truth
> > personally, through His Spirit.
>
> I mean no disrespect to your beliefs, but allow me to state that this is a damned silly reason to believe anything. The functional difference between 'The Holy Spirit told me this' and 'I hit my head on a rock and hallucinated about the Holy Spirit telling me this' is negligible from the point of view of some other observer.
>

Well, what can I say. I tried to anticipate and acknowledge your objection when I admitted that without a prior faith-commitment, the Holy Spirit's guidance is unbelievable. What you've said is, of course, correct. To an outside observer, I'm talking about an unprovable personal experience.

> If you believe that the Bible is literal truth (a belief which I do not personally share), you must allow the text to stand on its own merits, and not rely on a mystical force to guide the understanding of its previous interpreters to the 'correct' truth.
>
> In fact, this is a very dangerous belief. It's the sort of thing that the Inquisition said: If suspicion has been placed in my mind, the Holy Spirit must have put it there, and it must therefore be correct.
>

I'm with you on allowing the text to stand on its own merits, as the Bible certainly can. But as to characterizing the Holy Spirit as a mystical force, that isn't at all what I believe or claim. It is more accurate to say that I believe that God, as a real person, communicates Himself both through the written scripture and directly through His Spirit. The two methods of self-revelation complement one another, and if what a person says the Spirit revealed to him is in conflict with the Bible, then that person is in some way mistaken. The Spirit's guidance illuminates Scripture, but Scripture also serves as a corrective for persons whose overly mystical sensibilities lead them into interpretive errors.

I'm still not expecting any of this to be acceptable to someone who does not exercise faith in Christ, but maybe it clarifies what I was trying to say just a bit.

Iss "Windex guy" achar