What does it really mean when Mormons say they feel the Spirit ? According to , feeling the Spirit equates to positive emotional reactions to bad art. If this is true then the Spirit is particularly adept at pulling heart strings.
Let s call this feeling the Spirit via a lump in the throat.
Something about this leaves me cold. It s not just that I m a cynic, it s also a resistance I have to reducing the workings of the Spirit of God to something so, well, saccharine.
Any old fool can pull off the trick of emotional manipulation.
It also seems to be terribly unpredictable. On another bloggernacle thread, one commenter noted that a certain film left him sickened I felt a complete absence of the Spirit.
This comment puzzled me because the exact same film had filled me with a love of Jesus so deep I was left speechless. I was sure I had felt the Spirit. But we cannot both be right.
The Spirit cannot utterly condemn a film to one person and testify to its truth to another. Therefore, one of us is misreading this thing we call feeling the Spirit. [1]
So, allow me to briefly explore what we mean by the Holy Spirit and how he (or she in Hebrew)[2] works in the human sphere.
I ll begin with the Old Testament.
The Holy Spirit that appears in the OT is more accurately described as the Spirit of God. (The term Holy Spirit ruah qadosh appears only seldom and late.
Holy Ghost and Holy Spirit are synonyms; I prefer the latter.) The Spirit of God is basically God s Spirit abroad in the world (and not a separate being despite occasional metaphorical personifications).[3] God s Spirit appears as a driving force in Creation, brooding over the waters in Genesis 1, is a saving power (Exod 14:21), and acts as a bringer of destruction (Hos 13:5).
Here s a real beauty: the Spirit (or a spirit from God ) can also be an agent of evil ( , , ).
Here s how the Spirit works on humans: it chooses and magnifies leaders (Judg 3:10, 1 Sam 10:1-13) and acts as an agent of prophecy. According to Hosea, a prophet is a man of the Spirit (Hos 9:7) and Micah says that he is filled with power, with the Spirit of the Lord (Mic 3:8).
In the eschatological age, the Spirit will be poured out upon all people and be the means through which people will hold to righteousness (Isa 59:21). Late texts speak of the Spirit offering wisdom, revelation, and guidance (Wis 7:7, Ezek 2:2).
So, for the OT the Holy Spirit acts as God s divine force on nature and as the power that leads and inspires the righteous (setting aside the mischievous spirits an interesting topic for sure).
Alas, I don t think the Old Testament is able to help me decide whether the Spirit can lead me to cry at a movie, or, if he/she/it can, how to know for sure, especially when a co-religionist claims the opposite effect.
Next time, the New Testament Holy Spirit
1. Another option is that the Spirit has nothing to do with it and that these are just visceral reactions that have to do with taste and worldview.
2. Don t get excited, feminists. This is just the quirk of language that makes breath, spirit mostly feminine in Hebrew.
3. The case of the evil spirits brings up a complicating factor, however. Is there one Spirit, or different spirits, or both.
In the case of God-inspired mischief, we prefer to read, God placed an evil spirit not God s Evil Spirit. Big diff. Good, post, R.
Though I think I ll side with your coreligionist that _Animal House_ is not a spirit-filled movie.
I believe a major problem both in current descriptions of the Spirit and in criticisms of them is that they have failed to distinguish a human response to a divine force from the divine force itself. A human may shudder and be overcome with emotion on encounter with the Spirit.
A human may have the same response to a Hallmark commercial, a wonderful meal, a highly charged church meeting, an urban legend, or simply an encounter with another human being.
This does mean that not everything that shudders and weeps is the Spirit, true, but it does not mean that encounters with the Spirit cannot cause one to shudder and weep.
I think of the Spirit as a moment of communion with God, and this can happen in many different ways to many different people and can simultaneously happen and fail to happen to people sitting next to each other.
Regarding the OT tradition, I d be interested to see a sustained comparison of shekinah and ruah qadosh. Comment by Sam MB December 17, 2006 @
As you know shekinah is rabbinic/targumic and refers to the Divine Presence, relating back to God s Presence in Exodus. It s God s shine/sheen/halo.
I see it as different, because as far as I can tell, it doesn t do anything. The Holy Spirit is an active force. Um, what do you mean by that comment about the Holy Spirit (I prefer that term too) being seperate from God?
What about the first article of faith? We believe in God the Eternal Father, in His Son, Jesus Christ and in the Holy Ghost. If Joseph Smith said they were seperate, I d be inclined to believe him.
Comment by Proud Daughter of Eve December 17, 2006 @
PDoE,
I ll get to the Mormon Holy Spirit doctrine in a later post. It s just that if all we had was the Old Testament, it is my view that we d say the Holy Spirit was simply God s Spirit, i.e.
that part of him that operates on the earth. With a bit of thought, Trinitarianism and perhaps even Mormon views aren t as far away from this as they seem, but again, I ll get to that.
In the meantime, a question for you: when Genesis says that the Spirit of God moved upon the waters, what is it referring to?
The (Mormon, separate personage) Holy Ghost, or something else? How we unravel that may be the key to fitting OT conceptions into our own doctrine, if indeed that is what we wish to do. (I m not convinced it is: certainly the Hebrew Bible is in many ways certainly not a proto-Mormon gospel.
)
But thanks for the question. It s an important one. Comment by Ronan December 17, 2006 @
My comment is a sort of restructuring of one I left in another post.
Your question is simply of religious experience.
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