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writerdad
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Date Joined Jun 2001
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   Posted 8/13/2001 9:50 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
This question has popped up in my mind as I was reading the post on omniscience and Genesis 18 and I asked it there but I was hoping that perhaps it would get more attention if I put it by itself.
If God is everywhere and present at all times, in what sense can we say that we are in the Lord's presense (aren't we always) and what does the Bible mean when, for instance, it says that the presense of the Lord left Saul. Is God's presense more in one place and not the other? Does God have a "place" he resides, or, because he is a spiritual being we can never truly understand how this exactly works? John 17:3 Harold

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PotOnWheel
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   Posted 8/13/2001 11:14 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
writerdad-

As you mentioned Saul, two kinds of distinctions can be made. First, I've read that the Holy Spirit's relationship before Pentecost was "external." He would come, do, and depart. But in the Church the Spirit "indwells." That is a point of difference. A point of similarity is that while the God is present in His energies in all creation. . .(providence, etc.). . .He is Personally present in us. (Beyond that some pretty detailed stuff about how the Spirit sends Christ, and how Christ sends the Spirit, has to many parts for me to hold in my head at one time without practicing! But that is all wonderful too. Some describe the Con and the Spirit as the right and left hands of the Father.)


PotOnWheel

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GregBoyd
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   Posted 8/14/2001 2:40 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
At the very least, it means we can't think of omnipresence as a sort of sheer "quantitative expanse" of God's being. We have to make qualitative distinctions. God is, in some sense, "more" in some places, or qualitatively "more present" in some places than in others.

"Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having." C.S.Lewis
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writerdad
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   Posted 8/14/2001 1:38 PM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
I am still wondering how that makes sense. Perhaps this is what happens when we try to give "space" to a "spaceless" being...

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PotOnWheel
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   Posted 8/14/2001 6:03 PM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Hi writerdad-- I'm not the trained thinker like these who expertly train the the art of philosophy; but if it is OK with you, it SOUNDS like it is straight thinking! Seems that the deal with God in the world is with matter, and the deal with the Holy Spirit is something personal. Those seem different and hard to compare. Maybe we'd better not try harder than comes easily--like working with bolt-threads so as to not force things that don't belong. Instead, mabye we will learn enough by learning to appreciate each for itself, within the limits of how much we are in a position to know.

So....please pardon my "going off campus" for these web-clippings; but I know the site and it is well organized.

As to God in the Creation, her it is first. (The second is on the Holy Spirit's indwelling, etc.)

quote:
Loving the whole of His good creation, God the Father dwells within the world that He has made because of His goodness and love for man. The omnipresence of God is one of the divine attributes of the Creator particularly stressed in Orthodox Christian teaching. This fact is directly affirmed in the prayer to the Spirit of God which is used as the opening prayer of Orthodox worship:

O Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, who art everywhere and fillest all things. Treasury of Blessings and Giver of Life! Come and abide in us. And cleanse us from every impurity. And save our souls, O Good One!

The fact that Christians pray: Our Father who art in heaven ... (or, literally, "in the heavens") is also an affirmation of the fact that God is present everywhere, for wherever men move on the face of the earth, over the seas or in the air, the heavens surround them with the presence of God. The Lord Jesus Christ, in order to have men realize that the true God, His Father, is not bound to one or another particular place, as were the pagan gods, teaches men to pray to the Father "in the heavens." For the one true and living God is present to all, over all, embracing and encompassing all with His heavenly care and protection. The God who is "over all" is also "through all and in all" (Eph 4:5). By His Word and His Holy Spirit, God "fills all in all" (Eph I :10, 23).

Thus, the Apostle Paul also proclaimed to the Athenians, that whether men realize it or not, "in Him we live and move and have our being," for "He is not far from each one of us" (Acts 17:27-28). It is this fact of God's omnipresence in His creation, and our own presence in and to Him, that is witnessed to so beautifully in Psalm 139:

Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit?
Or whither shall I flee from Thy Presence?
If I ascend to heaven, Thou art there!<
If I make my bed in Sheol, Thou art there
If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there Thy hand shall lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me.
If I say, "Let only darkness cover me, and the light about me be night," even the darkness is not dark to Thee, the night is bright as the day; for darkness is as light with Thee! (Ps 139:7-12)
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The Christian Church lives by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit alone is the guarantee of God's Kingdom on earth. He is the sole guarantee that God's life and truth and love are with men. Only by the Holy Spirit can man and the world fulfill that for which they were created by God. All of God's actions toward man and the world -- in creation, salvation and final glorification -- are from the Father through the Son (Word) in the Holy Spirit; and all of man's capabilities of response to God are in the same Spirit, through the same Son to the same Father.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of life.

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies through the Spirit who dwells in you (Rom 8:11).

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth.

When the Spirit of Truth comes he will guide you into all the Truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come (Jn 16:13; see also Jn 14:25; Jn 15:26).
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of divine sonship.

For all who are led by the Spirit are sons of God. For you did not receive the Spirit of slavery. ... but you received the Spirit of sonship. When we cry "Abba! Father!" it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God (Rom 8:14; also Gal 4:6).

The Holy Spirit is the personal presence of the new and everlasting covenant between God and man, the seal and guarantee of the Kingdom of God, the power of the divine indwelling of God in man.

... you are a letter from Christ, delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. ... our sufficiency is from God who has qualified us to be ministers of a new covenant, not in written code but in the Spirit, for the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life (2 Cor 3:2-6).

Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you. ... For God's temple is holy, and that temple you are (1 Cor 3:16; also Rom 6:19).

... through him (Christ) we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of apostles and the prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows in a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit (Eph 2:18-22; also 1 Pet 2:4-9).

In the Holy Spirit men have the possibility of receiving every gift from God, of sharing His divine nature and life, of doing what Christ has done by fulfilling his "new commandment" to love one another even as he has loved us, "because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which he has given us" (Rom 5:5).

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. ... And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life (Gal 5:22-25; 6:8).
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PotOnWheel

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writerdad
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Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 448
 
   Posted 8/15/2001 7:24 AM (GMT -6)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
POW: thanks! Your posts are like a breath of fresh to me...their making me think in different ways...its been awhile since I've read any Orthodox stuff and I already find it refreshing...

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