Biblical Interpretation

[DickOdenthal]

PhKrause:

Another helper – We all know this Greek word, Paraklete, “the Helper.” Growing up in the Church, we were told that this is a circumlocution for the Holy Spirit. This verse in John is typically used to establish the person of the Holy Spirit, the “other” helper who will come after  Jesus leaves. Sure enough, the Greek text reads allos parakleton, an accusative, singular, masculine noun. This construction indicates that the Paraklete is the direct object of the Father’s action. “He will give another helper.”

Now let’s put this into Jewish/Hebraic thought. The “spirit” is the personal power of the presence of Yahweh or His Messiah. There is no person called the Holy Spirit. In fact, until about 380 CE, there wasn’t even any official doctrine about the “Spirit” in Christianity. In Jewish thinking, the “spirit” is the expression of God’s action among men, whether it is found in Genesis 1:2, at Sinai, in the words of the prophets or in the life of the Messiah. It is God personally displayed.

Given this Jewish idea, I want to point out an interesting connection. Jesus tells us that the role of this personal presence of Yahweh is to “convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment” (John 16:8), to provide encouragement (John 14:18) and to testify of the Messiah ( John 15:26). We might summarize these functions as offering truthful criticism and conviction, providing nourishing support and witnessing to God’s great gift in the Messiah.

We should make an attempt to understand this verse in the context of orthodox Galilean Jewish living in the first century? Or shall we just accept the usual Christian doctrinal rendition? Is this really about the Holy Spirit, a third person in the Godhead, or is Jesus speaking about something quite foreign to our Western reading of the text?

Let’s start by recognizing that all the capital letters are the result of theological choices. They simply are not in the text. We might also note that allon (“another”) paráklēton is a bit ambiguous. Does it mean “another one besides me,” or “one of many others”? The answer depends on your meta-exegesis, that is, the assumption you bring to the text from other sources.

 

We will not ever solve these dilemmas today. They are embedded in paradigm issues and paradigms are particularly difficult to unpack for the simple reason that they inform the believer about what counts as evidence and what doesn’t.

So how you answer questions that can be raised about John’s verse concerning paráklētos will probably not be determined by the text. Your answers will be determined by prior commitments to what you believe to be The Truth, and if having The Truth means you don’t need to look any further, then dialogue is over and dogma wins.

 

My contention still stands. If we are going to use her as an inspired source she has to be internally consistent. Do we take her later views which were markedly different than her earlier non conventionally orthodox views. Do we try and understand the text as it was conveyed to an original Hebraic thinking audience? That is where lean. I do not have it all figured out. I have figured out enough that i will continue to wrestle with scripture and not try and decipher what someone said 1800 years later.

[GHansen]

27 minutes ago, DickOdenthal said:

I have figured out enough that i will continue to wrestle with scripture and not try and decipher what someone said 1800 years later.

I certainly agree with that. EGW can be  more difficult to understand than the Bible.

[GHansen]

8 hours ago, GHansen said:

The LEB translates the 5 passages where the Greek word numbered 3875 in the OLB/Strong's system (παράκλητος) as Advocate, referring to the HS as our Advocate instead of Comforter.

Clarification:

Joh 14:16  And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another *Comforter, that he may remain with you forever;
Joh 14:26  But the *Comforter, who is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things, and cause you to remember everything that I have said to you.
Joh 15:26 ¶  But when the *Comforter comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will testify of me:
Joh 16:7 ¶  Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is to your advantage for me to go away: for if I do not go away, the *Comforter will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send him to you.
1Jo 2:1 ¶  My little children, I am writing these things to you, that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an *advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: All quotes from the 2011 KJV

*= same Greek word: παράκλητος

[DickOdenthal]

6 hours ago, GHansen said:

I certainly agree with that. EGW can be  more difficult to understand than the Bible.

The problem is she wrote for 70 years and did not always pay attention to what she said at various times. Sometimes she just took whole sections of what she had written earlier and used it again.

[GHansen]

On 3/3/2022 at 4:08 AM, DickOdenthal said:

The problem is she wrote for 70 years and did not always pay attention to what she said at various times.

The search filter on the one website allows the student to eliminate many of the repetitive statements; however, even the statements published in her lifetime can number in the thousands. Searching perfection/perfection in the KJV amounts to 123 verses. At the EGW.org website, searching just her lifetime works (no compilations) the word perfection results in 10,562 hits.