Posted by Cygnus [Cygnus] on March 27, 1999 at 16:07:56 {L4bdfUTIaIvhVxddkJA6MWUh1hzMDt7og}:
In Reply to: **The Nature of the Divine posted by Jerry on March 27, 1999 at 14:48:09:
Jerry,
: If Jehovah is "somewhere" and he wanted to go "somewhere" else would this take time and thus Jehovah is subject to time/space like us?
IMO, it is really sort of foolish to argue such matters. If God is timeless, then nothing he does takes time, or seems to take time (rendering "1000 years as a day" pretty much worthless). I think that's usually why JWs don't spend too much time (ahem) on this issue; it usually leads to a "fruitless" discussion and is really irrelevant to the basic message of "Who God Is" (not "What or Where God Is").
I do believe JWs have a fuzzy notion that God indeed is somehow bound by (or, perhaps better, has binded himself by) the laws of the universe and time. He waited for Abraham to maybe find 10 righteous men in the city. He didn't "know" that Adam and Eve would fall from grace. He will eventually (all in good "time") hook Gog by the jaws and drag him kicking and screaming to Armageddon (or is it the other way around?). The Bible presents God as a in-progress developing character endowed with a history (which starts with Genesis, BTW), feelings and emotions, a decision maker (due often to outside influences) and even inconsistency (how appropriate)! God is very human to JWs, except of course they gloss over the less-than-omniwhatever-godlike manifestations.
A JW would likely answer that God is not restricted by anything except himself, which basically amounts to saying nothing.
: How is the Holy Spirit viewed? If Jehovah is a unit/body/an amount of spirit that is somewhere then is the holy spirit another unit of this same spirit?
Unknown. It was a bad idea to compare the Holy Spirit to electricity, but that's what JWs do. Apparently the Holy Spirit, to JWs, only came into existence upon the creation of the heavens and the earth as a tool God used and uses. God never needed it before, and its purpose and function relates directly to earthly and spiritual things that didn't exist before they, um, existed.
JWs make fun of the personhood of the Holy Spirit by clamoring that "people can't be filled with a person" (e.g. Acts 2), but really
the trinitarian position is nicely balanced and covers all scriptural bases, unless of course you wish to start redefining terms.