Can we trust the Spirit?

It would seem that we have a conundrum.  The Holy Spirit seems to be speaking with forked tongue.  He seems to be saying one thing to some and something else to others.  That is the problem between a progressive and liberal Christianity which believes that God is always doing new things and forgetting about the old and a conserving catholic Christianity which believes that God's Word endures forever.  You cannot have both.  That is the dilemma we find ourselves in today.  We do have both.  We have those on one side who insist that the Holy Spirit is telling us to talk more about climate change and liberating sexual desire and living true to your feelings than it is about calling us to repentance, forgiving our sins, and keeping us to everlasting life.  

This is precisely the problem that Luther and the Reformers found in the sixteenth century.  When the Roman Catholic Church presumes that it owns Scripture and can add to it or change what it means because of a papacy or teaching magisterium that is above Scripture, it is really no different than Protestantism deciding that reason or culture is above what Scripture says.  No matter how much it is ridiculed by liberals or Romans, sola Scriptura is the only real answer.  No, not a naked Scripture ripped out of its believing community and living tradition but a norming voice for today and for all times -- that is what we need.

Novelty has become what drives liberal and progressive voices.  It does not matter if it never was believed or heard that way before, it is how we hear it today and so that is all that matters.  Novelty also becomes those who can invent things not found in Scripture or attested to within the universal Church and her living tradition down through the ages.  Either the Spirit is unreliable or a liar OR the Spirit has already given us something to norm what we believe, teach, and confess.  It seems to me that this is pretty much what this sola is all about.

Some Roman Catholic wags have suggested that the Holy Spirit is telling the more liberal German part of that body things different not simply from the past but also from what the Spirit is telling other parts of that same church body.  If it were not so sad, you might laugh.  We should not be laughing.  This is the basic dilemma of Christendom today and it is occasioned by our distance from Scripture and the universal tradition of the Church.  Who can say who is right and who is wrong unless the Holy Spirit has also provided a means test for such things?  And what is that means test -- a person, a council, a teaching magisgerium?  Or, could it be the Word of the Lord which, by its own statement, endures forever the same.  What think ye?