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What a perfect, relevant, and
thorough example! Thank you, Bill.
Debbie
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 9:19
PM
Subject: Re: [Bulk] Re: [Bulk] Re:
[TruthTalk] Saved - Salvation
It says "soul" it means "soul" that is not interpreting.
For examples of intrepreting see some of the "better" posters on TT
or the million dollar question:
Which is a private interpretation?
Soul = Soul
Soul= when we talk of souls we are talking
about whole persons: body, mind and spirit.
The Hebrew word sometimes translated
into English as "soul" (when it was not being translated into any of
twenty-six other possible variations), is nephesh. The following is a
sampling of OT verses with nephesh present in them. Do me a favor and
try to identify this word in each verse. If when you are finished, you still
want to argue, I guess we can, -- but my position will be that
nephesh in the Hebrew is a workhorse word which was used in numerous
ways to speak not just about an ambiguously wispy "soul" but of whole
persons.
Bill
KJV Exodus 21:30 If there be laid on him a sum of money, then he
shall give for the ransom of his life whatsoever is laid upon him.
KJV Deuteronomy 18:6 And if a Levite come from any of thy gates
out of all Israel, where he sojourned, and come with all the desire of his
mind unto the place which the LORD shall choose;
KJV Deuteronomy 24:15 At his day thou shalt give him his
hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and
setteth his heart upon it: lest he cry against thee unto the LORD, and it be
sin unto thee.
KJV Judges 5:18 Zebulun and Naphtali were a people
that jeoparded their lives unto the death in the high places of the
field.
KJV Job 2:6 And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, he is
in thine hand; but save his life.
JV Job 18:4 He teareth himself in his anger: shall the earth be
forsaken for thee? and shall the rock be removed out of his place?
JV Job 32:2 Then was kindled the wrath of Elihu the son of
Barachel the Buzite, of the kindred of Ram: against Job was his wrath kindled,
because he justified himself rather than God.
KJV Job 41:21 His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out
of his mouth.
KJV Psalm 105:18 Whose feet they hurt with fetters: he was laid
in iron:
JV Proverbs 6:16 These six things doth the LORD hate:
yea, seven are an abomination unto him:
KJV Proverbs 14:10 The heart knoweth his own bitterness; and a
stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy.
KJV Isaiah 53:10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him
to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see
his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the
LORD shall prosper in his hand.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 6:45
AM
Subject: Re: [Bulk] Re: [Bulk] Re:
[TruthTalk] Saved - Salvation
It says "soul" it means "soul" that is not interpreting.
For examples of intrepreting see some of the "better" posters on
TT
or the million dollar question:
Which is a private interpretation?
Soul = Soul
Soul= when we talk of souls we are talking
about whole persons: body, mind and spirit.
Lance Muir <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
As you, and perhaps others interpret
Scripture, vis a vis the 'soul' you are COMPLETELY GREEK IN YOUR
UNDERSTANDING. Can I get an AMEN?
----- Original Message -----
Sent: April 20, 2005 08:33
Subject: [Bulk] Re: [Bulk] Re:
[TruthTalk] Saved - Salvation
Blind guides. This must be
where 'G' gets his inspiration also as Jeeves makes mention of all the
same Geeks - oophs!
I mean Greeks. Studying the physical
brain to try and find the soul is on the same level as getting
on Sputnik and flying out into space expecting to see God...
and excuse me - The idea of an immortal soul arises from Genesis 2:7
which is NOT Greek thought... Then he wades through the
hodgepodge called tradition (that makes God's Word of no effect) and
quotes what Origen thought (that is the guy who castrated himself
because he didn't understand that the power emanating from the cross
could free him from lust) and mixes it with a little Plato and
Augustine. This may be where Jeeves gets his wisdom but he can have
it. Jeeves doesn't know his Bible. Soul does not mean
body, mind, and spirit
just becaue the oldtimers used to call
people souls. Soul means soul. Mind means mind. and
spirit means spirit. Spirit and soul can be divided by God's
Word... and both are different from the physical body.
What a waste of time that could be redeemed by
spending it in the presence and counsel of God.
jt
(1) Beliefs - Whatever happened to the soul? (by Malcolm
Jeeves)
First, I am suggesting that statements about the physical nature of
human beings made from the
perspective of biology or neuroscience refer to
exactly the same entity as statements made about the soulish or
spiritual nature of persons from the point review of theology or
religious traditions. This disavows the suggestion that human science
speaks about a physical being whilst theology and religion speak about a
non-material essence or soul. Perhaps a better way of saying this is
that when we talk of souls
we are talking about whole persons: body, mind and spirit. One
might say "we are souls, we don't have souls".
Such a view contrasts sharply with views of soul and body in, for
example, Socrates discourse on death. He wrote "Does not death mean that
the body comes to exist by itself, separated from the soul, and that the
soul exists by herself, separated from the body? What is death but
that?� (Socrates, Plato's Phaedo, Fourth century BC).
The idea of an
immortal soul arises not from the Bible but from Greek
thought. In the end, Plato records
that Socrates lived out his own teaching by drinking the poison hemlock
in the serene conviction that his immortal soul would now find release
from its bodily prison. For Socrates and Plato, bodily death was a
welcome liberation. Indeed, it was actually not dying.
In the centuries after Christ, theologians combined this Greek doctrine of the immortal soul with
biblical images of human nature. When
Origen, a third century platonic
philosopher, became the father of theology, he built into Christian
doctrine Plato's idea of the soul. In the early
fifth century, Augustine thought
Plato to be the most bright in all of philosophy. And in the sixteenth
century, John Calvin, who was heavily influenced by both Plato and
Augustine, declared that Plato alone "rightly affirmed" the immortal
soul that "lies hidden in man separate from body".
Second, whilst scriptural teachings about the image of God do not, by their
nature address directly any dualism-physicalism distinction, there is at
the same time nothing in their teachings that necessitates belief in an ontologically distinct soul. What
is clear from Scripture is that the image of God is primarily
relational.
That is, it implies a capacity to enter into a covenant relationship
with God and with other humans. Humans are considered unique from the
rest of God's creation primarily due to their capacity for covenant
relationships.
Third, any ideas we have about the nature of persons ultimately
affect the way we treat one another. What we understand about human
nature impacts on our ethics. Are there any consequences of the views I
am putting forward which might start us on a slippery slope of ethical
or moral decline? In the past, dualist views have certainly sustained a
sense of caution about what can appropriately be done to besouled bodies
of other individuals. If an immmortal soul is present, doesn't this
force one to continue to honour and love the seriously mentally
defective or demented? The medical ethicist Stephen Post, whilst
recognizing that in the past dualism has played a protective role within
ethical systems, suggests that the fundamental biblical motive for the
care of those who have little ability to reciprocate is not to be found
in a dualist consideration of the soul of the other person. Rather, he
argues, it emerges from the ethos of bestowed love and from the
narratives of Jesus amongst the most vulnerable. Thus a narrative of
love and consideration to helpless, dying or deficient persons is
sufficient motive, and perhaps a more purely biblical motive, than the
consideration of a separate substantial soul.
(2) Practices-The Mind-Brain link and the Christian Life
By emphasising, in the way that I have, the unity of the human
person, I am, by implication, suggesting that the spiritual dimension to a person's life is no more immune to changes in the brain than other aspects
of mental life. Such a suggestion, at times, seems to surprise and
trouble, some Christian people. I do not believe that it should and may
I now give you three brief examples to illustrate why I think this is
the case,
There are a number of well documented cases of what happens to devout
Christians when they develop Alzheimer's disease. The psychologist
professor Glenn Weaver documents the spiritual pilgrimage of a devout
Christian lady who after a life of regular attendance at church services
where she was well known as a gentle Christian, with a deep concern for
her fellow Christians , she began
to develop the tell tale symptoms of increasing forgetfulness. She
struggled with the problem in the way that many people do but she was
fighting a losing battle. She found that she
could no longer remember the names of those she wanted to pray for and
her letters became verbose and
lost much of their content. This in turn made
her increasingly anxious; and her anxiety led onto depression and the
classical textbook description of developing Alzheimer's disease became
evident.
Glenn Weaver, however, points out that in her case there was much
more to her experience than the usual textbook account. She was deeply troubled about her relationship
with God. She felt she was personally responsible for falling away from
her former close walk with God ,and that she was deserting her friends
through her friendship and prayers. She
concluded that because of her lack of faith God was setting her aside
because she was no longer fit for his service.
As she continued she became more confused and began to lose control
of her natural processes and away from the security provided by her home
and husband, she would wander about violating the commands of her nurses
and then describing bizarre sexual disturbances in an explicit way.
She came to believe she'd
committed sins that provoked God's wrath and the continued deterioration
of her condition and the fact that the doctors could not help her
confirmed her in her beliefs. Eventually she
lost all interest in her daily devotions and prayer. The main point here
is quite simple; with neural
changes there are psychological consequences and
these in turn affect spiritual awareness. Such is the unity of the human
person.
My second example is the attempts to explore the association of
some forms of religiosity and the
occurrence of mystical experiences with their possible neural
substrates, an attempt which has continued from
time to time over the last thirty years. Many who write on the topic
begin with the apostle Paul's Damascus Road experience and then quickly
move on to talk about the religiosity of the typical epileptic patient, something which has been recognised since at least 1838 by
Esquirol.
The debate will continue as more evidence becomes available. However,
as one recent study by David Tucker and his associates has reported,
"the data indicate that hyper-religiosity is not a consistent interictal
trait of individuals with temporal lobe epilepsy. Further, although
hyper-religiosity and temporal lobe epilepsy may co-occur in a few
individuals, it does not appear to be a direct causal relationship
between repeated seizure discharge in the temporal lobes and
hyper-religiosity."
Third, I suggest that a return to a more holistic view of the human
person, prompted in part by recent developments in neuroscience has
helpful implications, I believe, for understanding the spiritual
distresses that are well documented in the experiences of Christian
leaders and from which we all, from time to time, suffer . It means that the spiritual dimension to our personality is
not immune to the changes in our biological and neural substrates.
I have already given you one example of this in the specific instance of
Altzheimers disease.
The psychiatrist Gaius Davies has documented how some of the
outstanding men and women of God whom all acknowledge have been greatly
used by him are also found on close study often to be those who have
endured significant swings in the immediacy of their felt awareness of
the presence and power of God. Davies shows how in the case of some of
these people it is possible for us, with the benefit of hindsight, and
informed by the advances in psychiatry at the end of the 20th-century,
to be fairly sure that some of their experiences were pathological in
the sense that today we would classify them in accepted categories of
psychological illness.
Some were obsessive compulsive, some were manic depressive, some
struggled with specific phobias, and so on. Among those studied by Gaius
Davies were John Bunyan and Amy Carmichael, William Cowper, CS Lewis,
Martin Luther, Gerard Manley Hopkins and J. B. Phillips . The relevance of his studies to us today is that there are
those amongst them whose illness probably had a significant biological
and biochemical etiology and these would include Luther, Cowper, Shaftesbury and Phillips. Luther was
probably an obsessive compulsive/depressive; Cowper suffered six serious
depressive breakdowns and made several suicide attempts; Shaftesbury was
probably a manic/depressive suffering from a bi-polar affective disorder
(he reported how his moods swung from �wild joy� to �cruel despondency�.
Phillips was probably an obsessive-compulsive.
Despite all these things they triumphed to our lasting benefit. We do
indeed �have this treasure in earthen vessels�.
Those of you, who like me enjoyed the fascinating BBC television series by Susan Greenfield
on the brain, may remember that in her first
lecture she made several references to the religious or spiritual dimension to a person's life
and personality. It is interesting that
following her presentation there were a number of letters to the press
complaining that she was attacking religion and the spiritual dimension
to life.
While we can understand the sensitivity, for some people, of singling
out religion for reference in this way, a little thought would quickly
indicate that it was unjustified. To be more specific, Susan Greenfield
could as easily have indicated that in due time, using appropriate brain
imaging techniques, we may be able to say a little more about
which systems in the brain are
most active when she is talking about brains and
their properties.
No one, I think, would have then gone on to argue that because we may
understand something of brain mechanisms underlying her fascinating
presentations, therefore, we could give no validity to the brain story
that she was telling us. In a
word, understanding something about the brain mechanisms underlying
mental life tells us nothing, one way or the other about the truth
claims of the statements being made at the time.
To be more specific because this is an important point, she could as
easily showed us a picture of Einstein's brain drawing attention
to some of its unusual features, but this would have told us nothing at all, one way or the
other about the truth of his theories. What I
believe is much more relevant is that by welcoming every new bit of information about the neural
substrates of spirituality, should give us
insights which will enable us to understand ourselves better, but more
importantly will enable us to show more sympathy and compassion to those
who may be going through what in past centuries used to be called
" the dark night of the
soul".
His most recent book is 'From Cells to
Souls - and Beyond' (editor) with an essay by Alan Torrance entitled
'What is a Person?' It addresses the important
issue of the mind/brain as well as the
rampant dualism and gnosticism one sees in society at large,
the believing community and, on TT.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: April 19, 2005
21:49
Subject: [Bulk] Re: [TruthTalk]
Saved - Salvation
"Portraits of Human
Nature: Scientific & Theological" by Malcolm Jeeves.
Anyway, I think that is what you are talking about. I was
thinking I had sent one of his books home with you. Is that
right?
Bill
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2005
6:56 AM
Subject: Re: [TruthTalk]
Saved - Salvation
Bill ,
what was the title and author of that CD from the pyschiatrist we
listened to some on the trip to Miss?
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