Conventions are consensual fiction
moral innocence is not the same thing as sinlessness.
A confirmation of sorts to my thinking against dualism as it applies to man.
And a patient dealing with DM in places - a good example for me.
Jd
-----Original Message-----
From: Judy Taylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Sent: Thu, 4 Aug 2005 04:57:57 -0400
Subject: Re: [TruthTalk] Spirit
What did they teach you JD?
On Thu, 04 Aug 2005 01:07:49 -0400 [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Debbie's responces are great and informative.JD
-----Original Message-----
From: Debbie Sawczak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Wed, 3 Aug 2005 23:42:43 -0400
Subject: Re: [TruthTalk] Spirit
Debbie in blue.----- Original Message -----From: "David Miller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: <[email protected]>Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2005 4:11 PMSubject: Re: [TruthTalk] Spirit> Debbie wrote:
>> 1) Yes, I agree without hesitation that there
>> is such a thing as spirit. There are beings who
>> are not material.
>
> Good. You are not a Sadducee, nor are you sad, you see. Nor are you a pure
> scientist.What is a "pure" scientist? If it is what I think it is, nobody is a pure scientist.
>
> Debbie wrote:
>> I take no support for its existence from the passage in Revelation
>> 6, given that this is a vision containing plenty of symbolic imagery.
>
> So... interpret the imagery and what do you have?Did Abel's blood really cry out from the ground?> Debbie wrote:
>> As for God breathing into Adam at creation, this doesn't
>> prove anything about the separate existence of a spirit.
>
> Maybe not anything about separate existence, but it does indicate that the
> body requires something more than the physical mechanics to function.How so? Why couldn't it just mean he made Adam alive? Set the physical mechanics in motion? Caused him to start breathing, etc.? There is a difference between a nonliving dog and a living dog; wouldn't your argument require you to say that all the animals have spirits? If the physical mechanics are operating, the creature is alive. If they're not, it is dead.>
> Debbie wrote:
>> Nor do I think parables such as the one about Lazarus and
>> the rich man are good foundation for this sort of thing, as it
>> is likely that Jesus drew on familiar conventional ideas in
>> which to couch his main point, whether those ideas were
>> accurate or not.
>
Jesus would not draw upon something false to teach us.Conventions are consensual fiction, and using them to avoid distraction is not the same as falsehood. Of course he wouldn't say, "Hell is like this" if it weren't. But my claim is that he is not saying that.
> Debbie wrote:
>> And I think it is possible to read other biblical references to
>> a person's spirit without having to posit a distinct entity.
>
> The question isn't whether one HAS to posit a distinct entity called spirit,
> but whether or not such a view is true. We can try hard to explain away a
> great many things, but what is the most parsimonious understanding that we
> receive from the Scriptures?Well, of course that is what I mean by "having to" posit something. Let me say instead, then: You don't have to posit a distinct entity called a spirit in order to be parsimonious. In fact, it's conceptually more parsimonious, but less familiar and therefore verbally less parsimonious, to interpret without the distinct spirit-entity.
>
> Debbie wrote:
>> I do wonder about the activity of Christ between his death and
>> his resurrection, about which a little is said in Scripture, and
>> Moses and Elijah visible at the transifguration (though I can think
>> of different ways to understand this; the time/eternity thing enters
>> into it again), and some other things.
>
> Surely you understand the concept of Occam's razor, do you not? You are
> really stretching it on these cases you mention.How so? If it is true that time and eternity are not simply parallel continua (and it is true), then that must be accounted for if you're trying to link events between them.When a view starts
> becoming very complex in order to be preserved, it is likely that the view
> is incorrect.What if it is merely strange, and hard to describe in words?
>
> What about demons? I consider demons to be spirits without bodies. What
> about you? I see them as distinct from angels in that they lack a body
> whereas angels have a body. How do you view it?I believe demons and angels to be spirits. I don't know about them having bodies, or taking on bodies, or whatever. This is a sideline.
> Debbie wrote:
>> The idea that there IS a distinct thing called the spirit is not
>> altogether implausible to me, but if that is true, I don't think
>> the spirit is "extricable" from the rest of a living person in
>> any meaningful way; i.e., it is impossible to isolate things
>> done by the spirit.
>
> I don't have a whole lot of trouble doing that, and Paul seems to have no
> trouble in Romans 7.I think you are mixing the two oppositions I mention at the end.> Debbie wrote:
>> There are no "spiritual" vs "physical" acts;
>
> Sure there are. For example, eating is a physical act;"Whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God." Sure it's a physical act, but it's also as "spiritual" an act as praying; it's involved in our integral response to God as spiritual beings. Is giving a cup of cold water to someone a physical or a spiritual act?prayer is a
> spiritual act.Nothing happens in your brain when you pray?Worship is a spiritual act; lust is a physical act.Lust involves your whole being! and so does worship.
>
> Debbie wrote:
>> we can never somehow leave spirit or body out of any behaviour.
>
> Sometimes, in visions, the body is pretty much isolated.You mean because it's not moving?Sometimes, in
> carnal acts of wickedness, the spirit is left out.Left out? How can you think this?? If that were true, such sin would have no effect on our spiritual life, but the opposite is abundantly clear. It is precisely for this reason that a person who does all kinds of praying and Bible reading and worshipping and meditating and whatnot and regularly beats up his brother ("physical" act) cannot say, "Well, at least I'm spiritually healthy." If a person is habitually lustful, is that a physical problem, or a spiritual one? The question is nonsense. Tell me, in your view, can it be said that animals (presumably spiritless) commit acts of wickedness?
>
> Debbie wrote:
>> The body would not be a container for the spirit, and their
>> relationship wouldn't consist in merely "affecting" one another,
>> but of some more fundamental interdependence. The bodiless
>> state between death and the resurrection would then be so me
>> kind of aberration, de-struction--with the spirit no longer intact
>> either. (It's even possible that there are body and spirit, inseparable,
>> dying together--a sort of combination of the two views.) I guess
>> I have a hard time thinking of a human being as an assemblage of
>> different kinds of things, each having its own "life". A human is one
>> kind of thing, one life. (But then, you are familiar with my revulsion
>> for dualism generally.)
>
> There certainly is a degree of interdependence; hence, the need for the
> resurrection, but I think your view of separation is skewed much too far
> toward the Hebrew Sadducean viewpoint.Where they were wrong was in not believing in a resurrection. As for your view, it cannot be said to logically require the resurrection. Your hypothesized spirit can and does exist and function on its own. What does it need the body for? I remember an earlier discussion (in which Judy also participated) in which doing things in the world was not considered a necessary part of being human.You have bought into the Greek
> Aristolean viewpoint hook line and sinker (IMO).Hebrew or Greek now?This is the popular view
> of the new modern orthodoxy, but it really is a viewpoint pushed by the
> influence of science upon religionrather than an adherence to Scripture and
> the words of prophets and apostles.
I think it may be the result of attention to all kinds of information. It may well be a better understanding of Scripture. There are scientists who believe human beings have spirits and scientists who don't--you are a scientist, I thought; would you explain yourself by saying you believe in a separable spirit in spite of science? The point being, I guess, that all scientists take a "religious" position of one kind or another. You also believe the same as Plato and many other pagans both ancient and modern. How do you account for that? Does it say anything about your adherence to Scripture?> Debbie wrote:
>> 2) Your second question is part of the problem I have with the
>> "distinct spirit" view. As soon as you regard the body and spirit
>> as separate, you have the body being the direct product of sexual
>> reproduction, its features determined genetically, while the spirit
>> has to be snuck into the body at fertilization by God, who creates
>> it specially and directly.
>
> Not necessarily. Dualism does not necessitate that the spirit is "snuck
> into the body" either at fertilization or sometime afterward. Personally, I
> do not believe this happens at fertilization. Some of the church fathers
> viewed the sperm as containing a homunculus which contained the spirit and
> soul being passed on from Adam to the future descendants. In other words,
> the spirit and soul was viewed as being inherited from Adam. While I do not
> hold this viewpoint, I recognize others in hist ory have.Are you regarding this as a serious alternative? Why do you not hold this view, I wonder? Either it isn't quite dualistic enough in principle, suggesting ontological unity in spite of itself by originating body and spirit together (this unity understood maybe in a similar way to sacramentality?), or it doesn't make sense to you scientifically. In any case if you cannot defend the view you describe above, it is not an option for you. In the view you find open to you, the different parts of an individual human come from two different sources and are assembled at some point--it doesn't matter which point--and this is just so counterintuitive to me (cf your appeal to instinct elsewhere). (Sorry about the "snuck", BTW. That was used for connotative load, not fair.)Debbie wrote:
>> That means you have a sinless, uncorrupted, spirit thwarted
>> by a sinful, corrupt, diseased body, with each person's spirit
>> undergoing its own individual Fall (or maybe resisting it in
>> some cases?);
>
> Not its own individual fall, because the influence of the flesh creates a
> state of ignorance which makes the transgression different.What?Understanding
> the spirit and its position in man does not mean that the spirit is
> completely independent. Sometimes I feel like I'm trying to describe the
> function of an organ in the body like the brain to someone, and then they
> counter that such is ridiculous because nobody has ever removed a brain from
> a person and watched it function on its own independently from the body.In this example the brain and the rest of the body are the same kind of thing; the brain is a "subset" of bodily material, if you will. You are not positing the spirit as a part of the body. You are positing it as a thing parallel to the body, of an entirely different order, which (if I understand earlier parts of your post properly) CAN and DOES in fact function independently of the body, and vice versa--which is only to be expected of them, since matter and spirit are mutually exclusive categories. It is really a mere artifact of assembly that they are hanging out together at all, in this view; their being together is incidental, but now that they're together, sure, they have some interaction. That's your view. The interdependence I am talking about would be much more intrinsic, so that IF I can make a separation at all it is only conceptual. Almost like the lines and angles of a triangle. (BAD analogy in one respect, I know, because that is only a logical interdepen dence, but it's the best I can do on short notice; take it as an illustration of degree rather than quality of interdependence. Note that the total-interdependence thing was my tentative concession to a spirit+body view; perhaps it is akin to the version you attribute to the church fathers above. But I think maybe it doesn't really make sense, in which case there would never be a good analogy.)>
> Debbie wrote:
>> I don't believe that reflects reality. If I take the view outlined
>> in the first two paragraphs of (1) above, however, it obviates
>> question (2).
>
> Sure, it obviates the question, but it looks like a cop-out to me. It is
> like the Creationist who hollers, "God's word says God created it, so there
> is nothing concerning evolution that is worth talking about."
> Anti-researchers use this kind of tactic all the time. People ask why,
> someone says, "God did it that way, end of story." Eliminating questions
> does not enhance understanding.Good grief, David! I'm not saying I choose the view because it obviates the question, or that its obviation of the question is a point in its favour! I'm just saying, "Sorry, but I can't answer this question under that view because it becomes a non-question."Hmm, though...this example of yours kind of dampens your other comments about science above.
>
> Concerning the idea that this model does not reflect reality: I disagree.
> For example, people have a natural understanding of infants being in an
> innocent state. The concept of a flesh inherited that is evil in close
> contact with a spirit which originally is not evil helps explain this very
> well.The natural understanding is that the bodies of infants are evil? But in any case moral innocence is not the same thing as sinlessness.> Debbie wrote:
>> 3) Similarly with this question. If I don't think in terms of two distinct
>> entities of body and spirit, I can say that we genetically inherit from
>> our parents all kinds of traits manifesting themselves in the way we
>> relate to God. (And that's not to say that all traits are unalterable,
>> or that we have no choice or responsibility when it comes to what
>> to cultivate, or that God can't heal all manner of conditions.) If you
>> regard body and spirit as distinct entities, I don't see how you can
>> have spirit-traits (whatever those are) inherited via physical genes.
>
> It certainly seems possible to me, but my instincts tell me this would not
> be the caseTo me your two clauses above are contradictory in this context. I think you do not believe it because it doesn't make sense or fudges the dualism of spirit and matter. (I.e., for similar reasons as the scenario in 2.)> Debbie wrote:
>> Of course, we also acquire all kinds of attitudes and behaviours
>> from our parents (and others) by learning, and there continues
>> to be debate about what is inherited and what is learned.
>> We are formed as well, cumulatively, by our tiniest experiences
>> and choices. I don't think it's necessary to posit a spirit in order
>> to explain the differences between twins.
>
> I strongly disagree about the twin issue. I am an identical twin myself, so
> this is an area of special interest to me. In comparison to fraternal
> twins, identical twins should be much more alike "spiritually" if their
> spirits were determined by genetic inheritance.Don't you see that this statement is begging the question; it assumes the existence of a spirit as distinct from body. If there is no such entity, there is nothing to explain. Of course they are "spiritually" different, for all the reasons I've given. I''m not a genetic determinist.
>
> Debbie wrote:
>> I am keeping this file (along with others!) wide open. Both views
>> leave certain things without satisfactory explanation--at least so far.
>
> I think this is only because you have been indoctrinated with a superficial
> holistic model. Without being more reductionistic in your approach, there
> will always remain many unanswered questions for you.Tautology, with a loaded word or two ("indoctrinated") thrown in to look like actual content. What you are saying is, "If you agreed with me, the answers that work for me would work for you." (How is one view more or less superficial than the other, BTW? I think that word must have just been thrown in for rhetorical purposes too.)>
Debbie wrote:
> I grew up with the spirit+body view and it affects the way
> I understand a lot of things; departing from that understanding
> entails a fair bit of reintegrating, and that takes some study and
> prayer and "percolation time". But that shouldn't and doesn't put
> me off. I would like to repeat here what someone else said not
> long ago on TT (Bill, I think), that quite often when we contrast
> simple with complicated, we are really only contrasting familiar
> with unfamiliar--like the grammar of our mother tongue with that
> of another language.
Sometimes, this is true, because a new model requires a different set of
assumptions. Sometimes we only alter a few of the assumptions and do not
realize that we are not really considering the full alternative.I'm not sure how you are applying this, but there is something in what you say. Interestingly, what I am actually doing right now is considering the full alternative rather than trying to hold assumptions simultaneously from two different models. Although all the traditions that contributed a thread to my upbringing explicitly espoused a dualistic model on this point of the constitution of a human being, none of them took a dualistic approach in practice, and I think that reflects their (and my) more basic implicit belief. Nobody ever gave me to believe that there were spiritual and nonspiritual realms of life, or sacred and secular. Nor did anybody set faith and reason side by side in compartments, or religion and science. The explicit body+spirit model has sort of floated on the surface unconnected to the rest (talk of superficial!). But there are details of eschatology and the interpretation of specific Scriptures that are attached to it, and these are what I have to re-examine.> Debbie wrote:
>> I should add that "spiritual" is used in opposition to both "physical"
>> and "carnal" (or "natural", "unspiritual", or various other terms).
>> These oppositions shouldn't be mixed up. Some TTers who shall
>> remain nameless mix them up fairly often. It doesn't help that some
>> Englishes use "flesh" for the counterpart of "spirit" in both oppositions.
>
> I'm not sure what you just said,I know--I have seen you mix them up! But although your dualism conduces to this confusion, it doesn't entail it. "Carnal" in opposition to "spiritual" means "not brought into submission to Christ" or "not led by the Holy Spirit" (other periphrases are also possible; in some theologies, it would mean "unregenerate" or "characteristic of the unregenerate", for example), and can apply to any aspect of our being. It is not the same as "physical" (= to do with flesh and blood or other matter; corporeal).> Debbie wrote:
>> P.S.: Note that, in any case, I don't believe in three distinct entities
>> per person! (I hope there would be a good "binding agent" for the
>> soul and spirit after death!) Occam would turn over in his grave.
>> Not that anybody here cares about that.
>
> What do you mean by "distinct entities"? Concerning the physical body, are
> the kidneys, heart, and lungs distinct entities?I'm sorry, that was too shorthand. I meant the body, soul, and spirit, each of an entirely different order and separable one from the other. Yes, the kidneys, heart, and lungs are distinct and separable entities within the body; all are material, corporeal, substantively similar. The relation of body parts to one another and to the whole body is not analogous to the relations posited for body, soul, and spirit.Please note that the interlinear approach is a concession too. As it proliferates in multiple rounds, the slices become smaller and smaller, and thinking becomes progressively more atomistic. I know this doesn't really bother you, since you operate only with parts anyway, but I find it hard to keep track. It also makes for very long posts! I won't pursue it for long.Debbie
