God's Creation of Souls

Man, Sin, & Salvation
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jriccitelli
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Re: God's Creation of Souls

Post by jriccitelli » Sun Feb 26, 2012 1:02 pm

These are great questions to pose to your pastor on Sunday morning, not.

Quickly I might say that although Lazarus, Abraham, David and Jesus' bodies lay in a tomb or grave, their spirit was alive with God. To the living on earth all we have of the dead is their dead bodies, but with God their spirit lives. To everyone on earth a dead person 'appears' dead, and the body of a person is still the person's body, dead or not.
Jesus called Lazarus' spirit back to Lazarus' body. Sleeping must refer to the body not the spirit, and I suspect we are not fully able to be functional without our bodies. So when we are raised it may mean now we can interact with the atomic world instead of only with the spiritual world (in Christ, Abrahams bosom, or other).

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jeremiah
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Re: God's Creation of Souls

Post by jeremiah » Sun Feb 26, 2012 1:25 pm

good morning jr,

i had hoped i made it clear in my recent responses that i would never deny the fact that contrasts are indeed made between what is called body and what is called spirit in scripture.(nor disagree with them) i am growing tired of having to explain beyond the straw men you keep erecting. its like if a pre trib dispensationalist tells an amillenialist there is no way the rapture can occur at the end of the tribulation right before jesus comes back. because the bible 'says' God has not appointed us to wrath. the amillenialist sees the words rapture and tribulation through differing frameworks, the pre tribber can't concieve of another possible reverently exegetical definition of the word tribulation. im in no way implying the theological superiority of either these two views, just illustrating the fact that among the views God fearing and loving christians hold, they maintain different definitions and understandings for the same words.

regarding rich "wanting his thread back", if i am mistaken i'm sorry, but i thought this was an open discussion forum. someone posts a question or topic and as a community we respectfully discuss it, if we wish to engage the topic. i deleted my first response to your post, because i thought i was being disrespectful to you as a brother. i would ask, are you interested in discussing this on a level charitable plane? to this point i see you (albeit understandably) gently mocking what you think i believe(god of the sleeping), then in another breath saying the existence of a soul as you take for granted, cannot be dogmatically established in scripture. and finally giving yet another caricature of what you think to be the only possible logical end regarding paul's method of contrasting body and spirit. i would hope that we can ask each other...what then do you think or believe about this passage or that. instead of the...are you going to tell me then...model we're both engaging in.

grace and peace...
Last edited by jeremiah on Sun Feb 26, 2012 10:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: God's Creation of Souls

Post by jriccitelli » Sun Feb 26, 2012 2:28 pm

I was joking about Rich and his thread. I am sorry if it appears as mocking I am just trying to reduce the position to the simplest terms to understand it, I used the same words as the verse in question, and inserted the words to see if the position makes sense. I do this all the time in my own thinking as a form of deduction (Like in math you replace a quotient with others to see if it works) to discern what makes sense.

I never even engage in dispensationalist and amillenialist discussions because I do not see enough resolution or profit from the discussion. This topic involves our hope and life and I have found the soul/body topic beneficial to evangelism.

These are great questions to pose to your pastor on Sunday morning, not.
Quickly I might say that although Lazarus, Abraham, David and Jesus' bodies lay in a tomb or grave, their spirit was alive with God. To the living on earth all we have of the dead is their dead bodies, but with God their spirit lives. To everyone on earth a dead person 'appears' dead, and the body of a person is still the person's body, dead or not.
Jesus called Lazarus' spirit back to Lazarus' body. Sleeping must refer to the body not the spirit, and I suspect we are not fully able to be functional without our bodies. So when we are raised it may mean now we can interact with the atomic world instead of only with the spiritual world (in Christ, Abrahams bosom, the third heaven, or other).
I think referring to the body as sleeping is a polite way of referring to the dead body and the living soul, and a great explanation of death, because the body is 'as' dead but the spirit is fully alive in sleep, yet the spirit does not (usually) communicate with the living.

"We are not told explicitly that heaven is where we go when we die", but we are told explicitly by Jesus "Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise", and of course (whether or not Jesus quotes Jewish lore) 'the poor man who died and was carried away by the angels to Abraham's bosom', so we may only have these two explicit verses but never the less how can you disagree with these verses?

Certainly our reunion with a body of our own is everyone's concern, as many are rightly disturbed about being a spirit without a body. God does want us to be reassured that our spirit will indeed have a body again, eventually at the resurrection, as that is what we are used to, and I think a body is necessary to fully interact with creation and others.

I agree with Romans 8; However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.10 If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness.11 But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. (Romans 8:9-13)

I am alive in Christ, but I am also dead. I am dead to the body, at least I should consider myself dead to the flesh, because the outward man is decaying. We have considered our flesh crucified with Christ, so my body is already dead;
If by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. (8:13)

Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin;7 for he who has died is freed from sin.8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him.10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.11 Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts,13 and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead (Romans 6:4-14)

Do you believe you have died with Christ?
Yet your body is not asleep. (Except during those long sermons). Amen,

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Paidion
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Re: God's Creation of Souls

Post by Paidion » Sun Feb 26, 2012 2:34 pm

JR, no one, absolutely no one, claims that "the body and the soul (the self)" are the same substance.

and the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground,... (Gen 2:7a NKJV)

This "man" which The LORD (Yahweh) created was only a body. It has no life in it. It was a complete body, but lacked one thing — life. The body was not a self. The body was not a soul. The body did not contain a soul. It was just a body, just as lifeless as any body we see to day after the person dies.

...and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ... (Gen 2:7b NKJV)

What the body lacked was "the breath of life". This word translated as "breath" is also translated as "spirit". The spirit of life which God breathed into the body was not a "soul". It was not a conscious entity. It was life itself. When a person dies that "breath" or spirit goes back to the God who gave it. It is not a person. It does not have consciousness. It is life itself which comes from God.

...and man became a living being.(Gen 2:7c NKJV

The Hebrew word "nephesh" is translated for "being" in the New King James Version. The authorized version translates it as "soul".

If your concept of "soul" is correct, we would expect 7c to read "and man received a living soul." But that is not the case. He didn't receive a soul from God, rather he became a soul after God breathed life into him.

It is not the case that body = soul as you think we are saying. Rather the following holds:

body + spirit = soul

Somehow when God's breath is added to the body, a new entity is formed, a "living being", or "living soul" or "living self." Animals too, became living beings when God put life into them.

We could suggest a crude analogy with a lamp. A light bulb would be analogous to Adam's body which God created. Causing electricity to flow into the bulb by flipping a switch would be analogous to God breathing life into Adam. The fully functioning lamp is analagous to Adam existing a living being (or living "soul")

At death, the following equation applies:

soul—spirit = body

When a person dies, the breath of life (or spirit of life) goes out of him and goes back to God. This life has no consciousness; it is simply life itself. It is not the soul. The body that remains is not the soul. So where is the soul at death? It no longer exists! For the spirit of life has been removed from the person.

Flipping a switch can remove the flow of electricity through a light bulb. When you flip that switch, you no longer have a functioning lamp. You are left with a mere light bulb.

I recall attending two funerals in the same day.

In the first funeral, when I heard the words, "Mr. H. will live again!" my heart leapt. Those words resonated with the fond expectation which I hold concerning the resurrection.

In the second funeral, I heard the words, "Mrs. K. did not die. She simply walked through a door." Somehow those words lacked reality. They seemed more like a fairy tale.
Last edited by Paidion on Sun Feb 26, 2012 2:55 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: God's Creation of Souls

Post by Paidion » Sun Feb 26, 2012 2:49 pm

JR wrote:"We are not told explicitly that heaven is where we go when we die", but we are told explicitly by Jesus "Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise"


Are you certain that He said that, JR? Are you quite sure He did not say, "Truly I tell you today, you will be with Me in Paradise"?

There are no commas in the Greek which was written prior to 300 A.D. Not only were there no punctuation marks such as commas, periods, and question marks, but there were not even spaces between words, and all letters were upper case. (There were overstrokes which were placed above the first and last letters of some words, omitting the letters between. These were used as abbreviations for particular words).

Now some people say it wouldn't make sense if we placed the comma in an English translation after the word "today." But is that really true? Don't we speak similarly today for emphasis? We may not have heard anyone say, "I'm telling you today, ..." but I'm sure we've all heard people say, "I'm telling you right now, ..." Today/right now — not much difference.
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Re: God's Creation of Souls

Post by jeremiah » Sun Feb 26, 2012 3:33 pm

hey what's up jr,

thanks man,for clearing that up. i am sorry i mistook your words...

it is truly grace and peace, praise God...
Also unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy: for thou renderest to every man according to his work.

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Re: God's Creation of Souls

Post by jeremiah » Mon Feb 27, 2012 12:08 am

hello jr,

i'm surprised you would ask(*edit: on second thought, i'm sorry. it was an honest question to someone you don't know) if i believe that i have died with Christ. of course i do, do you think when you read romans 6 that paul is not using those terms abstractly? i understand paul to be speaking figuratively until i come to verse nine. paul and jesus only use the metaphor of sleep when speaking of our physical death. me having died with Christ in the sense that paul is using here is not the same thing being one of the "dead in Christ".

i think you misunderstood my point with PTdispensationalist/amillennialist. it was an illustration, i could have used ECT/UR/CI and the point would have been the same.
jriccitelli wrote:"We are not told explicitly that heaven is where we go when we die", but we are told explicitly by Jesus "Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise", and of course (whether or not Jesus quotes Jewish lore) 'the poor man who died and was carried away by the angels to Abraham's bosom', so we may only have these two explicit verses but never the less how can you disagree with these verses?
i don't disagree with them. i'm surprised you would use luke 16, did i get you wrong, aren't you a conditionalist? if it's not a parable by which jesus reverses the story of the great teacher of the law than that would militate against your position on hell, wouldn't it? i have a defense for your objection, but i would like to know how you reconcile the parable of lazarus and the rich man, your view of hell, and your view of the nature of the human person first.

i think paidion's grammatical argument regarding the thief on the cross is perfectly valid. but since many tend to scoff when first seeing it, on the other hand: plainly i think, if jesus' words were " truly i say to you, today" then this is the most pastoral encouragement of hope jesus could of given the thief on the cross. as far as i can tell, if when we die, we truly "sleep" until awakened at the last day then the interim of this would seem instantaneous. so if the thief on the cross hears jesus' words, closes his eyes, and breaths his last.(and that breath/spirit returns to God who gave it) he is then dead in Christ. the next thing he knows, he's awakened by the last trump. he finds himself in paradise with jesus standing there in sight. if this thief was to somehow find out that five thousand years had passed since he closed his eyes, do you think he would ask jesus, " you told me Today not thousands of years from now, whats up?"

as a counter challenge, would you tell me why you think you're safe in assuming that paradise is synonymous with heaven?

grace and peace...
Also unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy: for thou renderest to every man according to his work.

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Re: God's Creation of Souls

Post by jriccitelli » Wed Feb 29, 2012 2:01 am

Jeremiah I totally concurred with your point about word definitions, but I launched into my rant about Disp/Amil. Without letting you know I appreciated your illustration, my bad.
And I asked a question, knowing you would affirm that you believe you have died with Christ.
Sincerely I do not know where my conditionalist leanings would conflict with Luke 16?
('They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them')
I do not think of paradise as our permanent abode, but a temporary place we go to before God makes the new earth. Although the bible uses the term third heaven in places (Paul), I am sure it always refers to the temporary abode. That is what I meant when I referred to Abrahams bosom.
I also understand that we 'could' sleep and then awaken as if no time had passed, but I am posing the arguments to why I no longer consider that view, as 'completely' in agreement with a few other passages and doctrines.

You asked me if I thought Paul spoke in abstract terms.
Many of terms that Paul uses are abstract, as many biblical terms are, but they represent very real things and events. These terms help us understand real things that will take place, and things that are taking place, and what has taken place. Death will happen to our body but I do not think it happens to the spirit. Some will go unto eternal life, and some unto the second death, whatever that is.
We do not literally eat his body or drink his blood, but there is a very real occurrence in ourselves when we believe and partake of his body. There is a real sense (as in; it really does happen) of becoming one with Him, a real sense of being born-again, and a real sense of being sanctified and being conformed to His image, we can 'not see' it so it is 'abstract' but it is non the less 'real'. We have died, and we are alive.
And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit.
(Romans 8:23)
Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge. (2 Corinthians 5:5)
So if we have the Holy Spirit with us now, where does the Holy Spirit go when we die?

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Re: God's Creation of Souls

Post by darinhouston » Wed Feb 29, 2012 8:24 am

I tend do think that from the point of view of our consciousness, it is right away -- that doesn't mean it is temporally the same moment from the perspective of those alive on earth. But, either way you look at it, I don't think it requires actually passage of time here on earth in a "sleep" mode. I don't think time and space and cause and effect have the same meaning outside the constraints of this physical reality. We are constrained in 4 dimensions presently. I do not believe "heaven" or the spiritual realms are bound to this time-space continuum or the physical or temporal rules which govern it. I think it's perfectly reasonable that we might all be raised at the same "moment" from the awareness of those still alive (or some indeterminate temporal moment between "raisings." Beyond that, and the freedom it gives me not to worry about it, I'm not sure I can elaborate further.

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Re: God's Creation of Souls

Post by jeremiah » Wed Feb 29, 2012 4:15 pm

jr,
man this humble pie is bittersweet. i'm constantly encouraging people of the necessity to charitably interpret people's words on the internet because it's all to easy to mistakenly interpolate tone or intention into them. and once again i am the pot calling the kettle black. :) while i don't imagine you and i are coming any closer to agreement on this question, i do hope it's been a mutual harvest in understanding what makes the other tick (pun intended).

regarding where the holy spirit goes when we die. if physicalism is true, this question doesn't really need an answer. that's not to say it's a dumb question. only that i consider God's spirit living in us currently, is for here and now. the spirit being a pledge or guarantee to us so we know now that we are his, and can be judged faithful to raise us to immortality on the last day. and by this i can know(if the Lord tarries) that when i go into the grave 'it is indeed my darkest night of all, but i know the one who will wake me in the morning...'

regarding paradise, i understand paradise to be the new earth. what do you think of jesus' use in revelation 2? (then revelation 22)?

darin,
i would agree, if a dualistic view of mankind is correct, then that's perfectly valid. funny too, the worship pastor at my church had said something really close to that a couple of weeks ago. and i thought "yeah man, now just for a moment remove the presupposition of dualism and you'll be in the neighborhood of what i think the scripture is teaching us about sleeping in death."
-------------------
something i've observed in these discussions is how as dualists we of course break the human person up into parts and speak in ways like: when i die, my body will go to the dust or the grave or whatever, but my spirit, or me will go to heaven. or "at the resurrection, we will be reunited with our bodies and so on. we make this distinction between our understanding of the outward man and the the part that's really us, or the inward man. or we stress that our body is not what defines us but our personhood is our spirit/soul. but i would ask, has it ever struck you how the christian scriptures don't speak about death or the resurrection is such a way. instead i i see them applying personhood to the dead: though he may die...i will raise him up...those who sleep...concerning the dead, that they rise. it does not speak of our bodies dying, or our bodies sleeping, but us.

moreover, though paul's words in 2 cor 5:8 are so often assumed to be speaking of death**, whenever he is explicitly describing a physically dead disciple why does he not say they have gone to be with the Lord? instead, when at other times, paul speaks of us being present with the Lord, it is at the appearing of of Jesus from heaven, at the resurrection(1thess 2). then in chapter 4

"But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus." if paul believed they were alive and present with jesus in heaven, why does he speak of them as "those who sleep in jesus." why not say don't worry about those who have died, they are not dead but with Christ in heaven already. therefore comfort one another with these words. but no, its the resurrection that is our comfort and hope. i see him go on to conclude the resurrection to be the means by which we will be present with the Lord. and tells us to comfort each other with those words.

my point is we are not told in the above passage that our spirits(the dualist real us) are already with Christ and they reunite with the body. this seems to me a sharp contrast between the verbiage of death and resurrection spoken by most in the modern church and that spoken of by the primitive church.

**(a death that results in a separation of "body" and "soul", then this "soul" goes to heaven)
grace and peace...
Last edited by jeremiah on Mon Jul 16, 2012 10:35 am, edited 4 times in total.
Also unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy: for thou renderest to every man according to his work.

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