Anyway, the time has come for me to attempt to articulate why I think this whole debate around the soul has any sort of relevance. After all, "why does this even matter?" is the question I've been asked the most since I've started this discussion. While the exploration and application of soullessness can and has taken up whole books I will simply address three areas of application: 1) the theological; 2) the personal; and 3) the inter-personal.
1. the theological:
I am working under the basic assumption that we all want to believe the right things. I am assuming that each one of us wants to do our best to believe the things about the Bible that God intended us to get out of it. I trust that this is a safe assumption.
Thus, I think it is important to wrestle through stuff like this. If there is good solid scholarship that indicates that we may be basing our some of our theology on pagan philosophy (ie. Greek dualism/gnosticism) then I think that's a big deal. If we think the Bible says something but that's not what God wanted us to get out of the scriptures then I think that's reason enough to look into this. More could be said about this but I'll leave it at that.
2. the personal:
If it is true that we are one integrous being, think about how this shapes your view about who you are. Ask yourself the ultimate existential question from these two differing angles
(seriously, if you have time to read this blog then you have time to stop and think for a minute or two):Who am I? (dualism - I have a body and a soul and they are separate)
Who am I? (Biblical monism - God created mankind with physical and spiritual aspects)
How are your answers different?
Why?
Think about how this affects the way in which we view ourselves as human beings. Think about how this affects our "self-esteem." I am not a "soul" stuck in a body. If we buy into this idea (which is basically the heresy of gnosticism) we can allow ourselves to be indifferent/apathetic/unhappy/angry with the way God created us. I can hate/abuse/neglect my body under the premise of "that's not who I REALLY AM." However, if God created us to forever be united to our physical bodies this changes everything. Once again, a lot more could be said (this is a blog not an essay... I always struggle with that) but I will leave it at that.
3. the inter-personal:
I was recently reading an article from a guy who works at World Vision who (at least partly) blamed the dualism that is so prevalent in Western Christianity for the lack of humanitarian work done by Western Churches in the Third World. We argued that just as we have separated the body and the soul we have separated development and evangelism. He argues that true, Biblical, Christian Witness needs to be holistic just as we as human beings are holistic.
Historically, the Church has "fed the soul" but left it to governments and secular agenc
ies to feed the body. As a person working in the Third World he said that he has seen the damage that this has done. Many Christians are content to walk through towns and preach to the people and then walk on to the next town while the people they just preached to die. How is that Biblical (read the book of James; ie 2:15,16)? Again, I could go on and on... but I won't.All of this is simply to say that this discussion is relevant. I may not have answers to all of the complicated questions that may arise (like Gil's question from last week's comments... that is one of the only questions that I find problematic) but it does (or at the very least can) have bearing on everyday life.
So, what other aspects of life does this discussion touch on?
Have any of your views shifted?
Vent/rant/just let it all out!
10 comments:
First off I must say I am especially looking forward to next weeks treat!
I can't wait!
Secondly I find your three categories very interesting. Because this is in fact how Murphy divides her book (not with exact wording). Admittedly I am only half way through the first chapter but already the question of relevance to my own faith has been answered. It is relevant! Did we misinterpret what the biblical authors intended? And are we believing in heresy?
Yeah, I think the implications are pretty big...
... but hey! where is everybody else? Everyone was wondering about the relevance and now that I thow out some options there aren't any comments?
I just saw a clip on YouTube where Nancey Murphy also tied in the lack of Christian presence in Environmental issues to our acceptance of Dualism.
What do you all think?
I'm a bit of a skeptic and I'd be interested to know who this Murphey is? What ulterior motives might she have that don't include a better translation of the Scriptures? What is her theological/ philosophical filter? Under whom has she studied and where?
I don't have a lot to say, but as Verne the turtle on "Over the Hedge" used to say-- "my tail is tingling". Well, I don't have a tail, but something's not smelling right here... course that could be the neighbour's septic tank overflowing after the rain...
Whenever we are dealing with "progressive theology" our tails should always be tingling; we always need to be a little skeptical.
As for Nancey Murphy, she is a prof. at Fuller Theological Seminary, a Faculty Lecturer at the International Baptist Theological Seminary in Prague, and she did a Ph.D. and a Th.D. at Berkley. Her most notable tutor/mentor would undoutably be renouned baptist theologian James Wm. McClendon Jr.
Most of her research and publishing has been on the topic of the inter-relatedness/disconnection between science and religion. As such, she doensn't comfortably fit in either the theological or scientific camps.
I was reading your blog and got to the second "who am I" where you have physical and spiritual "aspects" and that's where I stopped reading. Not that I won't go back and read the rest, but this topic has really bothered me because I do think that the physical and spiritual are not the same, but I don't think they are separate. I think they are part of us as a whole, created being, but that there are different aspects. I thought you were saying that there's no difference, that there really is no spiritual aspect, and then I was confused. I understand what you're saying now.
Now that I've read the rest I'll agree that this has a HUGE impact on how we treat Global ministries. Why preach at someone who is starving? I appreciate the agencies who go out, deal with the physical needs of a community, help with the development of the area and then teach them about Christ. People are willing to listen to a message of love and hope if you show them what love and hope really is. Some people don't even know.
I do find this interesting and I understand it is important to look into this theologically. But I struggle with your relevance statements 2 and 3. If I hold to a dualistic approach on this issue it would seem to me that the "soul stuck in a body" way of thinking would have to incorporate the Gnosticism approach of spirit being good and matter bad. But if God created both soul and our bodies (however temporary) should we not regard them as equally good even if they are separated? We are not required to hold to a Gnostic way of thinking just because we believe that the soul is separate from the body. And if it is not then what is Paul talking about in 2 Cor 5:1-10?
As for the inter-personal, perhaps the problem is not dualism but the feelings of Gnosticism that have been added into the dualism. Again if we view the body as created by God and thus an equal partner to the soul then we would not neglect other people's physical needs. Jesus and the early church demonstrated this by preaching the Gospel and caring for people's physical needs as well. Dualism or Biblical monism for me has no relevance when it comes to doing what the Bible has called us to do. Also, if I believe in Biblical monism, then if I help someone physically, have I helped them spiritually? If body and spirit are one, then preaching to a starving person and helping them spiritually is helping their whole being which would perpetuate the inter-personal problem. But then I'm probably not understanding the entirety of Biblical monism.
Help me out here, am I missing something?
Tim S.
No, I don't think you're really missing anything, Tim. I've been wrestling with some of these same questions. I think that you have some good points. If we simply follow through with what the scriptures tell us to do we would care for people physically and spiritually. However, I would argue that the reason the scriptures call for a holistic witness is precisly because they are promoting a monistic worldview.
I find the argument for monism to be fairly compelling based solely on the biblical languages and Hebrew culture. I think there is some room to allow for a Christian dualism providing that it is actually possible to rid all aspects of gnosticism from it. However, what you describe (physical and spiritual as equal partners) is pretty close to what this push toward monism is trying to accomplish: a recognition that both aspects (physical and spiritual) of humanity are NOT mutually exclusive and that ultimately, as described in 1Cor15, our eternity will not simply be spent as a disembodied soul but in the same kind of physical/spiritual blend that we live in now.
I find your final question really interesting and I'm not quite sure what to do with it yet. But my initial response is to ask myself, "do we spend too much time diferentiating between the physical and the spiritual?" Rather than specifying whether we've helped someone in a certain way maybe we should just help them and let God use that however he will.
Can shoveling your neighbour's sidewalk be a "spiritual" act. Is feeding a needy family more than just a "physical" thing?
In the OT it is clear that how we "physically" help those around us who are in need is intimately connected to our personal relationship with God. This is how monism manifests itself.
Last time I said sometime along the lines of "Does this really matter?" But I think what I meant to ask was "Are we over-thinking this?" Here's just something I thought of:
Let's say someone goes overseas and ends up in a village filled with starving people. He feels compassion for them, feeds them, and helps them to feel more "alive." Then he teaches them the gospel and people are willing to listen. Does he say to himself, "First I will feed the physical being, then address their spiritual being" or "Since both physical and spiritual aspects are connected, I will feed these people in two different ways." I don't think they really think about it like that. It's more, "These people are hungry, let's give them something to eat. They are thirsty, lets give them something to drink. They need hope, lets teach them about the One who brings hope." Can we not save people regardless of their physical and spiritual connectivity?
I realize having proper theology is down, but I think sometimes we lose the heart of the whole issue. Are we really helping people?
Thanks, Lisa. It's always good to bring things back to the pragmatic side of things...
However...
#1 - the whole point of this blog is to facilitate theological discussion which is exactly what we're doing. So, in the nicest way possible I say, "Deal with it." :)
#2 - Only in a dualistic world would your concerns have any merit. Had we all stuck with a biblical monism your perspective would be our default... which would be a good thing.
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