I don't sense that that started at birth. I see the connection as not a flow that proceeds from a direction toward a direction, but like a touch that's always been there or an extension of the same thing. 
Posted on 05/08/2003 9:44:29 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
I confess I find the Scriptures adoption of the language of gnosticism annoying. ;-` But I'm glad that through it captives to that motif have been lead to their freedom.
The flesh vs. the spirit to the Greeks and mystics is a divide of the dimensions of man. But in the Lord's Word to us, it is just what you have said, a distinction between the fallen nature (in all its aspects eternally separated from God) and the new nature (in all its aspects eternally united with Him) and that because it is of the dimensions of God and man fully related!
I don't know the Greek word for "Spirit," used in the declaration, "the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace," but the Spirit is the Spirit of God Himself breathed into us by the precious gift of the lain flesh of Jesus the Unifier. And because of this new breath breathed by the willing, all that is of a person has come under it's power, by the authority of the Word it carries.
As I walked out of that cultic church a few years ago, one who was sort of "strongly suggested out" just before I left pointed me in the direction of a book by another man of might, Jesse Penn (mightier than the Body) Lewis. It was so wonderful to be reassured in his book, that God has given me a will -- and a will to be a will! -- a will which is all mine and not ever to be violated, nor dominated, nor dissipated, not by any creature and not even by God Himself. Why? For the very reason He made life: because He did not want to be succumbed to, but to be fully agreed with and very, very, very wilfully embraced. Ho, the difference!
That is a good test of whether one is free from gnostic notions: whether one is confident in God's gift of full person and an autonomous identity in all aspects of our lives, an identity in which we may run to willingly unite with His, yet as two individuals, and yet still in a unity which is utterly autonomous as a new joined relational identity, after the God-Man Himself. We never cease to be any less self in this relationship. However, we find self's other! We find a new fathomless giving of each other, God to me and me to God, a giving past death, that is a new living phenomena in all of creation, not possible had it not been for both the fall of the first Adam and the rise of the Second!
Thus, my reason is free, my emotions are free, my head and heart are free, and my will is enabled to agree with God in winning the soul's ground for the dwelling of one God and me.
Die, to live, yes, in Christ. But done once and for all. And yes, we still have the fallen nature to drag along with us until our earth bound bodies are worn down, but yes, it is not us anymore. It is as you say, just what was. And yes, we still have our old Adamically cursed bodies, but even they as degenerate as they are, are sanctified by what the vessel contains and until the new thoroughly pure flesh is put on.
Oh what we know! Oh WHO we KNOW! (when we are what we may be).
Yes, creation is expanding.
Or rather like a Socrates? Did Barzun slip? There are all sorts of existentialists, but I'm not so sure that Job was one like that.
Job and Nietzsche, now that would make a dialogue. And Socrates. What a trio of profound speech to eulogize the human ape.
Doesn't look like it to me, A-G! :^) What a beautiful post, through and through. But this is particularly noteworthy, IMO: "I agree with you that the bride of Christ is the collective body of believers (Revelation.) There is however also a personal belonging, or engagement, that we experience until the groom arrives." Thank you so much, A-G!
Eulogize!!! Well, I must confess there are days when I, too, think the human race is toast, and deservedly so. But then I rally back: It's all in God's hands. It's good to see you, cornelis.
I don't sense that that started at birth. I see the connection as not a flow that proceeds from a direction toward a direction, but like a touch that's always been there or an extension of the same thing.
In a nutshell, that is what every linguist should see in every word and proposition. That alone hallows truth as one step removed and permits every dualist to be true in part. Not to forget they are all liars at the same time. A contradiction? Perhaps, if abstracted for logical analysis alone.
I'm not the one to teach you. But for starters, I'd say to begin with the recognition that there are all kinds because everyone comes at problems from different angles.
Philosophical anthropology is perhaps one such angle, and certain traditions give as the fundamental distinction between body and soul to be characteristically human. The Greek tradition.
But this body soul thing is not cosmological. So there are others. Logical ones? A is a and not non-A. This yields the principle of non-contradiction formalized by Aristotle. The old and new man? That is the Pauline distinction in the doctrine of creation. I'm sure to be missing many more.
I sometimes use the term "dualist" to designate those who recognize a distinction and then favor one at the expense of the other. They hop around on one leg and claim everyone else has only one too. Or that the other leg was no use anyhow. They make very poor dancers. They can also be very tricky and grow back their other leg but lose the one they had.
And so I think Dooyeweerd is right that dualisms often resolve on one side or the other or embark on an interminable struggle. Then comes the yin & yang types that make the struggle the fundamental cycle and arche of all and everything. Dr. Erixymachis in Plato's Symposium tried that trick.
I don't know why we are so disposed to it. The Greeks are to blame, according to many. But even Aristotle made an important point in his ethics. Virtue is a mean, but not a mathematical mean, as if you could take 1 mol of excess fear and add to it one 1 mol excess recklessness to arrive at courage. No, he said the virtues are not a balance of extremes, but a mean relative to us. So Aristotle, as much as he was dualistic in describing the human person as a form-matter complex (body-soul, if you will, but not Platonic; Socrates said it was an entombment but a harmony). For virtue he sought the ordered relation of part to whole and the ordered relation of actions to an end.
Human frame of reference fallacy
____________________________________________________________________________
And the same dualism is dealt with more fully here... this is looking pretty good, too:
Dueling with Dualism
Nancy Scott
http://www.mckenziestudycenter.org/philosophy/articles/dualism.html
____________________________________________________________________________
And for a further flung look into various kinds of dualisms out there:
Dualistic Discourse
Strong emphasis on two forces at work in the world
Darren Witwer
http://www.mctc.mnscu.edu/~witwerda.faculty/religions/dualism.htm
____________________________________________________________________________
And here's about the common, current (or do you say post-modern? --maybe if you're in a really big hurry you do;-) dualism that betty boop referred to:
THEOLOGY AND SCIENCE WITHOUT DUALISM
Elizabeth Newman
http://www.aril.org/newman.htm
I have a real problem with willfulness. It was willfulness that caused Satan and Adam to fall, and it was for willfulness that Moses laid the book of the law as a testimony to the children of Israel.
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree [was] good for food, and that it [was] pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make [one] wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. – Genesis 3:4-6
Take this book of the law, and put it in the side of the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, that it may be there for a witness against thee. For I know thy rebellion, and thy stiff neck: behold, while I am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against the LORD; and how much more after my death? – Deuteronomy 31:26-27
Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. – Luke 22:42
Who being the brightness of [his] glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high; - Hebrews 1:2
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. - Philippians 2:5-8
Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, [art] in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. – John 17:20-21
The information on Pascal was extremely helpful to me; scientism has always been troubling and your excerpts reveal why.
I’ve identified strongly with you and Phaedrus as sojourners...
I certainly agree with your observations of a “normalizing mechanism” and what a strange thing it would be to go through "successive states of amnesia.” Indeed, we would be full of awe and wonder if we were like children anew moment by moment. Children made anew wouldn’t have the memories to know fear or hate.
She and physical death are all that stand between me and graduation and I'm trusting that physical death will be the end of her.
The Kabbalist words can be a bit unsettling because not only are they a different language (Hebrew) – each word implies a ton of thinking accumulated over so many years. I think your use of the terms makes sense in the context you’ve described.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.