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so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.-Gen 3:6

Trying to attain wisdom apart from the spiritual (God) has been a temptation from the beginning. The results are always the same; a lack of understanding and separation from God.

So very true. Jesus Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. The wisdom of men will not do.

Thank you so much for sharing your insights!

And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God.

For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.

And my speech and my preaching [was] not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. – I Corinthians 2:1-5

But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. - I Corinthians 1:24

To God be the glory!

the_conscience wrote: ...where the existential is examined it is always the history of the existential in light of the transcendent law. If the existential is not fully perceived in light of the transcendent law than the spiritual becomes merely creature worship.

weston wrote: Trying to attain wisdom apart from the spiritual (God) has been a temptation from the beginning. The results are always the same; a lack of understanding and separation from God.

Beautiful insights both! It seems we're all seeing the same thing here though perhaps from slightly different perspectives. Ultimately it's called "soul," and our common concern is with what constitutes its good order.

Man is more than a "creature," i.e., in the sense of having a finite physical body. God created him in His own image, i.e., as an eternal soul, a spiritual entity whose essential nature is liberty and understanding. Created man is "psyche in soma," as the Greeks put it — embodied, incarnated spirit — the implication being, as St. Thomas Aquinas pointed out, that psyche is the senior partner, the specifying order of the corporeal body, and that without the soul there could be no soma, no corporeal body, in the first place.

Soul is moreover the seat of all subjective experience whatsoever: It is where the light of the transcendent law can become luminous in human consciousness, mediating all true understanding and knowledge.

A soul closed to God means a deliberate separation from God's order, which involves a sort of collapse back into one's own creatureliness. The soul becomes disordered, because closure to God means that the soul loses connection to its own innate principle of order. When this happens, we begin to "devolve" into brute animals.

Man was made for God, not God for man. We can reject our God-given nature by denying the soul. We are at perfect liberty to do that. But in doing that, in effect, we reject our own divinely-constituted humanity as well, notably including reason and free will....

Typically we humans take pretty good care of our bodies. But what are we doing for the good order and care of our souls?

Just some ruminations, FWIW. Thank you weston and one_conscience for your excellent posts!