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!
So odd you would say this today, betty. This evening as I drove back to my hotel, I was busily building a mental list of things I need to do before retiring. I was thinking about working out in the gym, checking email etc; at the same time searching for a good radio station (I'm in a new city today). A station was playing some sort of Gregorian Chant type music which sounded rather soothing and I continued to let my mind race. But this song kept saying the same thing over and over "for the beauty of your mercy and passion, we thank you Lord for ourselves and the world" After 4 or 5 times I sort of got irritated because it was interrupting my thoughts. Suddenly the words shook me awake and something in my spirit stirred. A little voice in my head said almost your very exact words! You're taking care of your body and your business, but what are you doing to care for your soul?
I've been trying to figure out how I ended up on this thread, because I would not consider myself a deep philosophical thinker like the rest here. But today I think I know why. This may be TMI, but I thank you for your post.
This is the point where we go on separate paths. First, I do not believe it is possible to deny the soul although one could claim such a thing but his actions would prove otherwise. Historically Christian theologians have divided the soul into three parts; the intellect, the emotions, and the will. Your presentation is the old order that places "Reason" as a abstract principle independent of God himself and intellect above the the other aspects of human personality. In this schema it is thought that if man employs her intellect through the abstract principle of Reason than one can come to a knowledge of God. Reaching the knowledge of God then becomes merely an examination of universal principles.
The problem with the "old order" is that it succumbs to Platonic dualisms and places the intellect above other aspects of human personality and it believed that employing the intellect according to "laws of nature" there would be a mechanistic one to one relationship between stimulus and response.
It seems to me a truly Christian psychology of man should first note that both body and soul make a complete man. Both body and soul are two aspects of one being and the one being would be incomplete without both aspects.
If we look at the Biblical record we find how God revealed the psychology of man through the roles of Prophet, Priest, and King. If we understand how each of these offices relate to human psychology and how each is equally important then we need not overemphasize one aspect over against the other aspects.
The prophet office of our being relates to the intellect and our capacity to interpret both ourselves and the universe. The priestly office of our being relates to our emotions and dedicating oneself and the universe to God. Our kingly office relates to our will and the volitional aspect our responsibility to rule over the universe under God.
There are dangers of course of overemphasizing the emotional or volitional aspects of human psychology which many times leads to irrationalism. These systems usually dismiss the intellectual aspects leading to an unbalanced view of man. The benefit of a balanced view of the emotional and volitional aspects of human psychology is that it does justice to the individuality of each person. Since man was originally created with the love of God in his subconscious, the priestly aspect, the conscience, continues to function as that aspect which informs us when we have violated the transcendental law, that which pricks us when we fail to show the appropriate love.
The integration of personality, that is, the constant readjustment of the particular and the universal within itself, and the constant readjustment of the whole personality as an individual to the universal found in the universe beyond itself, takes place by a more ultimate and constant readjustment of the individual together with his surroundings to God who is the absolute particular and the absolute universal combined in one ultimate personality. The integration of personality according to the Christian view is an integration toward and by virtue of the triune God of Scripture as the only ultimate self-sufficient personality.
Van Til, Cornelius, The Works of Cornelius Van Til, (New York: Labels Army Co.) 1997.