First on the Witnesses and that thing. I absolutely agree that if a certain candidate says both that I cling bitterly to my Bible and the sky is blue, I can deny the bitterness and affirm the blueness. But if that same candidate says the sky is blue and surrounds that with 99 more propositions all of which are grossly false, I'm inclined to go check the sky again, just in case something happened. So that's all the usefulness I get out of the Witnesses. Check everything twice, or more, hold fast to that which is good.
Hmmm...I would "off-hand" reject the "intrinsic" idea as being purely Platonic.
The line between creator and creature is fuzzy in Plato, and so wide that only a miracle can cross it in Xty. Which is why we bow at the "et incarnatus" in the Creed. Glory be to God, He gave us the miracle we needed!
On the other side, I say things like, God doesn't foresee; He sees; He didn't see Adam fall and the foresee the Cross. Rather He sees the fall and sees the cross (and the consummation.)
Now I have some, to me artificial, arguments, one from Peter, the other from Aristotle which show to my satisfaction why this is a necessary idea.
And where it gets especially dicey is in our thinking about the Asssumption of the BVM (as if that weren't dicey enough, huh?) in that we say that she "currently" enjoys what all the blessed "will" enjoy. And the best I can do to make room for that in my alleged thinking is to say that "eternity" "comprehends" all of time.
In other words, I recognize I am on shaky ground here.
I could go on. For example, you may know that in our thinking Purgatory, which is VERY temporal, is no more after the consummation.
But spare me, unless you're really interested.
I am really committed, barring a memo from the Vatican, to my account of my having died. Let me try to lay it out briefly:
In the day that we ate the forbidden fruit we surely died. But the dying had to work its way out from the central breach of relationship with Life Himself and to this day it takes our poor bodies several decades to figure it out. Okay so far?
IHS brought the death of all humanity to completion. (And also to transformation, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.)
In that act or event or series of acts or events which we can call "coming to IHS" or his coming to us individually (and leaving aside all the issues about baptism) we are joined with His completed death, and, in the Spirit, His resurrected life is now ours.
Not only does it take our bodies a while to behave accordingly, but even our hearts, or our subjective experience of them at least, are slow on the uptake. I dare to say, "It is well with my soul," but if a bad guy burst into my office now, I bet I would, well, have a few sphincter control issues, an adrenaline dump, and all the physical and many of the psychological signs of mortal fear. This is likely despite my being persuaded to dare to hope that my good Lord will see that all comes out as well as can be and better than I can imagine. I am slow on the uptake, though a tad faster when I remember to leave tempo issues to Him.
Now I think we don't have much witness to the state of humans between their death and the consummation, and what witness we have is, at best, unclear. Do the martyrs sleep under the altar now? What are the Apostles actually doing "right now"? I'm blest if I can tell.
But, in another way, I don't much care one way or another. As long as the "blue-bird of Happiness" or related Platonic, Hindu, neo-Platonic blah blah notions of the soul as a little spark of the divine trapped in my gross body -- as long as they are just stomped on and only thought of again in order to construct counter-arguments, I am happy either to sleep for a spell, which would perhaps involve so awareness at the end of a passage of time, or to pass, directly or in stages, to the Joy of my Lord.
What I will insist upon (until He shows me different) is that it is HIS life in HIS Spirit which lives, not me, not my life.
How's that?
I completely understand what you are getting at, and that is all well and good. At the very least, it is conductive to an intelligent conversation, unlike a great number of the posts one sees on this thread’s topic. Let me pick up on a small but very important topic you have brought up, which actually deserves its own thread.
I said, “I say that God has, in what He chose to reveal to us in the Scriptures, not yet gifted any man, other than Jesus, with immorality.”
You said, “Here I’d suggest that it’s important to understand the difference between ‘eternal’ and ‘from everlasting to everlasting’.”
To which I replied, “I agree, and that is a worthy topic for discussion.”
Exactly! To what both of us just said. With that in mind, I will start a thread on it in the very near future (if I’m able to) and invite you to take a leading part in it. In the meantime, on this thread, let’s see if we can succulently discuss what Mr. Fortier’s preliminary study on the “soul” brings out and if it is of value in our growing in the knowledge of God as He has revealed Himself to us in the Scriptures. This in no way detracts from what you are saying in your post to me when you said “spare me, unless you’re really interested.” I’m interested, but would, at this time, prefer to stay on the topic of this thread if that’s okay with you.
That said, permit me to start with the following argument.
In over 300 passages in the Old Testament alone, we find that a “soul” (psuche/nephesh) can die. I do not know of a single biblical scholar, Catholic or Protestant, who would deny this exegetical fact. If the existence of a “soul” separate from the body be admitted, the death of that soul will be the cessation of all individual functions. The possibility of this is not at all an inadmissible hypothesis. Every being that has had a beginning may have an end, whether animal or man. This, in studying what the scriptures say according to universal hermeneutical standards and etymology, is an incontestable principle. Infatuated with himself, man is too ready to forget that, being a contingent creature, he exists only by the good pleasure of the Creator.
It is vain to argue that when a soul is in question death is only an image. Were it so, the image reproduces the salient features of the object represented; the characteristic and principle feature of physical death is neither disorder nor suffering, it is the complete cessation of all functions, immobility, and insensibility. If the death of a soul consisted in a life of suffering or disorder, the image that would most naturally be used to represent it would be an illness or persistent agony. Life and death are opposites, like black and white. To say that death is a kind of life, a certain “state of life”, is like declaring that black is a kind of white, a certain “state of white”. If death were a certain “state of life”, it would be a manifestation of life: the contradiction is very evident.
The usage of all language protests against such violence done to the words. To die, when the predicate is something animate, means to cease to exist. When the unbelieving materialist tells us that after death all is dead, there is no doubt as to the meaning of the word; it signifies that the dead person no longer exists at all. So also in the negative term “immortal” as applied to a soul: everyone will admit that the meaning is indestructible, imperishable. If “to die”, when spoken of a soul, is to signify to “suffer far away from God”, a soul that is immortal, or that “cannot die”, could not “suffer far away from God”; their very immortality would prevent this liability to that fate, and the very terms of the traditional “immortal soul” dogma would thus be contradictory – reductio ad absurdum.
As you stated in the close of your long post, “How’s that?” So too, I repeat it to you, “How’s that?” I look forward to your response in anticipation of some excellent discussion.
BTW, let me say that goals shape the nature of those who aspire to reach them. The destiny toward which one moves furnishes him with the motive that drives him toward it. In saying what I did I am concerned with the ultimate destiny of man as intended by the Creator Who brought me into existence and Who obviously has the power to bring me to fulfillment of that destiny. It is equally obvious that any goal not in harmony with the purpose of God will but lead its pursuer to failure. I believe that God’s purpose is revealed in Christ, and Christ proclaimed this purpose in His own preaching. The goal Christ revealed can be summed up on one word I believe, LIFE. He set forth in plain language the fact that He is the life-giver, that those who believe on Him should not perish, but receive an immortal life at His return. Thusly (there’s that word again), this is the question: life or death? Jesus made it clear that He could and would raise men from the dead, and give SOME of them an immortal life. The question as I see it, is not WHERE one is going to live, but IS one going to live?