From: "Adrian Teo" <ateo@whitworth.edu>
> AT: Living beings are sometimes referred to as souls in the bible, and
other times it refers to the very depth/totality of a person's being. The
varied use of the word does not allow us to conclude that a living being is
identical to a soul. Both in Scripture and throughout the history of
Christianity, some form of dualism is evident and widely accepted. Nephesh,
while sometimes used to refer to the whole person, it is also used to refer
to the inner life of the person - consciousness, thought, and emotion. The
translators of the Septuagint always translated nephesh as psyche, and never
bios (biological/physical life).
I have no problem with the word soul also being used to refer to the
inner-person, consciousness, thought and emotion. However, that does not
automatically translate into the idea that the inner-person/consciousness,
etc., is an immortal entity. The soul as the being who's consciousness of
the mind is the normal functioning of the brain ceases to exist when the
breath of life ends.
The translators of the Septuagint were out to prove to the Greeks that the
Bible did not conflict with pagan Greek philosophy. I'd consider their
position only with a very large grain of salt.
> The OT concept of Sheol implies survival of personal identity after
physical death.
The word Sheol is simply the grave, nothing more, nothing less.
>Furthermore, the practice of necromancy is assumed to be a real possibility
and occurrence.
There is no such thing as communication with the dead.
ECC 9:5
For the living know that they will die,
but the dead know nothing;
they have no further reward,
and even the memory of them is forgotten. [or, even their memory is
gone.]
What there is, is Satan's confederates masquerading as the dead, to promote
the false concept of the immortality of the soul and to support Satan's lie
to Eve -- "You shall not surely die."
>Christians since the earliest days have always held that there is a soul
that lives on after physical death. In fact, I think that the NT makes it
even more compelling that there is an immaterial soul that survives physical
death.
Granted, you can find some early Christians who adopted the pagan Greek and
Roman concepts of immortality of the soul. The Catholic Church is famous
for "christianizing' all kinds of pagan beliefs and theology. But just
because some did doesn't make it right or Biblical. We don't make our
choices of theology based on what others have or have not believed before.
Rather, we believe what we believe because the Holy Spirit leads us, if we
let him, to understand what the Bible says.
> But for me, the heart of the matter is how the monist view affects
Christology. What happened to Jesus between the death and the resurrection?
Did He cease to exist as God-man, or do we confess that after the
incarnation, the Son as Jesus is forever the God-man?
According to the on-line American Heritage® Dictionary, monism is the
doctrine that mind and matter are formed from, or reducible to, the same
ultimate substance or principle of being. I do not believe that what I am
promoting is monism or anything remotely resembling it. I believe that the
brain is a physical organ of the body composed of matter that decays to dust
upon death. And, that the mind is the consciousness of the person that
results from the normal functioning of the physical brain. A living,
breathing body that is functioning as it was designed to do results in a
living, conscious being or soul. When the person dies, consciousness
ceases, the mind no longer exists and the body and brain decay. The mind is
different that the brain. The brain is composed of matter. The mind,
although it is the result of the proper functioning of the physical brain,
is the consciousness of the living being. It cannot exist without the
brain, although the brain can exist without a mind. Unlike, Monism, the
mind is not composed of or reducible to any ultimate substance or principle
of being. The mind either is or is not. We are alive or we are not. The
soul is or it is not.
Nothing happened to Jesus between the moment of death and resurrection. He
simply ceased to exist as God and Man. His dead body was in Sheol, the
grave. He died the second death of complete annihilation, taking the place
of everyone who chooses His life in place of their own though deserving the
final annihilation. He was raised from the dead the same as before, the
God/man incarnate with a body and the breath of life, i.e., a living being.
Jesus became incarnate to die for us. He was incarnate before His death,
He was incarnate after his death. While he was dead, he was dead.
>Did God have to re-create the humanity of Christ, such that the human part
of the person who died for our sins is not the same as the new one that was
raised?
What Jesus was before his death he remained after his resurrection. He had
a glorified body afterward not because it was different, but that it would
never die again.
>In addition, the monist view suggests that there is a clean break or
discontinuity between my death and resurrection. I die, cease to exist, and
then am re-created.
I don't know about Monism, but the Bible teaches that you are either alive
or dead. You did not exist before conception, and if you sin, you will
cease to exist upon death. If you do not sin, you will live forever,
because this mortal will "put on immortality" at the resurrection of the
righteous.
> I don't have the time now, but there are also philosophical objections to
monism that even Nancy Murphy, esteemed philosopher at Fuller, was unable to
respond to at a conference on human nature. There are also moral
implications of monism are troubling, to say the least. In the preface to
Whatever happened to the Soul by Brown, Murphy and Maloney, the authors
described the soul as "a functional capacity of a complex physical organism,
rather than a separate spiritual essence." Whenever the human person is
defined in terms of functions, we set the stage for the justification of
horrible crimes against humanity. But this is the logical implication of
monism.
How one can possibly justify any type of crime against humanity because of
logical implications of monism is beyond me. But then, I am not promoting
monism.
Upon reflection, however, one might try to argue that since a mind cannot
function properly in a malfunctioning brain, then that person is not
responsible for their actions because they have a malfunctioning brain. I'd
say that anyone attempting such an argument to escape from the consequence
of their actions does not have a malfunctioning brain. And, anyone who does
have a truly malfunctioning brain would be incapable of such logical
thought. I suppose it all comes down to matters of degree. And, with the
onset of sin in humanity, one might argue that there is only one person who
has ever had a properly functioning brain -- Jesus.
After Adam and Eve sinned, God told the Serpent that he would put "emnity"
between mankind the Satan. That 'emnity' is our conscience (distinct from
consciousness) that tell us right from wrong and which is innate in all but
those with the worst of malfunctioning brains. This conscience means that
we are not and cannot be guiltless. We have to choose to ignore or drown
out the conscience, and we cannot be guiltless because of minor
malfunctioning of the brain.
I assume that monism is drawn from the evolutionary philosophy and
illogically applied to Christian philosophy. Such Evolutionary ideas would
not allow for a conscience that convicts of guilt, because there is no such
thing as good or evil, but properly functioning brains or malfunctioning
brains.
It seems to me that bringing up Monism is actually a red herring and a
strawman.
Allen
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