I find that definition is the problem. Christianity has unfortunately allowed doctrine to define it’s words rather than the words define Christianity. Not that all Christianity has done this, but it has been a common problem with modern mainstream denominations as they try to build their ministries.
2 Timothy 4:3
For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
Actually, Paul says “may YOUR whole spirit, soul and body…” Thus, the “spirit” of which he speaks here (however you define it) is something we have, not something we are, as you continue to assert. So no, Paul is not, in fact, “disclosing” what you say he is. You’re mistaken.
You are at odds with Scripture, my friend. The first few chapters of Genesis teach that animals have the same spirit (ruach) that was given to man (and which was taken away in the flood). And Ecclesiastes 3:19-21 says: “For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath (ruach), and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return. Who knows whether the spirit (ruach) of man goes upward and the spirit (ruach) of the beast goes down into the earth?” “Ruach” is the Hebrew word for “spirit”; the Greek equivalent is “pneuma.” “Nephesh” is the Hebrew word for “soul”; the Greek equivalent is “psuche.”
Again, you have yet to prove that man “IS a spirit.” Nor have you proven with Scripture that man is eternal; you’ve simply asserted it. And if God’s being “made up in 3 persons” is what makes him “triune” - and if man’s being “triune” is what makes him in God’s image - then it would follow that we, too, are “made up in 3 persons.” You’re being inconsistent here. And again, I’ve shown from Scripture (which you’ve either overlooked or ignored) that animals have a spirit, soul and body - which, according to your reasoning, means they, too, share God’s “triune image.”
When a person is separated from their body - they are DEAD. Christ, the first of the resurrected, is not separated from His body - He is alive. Christ is not a spirit, He is a resurrected man with a body. There is nothing inherently evil about material stuff - including bodies that can touch and be touched, eat, drink and have LIFE!
I suppose one could argue for Bodiless ‘spirits’ in DEATH. But they don’t do anything - they’re DEAD.
His body, was flesh and bone, not flesh and blood. He was raised in a heavenly body, not a natural one. This resurrected body was not one of dust, but of heaven. A spiritual body that can tangibly interact with a natural realm. Yet, He still was spirit and body, a soul.
It was changed… “The dead are sown a natural body, the dead are raised a spiritual body.” (1 Corinthians 15:44)
Until you actually see Him, it is very difficult to comprehend these words.
We know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure. (1 John 3:2-3)
I can assure you that when you are separated from your body, you are dead - and stay that way until you have a body. Your above statement was typical of any first century gnostic. Even as we speak, there is one man in God’s realm with a body.
“Look at my hands and feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”
Apparently, while you have been 'spiritualizing everything - you missed that.
Not really. The witnesses of His resurrection had no problem seeing Him or understanding that a living man has a body.
Wow! I had been ignoring BA most of the time, but he believed that we live without a body as a bodiless spirit? This is not only non-Scriptural, this was also considered heresy to the early Christian church. Every day I notice more and more how Modern day Christianity resembles Augustine’s Manichaeanism past.
I think his main point was not so much that we can exist and operate as a spirit without a body (since after all the Holy Spirit does this, as well as the Father, and also the Son in the excession of His Incarnation); but rather he was trying to go with the idea that our spirits must be inherently eternal because God’s Spirit is itself inherently eternal. Thus, as his (rather inept) opening post tried to argue: who goes to hell?–persons who are eternal criminals.
I think much of this comes from the notion that Satan and other demons, being spirits, must not be capable of salvation, being impervious to redemption by virtue of the inherently immortal character of their spirits. But as you noted, this is really cosmological dualism (or worse), not supernaturalistic theism.
Unfortunately, real Christian theology is pretty detailed and complex, and it’s hard to teach to everyone. A Manichaeistic dualism, though not admitted explicitly under that term, is the easier way to go. And hey, it explains why God can’t save the devil, right?
So, over here affirm ‘there is one God and none other above or beside Him’; and over there affirm ‘there is another spirit, or even more than one other spirit, who does not require God for existence and so is inherently impervious to God’s salvation’; while then turning around and affirming again, ‘no rebel spirit shall escape the punishment of God’.
As I often point out, non-universalistic soteriologies tend sooner or later to deny ortho-trin theism, in one or more ways.
This, by the way, is why annihilationists sometimes prefer to call themselves “Conditional Immortalityists”… um… well, I mean they prefer to describe themselves as proponents of conditional immortality – the implication being that somehow this distinguishes them from ECT and UR proponents.
That’s because there are ECT and UR proponents who, either explicitly or tacitly, claim that created spirits are inherently immortal (meaning God couldn’t annihilate them even if He wanted to). But not all ECT and UR proponents go that route, so the description is of very limited distinctional use. (It does, however, sound more positive than to identify oneself as being a believer in annihilation. Well, it doesn’t sound so negative anyway, even if it doesn’t sound quite positive exactly… )
So you agree with @Born_Again at the very least, on the point of man’s Biblical anthropology, that is: being tripartite? I just like to line these things up to clarify for readership’s sake.
Well, it doesn’t sound so negative anyway, even if it doesn’t sound quite positive exactly… 