Long-term lurker, first time poster.

It occurred to me today that the Christian deity is peculiarly obsessed with our actions here on Earth, in these bodies. In Christian theology, the soul is an eternal, or everlasting entity. My childhood experiences in the Church of the Nazarene left me with the impression that the soul is, in essence, created specially for each new human, at the time of conception, but is also somehow invested with an adult level of wisdom, since "God's law is written on our hearts."

The problem that occurred to me then, is not that the soul is given such a finite amount of time in which to make major decisions regarding its everlasting future, but rather that the timing is unusual. Why is God so insistent that the decision be made while the soul is encased in its little meatsuit and living on this planet? It strikes me that this is rather like asking an infant to make a decision about what college they want to go to, and requiring that they permanently decide some time in between birth and the hospital nursery.

Moreover, what is the significance of the body in particular? I have heard the argument that sinners cannot escape Hell because someone who won't repent in life wouldn't repent in the afterlife, but this argument is patently false on its face. First of all, those of a different religion from Christianity are highly likely to be able to admit that they just got it wrong or were misinformed upon experiencing the Christian afterlife, and therefore willing to repent. Clearly, belief in general was no impediment during their meatsuit internment, so transferring the target of that belief is likely to present no undue difficulties. Secondly, not every atheist is of the "God is a dick," variety, and so, once presented with evidence, they are also likely to repent. At most, given this argument, Hell is populated with diehard "God is a dick" atheists.

Nevertheless, Christianity seems obsessed with the idea that the soul can only change its mind, come to believe, or grow in wisdom while encased in the Earthly meatsuit. To my mind, this seems to remove any need for the soul at all, since it is entirely dependent on the body to be anything more than a unthinking, unchanging target for reward or punishment, a sort of eschatological whipping boy for the body. Is there any theological backing for this at all? Has any Christian theologian bothered to address this peculiar aspect of their beliefs, or is it all just so taken for granted that no one has commented?

Oie, Christians

The concept of the soul is incomplete from the perspective of the Christians. You see they were never able to fit it into their paradigm after they cut out the part about reincarnation. (See Kings James 1st. Edition vs. Old Testament 1611) The Soul is the "memory board" for the reincarnated. You carry that with you from one lifetime to another. Or so it goes.

Welcome to RS.

As you say, a standard response is that our meatsuit condition is a requirement of growth. Perhaps we're meant to carry that experience back to God when we reconcile with it. Which does short out its omniscience, but all theology has to make sacrifices!

The indisputable answer is that we are meatsuits (such as we can know), so that's the unavoidable starting proposition. Justify as you see fit. Paul of Tarsus was fond of "spiritual bodies," so maybe that's the way to go, whatever these "spiritual bodies" are. (Something like the Time Lords off of Doctor Who would do me nicely.)

Byron wrote:Welcome to RS.

The indisputable answer is that we are meatsuits (such as we can know), so that's the unavoidable starting proposition. Justify as you see fit. Paul of Tarsus was fond of "spiritual bodies," so maybe that's the way to go, whatever these "spiritual bodies" are. (Something like the Time Lords off of Doctor Who would do me nicely.)

Thank you for the welcome.

As an atheist, I would agree with your statement that we are our bodies (meatsuits). However, as a Christian I often heard, and still do, platitudes to the effect that the body was "shaken off like old clothes," or something to that effect, particularly at funerals. It seems to me that the underlying current of Christian theology is that the soul is our essential amness, that what we are is the soul, and that the body is just temporary clothing, like a top-layer sweater on a cold spring morning. As an atheist my essential amness is no more affected by my choice of sweater than my amness should be by my body if I were a Christian.

Nevertheless, inside the context of Christian eschatology, the body seems absolutely critical to the soul's ability to change, make moral and ethical decisions, and gain knowledge or wisdom, but I suspect that until faced with this argument, no Christian anywhere would say that the body is necessary to any of the soul's abilities.

Or maybe they would? With so many splinter groups of Christianity, it's possible that the one I was raised in simply didn't bother to build its theological edifice quite this high (or low). Hence my curiosity.

Any branch of theology that reduces the body to mere animus for the soul, a soul-suit, seems violently anti-Incarnational. The old Nestorian heresy reborn. The puritan-leaning branches of protestantism tend to elevate the soul at the expense of the body in this way: as a very catholic sort of atheist, I reject that separation, and embrace Incarnation.

Christianity's always had a tension between body and spirit, befitting an incarnational faith. When it abandons that tension, and lurches to either camp, it loses that which makes it distinctive. The most authentically Christian response would seem to me to place our essence in neither soul nor body, but in an unending dialectic between the two. The Logos was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us: Christ was god-man, and man-god, fully both. How? As they said in 'Good Omens,' ineffable, dear boy, ineffable.

Well, I come out of a quite puritan-leaning branch of Protestantism, so I suppose it makes sense that my viewpoint on Christian theology is colored the way it is.

I suppose it might be easiest to say that I see two conceptions of the soul, one for Christian theology, and one for Christian eschatology, which seem to not be completely syncretized. In Christian theology, as I understand it, the soul is the seat of all of our higher decision-making capability, while the body is, at best, the source of our primal urges. This is a bit more incarnational than the body merely being a soul-suit, and I think about as far as the evangelical denominations I grew up around would be willing to take things, at least in the simple theology they offer to the pews. Anyways, at this point, I am still tracking right along. Disagreeing, of course, but tracking.

However, once the body dies, the soul goes to either Heaven or Hell. Once in Hell, it seems to become entirely incapable of utilizing any of the capabilities that make the soul the higher decision-maker, such as spiritual growth, development, and change. In Heaven, however, it seems to retain at least the ability to make free-will decisions, since I was always taught that each soul makes a free will choice to continue participating in the everlasting praise of God which occurs in Heaven. Considering that it is clearly possible to be in the presence of God, and yet make a free-will choice to rebel against him e.g. Lucifer, it seems that it should be equally possible and allowable to be outside the presence of God and make a free-will choice to accept him.

Yet in all mainstream Christian eschatology I have ever encountered, it's not. Once in Hell, always in Hell. I was hoping that some theologian somewhere might have addressed this incongruity, but I would certainly not be surprised if I ran up against the brick wall of ineffability, the last refuge of the man with no answers.

Appreciate your replies, by the way.

It's usually a spin on Anselm's dictum that, "Even God cannot raise to happiness any being bound at all by the debt of sin, because he ought not to." 'Why God Became Man' Why the dividing line is at death: well, yet to see a convincing answer. Biblical proof-texts are routinely wheeled out, as is evidence from the church fathers, but I've yet to see it argued from first principles. All attempts hit the stumbling block of asserting that the cut-off must come at the point of death.

The idea of universal reconciliation makes a lot more sense of the soul's journey. Elsewise, God just created people to suffer eternal torment, with, as you say, no useful purpose. If all are reconciled to theos, however, then the many become one with the whole, fulfilling Paul's beautiful statement in Romans 11 that, "For from him [Christ] and through him and to him are all things."

There's also the soul/spirit distinction that I've never quite been able to get a handle on. As far as I've been able to figure it, the soul is the incorporeal essence of an individual, and the spirit/pneuma is the inbreathed aspect of God in each person. As all things are meant to be in God, this does get muddled. I suspect it's been overly systematized by later theology. A system can trample mystery.

Eschatology is at the heart of Christianity (it was the historical Jesus' creed, after all), but it can be fairly reinterpreted in all kinds of ways. An atheist take would be making a new world here on Earth, although with all the dangers that Utopianism leaves open, you have to be mighty careful taking that path!

Realized eschatology was an attempt to bring back eschatology to this world, and there is a nice little sentence by Crossan on this:

Apocalyptic eschatology is world-negation stressing imminent divine intervention: we wait for God to act; sapiential eschatology is world-negation emphasizing immediate divine imitation: God waits for us to act.

But still you have the 'world-negation', and Christianity has been schizophrenic about this, both negating and affirming this bodily reality.

Very good OP, actually, which seems to go to the heart of Christian dualism, that the body is a temporary (and for some, unfortunate) hiding place for soul. But I don't think Christian theology ever really tackled the nature of self, in the way that for example, Buddhist philosophy did.

Thus for Buddhists, transcendence is now, and is One, whereas this is a difficult idea for Christians. But it is a good question - why can't the disembodied soul change its mind?

I notice in recent years that liberals tend to say 'I am a soul', not 'I have a soul', which seems to reflect an interesting shift away from this kind of dualism, towards either a dialectic between body and I (as Byron suggested), or something really radical, e.g. a transcendent I am (although then we are probably negating Jesus' own teaching!).

And yes, I guess Paul was grappling with this with his rather mysterious comments about spiritual bodies, and 'flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven'.

Welcome Stormcrow.

Why is God so insistent that the decision be made while the soul is encased in its little meatsuit and living on this planet? It strikes me that this is rather like asking an infant to make a decision about what college they want to go to, and requiring that they permanently decide some time in between birth and the hospital nursery.

Nice analogy.

It's not that God's fixated on our meatsuits, IMO, but that other meatsuits are interested in our meatsuits. Christianity is just a societal control mechanism, after all, or a way of corralling and using meatsuits.

Made of Stars wrote:Welcome Stormcrow.

Why is God so insistent that the decision be made while the soul is encased in its little meatsuit and living on this planet? It strikes me that this is rather like asking an infant to make a decision about what college they want to go to, and requiring that they permanently decide some time in between birth and the hospital nursery.

Nice analogy.

It's not that God's fixated on our meatsuits, IMO, but that other meatsuits are interested in our meatsuits. Christianity is just a societal control mechanism, after all, or a way of corralling and using meatsuits.

That little word 'just' set off alarms deep in the bowels of Nunnington Castle. Are you really saying that? I agree that religion has sociological functions, to do with cohesion, control, and so on.

Nothing else? It doesn't express deep archetypal themes symbolically?

Welcome Stormcrow! An excellent first post.

I don't come from a Christian background but my studies of Christian history suggest to me that many of the intractable problems that Chritian theology finds itself facing are a result of the historical development of Christianity. The most significant of these is that Christianity was not developed as a coherent creed from first principles but rather it seems to be an amalgam of various faith positions that were engulfed along the way for reasons (presumably) of political expediency.

What emerged was a doctrine that is riven with internal inconsistencies and which Christian theologians have been trying to wrestle into a consistent framework for centuries, with questionable success ( in my opinion). The responses by Byron and Nunnington seem to bear this out. "Ineffable" is a good way of putting it.

Also Christianity blended Jewish and Greek thought, and they are not always compatible. Also important have been Stoicism, Platonism, Gnosticism, and other modes of thought. But then certain Christian teachers and scholars become important in their own right, e.g. Aquinas, Augustine, Kierkegaard, and you have a true goulash. One could speak of Christianities.

nunnington wrote:Realized eschatology was an attempt to bring back eschatology to this world, and there is a nice little sentence by Crossan on this:

Apocalyptic eschatology is world-negation stressing imminent divine intervention: we wait for God to act; sapiential eschatology is world-negation emphasizing immediate divine imitation: God waits for us to act..

Jesus did both kinds of eschatology according to the gospels. But an orthodox Christian would always point out that it is God acting through us. The Apocalypse to John, read intelligently, is about "how God can use us to defeat the Roman Empire" and is written in such a way that only someone who is familiar with both the Gospel and Jewish apocalyptic can make head or tail of it.

While the end of the world as we know it is coming real soon now is an important part of Christian teaching from the beginning, a realised eschatology is implicit in calling Jesus both "Christ" and "Lord."

nunnington wrote:
I notice in recent years that liberals tend to say 'I am a soul', not 'I have a soul', which seems to reflect an interesting shift away from this kind of dualism,

I've seen far more of this from bible-believing types than from theological liberals, and it extends back to the 1700s if not earlier. I prefer Blake's expression of it : "Man has no Body distinct from his Soul." And while Blake has "All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors:" he has surely either found out for himself or had it pointed out to him that these are from bad reading, and that the use of psuche in the New Testament is more closely tied to its use in the LXX than it is to popular philosophical ideas. (Blake quotes are from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.)

nunnington wrote:
And yes, I guess Paul was grappling with this with his rather mysterious comments about spiritual bodies, and 'flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven'.

Paul's use of psuche and pneuma is more comprehensible if you suppose him to be a Greek speaking Jew rather than someone attempting to use the language of philosophy and using it rather strangely.

Peter.

PeterI

Nice point about realized eschatology, and I suppose for sacramental-type Christians the eschaton is realized now, in the sacrament?

Interesting footnote, that some Eastern religious teachers and gurus have said that the next breath is the beginning of the universe, leading to the end. Well, I saw a connection!

NIce quote from Blake. I notice that some New Agers talk of 'bodymind' now, an interesting fusion.

nunnington wrote:PeterI

Nice point about realized eschatology, and I suppose for sacramental-type Christians the eschaton is realized now, in the sacrament?

The water of baptism symbolises the death of the old self and the birth of another, the bread symbolises obedience, the wine both forgiveness and suffering. For the sacramentalist, these outward symbols help to create the inward spiritual reality they represent. I can only observe that they are not magic and do not seem to work on everyone. But for a person who allows themselves to become what the symbols represent they seem efficacious.

nunnington wrote:
Interesting footnote, that some Eastern religious teachers and gurus have said that the next breath is the beginning of the universe, leading to the end. Well, I saw a connection!

It is a common theistic belief that the world is constantly God's new creation. And while we suppose a start to creation and time, and an end to this present age in the future, these do not take away from the idea that all things are constantly newly made.

nunnington wrote:
NIce quote from Blake. I notice that some New Agers talk of 'bodymind' now, an interesting fusion.

Blake is astonishingly orthodox for someone who likes to startle his readers.

nunnington wrote:Also Christianity blended Jewish and Greek thought, and they are not always compatible. Also important have been Stoicism, Platonism, Gnosticism, and other modes of thought. But then certain Christian teachers and scholars become important in their own right, e.g. Aquinas, Augustine, Kierkegaard, and you have a true goulash. One could speak of Christianities.

I sure do.

There's a fascinating snippet from Augustine's City of God Against the Pagans where the sin daddy directs his acid pen to "amicable controversy with those tender-hearted Christians" who deny eternal torment for the damned. Augustine's reasoning boils down to (I paraphrase ) "well, if everyone gets saved, that includes the Devil, and most of you weedy liberals haven't got the cōleī for that: and if you have, well, you're perverse, so nah." (Book 21, c.17)

Personally, I'm struck by how idolatrous the wrathful God becomes: my God couldn't possibly show mercy to those I can't show mercy to, and I'll visit exquisite tortures on those tender-hearted bastards who put my meager capacity for mercy to shame ... ahem, who commit heresy.

But Augustine also mocked those Christians who denied basic empirical truths, and employed symbolism so convoluted it'd make Simeon Stylites' pillar spin. Coming from the relatively neat orthodoxy of mainstream Christianity, it's a jolt to realize just how diverse it all was.

nunnington wrote:

Made of Stars wrote:Welcome Stormcrow.

Why is God so insistent that the decision be made while the soul is encased in its little meatsuit and living on this planet? It strikes me that this is rather like asking an infant to make a decision about what college they want to go to, and requiring that they permanently decide some time in between birth and the hospital nursery.

Nice analogy.

It's not that God's fixated on our meatsuits, IMO, but that other meatsuits are interested in our meatsuits. Christianity is just a societal control mechanism, after all, or a way of corralling and using meatsuits.

That little word 'just' set off alarms deep in the bowels of Nunnington Castle. Are you really saying that? I agree that religion has sociological functions, to do with cohesion, control, and so on.

Nothing else? It doesn't express deep archetypal themes symbolically?

Only to postmodern theists trying to make it more than it is. Religion takes peoples' yearning for meaning and uses it to tell them how to live their lives. 'Live like this, think like we do, give us your money, and there'll be a nice reward for you just after I pull this lever...' Any woo and alleged transcendence serves only to suck people in, and keep them suckered.

What makes you think that religions are so calculating? The passions involved, and the grisly fates on many of their adherents, seem to point towards a great many people who are sincere in their convictions. Even an operator like Thomas Cranmer ended up dying for his beliefs.

Hucksters have undoubtedly used religion for a quick buck, but then, hucksters have used just about anything for a quick buck! Religion is too sprawling a category to be pinned down so neatly.

Byron wrote:What makes you think that religions are so calculating? The passions involved, and the grisly fates on many of their adherents, seem to point towards a great many people who are sincere in their convictions. Even an operator like Thomas Cranmer ended up dying for his beliefs.

Hucksters have undoubtedly used religion for a quick buck, but then, hucksters have used just about anything for a quick buck! Religion is too sprawling a category to be pinned down so neatly.

The sincerity of the believer is no guide to the value or veracity of the belief. Cults such as creationism, the Abrahamic religion and its mosaic subcults, Heaven's Gate and the anti-vax movement show us this. In all these cults, people have been prepared to put their, or worse, their children's lives on the line for their beliefs. Are they all then 'true', 'valuable', 'noble', or 'transcendent' (except in the sense that the belief helps the believer depart this life)?

Religion is a tool to manipulate people to comply with a preordained set of beliefs and behaviors, usually for the benefit of a few, or of one. The human universe is ready to move on - we have secular systems that can achieve the same ends without the tribal intellect stunting effects.

Made of Stars wrote:

nunnington wrote:

Made of Stars wrote:Welcome Stormcrow.

Nice analogy.

It's not that God's fixated on our meatsuits, IMO, but that other meatsuits are interested in our meatsuits. Christianity is just a societal control mechanism, after all, or a way of corralling and using meatsuits.

That little word 'just' set off alarms deep in the bowels of Nunnington Castle. Are you really saying that? I agree that religion has sociological functions, to do with cohesion, control, and so on.

Nothing else? It doesn't express deep archetypal themes symbolically?

Only to postmodern theists trying to make it more than it is. Religion takes peoples' yearning for meaning and uses it to tell them how to live their lives. 'Live like this, think like we do, give us your money, and there'll be a nice reward for you just after I pull this lever...' Any woo and alleged transcendence serves only to suck people in, and keep them suckered.

But your argument assumes by default that religion does not satisfy the yearning for meaning, or does not express various meanings symbolically. How would you know that?