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Jun. 20th, 2003 09:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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I expressed these thoughts in a discussion on Beliefnet regarding reincarnation in Christian thought. I am modifying it here somewhat.
I do not believe in the concept of the "immortal soul" as such, but I do believe there is a form of eternal existence that we can obtain.
IMO the Christian teaching does not necessarily imply the existence of an "immortal soul." This belief was probably not held by the earliest writers of the New Testament and, was not only not expressed in the Old Testament, indeed it contradicts some passages.
The belief of the Pharisees, which was held by Paul, was that the souls of the righteous would be reconstructed from God's memory at the coming of the Messiah.
I've come to see the psyche as a part of us that is born with the fleshly body and dies with it. That is, our mind, our emotions, our memories. So many of these things are connected to brain functions and abilities, that I am not convinced they can occur without it.
However, I've come to see the Pneuma as an immortal piece of the Spirit that resides within each of us, as though each of us possesses (or is) a single inhale and exhale from God's nostrils.
Could it be, perhaps, that impressions of past experiences come to some few of us by way of "inhaling" the remnants of them as we Breathe the Pneuma?
Eternal life, as I read it, is dying to one's self/psyche and identifying one's "self" as the Pneuma. For Christians this means being crucified with Christ so that only Christ lives within: cf. Galatians 2:20.
I Corinthians 15 describes the risen Christ as possessing a Pneumatic ("spiritual") body.
If, as I wrote, the spark of Pneuma within each of us is a little piece of a bigger, immortal Pneuma -- then we might suppose that a "Pneumatic body" is a being whose breath passes through the lungs of many.
Indeed, we find in the passages of Paul numerous allusions to the Church as the Body of Christ in a perhaps literal way.
If this is true, then perhaps one of the crucial aspects of "realigning one's mind" (the Greek word metanoeo is usually translated "repent" in the NT) in order to enter the Reign/Realm (Kingdom) of God (which I call the cosmic tribe) is recognizing that the eternal breath and Pneuma we share with other Christians, which lives on after we as individuals die, is the eternal life we find "in" Christ.
cp_circleI expressed these thoughts in a discussion on Beliefnet regarding reincarnation in Christian thought. I am modifying it here somewhat.
I do not believe in the concept of the "immortal soul" as such, but I do believe there is a form of eternal existence that we can obtain.
IMO the Christian teaching does not necessarily imply the existence of an "immortal soul." This belief was probably not held by the earliest writers of the New Testament and, was not only not expressed in the Old Testament, indeed it contradicts some passages.
The belief of the Pharisees, which was held by Paul, was that the souls of the righteous would be reconstructed from God's memory at the coming of the Messiah.
I've come to see the psyche as a part of us that is born with the fleshly body and dies with it. That is, our mind, our emotions, our memories. So many of these things are connected to brain functions and abilities, that I am not convinced they can occur without it.
However, I've come to see the Pneuma as an immortal piece of the Spirit that resides within each of us, as though each of us possesses (or is) a single inhale and exhale from God's nostrils.
Could it be, perhaps, that impressions of past experiences come to some few of us by way of "inhaling" the remnants of them as we Breathe the Pneuma?
Eternal life, as I read it, is dying to one's self/psyche and identifying one's "self" as the Pneuma. For Christians this means being crucified with Christ so that only Christ lives within: cf. Galatians 2:20.
I Corinthians 15 describes the risen Christ as possessing a Pneumatic ("spiritual") body.
If, as I wrote, the spark of Pneuma within each of us is a little piece of a bigger, immortal Pneuma -- then we might suppose that a "Pneumatic body" is a being whose breath passes through the lungs of many.
Indeed, we find in the passages of Paul numerous allusions to the Church as the Body of Christ in a perhaps literal way.
If this is true, then perhaps one of the crucial aspects of "realigning one's mind" (the Greek word metanoeo is usually translated "repent" in the NT) in order to enter the Reign/Realm (Kingdom) of God (which I call the cosmic tribe) is recognizing that the eternal breath and Pneuma we share with other Christians, which lives on after we as individuals die, is the eternal life we find "in" Christ.
