"For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles," 1 Corinthians 1:22-23
I have been to churches which managed to appeal to both Jews and Greeks by this standard, yet preached Christ as a mere example, not as savior.
The Church needs to preach Christ crucified. Christ who died for our sins, who died to save us and redeem us. Christ apart from whom we would be lost in the world, apart from God. Christ by whom alone we can have fellowship with God. Christ who has died so that the hideousness of our sinful selves need no longer separate us from God or humans.
But we give the world signs: good music, beautiful pictures--as the world judges, but to us it is ugly insofar as it lacks the beauty of Christ crucified.
And we give the world wisdom, we preach the proverbs as mere wisdom for humans to live. Things to do, ways to be: law. There is wisdom enough in the world. The world does not need the Bible to know this kind of wisdom. The Bible is not "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth." It is, rather, God's self-revelation to us that we might be saved and joined in relationship with him. It is for our salvation and sanctification. It is for God's glory.
Human beings are hungry to hear of Christ crucified. So long as we tell them things to do, or give them spiritual highs, or show them the quality of our handiwork, we hide God behind our human skill and wisdom. We give them what they already have.
We have got to extend the hope of the Gospel, that Christ died so that our sins need no longer bind us, and so we need no longer be bound in our sins. We may, because we have Christ's righteousness--because it is about Jesus's finished work on the cross, not our incomplete, inadequate work on earth--we may live free of our unrighteousness which Jesus Christ took and died for so that we might live both now and forever.
And how shall we do this? How have we not been doing this?! They are hungry people. Like we were. Like we are. I write this because I am hungry for it! I am now keenly aware of the lack, and thus hungry for it, and thus eager to feed others so that I may express the excellency of the Gospel. How can we keep silent when we have this treasure?
Yet God's grace exceeds beyond making us eager to do what we ought. We have failed--I have failed. Christ died even for this. Christ died so that we could speak of him, and so that we might not be ashamed of him--because it is not about us. It is not even about our telling of the Gospel. It is about Christ, and our lives are now made to be about Christ. It is not really up to us to do this. Christ will be known. You will not, finally, fail. God will give you grace, and words, to speak. Apart from him we can say nothing--at least, nothing helpful. It is God who calls--through men. We are blessed to participate in God's work. And we are being formed still, to be ready to tell others of Christ's death for us. Are you not ready? Rely on the Spirit to make you ready, through discipleship, reading Scripture, prayer, and communion. Christ died even for our failure to glorify him now. He died for all our sins. May God make us burn with a passion for the Gospel too great to contain.
Sunday, July 13, 2014
Expositional Preaching: A Grace to Preachers
The Gospel frees us to live in Christ, not in our own strength. Therefore preachers should be able to preach by the grace of God. This could easily be left as an amorphous reliance on God in sermon preparation, but I think that it can be made concrete in expositional preaching.
Consider: a preacher may rely on himself as he crafts his sermon. He may work out his own structure and his own topic for what he says, and find texts from Scripture on his own. He may choose his own tone, his own words, his own conclusion. Or a preacher may rely on God, by taking a text and preaching its structure, which is the structure of the Word of God and so God's structure. He may preach the topic of that text, the tone of that text, the keywords and phrases of that text, and the conclusion of that text. He may look and see what God has already given him to preach. "Here is what God says" the preacher may then say, "I will tell my congregation about it." He then locates the text in the way God's word is organized around the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and then preaches what this text says, as it says it, to the end for which it says it.
This is why I am amazed by how little expositional preaching I find, as I look for a church. expositional preaching is, to me, the obviously best way to preach from Scripture, as well as the easiest. God has already done the work. Why try to reinvent the wheel? Why not preach off of what God--who is way better at this stuff than any of us--has already done? Why make things harder for yourself than you have to, especially when it is likely to have worse results?
There are various possibilities as to why preachers don't preach this way. Perhaps some don't preach this way out of ignorance: it may just never have occurred to them that they can, and no one has told them. Some may have worse reasons. Expositional preaching requires that the preacher submit himself to the word of God, and that requires humility. We are proud and want to do things for ourselves, but you know what? Christ died so that it is no longer about what we do, but what Christ has already done. You don't need to run around making your very own pretty sermon. God has already given his message, you don't need to make one up for him, or try to find some secret message. Maybe there is fear. Of what? That it will be boring? Because it is a new way of preaching? God's word is not boring--the Gospel of Christ is the most exciting story in the world, the one all other good stories image, the one we are all hungry for. It is new, though. But of all kinds of preaching to try for the first time, expositional preaching is the best to mess up. Pick a book; work through it. Even if it is the crappiest sermon you have ever preached, God's word lies behind it. God still speaks, and he speaks even in our weakness, even in if the weakness is in the area of preaching.
Consider: a preacher may rely on himself as he crafts his sermon. He may work out his own structure and his own topic for what he says, and find texts from Scripture on his own. He may choose his own tone, his own words, his own conclusion. Or a preacher may rely on God, by taking a text and preaching its structure, which is the structure of the Word of God and so God's structure. He may preach the topic of that text, the tone of that text, the keywords and phrases of that text, and the conclusion of that text. He may look and see what God has already given him to preach. "Here is what God says" the preacher may then say, "I will tell my congregation about it." He then locates the text in the way God's word is organized around the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and then preaches what this text says, as it says it, to the end for which it says it.
This is why I am amazed by how little expositional preaching I find, as I look for a church. expositional preaching is, to me, the obviously best way to preach from Scripture, as well as the easiest. God has already done the work. Why try to reinvent the wheel? Why not preach off of what God--who is way better at this stuff than any of us--has already done? Why make things harder for yourself than you have to, especially when it is likely to have worse results?
There are various possibilities as to why preachers don't preach this way. Perhaps some don't preach this way out of ignorance: it may just never have occurred to them that they can, and no one has told them. Some may have worse reasons. Expositional preaching requires that the preacher submit himself to the word of God, and that requires humility. We are proud and want to do things for ourselves, but you know what? Christ died so that it is no longer about what we do, but what Christ has already done. You don't need to run around making your very own pretty sermon. God has already given his message, you don't need to make one up for him, or try to find some secret message. Maybe there is fear. Of what? That it will be boring? Because it is a new way of preaching? God's word is not boring--the Gospel of Christ is the most exciting story in the world, the one all other good stories image, the one we are all hungry for. It is new, though. But of all kinds of preaching to try for the first time, expositional preaching is the best to mess up. Pick a book; work through it. Even if it is the crappiest sermon you have ever preached, God's word lies behind it. God still speaks, and he speaks even in our weakness, even in if the weakness is in the area of preaching.
Sunday, July 6, 2014
What I Want in a Church
1. Preach Christ and him crucified. If Christ's death for me is
unimportant to the sermon, it is a bad sermon. Premiss: the whole of
Scripture forms a unity at the center of which is Christ's death and
resurrection. Conclusion: If you are preaching Scripture, you are
preaching something organized around Christ's death and resurrection. It
should sound like it. You can give a great talk using cool
screens/music/gimmicks/etc., (Jews demand signs) and using Scripture like a
book of wisdom (Greeks demand wisdom), but that's not what I come to
hear (we preach Christ and him crucified).
Christ's death means that it is not about what we do, but about what Christ has already done on our behalf.
Christ's death frees us to live righteously. You know those commands? They are fulfilled in Christ, and in Christ we are freed to walk in them. Yes, it's hard, but if we understand them right, and trust God, we will want to struggle for it. (This is the essential one for me)
2. Preach what the text says, not what you think about what the text says. Yes, you might not know exactly what the text is trying to communicate, but at least make it possible for me to see how you got what you are saying from the words on the page.
3. Don't ignore the context. And by context I don't just mean the verses in the general vicinity. I will probably notice if there is stuff being ignored which is in the chapters around the text at hand. Pay attention to the general flow of the book too. Basically: preach the part like it is a part of a greater whole.
4. Keep your tone aligned with the text. I actually think this is a repeat of 2., but it bears saying separately. If we are trying to give people what someone said, we try not to change the tone of the message (right?) so, same when the person is God. Especially since I am betting he knew what he was doing when he used that tone.
5. Be able and willing to suffer. Weep with those who weep. Don't be mono-emotive, that is, allow for the display of the whole spectrum of human emotion. This is the one thing on this list that can look like a taste issue. It is not (the churches I avoid for this reason are usually described by members as being full of members who are joyful or excited about Jesus or something). Mourning is a declaration of the value of the human person, echoing Christ's redemption of humanity and motivated by a hope in the resurrection of the dead. I tend to take the unwillingness to mourn or suffer as a sign that the fear of death remains and has not been displaced by hope in the promise that Christ is making all things new, that death and suffering will not get the last word. I will admit that my sensitivity to this issue may be a matter of temperament, but the issue itself is important.
6. I'm a credobaptist, so I'm looking for a credobaptist church (credobaptist: doesn't baptize babies, usually dunks).
And... that is it for points a church must at least get close on before I consider attending regularly. I doubt a church that gets the first three will miss the fifth one, but it is there. Inessentials (which I pessimistically don't expect to need to look at):
7. Have deep, dense theology in your music. I want the gospel getting stuck in my head.
8. Don't let the music be too loud, or the lights too bright. This is mostly just a quirk of my biology, but those stress me out. The fastest way to make me mad is to make me listen to a bad, loud preacher.
9. Screens are not a plus. they stir up brain activity in a way that can cause trouble for light-sensitive epileptics (my fiancee) and those with sensory processing disorders (autism, etc.,).
10. 5-point Calvinism is a plus, since otherwise people say things that I don't hear the way they mean them (sovereignty, for one).
Conclusion: I fully expect to end up in a small baptist church where the average age is in the fifties or so. I am also quite alright with that.
Christ's death means that it is not about what we do, but about what Christ has already done on our behalf.
Christ's death frees us to live righteously. You know those commands? They are fulfilled in Christ, and in Christ we are freed to walk in them. Yes, it's hard, but if we understand them right, and trust God, we will want to struggle for it. (This is the essential one for me)
2. Preach what the text says, not what you think about what the text says. Yes, you might not know exactly what the text is trying to communicate, but at least make it possible for me to see how you got what you are saying from the words on the page.
3. Don't ignore the context. And by context I don't just mean the verses in the general vicinity. I will probably notice if there is stuff being ignored which is in the chapters around the text at hand. Pay attention to the general flow of the book too. Basically: preach the part like it is a part of a greater whole.
4. Keep your tone aligned with the text. I actually think this is a repeat of 2., but it bears saying separately. If we are trying to give people what someone said, we try not to change the tone of the message (right?) so, same when the person is God. Especially since I am betting he knew what he was doing when he used that tone.
5. Be able and willing to suffer. Weep with those who weep. Don't be mono-emotive, that is, allow for the display of the whole spectrum of human emotion. This is the one thing on this list that can look like a taste issue. It is not (the churches I avoid for this reason are usually described by members as being full of members who are joyful or excited about Jesus or something). Mourning is a declaration of the value of the human person, echoing Christ's redemption of humanity and motivated by a hope in the resurrection of the dead. I tend to take the unwillingness to mourn or suffer as a sign that the fear of death remains and has not been displaced by hope in the promise that Christ is making all things new, that death and suffering will not get the last word. I will admit that my sensitivity to this issue may be a matter of temperament, but the issue itself is important.
6. I'm a credobaptist, so I'm looking for a credobaptist church (credobaptist: doesn't baptize babies, usually dunks).
And... that is it for points a church must at least get close on before I consider attending regularly. I doubt a church that gets the first three will miss the fifth one, but it is there. Inessentials (which I pessimistically don't expect to need to look at):
7. Have deep, dense theology in your music. I want the gospel getting stuck in my head.
8. Don't let the music be too loud, or the lights too bright. This is mostly just a quirk of my biology, but those stress me out. The fastest way to make me mad is to make me listen to a bad, loud preacher.
9. Screens are not a plus. they stir up brain activity in a way that can cause trouble for light-sensitive epileptics (my fiancee) and those with sensory processing disorders (autism, etc.,).
10. 5-point Calvinism is a plus, since otherwise people say things that I don't hear the way they mean them (sovereignty, for one).
Conclusion: I fully expect to end up in a small baptist church where the average age is in the fifties or so. I am also quite alright with that.
Saturday, July 5, 2014
The Bodily Person
I am my body.
I am not just my body.
My crankiness due to lack of sleep, for instance: it is still my crankiness, even though I can point to its biological causes. My crankiness is in my body, so to speak, but it is still a feature of my person that I am cranky.
It is possible to say to oneself, "I did not get enough sleep, I must beware of my crankiness." Consider: "be angry, but do not sin." I may, in my person, experience human emotions, yet I may act contrary to them (emotions are not the only motivators).
This is to subordinate the emotions to the "I" who chooses. The emotions are still to be considered a part of me, but not the whole. This is the subordination of the part of a person to the whole of the person.
The emotions are, therefore, linked to the biological. Nevertheless, even when we know the biological causes of our emotions, we do not necessarily disregard our emotions. That is to say, even when we consider the emotions fully explained by biology, we do not on that account disregard or silence them. Though we may disregard our emotions when we regard the causes as not warranting them.
All this goes to show that the mere fact that something has biological causes does not simply on that account absolve the subject of responsibility for them, nor does it entail that those things are not part of the person.
A human person interacts with other human persons and with the environment only through their bodies. My body is how I interact with what is not me.
Could a person, or part of a person, exist apart from being expressed?
Is there anything more to a person than the expression of personhood?
Surely, my motives are not fully expressed, yet they are fully a part of my person. Is a person truly without anger simply because the anger is not expressed? But anger has a physical component to it, and even apart from that we know that anger can be said to fester and build. The anger exists, that is to say: it will show itself. This answers the first question in the negative.
To the second I would like to say that there is more to a person than their expression, that there is something it is like to be conscious, to be a person, which I know (only) firsthand. But let us refine the question some more.
Can there be an expression which appears as the expression of a person, without there being a person?
We would not know. At the very least, we could not hold that such an illusion occurred both regularly and naturally, lest we lose confidence in the personhood of other humans. If such an illusion could be expected, then it would no longer be an illusion--we would not read those things as an expression of personhood.
What I am puzzling over here is the mind-body problem: how is the conscious subject related to his physical body? This is different from, though related to and frequently identified with, the question as to whether we have non-physical souls or not. Many, if not most, answers to the mind-body problem identify the mind with the soul, but that is to beg other questions which I do not intend to address here just yet (viz., what is the mind? What is the soul? How are they related?). What I have expressed above are reasons for being suspicious of mind-body dualism. They do not invalidate soul-body dualism, so long as the soul and the mind are not identified with one another. It is possible for soul-body dualism to be true and the mind to have aspects which cannot be accounted for without reference to each, yet the mind not be a third thing (for that reason, I will need to address the questions in the above parenthesis eventually).
I am not just my body.
My crankiness due to lack of sleep, for instance: it is still my crankiness, even though I can point to its biological causes. My crankiness is in my body, so to speak, but it is still a feature of my person that I am cranky.
It is possible to say to oneself, "I did not get enough sleep, I must beware of my crankiness." Consider: "be angry, but do not sin." I may, in my person, experience human emotions, yet I may act contrary to them (emotions are not the only motivators).
This is to subordinate the emotions to the "I" who chooses. The emotions are still to be considered a part of me, but not the whole. This is the subordination of the part of a person to the whole of the person.
The emotions are, therefore, linked to the biological. Nevertheless, even when we know the biological causes of our emotions, we do not necessarily disregard our emotions. That is to say, even when we consider the emotions fully explained by biology, we do not on that account disregard or silence them. Though we may disregard our emotions when we regard the causes as not warranting them.
All this goes to show that the mere fact that something has biological causes does not simply on that account absolve the subject of responsibility for them, nor does it entail that those things are not part of the person.
A human person interacts with other human persons and with the environment only through their bodies. My body is how I interact with what is not me.
Could a person, or part of a person, exist apart from being expressed?
Is there anything more to a person than the expression of personhood?
Surely, my motives are not fully expressed, yet they are fully a part of my person. Is a person truly without anger simply because the anger is not expressed? But anger has a physical component to it, and even apart from that we know that anger can be said to fester and build. The anger exists, that is to say: it will show itself. This answers the first question in the negative.
To the second I would like to say that there is more to a person than their expression, that there is something it is like to be conscious, to be a person, which I know (only) firsthand. But let us refine the question some more.
Can there be an expression which appears as the expression of a person, without there being a person?
We would not know. At the very least, we could not hold that such an illusion occurred both regularly and naturally, lest we lose confidence in the personhood of other humans. If such an illusion could be expected, then it would no longer be an illusion--we would not read those things as an expression of personhood.
What I am puzzling over here is the mind-body problem: how is the conscious subject related to his physical body? This is different from, though related to and frequently identified with, the question as to whether we have non-physical souls or not. Many, if not most, answers to the mind-body problem identify the mind with the soul, but that is to beg other questions which I do not intend to address here just yet (viz., what is the mind? What is the soul? How are they related?). What I have expressed above are reasons for being suspicious of mind-body dualism. They do not invalidate soul-body dualism, so long as the soul and the mind are not identified with one another. It is possible for soul-body dualism to be true and the mind to have aspects which cannot be accounted for without reference to each, yet the mind not be a third thing (for that reason, I will need to address the questions in the above parenthesis eventually).
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Two Places at Once
You have one body. Two arms, two legs, a mouth, two eyes, two ears, a nose, lungs, a heart, a stomach, all physically connected to the same nervous system. Your nerves aren't wireless. Your body is one whole thing, and it can't be separated and made to occupy multiple places without harming you. So you can't be in two places at once.
Or can you?
To occupy a place is to be able to interact with it. I first encountered this view in discussions of God's omnipresence. It is a solution to the problem of how God can be entirely everywhere. Not some part of him everywhere, as a distributed body, nor all of him multiplied so as to be reproduced everywhere, but him, entire and complete, at every place. The solution is to suggest that God's omnipresence is his ability to know what is going on everywhere and to respond to it from anywhere and everywhere. His actions and knowledge are not bounded by space, and this makes him omnipresent.
So, if I were to be in two places at once, I would need to be able to perceive both places and perform actions in both places--at once.
The biggest problem we face in doing this at this point is that it involves multitasking, which we can't technically do. What we actually do is switch back and forth between tasks very rapidly. Let's ignore this problem for the time being, because we get close enough.
When you are talking on the phone, your ears and voice can reach two different, and usually distant, locations. You can usually still hear what is going on around your body, but you can also hear what is going on where you are calling. Two locations become linked by your phone. That is just the most common way it works, of course: there is pretty high demand for technologies that will let you be in two places at once now. That is what allows for telecommuting: your presence is no longer limited to the geographical space around your body.
It gets weirder.
Massively Multiplayer Online Games create a new, shared space which many people can occupy. You occupy both your desk, and this artificial world. The feature which makes it most obviously a world is that multiple persons can communicate in it and about it, and can get results relative to it, and all this can happen within its space. So within these games a person can occupy, not only two places, but two distinct, though connected, worlds.
You are still limited, though. You can't fix a sandwich and work at the office at once. Pretty much all our devices for telecommuting involve our fingers, and, even if they didn't, it would hard to multitask so thoroughly.
And this is just descriptive. I haven't even started thinking about the ethics of this.
I want to say we should avoid multitasking, and that we should be present wherever we happen to be. That needs some nuancing, however, especially seeing that we can't really function in this era without phones.
Or can you?
To occupy a place is to be able to interact with it. I first encountered this view in discussions of God's omnipresence. It is a solution to the problem of how God can be entirely everywhere. Not some part of him everywhere, as a distributed body, nor all of him multiplied so as to be reproduced everywhere, but him, entire and complete, at every place. The solution is to suggest that God's omnipresence is his ability to know what is going on everywhere and to respond to it from anywhere and everywhere. His actions and knowledge are not bounded by space, and this makes him omnipresent.
So, if I were to be in two places at once, I would need to be able to perceive both places and perform actions in both places--at once.
The biggest problem we face in doing this at this point is that it involves multitasking, which we can't technically do. What we actually do is switch back and forth between tasks very rapidly. Let's ignore this problem for the time being, because we get close enough.
When you are talking on the phone, your ears and voice can reach two different, and usually distant, locations. You can usually still hear what is going on around your body, but you can also hear what is going on where you are calling. Two locations become linked by your phone. That is just the most common way it works, of course: there is pretty high demand for technologies that will let you be in two places at once now. That is what allows for telecommuting: your presence is no longer limited to the geographical space around your body.
It gets weirder.
Massively Multiplayer Online Games create a new, shared space which many people can occupy. You occupy both your desk, and this artificial world. The feature which makes it most obviously a world is that multiple persons can communicate in it and about it, and can get results relative to it, and all this can happen within its space. So within these games a person can occupy, not only two places, but two distinct, though connected, worlds.
You are still limited, though. You can't fix a sandwich and work at the office at once. Pretty much all our devices for telecommuting involve our fingers, and, even if they didn't, it would hard to multitask so thoroughly.
And this is just descriptive. I haven't even started thinking about the ethics of this.
I want to say we should avoid multitasking, and that we should be present wherever we happen to be. That needs some nuancing, however, especially seeing that we can't really function in this era without phones.
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Wittgensteinian Ethics
Maurice Drury tells a story about an interaction he had with Wittgenstein where Drury said something about monastic kinds of life being a waste of time. Wittgenstein responded "how can you know what their problems were in those days and what they had to do about them?"
To Freidrich Waismann Wittgenstein said "At the end of my lecture on ethics, I spoke in the first person. I believe that is quite essential. Here nothing more can be established, I can only appear as a person speaking for myself."
It can easily be seen throughout Wittgenstein's comments and actions regarding his life and philosophy that his philosophical work was bound up in his life.
I would like to suggest that Wittgenstein's ethic was a kind of existential ethic. Ethical problems are seen as problems which need solved in life--by a form of life--and one cannot solve an ethical problem without encountering it in a life. We speak from where we are in matters of ethics. My answers to ethical questions are only valid insofar as they are livable, and so the best test for an answer to a problem of ethics, of life, is to live it out. The question is whether the solution can fit into a way of life.
Why are we incapable of speaking about what is ethical? This is an attack on the open question argument, or a kind of agreement with its force. The point, that is, is that we cannot capture the normative power of what is to be done, or what is good, in language. Normativity exceeds what can be expressed. What we should do is what would solve the lived problems of our lives. Why? And the answer is not given in words, so much as by our inability to truly ask the question if we have heard the answer rightly. We must see what is normative, we cannot merely speak it.
To Freidrich Waismann Wittgenstein said "At the end of my lecture on ethics, I spoke in the first person. I believe that is quite essential. Here nothing more can be established, I can only appear as a person speaking for myself."
It can easily be seen throughout Wittgenstein's comments and actions regarding his life and philosophy that his philosophical work was bound up in his life.
I would like to suggest that Wittgenstein's ethic was a kind of existential ethic. Ethical problems are seen as problems which need solved in life--by a form of life--and one cannot solve an ethical problem without encountering it in a life. We speak from where we are in matters of ethics. My answers to ethical questions are only valid insofar as they are livable, and so the best test for an answer to a problem of ethics, of life, is to live it out. The question is whether the solution can fit into a way of life.
Why are we incapable of speaking about what is ethical? This is an attack on the open question argument, or a kind of agreement with its force. The point, that is, is that we cannot capture the normative power of what is to be done, or what is good, in language. Normativity exceeds what can be expressed. What we should do is what would solve the lived problems of our lives. Why? And the answer is not given in words, so much as by our inability to truly ask the question if we have heard the answer rightly. We must see what is normative, we cannot merely speak it.
Thursday, June 5, 2014
Body and Soul: A Normative Relationship
"The human body is the best picture of the human soul." Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations pt.II, iv, section 25.
I use this quote because it is what began the thought processes which led to the conclusions here, not as evidence for them.
My thesis here is that the physical ought to represent, picture, or better yet embody the spiritual (by which I will mean in this post anything one would refer to as mental, spiritual, relating to the soul, emotions, cognition, etc.).
As a Christian, the most obvious evidence in favor of this is in reference to those places where the spiritual is embodied in the context of Christianity. These are, first, the human person, but that is the case we wish to understand by reference to the others; second, Christ, who is God incarnate; third, the Christian sacraments and what went before them.
In the case of Jesus Christ, God became human and thereby took on "sinful flesh" in order to bear our sins, and our sin nature in the flesh, which nature is often referred to as our flesh. He suffered, bled, and died as sinner--in our stead, or as ourselves. He represented all humans and so became human.
I think the sacraments are more obvious, and to those I now turn. In baptism, one exhibits outwardly that one has been cleansed, that one has been buried and raised with Christ. In taking communion, we take Christ in bodily and in so doing show our taking him in spiritually. I take neither of these as salvific, but both as means of grace in which we meet God spiritually in the physical representation. I count neither of these as mere ceremonies or as merely representations, but as also involving the presence of God with us in spirit in a special way. If these were merely physical representations, then they would be of no help in understanding the relationship between the physical and the spiritual in this way.
So much for the particularly Christian points, on to more broadly theistic.
I take it that all of creation pictures God, whether by choice or not and whether in the short term or long. I further take it that, in a perfect (i.e., pre-fall or once Christ returns) world, we would be able to learn directly from creation how things stand regarding the nature of God. Those who take disaster as a sign of the displeasure of God should not be wrong, and likewise those who take riches as a sign of God's pleasure--their being wrong about these things is a consequence of the fall, and so to be lamented as it is in the psalms and by the prophets. Thus I take it that the right structure of the world as a whole was meant to be one of imaging the spiritual in the physical. It may be possible for this to be the case and yet particular physical things not be intended to relate in that way to particular spiritual realities, but I doubt that it is likely that that is how it is supposed to be. That is, I suspect that particular physical realities correspond relatively straightforwardly to spiritual realities as regards what they are supposed to image. Thus, human body is to picture human soul.
On to broadly philosophical points.
Insofar as what I am referring to here as the human soul is what directs the human body, it seems natural that it would exhibit itself in the human body, and insofar as there is design, it seems designed to do so. Thus there would seem to be a malfunction if the human soul was not pictured by the human body.
If the normative in no way shows up in the physical, then we cannot charge anyone with guilt on account of actions performed, but only on account of intent divorced of physical content, e.g., intent to commit murder, but not intent to drive an axe through the skull of a self-moving human body's skull. If the normative does show up in the physical, then I would expect it to do so by means of, at least, what is harmful or beneficial to human well-being, broadly construed. Such things would then indicate what is good or bad to us.
What is conducive to our well-being, broadly construed, is what is conducive to our being what we are as fully as possible. We are humans which are both spiritual and physical, with the spiritual directing the physical, by and large. Thus, what is good for us is, in part, what is conducive to our exhibiting who we are as spiritual persons in what we are as physical bodies.
There is much complication which may follow, such as balancing changing insides versus changing outsides, but the point here is to establish that, all else being equal, one's spiritual person should show up in one's physical body. I take it, further, that this extends to speech and to social life and exhibiting spiritual relations via physical ones, which we do naturally, indeed, instinctively, by adjusting distances between us, shifting foot positions, crossing arms, etc.
I use this quote because it is what began the thought processes which led to the conclusions here, not as evidence for them.
My thesis here is that the physical ought to represent, picture, or better yet embody the spiritual (by which I will mean in this post anything one would refer to as mental, spiritual, relating to the soul, emotions, cognition, etc.).
As a Christian, the most obvious evidence in favor of this is in reference to those places where the spiritual is embodied in the context of Christianity. These are, first, the human person, but that is the case we wish to understand by reference to the others; second, Christ, who is God incarnate; third, the Christian sacraments and what went before them.
In the case of Jesus Christ, God became human and thereby took on "sinful flesh" in order to bear our sins, and our sin nature in the flesh, which nature is often referred to as our flesh. He suffered, bled, and died as sinner--in our stead, or as ourselves. He represented all humans and so became human.
I think the sacraments are more obvious, and to those I now turn. In baptism, one exhibits outwardly that one has been cleansed, that one has been buried and raised with Christ. In taking communion, we take Christ in bodily and in so doing show our taking him in spiritually. I take neither of these as salvific, but both as means of grace in which we meet God spiritually in the physical representation. I count neither of these as mere ceremonies or as merely representations, but as also involving the presence of God with us in spirit in a special way. If these were merely physical representations, then they would be of no help in understanding the relationship between the physical and the spiritual in this way.
So much for the particularly Christian points, on to more broadly theistic.
I take it that all of creation pictures God, whether by choice or not and whether in the short term or long. I further take it that, in a perfect (i.e., pre-fall or once Christ returns) world, we would be able to learn directly from creation how things stand regarding the nature of God. Those who take disaster as a sign of the displeasure of God should not be wrong, and likewise those who take riches as a sign of God's pleasure--their being wrong about these things is a consequence of the fall, and so to be lamented as it is in the psalms and by the prophets. Thus I take it that the right structure of the world as a whole was meant to be one of imaging the spiritual in the physical. It may be possible for this to be the case and yet particular physical things not be intended to relate in that way to particular spiritual realities, but I doubt that it is likely that that is how it is supposed to be. That is, I suspect that particular physical realities correspond relatively straightforwardly to spiritual realities as regards what they are supposed to image. Thus, human body is to picture human soul.
On to broadly philosophical points.
Insofar as what I am referring to here as the human soul is what directs the human body, it seems natural that it would exhibit itself in the human body, and insofar as there is design, it seems designed to do so. Thus there would seem to be a malfunction if the human soul was not pictured by the human body.
If the normative in no way shows up in the physical, then we cannot charge anyone with guilt on account of actions performed, but only on account of intent divorced of physical content, e.g., intent to commit murder, but not intent to drive an axe through the skull of a self-moving human body's skull. If the normative does show up in the physical, then I would expect it to do so by means of, at least, what is harmful or beneficial to human well-being, broadly construed. Such things would then indicate what is good or bad to us.
What is conducive to our well-being, broadly construed, is what is conducive to our being what we are as fully as possible. We are humans which are both spiritual and physical, with the spiritual directing the physical, by and large. Thus, what is good for us is, in part, what is conducive to our exhibiting who we are as spiritual persons in what we are as physical bodies.
There is much complication which may follow, such as balancing changing insides versus changing outsides, but the point here is to establish that, all else being equal, one's spiritual person should show up in one's physical body. I take it, further, that this extends to speech and to social life and exhibiting spiritual relations via physical ones, which we do naturally, indeed, instinctively, by adjusting distances between us, shifting foot positions, crossing arms, etc.
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