Occasional-ism “a non-Deistic understanding of the World”
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Idolater
"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
Its a good question. How are empty spaces defined in the spiritual realm? Is there a created medium that transcends the spiritual and physical realm? A universe "spoken" into existence seems to imply that there is...no?
It's really wild to think about some of these things.
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." If the heaven means something other than the night sky and outer space, it means whatever the spiritual realm is. He created the angels first.
Lon
Well-known member
It is odd to think God exists no'where.' He exists of/in/by Himself. After creation, He is intricately involved (Colossians 1:16-20). I, a physical being continue to try and capture the truth of Father's Spirit existence, but cannot capture it but with physical constraint every time. The closest I've come to barely an ah ha moment is contemplating an eternal nonbeginning. He always existed and then my brain explodes. I, finite, just have a huge difficulty trying to even get a glimpse of an infinite/eternal/eternity of nonbeginning. "I AM" is about all God could tell Moses and Jesus the Pharisees John 8:58. I barely grasp the meaning, look into the truth of what it means and my mind stops some gazillion years ago and it is nowhere near an inch of an endless race.Its a good question. How are empty spaces defined in the spiritual realm? Is there a created medium that transcends the spiritual and physical realm? A universe "spoken" into existence seems to imply that there is...no?
It's really wild to think about some of these things.
VladtheDestroyer
Member
Our physical brain/bodies might be better understood as limiters. They constrain the perceptive ability of our spirits. Our eyes are perfectly designed to work with our physical bodies and the image we are meant to dwell in. But they were not designed to see ultra-violet light. But once we die and our spirits are no longer tied to our bodies, then I suspect we will be able to. Maybe.
Or it could be I'm just talking a bunch of pseudo-intellectual nonsense.
What about our minds? Will we be smarter in Heaven? I used to spend way too much time killing off my brains cells with tasty German beers. Will I ever get them back? That's the big question.
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Idolater
"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
You're personally starved for sacrament; the literal meeting between the spiritual, physical, eternal and temporal; right before your eyes. (Almost as if God knows what you know, about the impossibility of reconciling physics and heaven, with the human heart, soul, mind and strength. So He gave us some visual cues. The sacraments are physical and spiritual. Everywhere else—we don't know, but we know in the sacraments eternality and temporality meet, before our eyes. They unite somehow. It's for calibration, if nothing else, is what your analysis above reveals, entails, shows and demonstrates, about why God gives us sacraments. Not because our finite human brains can't process Heaven, but because our brain can process it, ONLY with a handful of fixed points of reference. Assertions, call them. The seven sacraments are seven assertions. About the relationship between the Heaven and the Earth. At the seven sacraments somehow the Heaven is the Earth. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven. Our Father Who art in Heaven. Sacraments are the united Heaven and Earth. Christ's kingdom is not of this World (Earth). That means it's the kingdom of Heaven (cf. the Gospel of Matthew).)
Idolater
"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
Our physical brain/bodies might be better understood as limiters. They constrain the perceptive ability of our spirits. Our eyes are perfectly designed to work with our physical bodies and the image we are meant to dwell in. But they were not designed to see ultra-violet light. But once we die and our spirits are no longer tied to our bodies, then I suspect we will be able to. Maybe.
Or it could be I'm just talking a bunch of pseudo-intellectual nonsense.
What about our minds? Will we be smarter in Heaven? I used to spend way too much time killing off my brains cells with tasty German beers. Will I ever get them back? That's the big question.
I think there is an ontological real distinction between our body /flesh and the rest of us, whatever we want to call it, I call it the soul.
Like you say, our body limits our soul, if anything. Although our body only does what our soul authorizes it to do. Don't approve of anything you don't want to also validate, because that's how things get validated, by first approving of them. Then they get validated. If your soul approves of your body sinning, then the sinning is validated.
Disabled people are surely limited by their body. Surely their soul is just like ours. So try to imagine what it's like, having the fullness of the human soul, but caged by a body which is disabled?
Here is how Paul instructs the faithful to be spiritual and unlike the natural man:
If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.
2 Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.
3 For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
4 When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.
5 Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:
6 For which things' sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience:
7 In the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them.
8 But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth.
9 Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds;
10 And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:
11 Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.
12 Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering;
13 Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.
14 And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.
15 And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful.
16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.
17 And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.
Derf
Well-known member
Disabled people exhibit effects of the fall in a continuum ending in death. Jess said if your eye or hand offend, pluck it out or cut it off. Paul said to mortify your members. A disabled person has some part(s) of his body already mortified. So if his soul is the same as a whole person (not yet disagreeing with you, but trying to follow the thought where it leads), when does a distinction occur? When the whole body is killed? Then is the fully disabled person's soul different from ours?
Derf
Well-known member
I mean, wouldn't it just mean that in one verse only two of the three are referenced, and in another, all three are referenced?
Not sure why something like that would need explanation...
No, just tripartite.
Strength is something we have. We are not "strength."
Derf
Well-known member
Not really at issue, since they are all three mentioned in both.
What about the plural pronoun usage ("your") with singular body soul and mind?
Is it possible the admonition is written not to individuals, but to the church as a corporate body, with a corporate soul (entity) and a corporate spirit (united will)? That makes the singular fit with the plural (as in corporate).
Idolater
"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
The only distinction I could see as meaningful would be in the spiritual realm. A fully able bodied man could be a wretched soul, and a fully retarded cerebral palsy sufferer could have a soul of pure light. And isn't it in what we approve, or "alloweth"?
$$ Ro 14:22
Hast thou faith? have [it] to thyself before God. Happy [is] he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.
Derf
Well-known member
Let's go back to Jesus' wording:
Matthew 18:9 KJV — And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.
If "life" is contrasted with "hell fire", then it seems to be talking about the resurrected state, not some disembodied state.
Here's a similar passage:
Matthew 5:29 KJV — And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
If the whole body is to be cast into hell, isnt it the body that enters into life (the contrast), minus a member, perhaps?