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> the entire human person is simultaneously both material and spiritual... the human person transcends the material world through the soul... the human spirit d

• nprateem 2y ago
  That's pretty close to the Buddhist view if you look at the immaterial jhanas. Obviously they don't couch it as God though, just the mind. It's basically progressive layers upon nothing which becomes something.
• archagon 2y ago
  Theology teaches that the body will be resurrected for the Last Judgement and beyond.
• gtech1 2y ago
  Mind you, it also can'y answer this: who really goes to heaven or hell ? Your spirit as you were at 10, 20, 30, 50 ? what if you have a stroke at 60 and die as a vegetable at 70 ? Which one is the real you ? Because if it's as you were when you die then it's pretty silly
  • airstrike 2y ago
    You get your favorite version of yourself if you go to heaven and your least favorite if you go to hell.
• aubanel 2y ago
  > So the soul lives on forever, but without the reasoning and intellectual capabilities granted by the corporeal form? What makes you think that there would be only spirit/soul left in Heaven? The idea is that people would be there in a "glorified body", a body without decay, suffering, or pain. But a real body!
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• Lammy 2y ago
  Not a Christian or follower of any organized religion but IMHO: Humanity (capital-H) is immortal; individual humans are not. Individuals are like the memory cells keeping the accumulated body of knowledge alive, and that body of knowledge is “God” or whatever, simultaneously human and spirit, an entire other world of Idea hosted in a distributed form in our physical reality. It's like a DRAM refresh where new individuals are born, some bit of the accumulated knowledge gets passed on to them, the old individuals die off, but the knowledge is Eternal. In this sense, human love and reproduction literally makes more room for more Knowledge, and that's why the people who want to rule physical reality as a sort of false-god constantly try to convince us to have fewer humans, The Population Bomb, Maintain Humanity Under 500000000, etc.
  • mistrial9 2y ago
    such a powerful insight.. until the last half-sentence.. why add that ? really?
    • Lammy 2y ago
      TRVKE whether you like it or not
      • HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
        Staying under the Earth's carrying capacity isn't some conspiracy, it's basic responsible behavior for surviving as a species. If your income is $700 a week, spending $900 a week isn't sustainable. What does "TRVKE" mean?
        • MiiMe19 2y ago
          Those who know
          • HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
            What do you mean?
• tantaman 2y ago
  It's been around 2000 years with many divisions and sects so I don't think you can give a single definition. Early Christians didn't agree on the divinity of Jesus. Hell wasn't christian doctrine until 400CE. Some Christians believe heaven is on earth itself and you'll be resurrected on earth, in your original body, when that times comes.
  • dmd 2y ago
    Makes sense. It wouldn’t be Heaven if you couldn’t order some tacos.
  • srcreigh 2y ago
    Not to argue, but just to drop some opinions for info sake. Early Christians largely did agree about the divinity of Jesus (it's in the gospels at least). Hell isn't really an Orthodox doctrine at all. The concept of Sheol/Hades predates the NT, and the modern idea of "hell" is more of a recent Western invention.
  • svieira 2y ago
    > Hell wasn't christian doctrine until 400CE. "So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." ~ Jesus of Nazareth, quoted in Matthew 13:49-50 https://biblehub.com/nrsvce/matthew/13.htm https://biblehub.com/nrsvce/matthew/13.htm
    • teeth-gnasher 2y ago
      The idea of Hell most popular is the “eternal conscious torment” view, which gives us the “don’t be bad or you’ll burn in Hell forever” perspective. That’s fairly new, and several other interpretations are just as biblical as it, if not more. Your quote for instance doesn’t explain what happens after the weeping and gnashing of teeth, some believe you become reunited with the Lord, others believe you are eliminated from existence.
      • svieira 2y ago
• 29athrowaway 2y ago
  The immortality of the soul is a Hellenistic belief that influenced Christianity.
  • titanomachy 2y ago
    I looked this up and it seems you're right that the old testament does not imply eternal conscious life. TIL!
• goatlover 2y ago
  Depends on the denomination, but Christianity in general usually has some sort of bodily resurrection. Certainly you see that in the gospel narratives about Jesus. Paul talks about it as well in his epistles, but whether he meant some new form of body or the existing one being restored is debatable. The ancients thought divine beings had bodies made of a celestial material. It's important to note that they didn't see the supernatural as existing in some other dimension. It was literally right above in the heavens or below in Sheol. It was all one universe. So Paul may have been arguing that Jesus and his followers would receive a new celestial body that wouldn't be subject to disease and death upon resurrection. Orthodox Churches don't believe in cremation because they think the biological body does get resurrected. The idea of a pure immortal soul is Greek, not Jewish in origin. Or at least it was believed that a soulish existence was a shadowy one in the underworld, not one enjoyed by beings in the heavens.
• sctb 2y ago
  I'll give you my understanding, which isn't exactly Christian or Buddhist or whatever—it's just how it seems to me, and YMMV. The word "soul" describes the fundamental sense of self experienced by a human person. We know this self isn't the same as our mind, our body, our possessions, or our memories, because those things change but the sense of self seemingly doesn't. It's just "me" or "I". Because this sense of self doesn't change, it seems timeless, or eternal. And many experience some amount of tension because this eternal sense of self seems to get mixed up with all of the temporary things in the world, especially our bodies and minds. With that admixture comes a fear of losing the self (i.e. death), as everything temporary is eventually lost. So what? The infinite is infinite, the finite is finite. IMO, any direct experience actually includes both. But anyway I figure it's wise to keep them straight and not mix them up.
• srcreigh 2y ago
  I imagine that many Christians agree that we will have a corporeal body after the resurrection. Jesus had a corporeal body after rising from the dead--that much has been orthodox tradition since the time of Christ and is recorded in the gospels.
• austin-cheney 2y ago
  > I have a hard time wrapping my head around exactly what it is that Christians believe about immortality From the Christian perspective immortality is less limited than mortality. In mortality people are limited by the physical limitations of their bodies, thinking capacity, and the worldly environment in which they operate. Beyond that Christians cannot precisely describe immortality because knowledge and/or memories of that, or anything else, do not accompany the soul into the mortal world. All Christians can know is a limited set of opportunities described in religious scripture. Everything else in mortality descends from agency and accountability.
• svieira 2y ago
  > So the soul lives on forever, but without the reasoning and intellectual capabilities granted by the corporeal form? :boom: You've found it! The disassociation of soul and body are the problem that pre-Catholic thinkers ran into over and over again. The soul must be immortal, but it relies on the body for the sensory perceptions which enable the first stages of any intellection. So what the heck happens to it after this dissolution? This is why the resurrection is such a big deal. Not only is the soul redeemed, all of corporeal reality is redeemed. As later revealed (Revelation in particular, St. Paul's writings in several other places) the Final Judgement will include the restoration of the "whole human person", body _and_ soul. What about the time between death and the final judgement? There is no natural bridge for our intellect to work on the beatific vision, but there is nothing stopping God from making up what is lacking (and indeed, we believe He does make up for what is lacking, so that the entire time between our particular judgement and the Final Judgement those who are in Heaven will be able to reason and remember far better than they could while on Earth).
  • titanomachy 2y ago
    If the soul is immortal and carries on to heaven, but doesn't contain your memories, but God copies all of your memories into a new body for you in heaven, then what's the point of even making the distinction between an immortal soul and a mortal body?
    • svieira 2y ago
      Is your question "why do we bother distinguishing" or "why did God bother creating the distinction" or something else entirely?
• akomtu 2y ago
  What you're looking for is called christian gnosis. Early Christians commited a cardinal sin when they banished gnostics because simpletons couldn't understand their wisdom. What's left is a shell of christianity. Simply put, soul is a material creation of the monad, aka the divine spark or the spirit, which is also our true I. Monads are reflections of the spiritual Sun, aka the God, and this is why they are created in his image. Monads shape matter, but aren't affected by matter. In the matter they create a microcosm, aka the soul, in their own image. The soul develops mind, emotions and finally condenses body from the heavy matter to serve as an anchor. Intelligence is developed at each layer, although the mind is where it can manifest to the fullest. First the soul develops the simplest form of intelligence in the dense body. It's a lot like learning to count with pen and paper: it's a heavy constraint for intelligence, but it's much easier to get an idea what it is when things are simple. Once the paper is lost, the student takes with him the learned skill and applies it later where things are more complex and less constrained. If the soul hasn't learned to count when it had pen and paper, it indeed live in the God's light blissfully unaware of its surroundings. But eventually it will develop the highest form of intelligence in its mind and it will no longer need pen and paper.