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chambes
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 41
| Posted 4/13/2002 4:44 PM (GMT -6) |   | John 15:13
Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
NIV
I was reading this verse a couple days ago, and I noticed that in the Greek, the word for "life" is psuche, not bios. I had always read it as:
"Greater love has no man than this, that he would take a bullet for his friend."
But, the use of psuche seems to bring a much deeper meaning to the passage. But, I'm not quite clear on what psuche means. Here's my current take:
Psuche is your life in terms of your personality, your "self," your identity. So, laying down your psuche for your friend is a daily, moment by moment act of putting your friend's interests ahead of yours. Jesus layed aside heaven to become a man. He did this each and every day for 33 years, not just on the cross.
My question is whether my interpretation of the word psuche is accurate. Does anyone have a more clear idea of what psuche means?
chambes
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to get what he cannot lose." ~Jim Elliot | | Back to Top | | |
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Seymour
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Date Joined Jan 2002
Total Posts : 105
| Posted 4/13/2002 6:51 PM (GMT -6) | | I like your reading here, but i'm not in a possition of authority to really know how accurate it is. But just to be another lay-dumby why don't i spout mindless drivel anyway?
I like looking at this verse as saying, "Greater love has no one than this, that one would lose face for a friend."
Now it is my understanding that the word 'face' in German French and sometimes in Greek can mean personhood. This ties in with humility. Greater love is that one would humiliate themselves for the sake of a freind. When we are humiliated we are MORTified, we litterally let the self die.
Okay enough dummy talk for now, i'll let the smart people sweep up.
EMILY: “Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?--every, every minute?”
STAGE MANAGER: “No. The saints and poets, maybe--they do some.”
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GregBoyd
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Total Posts : 1818
| Posted 4/14/2002 2:43 AM (GMT -6) | | Seymour: Okay enough dummy talk for now, i'll let the smart people sweep up.
Doc: There's my curtain call. Swooooosh!
I have nothing intelligent to add to this conversation.
Except, I never noticed that before chambes. Thanks.
In koine Greek terms were often imprecise, so we have to be careful about reading to much into a distinction between bios and psuche. Still, it seems reasonable to ask why John chose bios over psuche.
Psuche refers to "soul" (we get the word psyche, as in psychology, from it). Now, clearly John isn't saying "loose your soul" for a person. So the crucial thing is what he means by "laying down." And I think you're interpretation is probably as good as one can get. Our mindset and demeanor should be "laying down" for others. Instead of living FOR the "self" (psuche) we are to live OUT OF the self, FOR others. This isn't becoming a doormat, for we ARE to "love ourselves". But we are to "love our neigbhors" (viz. whoever we happen upon -- the good Samaritan story) AS ourselves. LAY DOWN seeking self to seek the wellbeing of the other. And THIS is how we "find our (true) self.
Whoever seeks to save his life (is this bios or psuche.. don't have time to look) will loose it, whoever looses their life will find it.
Good insight Chambes
Doc
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chambes
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 41
| Posted 4/14/2002 3:09 AM (GMT -6) | | Psuche is the word translated as life in the lose your life find your life verses, when Jesus said the good shepherd lays down his life, and when Jesus said to love god with all our soul (psuche). Jesus also uses psuche when he says his soul is troubled during the prayer at Gethsemane. It's all over the place in the gospels.
I guess the thing I got out of this is that laying down your life for your friend is a daily thing, not a one time thing. This goes along quite well with your sermon this weekend, Doc.
chambes
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to get what he cannot lose." ~Jim Elliot | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 4/16/2002 3:51 AM (GMT -6) | | About “psyche”…
Actually the word can and does often refer to physical life/death, not in the sense of physical life viewed in and of itself, but as the totality of what we are as living persons. It’s not surprising that “psyche” is used to speak of the willingness to die (e.g., to bring one’s physical life to an end) to another. Some contexts use “psyche” and only make sense if actual physical death is understood.
Mt 2.20: “Those who sought to kill the child” = “Those who sought the child’s ‘psyche’.” To “see the soul” is a Greek idiom for attempting to kill somebody.
In John 13.37-38 Peter is willing “to lay down [his] ‘psyche’” for Christ, obviously referring in this case not to living for Jesus as a living sacrifice (so to speak), but to actually dying for him physically (not because there’s value in the “bios” of our physical bodies, but because our physical bodies are where our wills, dreams, desires, etc., are housed. To offer this house is to offer the furniture in it as well, right?).
Similary, in Mt. 20.28 “to give one’s ‘psyche’” = “to die” for someone.
Mt. 10.39 (lit.) has “He who suffers his ‘psyche’ to be destroyed for my sake will gain his life.” I’m inclined to think this refers to physical death. On this verse Louw/Nida in their Greek-English Lexion of the New Testament (p. 266, reference 23.114) comment: “In Mt. 10.39 some scholars see in the use of ‘psyche’ a reference not to physical life but to a particular quality of life. This is difficult to justify except in terms of the total context, and it may be that in Mt. 10.39 there is a degree of intentional ambiguity with respect to the meaning of ‘psyche’.”
Obviously we have verses like Rm. 12.1-2 and others to support the idea that living for Jesus now means dying to ourselves (our ‘psyche’), but I think the verses above which regard “laying down our ‘psyche’” and “giving one’s ‘psyche’ to be destroyed” primarily refer to dying physically and not to the (although true) idea that our “dying daily” for Christ is a supreme act of love. Both are included, but I think it remains true that offering our physical life (i.e., flat out dying for somebody) is the highest form of sacrificing the ‘psyche’ as well, since it spells the end of the ‘psyche’ in terms of our embodied life here on earth. To offer my physical life for my wife (for example) is to offer to bring to an end the enjoyment of the intimacy our two ‘psyches’ have known so that her ‘psyche’ (embodied) can live on. It’s the offering of physical life; but it’s valued as a supreme act of love because it means offering up the continued interaction of our “life” (‘psyche’) with those we love and who love us.
Yes? No?
Tom
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chambes
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 41
| Posted 4/16/2002 9:45 AM (GMT -6) | | Thanks, Tom, that was really helpful.
So, under what circumstances would they use bios? Is that used in the NT much?
chambes
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to get what he cannot lose." ~Jim Elliot | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 4/17/2002 2:33 AM (GMT -6) | | Hey Chambes-
I remember thumbing through a neat volume that Robert Gundry has on anthropological terms in the Bible. He deals with it pretty extensively. That was in a library somewhere. Can’t remember!
By the way, Louw/Nida’s Greek-English Lexicon is pretty cool. It’s based on semantic domains. So, for example, you look up a word like “psyche” and it will examine all the different ways that word is used (and other similar words that intersect). Here’s what Louw/Nida have on “bios”:
“bia’o” (the verb; ref. 41.18): “to conduct daily life; to live”-1 Pet 4.2, “Live (“bio”) the rest of your life on earth controlled by God’s will”; Lk 8.14, “As they go on living, they are chocked by the worries, riches, and pleasures of daily life (lit. “the worries, riches, and pleas. of ‘bios’”)”; and Ac. 26.4, “My life (lit. my “biosis”= “way of life”) I lived from my youth up was spent from the beginning among my own nation.” “bios” can also refer to one’s “possessions” (Mk. 12.44; Lk 15.12; 1Jn 2.16) as a means of living.
If the material physical body/flesh is intended, “soma” and “sarx” are used. But even these can have non-material meanings too. It seems to me that “bios” simply means “life” as it’s lived in and through the body, i.e., “physical life”; not “flesh” as a substance, but “embodied life.”
Doesn’t help much does it!
Tom
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