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Christos Yannaras
"Man": Elements of Faith
(T&T Clark: Edinburgh, 1991), Chapter 7: pp. 53-88.
http://www.jbburnett.com/yannaras/yannaras-man.html


b. Soul

The word soul is among the most difficult words in the Bible and in Christian literature. Moreover, confusion was added to the meaning of the word, since the Greeks used it with a different meaning. Today, most people, almost self-evidently, understand the word "soul" more with the ancient Greek (particularly Platonic) and less with its biblical meaning. They believe that, as there exists within the body of man blood, lymph, bone marrow, in the. same way there exists an immaterial element, spiritual, essentially different from our material composition and precisely this is the soul– something transparent and indefinte, which leaves us with the last breath when we die and goes "somewhere else".

But this is not the biblical meaning of the word. The Seventy translators of the Old Testament carried over into Greek with the word psyche ("soul") the Hebrew nephesh, a term with many meanings. Anything which has life is called a soul, every animal, but more commonly within the Scripture it pertains to man. It signifies the way in which life is manifested in man. It does not refer just to one department of human existence– the spiritual, in opposition to the material– but signifies the whole man, as a single living hypostasis. The soul does not merely dwell in the body, but is expressed by the body, which itself, like the flesh or heart, corresponds to our ego, to the way in which we realize life. A man is a soul, he is someone, since this constitutes the sign of life, as much an external manifestation as interiority and subjectivity. But if the soul is the sign of life, it does not signify that it is also the source or cause of life, as the Greeks believed. It is, rather, the bearer of life, and therefore it is often identified in the Old Testament only with the manifestation of life on earth (the soul dies, it is handed over to death, but it also is raised, when life returns to the dead body), while in the New Testament it appears also as a bearer of eternal life, and therefore the salvation of the soul is identified with the possibility of life which does not know corruption and death.

The Fathers of the Christian Church interpreting the Scripture respected absolutely the very important meaning of the word "soul" and did not try to define it with only one interpretation. They saw both in the soul and in the body of man two differentiated and often co-inhering modes by which the image of God in man is revealed. But they refused to schematize the content of the "image" in a particular definition; they sought to preserve the mystery of the mode of the divine Existence and its imprinting on human existence from the danger of intellectual schernatization.

Much later, chiefly in the middle ages and afterwards and especially in the European West, when Christian theology began to succumb to the temptation of intellectual schematization, the "image" was interpreted with "objective" categories; it was identified with particular properties which characterize the "spiritual nature" of man. The most general understanding of man received in the West a strong influence from ancient Greek thought, with, though, exaggerated simplifications. The Greek definition of man as an "animal having reason" (animal rationale as it was put in the West) was interpreted in the form of a real, antithetical distinction of soul and body, matter and spirit. Man was thought of as, in principal, a biological being endowed additionally with a soul or with a soul and Spirit.

Within the scheme of this opposition, the "image" was limited to one of these two "parts" of the nature of man, the spiritual "part", that is, the soul– since the bodily, material "part" is by definition unable to represent the immaterial and spiritual God. The soul, then, of man– each one's individual soul– was endowed with three properties which characterize God himself, and therefore impart His image to man: rationality, free will, and dominion.

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I cannot say how "different" Believers will be with newly ressurected bodies, but whatever it is, it will be what God originally intended for us and of course better. But I think that is not important to dwell on. (Jesus didn't change that much because He was already perfect to begin with)

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All Forums
....Let’s solve the problem of evil
........When Human life begins: in reality and legally

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Case one: Human life begins with the Spirit of God creating the individual soul at conception. Size and complexity--or relative lack--don't matter. The frame of reference that matters is God. Human life begins at conception.

Case two: Yes, but you are not God, you do not have that frame of reference.

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Case one: Human life begins with the Spirit of God creating the individual soul at conception. Size and complexity--or relative lack--don't matter. The frame of reference that matters is God. Human life begins at conception.

Case two: Yes, but you are not God, you do not have that frame of reference.

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Pow:DLW responded to something that I did not say.

My post does NOT say that one has to be God to have a perspective to know when human life begins. That's not at all what I said.

I said, rather, that Human life begins [when] the Spirit of God creates the individual [and makes them a living] soul (Genesis 2:7).

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The argument has been put forward on this board some time back that if we define physical death as "medically brain dead," (when brain wave activity ceases), then we can somehow take this to the opposite end of the spectrum of life to say that human life really doesn't begin until the developing fetus' brain waves begin. While seemingly clever, it seems that this rationale misses the most crucial point of distinction -- at "brain death," no further physical life is possible, while at the moment of conception itself, further physical life is most definitely possible, and in fact would be the natural course of things if left alone.

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PoW

Case one: Human life begins with the Spirit of God creating the individual soul at conception. Size and complexity--or relative lack--don't matter. The frame of reference that matters is God. Human life begins at conception.

Case two: Yes, but you are not God, you do not have that frame of reference.

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Pow: DLW responded to something that I did not say.

My post does NOT say that one has to be God to have a perspective to know when human life begins. That's not at all what I said.

I said, rather, that Human life begins [when] the Spirit of God creates the individual [and makes them a living] soul (Genesis 2:7).

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DLW: Yes, but you also said that the spirit of God creates the individual soul at conception. I am saying that to claim to know with certainty this is to claim to have access to an extra special revelation from God.

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PoW

What I described as a "frame of reference" was the focus of attention on the "hands of the maker" (like the hands of the magician) to see what the maker does. I also said that "size and complexity" were not the issue.

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DLW: Clearly, when the sperm and the egg merge and become one is a spiritual moment. It sets in motion the process of the development of a human life. I am not sure what you mean by complexity. I would think brain activity could, indeed, be an issue in our fallible attempts to determine when human life begins. I start at one month because that is when brain-activity begins in a fetus. So the amount and complexity of brain-activity may not be an issue for you, but there we are not that much in disagreement personally, even if we are in disagreement politically.

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PoW

From the very beginning of conception God has acted. (Genesis 2:7 says that our life is the breath of God himself.) From the very beginning of conception God has created a new being. From the very beginning of conception the zigot is ensouled. (The soul is created with the body -- individuated personal existence begins at fertilization.) From the very beginning of conception the human life has begun.

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We do not breathe at conception. If two fertilized zygotes collide then they become one zygote. A mother's womb does not recognize the fetus for what it is initially and thus may absorb it instead of nurturing it, as was intended to be.

The existence of ambiguities regarding what is right conduct does not free us from our commitments to try to follow Christ.

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==================================================

DLW seems conflicted:

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"...even then we may not be able to get the fallen human law to be in accordance with God's law..."

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DLW has a set of issues involving politics, and a certain strategy for encorporating both perspectives that he approves of and also those that he does not approve of.

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DLW: In politics one is generally more successful at acheiving results/change if one has the distance to be able to understand/deal with the perspectives of one's opponents. This makes compromise possible and values acheiving real results over maintaining ideological purity in the pursuit of failure... . The pro-life movement has been one of cataclysmic waste of political activism since twenty-odd years of extensive activism has yielded a partial-birth abortion ban or occasional waiting periods and bans on aid to health-clinics in third-world countries that may be performing abortions. WWJD? Change political tactics and refocus on changing hearts not Roe-V-Wade!

dlw

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Pow:DLW represents a position on the issue called "delayed animation." The Biblical view is that of "immediate animation", where the embrio is 'ensouled' ensouled from the moment of conception--when spirm and ovum unite to form a new being--a person.

"Thy hands have fashioned me." (Ps. 119:73)

St. Irenaeus declared, "its was necessary for him to be created; then having been created, to grow; and having grown to become an adult; and having become an adult, to multiply; and having multiplied, to become strong; and having become strong, to be glorified; and having been glorified, to behold the Lord." (Against Heresies, IV:38)


Breck writes, that "the act of creation itself produces a living 'ensouled' human being, a bearer of divine image, whose entire esistence is given for one fundamental purpose: to grow in holiness from conception, through maturity, and to physical death, to full participation in God's very being, his own personal existence."

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The difference can be also be explained another way: "procreation" is not the same as "reproduction." The first is obviously sacred.

"Both fetus and embrio LIVE by virtue of God's indwelling Breath, or Spirit. And they do so from the moment of creation, that is, from fertilization." (Breck)

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I wrote: It is not difficult to know that the embryo and the zigot are both alive. ... It is alive unto God, by God. God's breath gives evidence in life. That is the revelation.

Dave responded: I'm sorry but can you be a little more concrete?

My answer to that is: THAT IS CONCRETE!!! It is alive and human and a creature of God. (re-read the above)

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PoW: I posted that Scripture and Nature show that the human is created (ensouled--since soul is not something distinct from body; and if you disagree with that then we will never agree, and should even stop with this conversation and debate that instead) when it is created. And it is created as what it is created. Nature IS that fact, and Scripture tells us its meaning and significance.


DLW: So now you appeal to Nature as the basis for your beliefs. My point has and is that we deal with the Abortion question differently now than in the past because of numerous developments. As such, we cannot appeal to scriptures to settle the issue for us for all times. Appeals to nature have been traditionally very dubious. Ultimately, they go back to the method of authority. Why is something natural, because it is(or I say it is...).

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DLW failed to post a position of his own. THAT should be his task.

I appealed to Scripture: "Scripture tells us (Nature's) meaning and significance."


DAVE, MAKE YOUR OWN POSTS.

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DLW: "Scripture cannot say more than it was intended to say to its original audience."

PoW: That is not true. With prophecy the significance became MUCH MORE fully known LATER. We see this beginning in the prophecy of Eve's offspring.

The Scripture that I quoted does not have to be sung to those of med-school preparations.

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