BODY, SOUL, AND SPIRIT
(Part 2 Our Western View)
by John Cooper
cosmicflyswatter.com
Our knowledge of the theology that we believe describes man and his soul correctly is admittedly inadequate. We are not scholars and we expect to be corrected when we expose our article pages to a coming blog. But we do remember some things that are basic, ideas that we embrace. They are the topics of discussion in this article on the make-up of man, his body, soul, and spirit.
As the character, Daniel Hightower, is fond of saying in Pinkerton’s book, the Cosmic Fly Swatter, we live in a universe of contrarieties. If you think about it all of physical nature is trapped in this concept. We can break down the contrarieties into the basics of generation and corruption. All physical things, no matter the relative time frame, generate and eventually corrupt. It is a process. It is evolution and devolution. But we do not believe that this is life. We might speak of the life of our cars but our cars have no life, they have existence.
The human body is generated and then corrupts and turns to dust. It has organic attributes like a plant, and being physical it will likewise corrupt and vanish. It shares the contrarieties with all physical nature. But is there anything incorruptible? If you were a Logical Positivist, someone who believes that anything that cannot be physically quantified is either meaningless or non-existent, you would have to answer no. Yet humans are Knowers and all men know things they cannot prove.
The words, soul and spirit are used interchangeably. They are even very close in the definitions found in authoritative dictionaries. They are both described as the immaterial part of man. They are referred to in these definitions as the seat of emotions and character, a part regarded as a person’s true self; capable of surviving death, and a person’s moral or emotional nature or sense of identity. They are words that describe the prime principle of human life beyond though not without the physical body. But we think that the substituting of these words for each other muddies understanding. We see them as different species of the immaterial.
In our view the soul is that essential and immortal first principle of human life. Without delving into other lesser types of souls such as the vegetative soul of plant life, it is our understanding that the human soul is made of three parts: the mind, the will, and the emotions. The intellective human soul is self-conscious. It has an overview of itself not apparent in any other life form that we can prove exists. The will is the driving force to action through its appetites, sensible and non-sensible. The emotions are the interface between the intellect and the body. These three elements are the fixtures of each human life. They are the soul.
We believe the spirit is akin to the soul but something in addition to it. The spirit is the grand essence of all life. The spirit goes where it will like the wind. And down here in the universe of contrarieties, the spirit can be either Spirit or Anti-Spirit. The Spirit in and of itself is One and Good. It is Single. But in time/space its momentum and position are temporal and fleeting like all physical bodies that experience its movement in and through them. And its lacking produces a vacuum that provides opportunity for its antithesis to gain occupancy. This antithesis, this Anti-Spirit has no life in and of itself for its object and its subject are the same as the Spirit’s, which is Good itself. Its purpose, however, is the opposite. The purpose of the Spirit is Good and More Good. The purpose of the Anti-Spirit is the destruction of Good or Evil. But without the Good to requisition for antithetical purposes, it possesses no life of its own.
The discussions of these things are vast and have been undertaken as long as there have been men. And also there are ancient thinkers whose intellectual work on these subjects will put to shame the products of today’s scholars. But the understanding of them will not go away no matter how much man finds out about matter itself, which (no pun intended) seem to make matters worse. All the revelations currently proceeding from physics still do not come close to answering the question of why. And the human soul can only avoid the questions for which it desires answers by truncating its own imperatives, by diminishing its own dignity.
For our part we desire clarity and truth, no matter the cost. So we will continue to debate and seek as long as the Spirit provides the time. There are so many mysteries as to the aspects of what it is to be a human that it cannot be exhausted. For instance, a man can be said to be triune in that he has body soul and spirit, but his soul likewise is triune in that it is mind, will and emotions. And this alone is enough to generate an interest in mathematics, the workout machines for logic.
Whatever a person's interest in the metaphysical, it is safe to say that the use and abuse of words are a major key in unlocking the clarity all souls desire whether they admit it or not. I got on an obsession a few years back trying to understand why in literature, the word heart was used to mean what appeared to me to be many and sometimes contradictory things. After quite a bit of research I found more contradiction than I had been aware of before I started. The Bible states that the heart can be the greatest deceiver of all, and yet writers were always endowing some sage-like character to admonish a protagonist to follow his heart. How can this be, I thought. It wasn’t until I discovered that the reference to the heart from antiquity was meant to describe the condition of all man’s parts functioning in agreement, that I reached understanding. If a man’s mind, will, and emotions are all in agreement then it can be said that his heart is in it. And so if that agreement is about something that is destructive, irrespective of any good intentions, a man’s heart can then be a great deceiver. So from this point on when I would read or hear a sage telling the protagonist at a story’s turning point to “follow your heart,” I would quickly add in my mind, “Oh yeah, and just make sure it’s for good!”
It is from this my untutored frame of reference, and Mr. Pinkerton’s more educated one, that we admit to the theories of the EAP, and the Lens Pole. We hope this provides a better picture of the Non-Sense we are presenting to you. This ends the fifth of our articles in this first installment. Hopefully many more will follow on a great number of our interests. And when our blog is in place we hope to hear from any civil and thinking debaters that find their own interest in any of this.
We’ll sign off for now. Besides this little soul is staring down at me. He’s making me nervous. I wonder what he knows?