Quote:
Originally Posted by Cap'n_Sparrow
Great replies, me mateys...much food for thought! Unfortunately it all makes for even more of a dog's breakfast of the whole issue than we started out with.
I was thinking of the verse that says 'we should love the lord our God with "all...our HEART...all our SOUL...all our MIND...and all our STRENGTH..."
Why wasn't the SPIRIT mentioned, I wonder? And why in that particular order? Heart, and then Soul, and then Mind, at least, seem to follow Lee's hierarchical order of how we are inwardly constructed. Our Strength may refer to our physical (fleshy) capacity...hence, why it is named last.
I'm also asking myself what could be the significance intended by Paul in Hebrews 4 in mentioning the "joints and the marrow"? I mean, clearly the Word of God does not literally sunder our joints apart or suction out our bone-marrow. We'd all be dead. Could there, then, be some important clue that lies in this comparison between the 'joints' and 'marrow' and the 'soul' and 'spirit' that may serve to throw some light on the actual nature and function of both the soul and spirit, and their interdependence? This seems, to me, like a reasonable path to follow.
Needless to say, I've been carrying out some medical research into joints and bone marrow. Watch this space. Your minds will be blown apart...
Much Grace,
'Jack'
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Jack (or should I call you Captain Jack?),
I agree with what you have posted. In my initial post, I characterized Heb 4:12 as a metaphor. This, I believe, is a fair characterization. I have said before that Paul was no stranger to employing literary devices in his writings. With that in mind, it follows that not all verses or passages in his writings can or should be interpreted literally. Obviously, the same can be said of the rest of the Bible. Context needs to be taken into consideration, and ultimately, context is everything.
This is certainly the case with Jesus' admonition that you referred to in your post. Jesus says to “
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Presumably, it would have been sufficient for him to just say “
Love the Lord your God” without everything else that follows. I don’t think saying “
Love the Lord your God”, is necessarily an insufficient admonition, but obviously Jesus added “
with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" to emphasize how we should love the Lord. With that in mind, it would be completely ridiculous if someone came along and completely ignored the
“Love the Lord your God” part and instead used the latter portion of what Jesus said solely to “prove” a different kind of trichotomy – that man is composed of three parts – a heart, soul, and mind. Obviously this is a stupid example, but I think the point is clear.
In the same way, in 1 Thess 5:23, Paul was trying to make a point about being sanctified. The word
completely is spelled out and although the way that Paul qualifies
completely seems to indicate that man has three parts, that is still secondary to his main point of being sanctified. I’m always willing to leave these kinds of things open for debate, but what I have a problem with is the position that Lee took, that these verses like 1 Thess 5:23 are just there to ‘prove’ his own dogmas. It misses the larger context to say the least.