Sells,

Would you agree with waterboy's explanation regarding Jesus having a soul because only in this way Jesus would be fully human? If one takes as given Jesus did have a human soul, when was said soul created? What was the relationship between the Holy Spirit and Jesus' soul?

O.

Oliver

I hope I made myself quite clear that body and 'soul' are not able to be separated. It makes no sense to talk about the 'soul' being created as something separate to the person and body of Jesus.

Your question seems to be predicated on the assumption that Jesus' soul could possibly have an existence separate from His body. That would be dualism.

The idea that life consists in a 'spiritual body' or 'immortal soul' that has some form of 'para-physical' existence separate from our bodies leads into all sorts of bizarre metaphysical speculations which are entirely unjustifiable. Regretfully, this sort of speculation is common among evangelical Christians. That does not make it Christian orthodoxy.

waterboy,

Thank you. I did appreciate your comment regarding Dualism or rather non-Dualism.

"And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." Gensis 2:7

Adam and by way of extrapolation Humanity has a living soul. Jesus, if born of a virgin, does not share that genaelogy.

I wonder what Sells thinks?

Last semester, I recall some of my students debating if grass has a soul, what are the implications of mowing?

clearly the clay adam..[though fully a body]..yet had no soul

it was only once god breathed his holy spirit..into the clayman[animating the clay]with GODS living spirit..that adam began forming his soul body

jesus was made man,..as he became adult his soul body grew into the adult jesus..[who's soul-body]was not recognised..[even by those closest to him]

the three are not interchangable..[but we are free to believe as we chose]..many have tried to make jesus more than the amasing teacher he is..

he is not god..[nor exclusivly the only son of god..[a term used many times throughout the bible]

this virgin issue is another case in point..[virgin back in those times meant unwed,..read the darn geniology,..how can jesus claim decendant back to the davidian king line..[a mortal line..[not a heavenly liniage]

i agree the body..[flesh houses the spirit,..but in between the two lies the soul[body]..the soul/body itself has many layers..[much like an onion]..in time all spirits return to god..

it is amasing to hear people prattle on about duelism[or trinity]as if that is some special ability..[or secret]..

if your really interested in the topic i suggest reading swedenborg..but clearly we are all just prateling..our own opinion's here..[when the topic is christs reserection]..

clearly many are thinking this is a matter of the flesh,..when its the highest matter of spirit...

jesus came to reveal this meat is nothing..[that when this meat dies it is instantly BORN AGAIN.. when it is 'born'..again..the life spirit is borne in our soulbody into heaven[or hell]according to our love of good[or vile]

the inportant issue is not of the flesh..[but that we seek to know god[you know the one..jesus came to reveal to us,..the one jesus calls father..the one those..many in the fathers many divided hoses..call god..[good]

jesus didnt come to form a new church..[but alone to unite the fathers divided house]..be one as my father and i are one

Oliver,

My assumption is that where Christians have literal belief in the soul it follows they also believe the incarnation was literally an incarnation, the taking on of flesh and blood by the one who existed before the moment of incarnation and who dwelt in the world as the God-man, Jesus of Nazareth. As waterboy has more or less said, the human person is not the soul but is rather the composite of body and soul. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote this ‘formula’ with slightly different algebraic expression, saying he was not saved unless his body was saved i.e., “my soul is not I.” The nuance of orthodoxy is that if there is no resurrection then the Christian faith is in vain (as asserted by St. Paul).

Sells may well subscribe to what is known as Radical Orthodoxy (RO) - developed primarily by three Cambridge trained Anglican theologians (John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward). It is a posture or a take, if you like, that outrightly rejects the concept of the secular because, as this approach explains, the philosophy it is built upon leads to nihilism. However, if you abandon secular objectivity as a foundation for understanding reality what are you left with? RO would say revelation. At its core RO is an unapologetically confessional movement in its approach to explaining, not only reality, but also every aspect of the human experience. “It rejects modern dualisms and the myth of secularity, theology in mainstream discourse is allowed to be unapologetically confessional and Christian research across the disciplines to be unapologetically theological.” ‘Post secularity’ means that everything is informed by a theological ontology.

I would not equate this to fundamentalist theology where an incomprehensible G-d takes a backseat to his own ‘word’ - where the ‘authority’ of the Bible displaces the more nebulous authority of the ‘Lord’. Here, literalist readings of scripture reduce the most enduring of stories to a pre-processed bible-in-a-box - a series of if-then formulas where A-leads-to-B logic by which we are to know a world where all nuance is dismissed as the devil’s deception

Christ's ascension is problematic. Where did he ascend to?

If his body left space-time, this is a breach of the second law of thermodymics. In kind, Stephen Hawkins had to reconsider the idea nothing leaves a black hole, after it had been demonstrated that matter just popping out of the universe contravenes the second law.

Likewise, would an equivalent amount of antimatter need to destroyed and to what effect?

When Jesus' spatial body reaches presumably non-spatial heaven, how does it exist? How does put four diemensional space-time matter (pegs) fit into transcendental holes.