Spiritualism

[mitchellmckain]

I know that many Christians will speak disparagingly of spiritualism and I am sure there is a great deal of fraudulent activity in this. But 1 Samuel 28:5-19 demonstrates that this practice of supposed mediums allowing people to speak to the dead is a very old one, as does 2 Chronicles 33:6 and Isaiha 8:19. Of course that this is mentioned in the Bible should not be construed as either authenticating it or condoning it any more than the mention of slavery constitutes an endorsement of slavery. But this passage in 1 Samuel says that the woman saw Samuel and so what shall we make of that? And for that matter, even in the gospels there is an account called "the transfiguration" where Jesus speaks to people that we know are long dead. So where do you think Christianity really stands in regards to these ideas and beliefs?

Well here is my point of view anyway:

Do I believe that there are people with the power to conjure spirits? No. I do not believe that there is or ever could be any reliable form of commnication possible between spirits of the departed and the living. But do I believe that there are spirits? Yes, and I believe interaction between spiritual and physical is possible but extremely limited and difficult, because God and the angels are spirits and they do accomplish things in the physical world.

The word "spirit" suffers from a great lack of precision and many uses in the Bible seem synonymous with mind, life, feeling or indeed any invisible force or agent. Nevertheless there are numerous examples in the Bible of spirits posessing people and speaking to God and commanded by God (e.g. 1 Kings 22:19-23) and other examples of the spirits of the dead even those of specific people doing various things like speaking to living people (eg. 2 Kings 2).

I think that the Bible teaches that we have a spirit (1 Cor 15:44) that this spirit is our true self (Proverbs 20:27, 1 Cor 2:11) and is eternal in nature (Gal 6:8, 1Cor 15:42-50) and that it continues existing when the physical body is dead (Luke 8:55), but this does not mean that the spirit is not subject to death for it can die even while we are yet physically alive(Luke 9:60, Genesis 2:17). This suggests (and is supported everywhere in the Bible) that the death of the spirit is not an ending of the spirit, but a continued existence without life, either to contrast a state of torment called hell with the promise of eternal life or to say that it can be brought back to life or resurrected by God.

[keytoad]

There is much that goes in the bible to this issue. I think you would do well to do a study of the words soul and spirit in the greek and hebrew and how they are used. They are different. "Fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell." How can the spirit be completely destroyed? It can't, it is eternal as you point out. In short i have found that the soul is like the feelings, personality and character center. Where as the spirit is the actual life force or the spark of life, or as the bible puts it, the BREATH of life. It's like the power switch. On=life, or conscienceness. Off=Death or unconscienceness.
Ecclesiastes 12:7
and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
The question is then, will your soul be born of the spirit (Love) and therefore have eternal life or will your soul be born of this world only (Self, earthly desires) and therefore be destroyed in "hell."
Ezekiel 18:4
Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.

[Pseudonym]

There is much that goes in the bible to this issue. I think you would do well to do a study of the words soul and spirit in the greek and hebrew and how they are used. They are different. "Fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell." How can the spirit be completely destroyed? It can't, it is eternal as you point out.

Just as a point of order, Jesus almost certainly didn't believe that. The belief that "the spirit" is inherently eternal isn't one that the Hebrews held; it only entered Christianity after Jesus, under the influence of Greek philosophy. As you rightly point out with the verse from Ezekiel, the Hebrew belief was that the default fate for our soul/spirit was death.

[mitchellmckain]

There is much that goes in the bible to this issue. I think you would do well to do a study of the words soul and spirit in the greek and hebrew and how they are used. They are different. "Fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell." How can the spirit be completely destroyed? It can't, it is eternal as you point out.

Just as a point of order, Jesus almost certainly didn't believe that. The belief that "the spirit" is inherently eternal isn't one that the Hebrews held; it only entered Christianity after Jesus, under the influence of Greek philosophy. As you rightly point out with the verse from Ezekiel, the Hebrew belief was that the default fate for our soul/spirit was death.

Because of course the Greeks had no influence on the thinking of people of the region until Jesus came.

Let see Alexander the Great conquered the area in 330 BC with the express purpose of spreading Greek culture all over the world but I guess you think that 360 years is too short a time to achieve goals like that and so they could not have had any influence.

Not that Greeks were the only ones who believed in the persistence of a soul or spirit after death. Before Alexander the Great, it was the Persians who conquered the region, but surely they wouldn't have brought any of the ideas of Zoastrianism (which began in the 6th century BC) about the soul or spirit after death.

As for Saul speaking to the spirit of Solomon and Jesus speaking to Elisha and Moses, I suppose you try to say that this only reflected a belief in the endurance of the soul or spirit of special people -- perhaps like in Egypt where this was only for those who could make sure they were properly mummified and entombed. Except there is that parable of Jesus about Lazarus and the rich man which doesn't really jibe with this.

I have a different theory, which is that Jews at the time of Jesus had a diversity of opinion and that it is only after the destruction of Israel that this idea of no afterlife became the dominant opinion among those who survived the destruction and avoided conversion to Christianity, and it is this which modern scholars are now insisting that Jesus must have believed.

[Pseudonym]

Because of course the Greeks had no influence on the thinking of people of the region until Jesus came.

OK, I should try to be more clear.

I'm not saying that the Greeks had no opportunity to influence Jewish people, and I'm not saying that there was any other opportunity for the belief to occur withing some Jewish sects. The Essenes probably believed it, for example.

What I'm saying that it was not a mainstream or common Jewish belief at the time that the soul was inherently immortal, it's highly unlikely that Jesus believed it, and it's highly unlikely that most of the early Christians did.

It was a fairly well-documented Jewish belief that both the righteous and the wicked await judgment, and the parable of Lazarus and the rich man conforms pretty well with this picture. That parable does deserve its own thread, the diversity of opinion it is so vast. My personal take on it is pretty much what I was taught by Lutheran school: A parable is a metaphor, not an allegory. It's about how we treat "the least of these", and while it plays off Jewish beliefs about the "Bosom of Abraham" and Sheol, that's not really its point.

[mitchellmckain]

What I'm saying that it was not a mainstream or common Jewish belief at the time that the soul was inherently immortal, it's highly unlikely that Jesus believed it, and it's highly unlikely that most of the early Christians did.

And I of course completely disagree. I think the words of Jesus show that it is highly likely that Jesus DID believe that the spirit was inherently immortal. I find such an attempt to use oversimplified historical theories to project beliefs upon Jesus in dismissal of His own words to be highly dishonest, and those who use the word "mainstream" are typically employing pure rhetoric to pretend that their view is the only view of significance.

It was a fairly well-documented Jewish belief that both the righteous and the wicked await judgment, and the parable of Lazarus and the rich man conforms pretty well with this picture. That parable does deserve its own thread, the diversity of opinion it is so vast. My personal take on it is pretty much what I was taught by Lutheran school: A parable is a metaphor, not an allegory. It's about how we treat "the least of these", and while it plays off Jewish beliefs about the "Bosom of Abraham" and Sheol, that's not really its point.

Again I disagree. All this proves really is that people find many different kinds of rhetoric to project whatever beliefs they want onto Jesus. If people believe that Jesus knew the truth then deciding what Jesus believed and deciding what is true become inseperable.