Concept of God According to Descartes Essays

Concept of God According to Descartes Essays Concept of God According to Descartes Essay Concept of God According to Descartes Essay so his view of the soul predated Christianity. Plato (ca. 428-348 B. C. ) saw mans existence as divided into the material and spiritual, or Ideal, realms. Plato reasoned that the soul, being eternal, must have had a pre-existence in the ideal world where it learned about the eternal Ideals (William S. Sahakian, History of Philosophy, 1968, p. 56). In Platos reasoning, man is meant to attain goodness and return to the Ideal through the experiences of the transmigration of the soul. Thus secular philosophies sanction the idea of the immortal soul, even though the Bible does not. Believe it or not, Gods Word teaches something entirely different. History of a Controversial Teaching The doctrine of the immortal soul caused much controversy in the early Catholic Church. Origen (ca. 185-254) was the first person to attempt to organize Christian doctrine into a systematic theology. He was an admirer of Plato and believed in the immortality of the soul and that it would depart to an everlasting reward or everlasting punishment at death. In Origen De Principiis he wrote: The soul, having a substance and life of its own, shall after its departure from the world, be rewarded according to its deserts, being destined to obtain either an inheritance of eternal life and blessedness, if its actions shall have procured this for it, or to be delivered up to eternal fire and punishments, if the guilt of its crimes shall have brought it down to this (Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 4, 1995, p. 240). Origen taught that human souls existed before the body but is imprisoned in the physical world as a form of punishment. Physical life, he reasoned, is a purification process to return humans to a spiritual state. Later Augustine (354-430) tackled the problem of the immortality of the soul and death. For Augustine death meant the destruction of the body, but the conscious soul would continue to live in either a blissful state with God or an agonizing state of separation from God. In The City of God he wrote that the soul is therefore called immortal, because in a sense, it does not cease to live and to feel; while the body is called mortal because it can be forsaken of all life, and cannot by itself live at all. The death, then, of the soul, takes place when God forsakes it, as the death of the body when the soul forsakes it (Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 2, 1995, p. 245. ) The influences of pagan Platonic philosophy on Origen and Augustine are profound. Richard Tarnas, in his best-seller The Passion of the Western Mind, points to this influence: It was Augustines formulation of Christian Platonism that was to permeate virtually all of medieval Christian thought in the West. So enthusiastic was the Christian integration of the Greek spirit that Socrates and Plato were frequently regarded as divinely inspired pre-Christian saints (1991, p. 103). Centuries later Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225-1274) crystallized the doctrine of the immortal soul in The Summa Theologica. He taught that the soul is a conscious intellect and will and cannot be destroyed. A few centuries later the leaders of the Protestant Reformation generally accepted these traditional views, so they became entrenched in traditional Prot estant teaching. The immortality of the soul is foundational in Western thought, both philosophical and religious. Belief in going to heaven or hell depends on it. But does the Bible teach that death is the separation of body and soul or that the soul is immortal? Hebrew Understanding of the Soul The Hebrew word translated soul in the Old Testament is nephesh, which simply means a breathing creature. Vines Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words defines nephesh as the essence of life, the act of breathing, taking breath The problem with the English term soul is that no actual equivalent of the term or the idea behind it is represented in the Hebrew language. The Hebrew system of thought does not include the combination or opposition of he body and soul which are really Greek and Latin in origin. The Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible makes this comment on nephesh: The word soul in English, though it has to some extent naturalized the Hebrew idiom, frequently carries with it overtones, ultimately coming from philosophical Greek (Platonism) and from Orphism and Gnosticism which are absent in nephesh. In the Old Testamen t it never means the immortal soul, but it is essentially the life principle, or the living being, or the self as the subject of appetite, and emotion, occasionally of volition. That nephesh doesnt refer to an immortal soul can be seen in the way the word is used in the Old Testament. It is translated soul or being in reference to man in Genesis 2:7, but also to animals by being translated creature in Genesis 1:24. Nephesh is translated body in Leviticus 21:11 in reference to a human corpse. The Hebrew Scriptures state plainly that, rather than possess immortality, the soul can and does die. The soul [nephesh] who sins shall die (Ezekiel 18:4, 20). The Old Testament describes the dead as going to sheol, translated into English as hell, pit or grave. Ecclesiastes 9:5-6 describes sheol as a place of unconsciousness: For the living know that they will die; but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, their hatred, and their envy have now perished King David laments that death extinguishes a relationship with God. For in death there is no remembrance of You; in the grave who will give You thanks ? (Psalm 6:5). The immortal-soul concept isnt part of the Old Testament, but it began to make inroads into Jewish thought as Jews came in contact with Greek culture. In the first century the Jewish philosopher Philo taught a Platonic concept: The death of a man is the separation of his soul from his body (The Works of Philo, translated by C. D. Yonge, 1993, p. 37). Philo followed the Hellenistic view that the soul is freed upon death to an everlasting life of virtue or evil. In the New Testament the Greek word translated soul is psuche, which is also translated life.   Ã‚  Ã‚   In Psalm 16:10 David uses nephesh (soul) to claim that the Holy One, or Messiah, wouldnt be left in sheol, the grave. Peter quotes this verse in Acts 2:27, using the Greek psuche for the Hebrew nephesh (notice verses 25-31). Like nephesh, psuche refers to human souls (Acts 2:41) and for animals (it is translated life in the King James Version of Revelation 8:9 and 16:3). Jesus declared that God can destroy mans psuche, or soul (Matthew 10:28). If the Old Testament describes death as an unconscious state, how does the New Testament describe it? No one wrote more about this subject than the apostle Paul. He describes death as sleep (1 Corinthians 15:51-58; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). Many people are surprised to find that the term immortal soul appears nowhere in the Bible. However, though the Scriptures do not speak of the soul as being immortal, they have much to say about immortality. For example: You know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him (1 John 3:15). Paul told the members of the congregation in Rome to seek immortality (Romans 2:5-7). He taught Christians at Corinth that they must be changed and put on immortality (1 Corinthians 15:51-55). Paul proclaimed that only God and His Son possess immortality (1 Timothy 6:12-16) and that eternal life is a gift from God (Romans 6:23). The most powerful words come from Jesus Himself: And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day (John 6:40). True Origin of Immortal-soul Teaching Weve seen in this brief look at the supposedly immortal soul that the Bible teaches no such concept. The idea filtered into Western thought through Greek philosophy. Its origins are older than Athens, in fact as old as man. The concept of the immortal soul was introduced into mans thinking at the earliest beginnings of human history. God told the first human beings, Adam and Eve, that if they sinned they would die and return to the dust from which He had created them (Genesis 2:17; 3:19). Satan, the embodiment of evil, the powerful entity who opposes God, assured them they wouldnt die (verses 1-5). Satan slyly injected into Eves consciousness the notion that God was lying and that she and her husband would not die, thus ingraining the unscriptural teaching of the immortality of the soul into human thought. Satan has since deceived the world on this important understanding as well as many other biblical truths (Revelation 12:9). Much f the world, including millions of people in religions outside of traditional Christianity, are convinced they have- or are- immortal souls and hope they will go to a happy place or state of being immediately after they die. Soul/Nephesh According to Judaism The Hebrew word for soul, nephesh, does not mean what you say it does, if you want to use Judaica as an original source. The fou ndation of Judaism, according to Judaism, is Kabbalah. The Kabbalistic meaning of nephesh/soul is that the one soul of the Creator that has been divided into many parts among mankind and awaits its reunification in the final correction. This is actually the root of our belief that all souls will be eternally okay, in the end. The Biblical Answer to Death Yet the Bible plainly teaches that the dead lie in the grave and know nothing, think no thoughts, have no emotions, possess no consciousness. Does this mean death, the cessation of life, is final, the end of everything? The Bible answers this question too. Although mankind is physical, subject to death, the good news is that God promises a resurrection to eternal life to everyone who repents, worships God and accepts Jesus as the Messiah and His sacrifice. The first resurrection to immortality will take place when Christ returns to establish Gods Kingdom on this earth. Later will come another resurrection- to physical life- for people who had never had a relationship with the Father and Jesus Christ. They, too, will gain the opportunity for immortality. The true final answer is not death but resurrection. From the above it is clear that the concept of immortality of Soul is actually not a Christian concept and there is no reference to it in the Holy Bible. Even if one does not want to rely too much on the above view of the Biblical verse, still one can say that immortality of Soul cannot be a Christian concept because according to Christian belief, the God is the Supreme commander and if our souls were immortal then there would not be any difference between the earthly human beings and the Divine God. And for human beings to be at par with the Supreme Commander is impossible. If one does not want to take this argument also then and stick to the belief that immortality of the soul is actually a Christian concept and Descartes has not proved it according to C. F. Fowler in his book, â€Å"Descartes on the human soul: philosophy and the demands of Christian doctrine,† from Descartes writing it is understood that the Soul is immaterial as against the body which is material. And if the Soul is immaterial then it cannot be put to death from this one can say that Descartes has proved the immortality of the Soul. So either way one can succeed in defending Descartes and say that the Catholic Church made a mistake by condemning Descartes writings.