quote: Dtmccameron
A while back, I was reading in the Catechism, and came across a, uh, passage? that related to the effect (if my memory serves me well, which would in itself be a surprise!) that we are ‘composite-beings’. It was speaking of the soul and the body.
That’s all I remember, I’m afraid. I was wondering if any of you might be so kind as to…elaborate? on the subject.
Oh, goodness. That is a big topic.
As Jesus was God, Who took on flesh, [became incarnate],
so human beings are an incarnated soul. Not soul & body -
rather, soul/body, which was meant to remain an inseparble unity,
until the sin of Adam ushered death into the world.
At death, the soul continues to exist, until such time as God raises us,
clothing us in a glorified body.
Death - the separation of soul/body, was never meant to be.
Death entered the world, because of sin.
That is why we are repelled by the thought of death -
for we instinctivly draw back - from the thought of such
separation of soul/body.
There is the definiton: A human being is a rational animal.
As such, human beings have the senses - with which to
experience the world.
The angels, being pure spirit, cannot at all know the
physical world that God created.
A human being, unlike all other animals, has the power to reason.
To think. To speak - and to speak of not only the physical world,
but to speak of God, and the things of God.
The perennial temptation has been to, somehow, think of human beings as pure spirit.
To hold that this is, somehow, a ‘higher’ reality to attain.
A big mistake, this way of thought, for that is not how God created us.
We are soul/body. Or soul/body/intellect.
In eternity, we shall have a glorified body - never to know illness or death again.
We shall not then ‘exist’ as soul, alone.
God will reunite both soul and body, and fit each of us
to bear the ‘weight of glory’ that will be His gift - as Christ returns.
There is a yearning, in this life, for the fulness of life in Him.
Many human beings realize, almost vaguely, that something is amiss.
Yet knowing that God has made us in His image and likeness,
we instinctively know that something is lacking. All of that lack will
be forever banished - as we ‘live and move and have our being’ in His full
and eternal presence.
“We see, now, as through a glass, darkly - but then, Face to face.”
“Then I shall know, even as I am known.”
As one Catholic author wrote: We are triadic beings, in a diadic universe.
St. Augustine said this, far more simply:
“You have made us for Youself, O Lord, and our hearts are
restless, til they rest in Thee.”
quote: Dtmccameron
I always looked at it more that I was a prisoner inside this flesh; like a driver of a vehicle.
The great philosopher of antiquity, Plato, created an analogy
- in which a chariot, drawn by two horses, was guided by the ‘charioteer’…the intellect of man.
To be a triadic creature, in a diadic world, will, literally,
not last forever. God wishes to restore to us that which was
lost in Eden.
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