Questioning Afterlife, Wisdom and Creed

[ahworst]

I said a short prayer before mass today including asking for God to guide me by the truth, or something of that nature and all during mass I found things that seemed obvious mistakes. First, the first reading was a reading from Wisdom:

“God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living. For he fashioned all things that they might have being; and the creatures of the world are wholesome, and there is not a destructive drug among them nor any domain the the netherworld on earth, for justice is undying. For God formed Man to be imperishable; the image of his own nature he made him. But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world, and they who belong to his company experience it.”

I will comment on this in a sec, but I also noticed a part of the Nicene Creed:

“I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages.”

Ok, so the first part, “God did not make death”; I understood that man was made after God and animals were not and therefore not made to live forever, in essence then he created death for the animals, right? The concept of man not dying as the original plan is re-enforced by, “For God formed Man to be imperishable”. However, just as one can use reason to determine God’s existence, one can determine that God made things (at least in our realm of matter) to grow and decay such that things can be made destroyed and remade even better, which is possibly a better idea than making something that lives forever. It is reasonable to believe that man has a spiritual soul that lives forever, but what of the body? The body is made of many parts unlike the soul and therefore can be taken apart. To me, this means it was not made to last forever. So, as I understand it, when God creates the new heaven and the new earth, he will give us the glorified bodies which will live forever as long as we don’t sin I guess, as it was meant to be. Though we don’t know much about what this means, if it means we still are made of many parts, then we could still be taken apart, right?

The reason the creed statement is incorrect is because it says that Jesus was born of the Father before all ages. As long as I understand this as the physical birth of Jesus as a human this can’t be true since we know at what point in history he was actually born. In addition to this, we say that Jesus is the only begotten son of God while we inherited son-ship with God and that we were not there from the foundation of the world during creation like Jesus was as he is God. However, if I have an eternal soul that lives forever, how can it have a beginning? It must have existed before I was born, and in fact before time, or at least since God created my spirit which cannot be marked at a time since God does not work within the confines of time.

It is interesting to think of; if angels (pure spirits that were not meant to have bodies) could inhabit a human body or possibly others, then what’s to say human souls couldn’t do the same since they were meant to be part of a body?

 

[ShowersofRoses]

However, if I have an eternal soul that lives forever, how can it have a beginning? It must have existed before I was born, and in fact before time, or at least since God created my spirit which cannot be marked at a time since God does not work within the confines of time.

I’ll just address this one question here. We do not have eternal souls…only God is eternal. We are imbued with an immortal soul at conception. Our souls do have a beginning at conception, but we will live forever in either Heaven or Hell so that is why they are immortal. However, God knew us before we were conceived…we have been in His thoughts from eternity.

It is interesting to think of; if angels (pure spirits that were not meant to have bodies) could inhabit a human body or possibly others, then what’s to say human souls couldn’t do the same since they were meant to be part of a body?

No, our human souls have not being hanging around out in heaven somewhere waiting for our bodies to be created. So a human soul cannot possess another person. Angels would not possess us…only the fallen angels attempt such evil.

This link might be helpful for you in reference to your question about the Creed.
The Eternal Sonship of Christ

 

[veritatisstella]

The reason the creed statement is incorrect is because it says that Jesus was born of the Father before all ages . As long as I understand this as the physical birth of Jesus as a human this can’t be true since we know at what point in history he was actually born.

The statement in the Creed does not refer to the physical birth of Jesus Christ, but to Jesus Christ’s “birth” from the Father as the Second Person of the Trinity for all time and with no beginning. It’s not a birth in the ordinary sense we use the word.

However, if I have an eternal soul that lives forever, how can it have a beginning?

The soul will only live forever because God sustains it in existence. It doens’t live forever of necessity or from any fact of its nature. Human souls were created at some point and God will sustain them in existence for eternity after that point.

It is interesting to think of; if angels (pure spirits that were not meant to have bodies) could inhabit a human body or possibly others, then what’s to say human souls couldn’t do the same since they were meant to be part of a body?

Not sure what you mean here, but human souls aren’t just part of a body; they’re part of the whole human person.

 

[Arkansan]

There are creatures with no senescence, that simply live until something kills them. Had we not fallen we would have been like that, except that divine intervention would protect us from death.

The soul is the form of the body, it comes into existence when the body is made and cannot inhabit any other. Angels are completely different, as they are naturally immaterial.

Jesus was born in time as a man, but as the Second Person of the Trinity He existed always.

 

[Gorgias]

all during mass I found things that seemed obvious mistakes.

** sigh **. Ok. Let’s see whatcha got…

First, the first reading was a reading from Wisdom:

"God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living.

For God formed Man to be imperishable; the image of his own nature he made him. But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world, and they who belong to his company experience it."

Ok, so the first part, “God did not make death”; I understood that man was made after God and animals were not and therefore not made to live forever, in essence then he created death for the animals, right?

I would respond that human imperishability doesn’t address physical death, but rather, spiritual death. After all, the context is being made in the image of God, right? God is completely spiritual and not at all physical, so that “image” is our immortal soul.

“I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages.”

The reason the creed statement is incorrect is because it says that Jesus was born of the Father before all ages. As long as I understand this as the physical birth of Jesus as a human this can’t be true since we know at what point in history he was actually born.

Right. It’s not talking about ‘physical birth’. Look a few words earlier – it’s about being begotten of God.

In the original Greek, it goes like this:

τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ τὸν Μονογενῆ,
τὸν ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς γεννηθέντα πρὸ πάντων τῶν αἰώνων,

I’ve highlighted the words that are in play here. “Μονογενῆ” means “only-begotten”. The line here is literally rendered “the son of God the only-begotten”, and if we were translating it into English, we’d say “the only-begotten son of God”. The word “γεννηθέντα” is from the same root (see the γεν in both of them? That’s the root – γεννάω (“gennao”) – which means “to beget”). In the case of a physical creature, we would use it to mean ‘born of the flesh’. In the case of a spiritual being, we wouldn’t mean ‘born of the flesh’. I think that this is what you’re getting hung up on…

However, if I have an eternal soul that lives forever, how can it have a beginning?

As others have mentioned, you don’t have an eternal soul, you have an immortal soul. It doesn’t die, but it does have a beginning.

It is interesting to think of; if angels (pure spirits that were not meant to have bodies) could inhabit a human body

“Inhabit” as in ‘possess’? Or “inhabit” as in ‘be a body-soul composite’? The former is possible (think of demonic possession); the latter is not.

 

[ahworst]

We do not have eternal souls…only God is eternal. We are imbued with an immortal soul at conception. Our souls do have a beginning at conception, but we will live forever in either Heaven or Hell so that is why they are immortal. However, God knew us before we were conceived…we have been in His thoughts from eternity.

That is exactly what I am saying. When we speak of God, what is the difference between a thought of God and something that really exists? If we exist in God’s mind from eternity, then we exist from eternity.
I heard an explanation of the second person of the trinity in a similar manner: Jesus is the word of God, but God does not speak like we do so his word is a thought and the thought of himself is the second person of the trinity. (Frank Sheed, “Theology for Beginners”) In this explanation, one can see the difference between us and Jesus since Jesus is the thought God has of himself, and we are something different, but still in his image and likeness. This is mysterious to me.

thanks for the reply, by the way.

 

[Gorgias]

If we exist in God’s mind from eternity, then we exist from eternity.

I think that this assertion ignores the difference between timelessness in eternity and the temporal framework within the universe. If there’s a time in the universe in which you haven’t yet existed, how can you say that you “exist from eternity”?

 

[ShowersofRoses]

That’s an interesting theory. While I agree we have existed in God’s thoughts from eternity, you can’t make the leap from that to saying that our souls existed literally before our created existence. I believe God can think about us without necessarily creating us.

In fact, it was at the Second Council of Constantinople that the pre-existence of souls doctrine was completely rejected. You could look this up and find more information.

About God the Son as the thought of the Father, I have heard that idea before. It was expressed as God the Father eternally contemplates Himself, and that contemplation is in itself a perfect reflection/image and is God the Son, and that the love between them is the Holy Spirit. It’s all very complicated.

I’m slowly reading through Frank Sheed’s Theology and Sanity right now, so I’ll have to see how he descibes it. But any sort of explanation like this still falls short of the mystery of the Trinity…it’s simply impossible to fully describe it with human words.