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catholic1seeks
Guest
While there may not be sex, the reasoning does not follow. For we will participate in many goods, even lesser goods then God, in heaven - like friendship. And anything that may come with having a body in Heaven.
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GEddie
Guest
I’m looking forward to my pneumatikon soma (spiritual body)! I can’t wait to be hugged and held by our LORD, and look into HIS eyes, and breathe with HIM!!!
You need a** BODY** for all of that!!!
Not to mention, a head to hold your mind in!
ICXC NIKA!
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fisherman_carl
Guest
Our bodies I think are somewhat secondary to who we are and what is most important. A person could lose an arm or a leg without losing that which is most important about them. God could have made our bodies differently. We could have had 4 arms and 2 legs. The body is important, but serves a higher purpose. We eat to nourish the body, but the body’s end is to nourish the soul. And, the soul’s higher purpose is to know and love God.
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GEddie
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No, our bodies are not secondary. They are intrinsic to human life.
Losing a limb does not mean that the body is secondary, but only that a body can take a lot of punishment before becoming dead. And although you’d remain alive if you (God forbid) lost a limb, such a catastrophe would reshape your life from then on.
Yes, we “could have” had six limbs, or some other bodyform; but the fact is, we don’t. The bodies we have now were chosen by God to define human life.
It is the mind that lives life, but life is lived through the body.
Your mind makes you you, but your body makes you somebody.
ICXC NIKA
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fisherman_carl
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Do you not agree that the body is secondary to love? What I am saying is there is a hierarchy of things. Even in your body there is a hierarchy. Your body can survive without your left toe for instance, but not without your head. Your heart is vital as well. But even your heart could undergo a transplant to save the body. If a person has a heart transplant they don’t cease being who they are. The body’s function is secondary to that of the soul’s function to know and to love. I consider the soul to be above the body in this hierarchy in that the body is servant to the soul. The body serves the spirit. The body is part of who we are, but it supports the nourishment of something greater, namely the soul. The soul experiences through the bodily senses. And the soul itself serves something greater than itself, namely God. I think Aquinas said something along these lines.
Aquinas said that without our bodies we are incomplete. But, this doesn’t mean that each part of ourselves is equally important. The things of the spirit are more important than the things of the flesh. If that were not true than why should we deny our bodies anything like fasting for instance to attain some greater spiritual good? The body serves something greater than itself.
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hu324b
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The only reason pleasure is involved is so we know what to do - if there was no pleasure having sex there would be no procreation because we would not know what to do - its an animal thing of the flesh so that we know what to do to procreate.
You must distinguish what is of the flesh and what is of the spirit which alot of people have a hard time doing.
You must distinguish what is of the flesh and what is of the spirit which alot of people have a hard time doing.
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GEddie
Guest
Things like fasting, though physically unpleasant, are not really about the body so much as a training of the will (which is “soulish”).
Body is not (or should not be) harmed by fasting in a religious context. Fasting is undertaken often for health reasons, i.e., to **benefit **the body. The Church does not teach to harm one’s own body.
You go on about “love”, but “love” turns to pain when there is no possible expression via the body, i.e. When the “loved one” is permanently out of one’s life due to death, or estrangement, or geographic distance. Love is to be expressed via the body. (No, I do not mean per se sexually. Nor am I concerned with what “pure spirits” do; we are human beings.)
ICXC NIKA
Body is not (or should not be) harmed by fasting in a religious context. Fasting is undertaken often for health reasons, i.e., to **benefit **the body. The Church does not teach to harm one’s own body.
You go on about “love”, but “love” turns to pain when there is no possible expression via the body, i.e. When the “loved one” is permanently out of one’s life due to death, or estrangement, or geographic distance. Love is to be expressed via the body. (No, I do not mean per se sexually. Nor am I concerned with what “pure spirits” do; we are human beings.)
ICXC NIKA
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fisherman_carl
Guest
Do you think the body is equal to the soul?
Baseball is to be expressed through a baseball and a bat. However, that does not mean that either are as important as the baseball player.
God is love. Love does not require a body. It is metaphysical. Can people in heaven still love?
Which was created in God’s image, the body or the soul?
Which survives death and thus keeps in tact our true essence, the body or the soul?
If our true selves did not survive the death of the body then whatever is Resurrected will be a copy of us rather than a continuation of our true self.
I am not saying our bodies are bad or are not an important part of who we are, just that it is subordinate to and serves the soul.
Many early Church Fathers thought the soul was greater than the body. And that the Intellect and will should control the body and subdue it’s passions.
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Robert_Sock
Guest
“Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man loves the world, the charity of the Father is not in him.”
-1 John 2:15
Sex, in and of itself, is a cheap and primitive pleasure that the people in Hell may engage in, but not in Heaven.
“Man is not a soul bound in a transient body. If that were the case, resurrection would have little significance other than representing the soul’s return to its bodily prison…The Rambam says there will be no eating, drinking or sleeping in the World to Come (Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance 8:2). This statement was the focal point of a dispute between Maimonides and Nachmonides, and has been deeply misunderstood. In the World to Come, the body will not be resurrected and then die. Maimonides says that after resurrection, the body will cease to be a body as we know it (ibid.). This cessation implies that the body will instead become so holy that it will become spiritual, transcending the physical limitations imposed upon it in this earthly world. Nevertheless, it will retain its sense of self-existence, its sense of being.”
-http://www.aish.com/sp/ph/48929597.html
I side with Maimonides.
When my master and teacher [R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi] was in a state of d’veikut (lit. “attachment,” a trance-like state of ecstatic cleaving to G-d) he would cry out: “I want nothing at all! I don’t want Your ‘garden of eden,’ I don’t want Your ‘world to come’… I want nothing but You alone.”
– Related by Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s grandson, Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch
Was this Rabbi having a psychotic episode, or did he experience a small taste of Heaven? I’ve had intense feelings of joy, so I think I can begin to understand what this Rabbi experienced. Again, sexual pleasure is cheap compared to the joys if Heaven.
-1 John 2:15
Sex, in and of itself, is a cheap and primitive pleasure that the people in Hell may engage in, but not in Heaven.
“Man is not a soul bound in a transient body. If that were the case, resurrection would have little significance other than representing the soul’s return to its bodily prison…The Rambam says there will be no eating, drinking or sleeping in the World to Come (Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance 8:2). This statement was the focal point of a dispute between Maimonides and Nachmonides, and has been deeply misunderstood. In the World to Come, the body will not be resurrected and then die. Maimonides says that after resurrection, the body will cease to be a body as we know it (ibid.). This cessation implies that the body will instead become so holy that it will become spiritual, transcending the physical limitations imposed upon it in this earthly world. Nevertheless, it will retain its sense of self-existence, its sense of being.”
-http://www.aish.com/sp/ph/48929597.html
I side with Maimonides.
When my master and teacher [R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi] was in a state of d’veikut (lit. “attachment,” a trance-like state of ecstatic cleaving to G-d) he would cry out: “I want nothing at all! I don’t want Your ‘garden of eden,’ I don’t want Your ‘world to come’… I want nothing but You alone.”
– Related by Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s grandson, Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch
Was this Rabbi having a psychotic episode, or did he experience a small taste of Heaven? I’ve had intense feelings of joy, so I think I can begin to understand what this Rabbi experienced. Again, sexual pleasure is cheap compared to the joys if Heaven.
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Gemma6039
Guest
Part of what I perceive would concur with Gorgias ’ post. : Personally, I don’t see the title of the topic as being totally congruous with the wording in the OP.
Two distinct impressions could possibly be conveyed.
*]The title sex in Heaven can definitely imply a question of whether there will be sexual intercourse in Heaven.
*]While the question in the OP . . . . . . *appears *to ask whether a particular joy “will be enjoyed in Heaven”
But asking “will the joy that comes with sexual intimacy”, fails to disassociate the *joy *from the intimacy. Essentially we are left to conclude the question asks equally whether there will be sexual intimacy in Heaven.
It would probably be helpful to clarify the differences between “joy” and “sexual pleasure.”
The OP acknowledges “procreations will be no more” and Fr. Hardon clarifies that sexual pleasure is intended to “aid the act of procreation.”
The prevalent thought is that “the joy that comes with sexual intimacy” has a twofold purpose intended exclusively for married couples ; which are unitive and procreative. It is meant exclusively for married couples , and the marriage vows specify, “until death do us part”. And when our Blessed Lord said that we will be like angels in Heaven (if we make it There- God willing), what he was confirming was that, in Heaven men and women do not marry as we do on earth:
Despite the certainty that at the General Judgement we shall be reunited with our bodies (and the just shall have their bodies glorified), the fact that we will not marry again makes it considerably difficult to posit from any practical standpoint ,an actual need in Heaven for sexual intercourse or its associated joy - all of which appears to be intended to benefit the husband and the wife and procreation within marriage -here,during our earthly sojourn.
But there is still a profound analogy to be seen in that we , the Church, are the bride of Christ. And the joy we will experience in the beatific vision because of this, is said to be beyond what we can even imagine, but we should still dare to dream. And it’s better to think BIG. Heavenly joy is frequently referred to as bliss. Here’s Father Hardon’s definition of bliss:
Great response! I love Fr. Hardon!
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Gorgias
Guest
No, I don’t agree with that sentiment. We are body-soul composites. That means that we’re not dualists – we are integral beings, and our bodies and our souls make up who we are. Through the mode of human existence, we express love. If you amputate an arm or a leg (as you suggest in another post), we are still a body-soul composite, and that reality expresses love, no matter how our body (in all its imperfections) is able to express that love.
That means that we cannot point at our soul and say “love” or point at our body and say “not love.” An expression of a dichotomy there says that the part determines the whole. It doesn’t. If it did, then we would be able to say that differently-abled persons are less than human. They aren’t.
That’s an ancient thought that the Church has rejected. Taken to its logical extremes, it tells us that body is evil and soul is good. That’s not what we believe as Christians. (But, that’s what a variety of heretics believed…)
By that reasoning, the soul, too, serves something greater than itself. You can’t separate the two and say “this part good; that part bad” or “this part master; that part servant.”
That’s not to say that the body is susceptible to various temptations that the soul is not (after all, there are temptations that the soul is susceptible to that the body is not!). However, that doesn’t create a hierarchy of ‘goodness’ – God created humanity, body and soul, and declared it “very good.”
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