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It is important not to make a category mistake and assume we
are talking about the same types of stuff (see Ryle) and consider
ourself a bipolar dualism with body as our material stuff, and
soul or spirit as our non-physical stuff.
A far more useful paradigm for understanding personhood and
created reality are
1) the Genesis model
body - word pattern prescribed boundary
spirit - breath life personhood
soul - the whole being and
2) the Australian Aboriginal Inside/outside
paradigm
Humanity, like all created reality, is predominantly spirit
(which is not spatially or temporally located) proscribed within
creation by the word of God. Spirit
manifesting boundaries as body.
In the context of the broader body of humanity, placing a
boundary for the place of the human within creation divided from
and separated from the place of what is other than human.
We are further defined within humanity through what we share
in common, and our voluntary and involuntary affiliations.
And obviously, we are defined and individuated as separate
human beings, differentiated in bodies of flesh.
Our inside, our spirit, is the place we should live. but
seperated from God, the source of our proscribing word, we often live on our boundariies, and
look to our boundaries to define who we are, and boundaries
generally (the outside) to define reality for us.
At our boundaries we come into contact with those who are Other than us. Other,
out of the context of a loving and proscribing god is a fearful
concept. We feel we have to protect, defend and fight for our
boundaries. We become fearful of nakedness, and our Other can often be seen as evil.
In this state we have a tendency to flee to nothingness to
hide in God's Other away from personhood
per se.
We hide in death.
Spirit is fundamental and archetypal personhood. It can neither be added
to or taken from without changing us from being who we are,
though it can be enriched by open links with other persons, and
principly the source of personhood, God.
Spirit cannot be described, Spirit can only be personally
known, spirit is the heart of our personhood. We can also
understand spirit from the body and soul, in a similar way we can
understand God from creation. Though this is limited by the
effect of the fall on our knowledge.
Body is what the person or spirit
lives in and through. A body is an interface between an
entity and the entity's environment. Body provides unique
and differentiated space for soul and individuality, in a similar
way to God providing space for Other
through Christ.
Western culture considers only physical bodies, however
Christianity perceives of bodies in 2 realms, the physical and
the spiritual.
Understood within the context of the Person Paradigm and the
Speaking/Hearing dynamic, a physical body could be
understood as the physical realm hearing or perceiving an
entity or person. A spiritual body is the spiritual realm
hearing or perceiving an entity or person.
Christianity is a resolver of dualisms, and the dualism is resolved by going back to the
foundations, and the fact that the person or entity is One and
can be manifest in different realms.
I consider that the stuff of a spiritual body is the Virtues. Interestingly some elements of
research into the emotions ('emotion' being a category with
significant cross over to the virtues and vices) define emotion
in terms of an interface between a person and their
environment. (for more musings on this - see the writings section - celestial bodies)
Soul is personality, a gathering of
ideas into the basket of our body, through the device of
conscious and subconscious memory and knowing.
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