Bernard Muller

Layman wrote:
Not at all. It is best translated "soul," which is why so many leading translations so render it.

Depends where you look and what you desire. Here, the living "soul" is a bodily human being. The ADAM of the story is made into a real man, not a soul out of a body.
Anyway, Paul is using the same word he found in the LXX; he did not change anything for a special purpose.

The main point is your argument goes for nothing.
One, after his creation, is a being in a body. The other, when back in heaven, is a spirit.

Best regards, Bernard

Haran

And that word is mostly used in the LXX to translate the Hebrew word "nephesh" which means "soul" (creature/being seem like language concessions to me). In Latin it is translated with "anima" or "soul". In English it is translated "soul". I think Layman has this correct though these words are notoriously difficult to translate.

In translation, both psyche and pneuma are usually related to the Hebrew nephesh and ruach, respectively.

Layman

No, the difference is between being animated by the soul and being animated by the life-giving Spirit. The former has a natural body but the latter has a spiritual body. I'll explain in more detail as time permits.

If you would bother to respond to any of my arguments instead of just making your own you'd have to face that Paul's usage of "soma" emphasizes the physicality of the new body. You'd also have to deal with Paul's discussions about "transforming" the old body into the new. And Paul's belief that the spirit of the believer immediately goes to be with Christ while the body waits for resurrection.

Orpheus42

Actually, Bernard, psuche and pneuma seem to at times refer to the same thing or a similar thing.

A bit of background: Greek operates in what I call "word families", where the same root can have a verb form (or perhaps multitpe verb forms, depending on the ending) and also various adjectival and noun forms. Psuchein and pneumein, the infinitive forms of the most basic word with each stem, both in fact mean the same thing- to breathe. Ergo, we should expect noun forms to have similar meanings as well.

The best translation for psuche is generally "soul". I would say that the soul concept in Hebrew thought refers to the core of a person's being, you could use heart language to refer to that in our culture ("this thing pains me in my heart", for example), but it doesn't change the fact that the literal meaning of the word is breath. It has in its basic meaning no more physical connotation than does the word breath or wind- just like pneuma. Do you really think Paul is saying that Adam did not become a physical human being? If not, then given the extremely close similarity between the two words how can you say that because he refers to Jesus in parallel using pneuma he is saying that Jesus wasn't a physical being after the resurrection?

The distinction here is the same that Layman was pounding with the difference between the physical body and the spiritual one. Linguistically, you don't have a leg on which to stand.

Cheers,

Jason

Steven Carr

CARR
I repeat it was Layman's OWN SOURCE in his opening post who said that if Paul wanted to refer to Jesus in a non-physical manner he would have used the word 'pneuma'.

Which is exactly what Paul did.

Now we learn that 'pneuma' means breath or wind, so is physical????

I love Layman's response to his OWN SOURCE

CARR (previous post)
So Sanders said that if Paul had wanted to , he would have called Jesus a spirit, pneuma.

But Paul DID call Jesus a spirit, pneuma! Exactly the term we would expect according to Layman's own quotes!!!!


LAYMAN
Sigh.

Here is the scripture that Sanders is referring to:

1Co 15:42-44: "So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body."

CARR
Layman cuts off the very next verse! He cannot deal with it, so he ignores it!

The very next verse says Jesus became a life-giving spirit (or breath or wind, whichever word Orpheus prefers)

When I say Layman ignores it, he actually did something very sneaky, as befits his tactics......

I quoted his original post which says

SANDERS
Paul, that is, thought of the resurrected Jesus neither as a corpse which had regained the ability to breathe and walk nor as a ghost. He regarded Jesus as 'first fruits' of the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:20) and thought that all Christians would become like him. He denied that the resurrected body would be the 'natural' body, but maintained that it would be a 'spiritual' body (1 Cor. 15:44-6). 'Not a natural body' excludes a walking corpse, while 'spiritual body' excludes a ghost (which would be called in Greek simply a 'spirit', pneuma).

CARR
Notice that Sanders says 1 Cor 15:44-6. Layman , of course, edits his own source and says

LAYMAN
Here is the scripture that Sanders is referring to: 1Co 15:42-44

CARR
No Layman, read your OWN QUOTE, where Sanders says he is NOT referring to what you claim he is referring to. He gives the reference I give, which includes verse 45.

I'm surprised Layman did that. Did he not read carefully what he cut and pasted?


----------------------------

LAYMAN
'No, the difference is between being animated by the soul and being animated by the life-giving Spirit. The former has a natural body but the latter has a spiritual body.'

CARR
What does it mean that Adam's clay was breathed into by God, and was NOT infused by God?

Jesus was NOT animated by the life-giving Spirit before the resurrection?

And after his death, he ate, so was his body animated by hunger?

What is a spiritual body? What is a spiritual spleen, or a spiritual gall-bladder?

Does a spiritual body still have wounds?

Paul explains that a spiritual body is a heavenly, perfect body , such as the sun and stars are heavenly and perfect.

Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:45 'The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.' (pneuma - exactly the term Layman's own source used as the example of what Paul would have said if he meant not physical)


Layman is quite right , of course, that Paul did not regard the incarnated Jesus's body as anything divine. It is an important point that Layman brings up here.


Only later did the idea come that Jesus was the PHYSICAL incarnation of God - something that sits uneasily with Paul's claim that Jesus emptied himself of Godhood.

A natural body is made of the dust of the ground. A spiritual body is not transformed clay, but a new, heavenly body, made out of heavenly material.....

Philo (a contemporary of Paul) wrote in Allegorical Interpretation 31 "And God formed the man by taking clay from the earth, and breathed into his face a breath of life, and the man became a living soul" (Gen 2:7). There are two types of men; the one a heavenly man, the other an earthly. The heavenly man, being made after the image of God, is altogether without part or lot in corruptible and terrestrial substance; but the earthly one was compacted out of the matter scattered here and there, which Moses calls "clay." For this reason he says that the heavenly man was not molded, but was stamped with the image of God;

32 while the earthly is a molded work of the Artificer, but not His offspring. We must account the man made out of the earth to be mind mingling with, but not yet blended with, body. But this earthlike mind is in reality also corruptible, were not God to breathe into it a power of real life; when He does so, it does not any more undergo molding, but becomes a soul, not an inefficient and imperfectly formed soul, but one endowed with mind and actually alive; for he says, "man became a living soul."

Exactly the same terminology as Paul , and exactly the same reasoning.

We will go back to the creation in Genesis 1, and be directly made in the image of God.


This is what Jews said. Layman's intepretation, that our bodies still need to be infused by God is refuted by what Jews of the period themselves wrote.

The body had already been breathed into by God and had become a soulish body. It HAD been infused by God. This distinction that a spiritual body is one infused by God is a false distinction. The soulish body had already been infused by God and already animated directly by the breath of God.

But there had already been a heavenly body, made directly in the image of God.

THIS is the distinction between a soulish and a spiritual body.



ORPHEUS wrote
'The best translation for psuche is generally "soul". I would say that the soul concept in Hebrew thought refers to the core of a person's being, you could use heart language to refer to that in our culture ("this thing pains me in my heart", for example), but it doesn't change the fact that the literal meaning of the word is breath. It has in its basic meaning no more physical connotation than does the word breath or wind- just like pneuma.'

CARR
Then what is a 'soulish' body. A non-physical physical body?

And what did Paul mean by saying that Jesus became a 'pneuma' - a word that YOU YOURSELF claims has no more physical connotation than 'breath' or 'wind'?

Layman and Orpheus play with words 'Pneuma' is non-phsyical, means 'breath' or 'wind' yet they would howl if I translated 1 Corinthians 15:45 as 'Jesus became a life-giving breath.'

Steven Carr

So there IS a difference between the physical body and the spiritual body?

So if I saw a physical body and I saw a spiritual body, I could look at the spiritual body and say 'That is NOT the physical body.'?

Jim Larmore

I would like to see specifically where you find that "Paul's belief that the spirit of the believer immediately goes to be with Christ while the body waits for resurrection" .

I don't find this anywhere in the canonized scriptures. I'm not trying to side with Steve or Bernard here but it really doesn't make sense either that "departed" souls would go immediately to heaven at their death when in Revelation it says that everyone would be judged first. Why would it even be necessary to have a resurrection if all the saved departed souls were already in heaven? Theres nothing in the Bible that says the departed souls are going to be reunited with their bodies. In Gen. it says God made man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. So according to our Bible it takes a body and the breath of life to make a soul. The soul is not some intangible entity which floats off to heaven after death. On the contrary the Bible says in Ezek 18:4 that souls die, Ecc 9:5 says the dead know not anything, James 2:26 says the body without the spirit ( pneuma or breath of life ) is dead, Eccl.3:19-20 "For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beast, even one thing befalleth them, as the one dieth, so dieth the other, yea, they all have one breath, so that a man has no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place: all are of the dust, and turn to dust again". If man had a departed "soul" upon death it would have said so in the scriptures , but it doesn't.

If you read in Acts 2:29 you find where it talks about David the Patriarch and King of Judah, David was a man after God's own heart , I think we can expect to see David in heaven , yet it specifically states "For David is NOT ascended into heaven" , why because he is asleep and waiting for the resurrection, the Bible calls death a sleep 66 times. Jesus called death a sleep. In Matt24:31 it says He shall send His angels to gather together the elect from the four winds , why would he do this if he already had them with Him? In the book of John Jesus said several times " and I will raise it up the last day" He didn't say He would bring them back and unite them with their bodies. This immortal soul idea is a lie propagated by satan and most of the world is believing it.