Something I'm throwing around

[Kerri]

I know this may or may not be the place for it. If it's not please allow me to remove it.

I've been thinking a lot over time about something I was told when I first became a Christian. About how people are made up of three basic parts.

Mind, Body and Soul.

Well the more I think about it the more I'm sure there's a good story in there somewhere. However... there are some ideas I've had I'm not sure are very sound. Heck, I'm pretty sure their not. But I want to throw this out because the subject intrigues me and makes me think and I like that.

Ok. Say that, yes, a human can be broken down into three main catagories of type of reaction, action and contemplation. Those three catagories would fall under Mind, Body or Soul.

Body, the easiest one to identify, would be a persons baser needs of survival and sinful nature. However, after studying human biology and nature, you find that there are two main cycles of habit that a body goes through without interferance from other portions of a being. Survival Instinct, labeled at times Libido, and Death Instinct, labeled Thanatos. As the body was made to eventually break down and die away, both are given in equal portions to each person.

Mind, a more complex peice of the triad. This peice can be described, without influence from either other peice, as the rationality. The thing above instinct that allows for cunning manipulation and understanding as well as reasoning. However, the mind is imperfect in that it can only work with information it has already been given, is able to process, and understands. And it is very easy to misintereperet things. The mind absorbs all things it comes in contact with as truth before the boundaries of reality, truth and untruth are erected at pubessant age.

Soul, if the last one was complex, this one is almost incomprehensable. Many people believe this is the core of every person. This is their center of identity and individuality and their center of emotions. I agree on most counts but I don't think this is necessary where "feelings" come from. I'm tempted to say this is where your moral center lies, however, I believe "feelings" or "emotions" come from a combination of two or more of the above listed peices, there in, not just a product of this one thing.

Unlike the body, we can't disect the soul to find out the truth.

Anyway... this kind of thing interests me so I wanted to post it because I'm considering using this concept in something I'm writing.

Any comments are welcome just keep them critique and not blast.

Kerri

[Peanut]

Hmmm...the only critique I have with what you've posted above is that much of it (though mostly your section on the body) is actually from Greek thought. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing since Christianity in the west has borrowed so much from Greece, including the concept of the soul. In Judaic thought, when the body dies, man merely goes to sleep until the graves are opened and his body resurrects. The body, therefore, is not a horrible thing which we should let whither and die, but is something that has been corrupted by sin (like all of creation) but will be redeemed as shown in the bodily resurrection at the end of time. You can see the importance of the body in Jewish thought also within the writings of Paul especially in Corinthians. Beyond Paul, the earl Church fathers also consistently had to deal with Gnosticism (the view that man is a divine soul stuck in a physical body) which reduced the importance of the physical body. With this in mind, I would suggest that revise your stance on the body since it portrays the physical nature of man to be lesser then his immaterial parts (soul and mind) when that is not the case. Perhaps the best way to handle this is to spread the sinful nature out amongst all three of these categories in some way and also emphasize the ultimate restoration of the body that will come with the end times.

[Kerri]

Hmmm...the only critique I have with what you've posted above is that much of it (though mostly your section on the body) is actually from Greek thought. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing since Christianity in the west has borrowed so much from Greece, including the concept of the soul. In Judaic thought, when the body dies, man merely goes to sleep until the graves are opened and his body resurrects. The body, therefore, is not a horrible thing which we should let whither and die, but is something that has been corrupted by sin (like all of creation) but will be redeemed as shown in the bodily resurrection at the end of time. You can see the importance of the body in Jewish thought also within the writings of Paul especially in Corinthians. Beyond Paul, the earl Church fathers also consistently had to deal with Gnosticism (the view that man is a divine soul stuck in a physical body) which reduced the importance of the physical body. With this in mind, I would suggest that revise your stance on the body since it portrays the physical nature of man to be lesser then his immaterial parts (soul and mind) when that is not the case. Perhaps the best way to handle this is to spread the sinful nature out amongst all three of these categories in some way and also emphasize the ultimate restoration of the body that will come with the end times.

"The body withers away" was my way of saying that after you are born, you grow or mature to a certain point, then from there you're body begins to break down with age. Your body doesn't stay continously healthy and vibrant. It slowly decreases until it dies, as all things in this world currently do.

In essance, the body is mortal. It is not made to last forever. It rots and decays even as it is alive.

I can understand your point on resurrection. However, until Christ does come the body is transient, isn't it?

[Peanut]

However, until Christ does come the body is transient, isn't it?

Yes it is.

[Dante]

Body: That which is concrete sitting right here and doing things, it represents your physical component in the world.

Mind: This isn't as much your brain (which is part of your body) but more the abstract representation of that information both conscious and unconscious.

Soul: The rest of us that we cannot define from our perception of the mind and the body. It's like in mathematics when we define the real number line. It consists of the rationals and... the irrationals... which are defined as the set of all numbers that cannot be written as p/q with p and q in the integers (Which are the rationals). So if it's not rational it's irrational, if it's not part of your mind or body, it's part of your soul.

We can try to approximate our soul with our mind and body all we'd like, but there are still "holes" that cannot be filled by those approximations left over when we're done. If it's like the irrationals, our souls represent a much larger set then then our minds or bodies do, but ultimately, we prefer to work with the rationals as we can't play around with this information as well.

See I learned something from staying up late and studying analysis! ^_^ Ok, that was mostly made up. But it sounded pretty good, didn't it!

[Nate]

Soul, if the last one was complex, this one is almost incomprehensable. Many people believe this is the core of every person. This is their center of identity and individuality and their center of emotions.

I don't agree with this at all, having had a family member who suffered from amnesia for a brief period of time. My mom didn't remember her own husband, or her kids. Unless she lost her soul in that bike wreck, it's safe to say that the sense of identity comes from the mind.

Take that as you will, all I'm saying is that who you are apparently doesn't come from the soul, as memory loss can rob you of who you are.