People are spirit beings clothed in flesh. 1 Thessalonians 5:23, And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So we have a spirit and a soul which is clothed in a body.
No. And that's not what St. Paul is saying in 1 Thessalonians 5:23. Not even a little bit.
Paul is using terms of expression to describe an entire person. He could have used more terms, for example he could have mentioned the mind or the heart. Because biblical language describing aspects of human existence are diverse.
I am not a soul or spirit encased in a body. I am a human person. Biblical "anthropology", that is the theology of human beings, speaks of human beings as living, breathing, flesh and blood creatures. That "living, breathing" part, that is based on the biblical language of the nephesh and ruach (psyche and pneuma when translated into Greek).
So in Genesis chapter 2 that God took dust of the earth, fashioned it into a shape, and then breathed life into it, and that dead matter became a "living soul", a
nephesh chaya, "[a] breathing living-thing".
The nephesh is the distinction between a living thing and a non-living thing. The distinction between a living creature and a dead corpse. The animal breath.
Souls don't get put into bodies, bodies have souls because living things are alive. That essence of life, that's "the soul".
We are not embodied souls, we are
ensouled bodies.
For us, a fundamental part of our being humanly alive is the human mind, the human intellect, that is the capacity for reason. We are rational animals. Which is why Christianity historically has borrowed the phrase "rational soul" when speaking of the human soul. Human beings have self awareness, consciousness, and are endowed with a reasoning intellect.
That's why we read in the confession of faith drawn up at Chalcedon (which is accepted by Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, but not by the Oriental Orthodox) that Christ is to be confessed as both fully God and fully human "of a rational soul and body". The emphasis on Christ having a "rational soul", that is a human soul, is very specifically intended to counter-act the heresy of Apollinarus who argued that Christ had no human soul or mind, but only a human body.
Genesis 25:8, Then Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man, and full of years; and was gathered to his people.
The spirit left his body.
See above. We are talking about the distinction between a living vs non-living thing. To "give up the ghost" means to die.
That the life of a person persists after death is biblical of course. Which is why King David can say that he will meet his dead child only after he dies, for they will both be in the place of the dead, She'ol. And in the New Testament St. Paul speaks of a departure from the body and being present with the Lord; which is why Christianity maintains a belief that between the death and resurrection of the body, the person goes to be with the Lord in an intermediate state of waiting--commonly referred to as "going to heaven".
It does not mean that there is some ethereal substance floating around inside my body that suddenly springs forth from my body at death and goes to some supernatural realm of spirits. That kind of idea has its basis not in Christian teaching, but in Platonic and Neo-Platonic (and therefore subsequently also) in Gnostic thought.
Why would God have a problem with the priest taking wives. They were not forbidden to marry. So he you think he destroyed the world because the priest took wives and had children.
I have no idea what you're talking about here. Who said anything about priests, or priests taking wives?
God sent Gabriel to tell Mary she would give birth to Jesus.
Yes, and?
Hebrew 13:2,
1Let brotherly love continue.
2Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
Which, of course if you see what I've said in this thread so far, simply isn't a problem.
And, to bring this conversation back on focus. You haven't provided anything to substantiate your claims about the existence of mythological-level giants.
Note that I am intentionally using the phrase "mythological-level" here, because in the ancient world "giant" was often applied to any person of notable size. The most obvious example from Biblical material would be Goliath of Gath, a man who stood nearly 7 feet tall. That's big even by modern western standards, let alone ancient standards where the average male height would have been around 5'5.
But humanoids standing 12, 20, 50, a 100 feet tall or more? That's utter tosh.
-CryptoLutheran
