Christianity and Hellenistic Dualism

[radorth]

Christianity promotes a mindset where a person is told that they're split into two, "soul" and "body", given the impression that "they" are merely using the "body" as a vehicle, and that the "body" and the "soul" are warring with each other.

Yeah pretty much.

You're told that perfection exists in the distant past (before the Fall) and the distant future (after the Resurrection),

Er, OK.

but right now the World is evil and out to get you, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, be in the world but not of the world, your true home is God (out there somewhere, not here),

Eh? Guess you misssed Masefield's The Everlasting Mercy, or Finney's testimony. God's right here. Anyone washed in the blood of Christ can enter his very presence. You'd have to repent of your sins though, a real strain on the ego, I know.

you were born with inherited dirtiness, and often that fleshly pleasures like sex and fine food are wrong.

Nah, just not something to obsess on. I marvel you got all those A's in Bible scholl and missed this rather clear passage.

Nothing is unclean of itself.

See, I actually read the thing with an open mind finally. It's amazing what you see when you do that.

Christianity inherited this from Hellenistic thought, not from Judaism. This dualism of spirit vs. matter.

Well at least the Hellenists got one thing right.

Rad

 

[Zoot]

I just had a thought. Wells, when I said "dualism", did you think I meant the kind of demiurge vs. God, good deity vs. bad deity, kind of dualism?

 

[Zoot]

Nah, just not something to obsess on. I marvel you got all those A's in Bible scholl and missed this rather clear passage.

Nothing is unclean of itself.

See, I actually read the thing with an open mind finally. It's amazing what you see when you do that.

Radorth, please spare us all the trouble of wiping your dripping condescension off our computers.

I point out, again, that I am not talking about the Bible, I am talking about Christianity as it has turned out.

 

[radorth]

If you know all that, why aren't you vindicating Christ and telling inane and ignorant people what the NT really says, instead of (in effect) promoting the opinions of atheists?


Rad

 

[Zoot]

radorth,

I don't particularly like the Bible, but I dislike it less than some unbiblical attitudes taken by many Christians today. While the Bible may be less trouble on this particular point, and I would like for modern Christianity to get back to its scriptural (and Judaic) roots on this particular matter, I would still prefer overall that people didn't take the Bible at all seriously.

So my order of preference, from highest preference to lowest preference, is this:

1. People don't take the Bible seriously.

2. People take the Bible seriously with regards to verses like the one you quoted and thus don't have so much of a "bad world, good soul" mentality.

3. People take the Bible seriously but follow the current Christian trend of the "bad world, good soul" mentality.


And as for "what the NT really says", I'd be just another person in the seething masses of people claiming to know what the NT really says.

 

[SolomonVII]

That seems like a much saner attitude than most forms of Christianity seems to engender in Christians. I doubt many Christians think much of the idea of the resurrection of their bodies. I don't know enough Orthodox people in real life to have any idea whether or not their mindsets match their the theology espoused by their church.

I have seldom come across Christians who do not on some level view themselves as strangers in the world, pure souls trapped in impure bodies in a seductive world run by a deceitful being (Satan, I mean, not God). They mourn the loss of goodness in Eden and yearn for the recovery of goodness in Armageddon, and emphasise greatly how unimpressed God is with us and everything we do.

And of course one can point to theological works in any of these denominations, or to the Christian scriptures, to support an argument that Christianity does not actually espouse this mindset, but in practice, it usually does.

You're Orthodox, Solomon? What does the Orthodox Church teach about the end of this world?

Sorry, I think I misled you with the use of the term 'orthodox'. I was merely using it to mean, according to the dictionary 'Adhering to the Christian faith as expressed in early Christian ecumenical creeds'. In this way, it would also include Roman Catholics like myself. While the Roman Catholic Church is includes a diversity of opinion, according to the Dominican priest at my parish at least, the resurrection of the body is stressed quite strongly.

Pure souls trapped in a body, or the 'divine spark' of Gnostic thought, suggest duality. Many believe that the Gospel of St. John was written directly to counter this concept. John in particular stressed that Jesus was fully human, and that the Father and Son were one. The antiChrists Jon spoke of most likely alluded to the Gnostic teachers who denied the humanity of Christ. While earlier Gospels show traces of gnostic influence- for example, there are allusions the gnostic belief in reincarnation in the relationship of John the Baptist to Elijah, - because Christ was fully human and fully divine, the body cannot therefore be regarded as evil.

Christianity is not a religion that states that all paths are equally valid. There are some paths that lead the follower to places of "wailing and gnashing of teeth". Such passages can just as easily be understood in terms of this world and not necessarily just the next. While I never really gave it much thought before, I do agree with your contention that "duality of mind and body" is such a path. It is important for us to see our bodies from the point of view of the Creator. In His eyes we are all beautiful and it would be impossible for Him not to love us. Theologically speaking, there is no reason for a Christian, or any human being, to feel alienated from his or her own body.


[/QUOTE] They mourn the loss of goodness in Eden and yearn for the recovery of goodness in Armageddon, and emphasise greatly how unimpressed God is with us and everything we do.[/QUOTE]
I agree that there is a strong element of self-criticism in Christianity and Judaism. This is a good thing. Through our choices we are capable of doing great harm, and therefore it is our responsibility to battle the evil within. Nevertheless, the wrath of God against sin is always counter-balanced by his great mercy and love. Hating the sins that we commit is not equivalent to a masochistic self-loathing.

Armegeddon is above all a symbol of hope. On its battlefields, sin will finally be conquered. I have no way of knowing whether we are to regard battles of Armageddon literally of symbolically, or both. Yet I do remain optimistic that through our battles against all that is wrong in this world we may prevail against evil.

 

[TWells]

I just had a thought. Wells, when I said "dualism", did you think I meant the kind of demiurge vs. God, good deity vs. bad deity, kind of dualism?

No, I understood what you meant.

 

[radorth]

And as for "what the NT really says", I'd be just another person in the seething masses of people claiming to know what the NT really says.

A lame excuse IMO, especially for one claiming intellectual discernment and training. The verse I quoted it hardly the only one that clearly contradicts common beliefs about what the NT says. I quote them all the time, and not one Christian here has chosen to argue with me about them. I trust they don't agree with my reading, but might agree they can find few scriptures to the contrary.

Christians virtually all agree on the Nicene Creed, which just happens to have been written before the church started a steep dive into ascriptural religious mumbo-jumbo. And now we have a "Joint Declaration" on justification by faith, the pivotal doctrine in the NT. It's amazing what Christians here agree on, compared to Muslims who can't even agree on who the first apostles of their faith were.

The least you could do is tell the whole truth as far as you know it, and reference NT verses which contradict, if you want to call yourself a seeker of truth. Personally I can't see a point to these kind of threads, other than to make some use of your "education."

To me it's like professors teaching confusing and inert facts to future professors, and in effect controlling what people believe. At least I encourage people to read the NT themselves, and think about it.

You speak as though it is hopeless to try to unencumber the truth of the NT, but some of us will die trying because we want to see people free of religious hocum. And I'd say we've made slow and steady progress since Luther, and we see spiritual revival and the favor of God whenever another false belief is exposed.

Rad

 

[Zoot]

Solomon,

Then again I'm struck with the contrast between Christianity on paper and Christianity in action.

 

[Zoot]

You speak as though it is hopeless to try to unencumber the truth of the NT, but some of us will die trying because we want to see people free of religious hocum.

I don't believe there is very much truth in the NT. I have been talking about Christianity as it exists in action today, how the religion tends to encourage dualistic mindsets, regardless of what it says on paper or in the NT. It's all very well pointing out scriptures that shouldfoster a holistic (i hate that word) view of the body and the world, but it doesn't. It's not that people openly believe "the body is dirty and the world is not our home", but the mindsets tend toward that way of thinking.

Frankly, I don't think you can believe in "souls" without this kind of mindset stemming from it. When people think that they are something other than matter, they find themselves in a world of stuff-not-like-them, operating a body made of stuff-not-like-them.

 

[TWells]

...how the religion tends to encourage dualistic mindsets,

First, I honestly dont see this as being anywhere near as prominent as you do. At the moment I live in the south, in an area where Fundamentalism is big. I went to many Fundie Church's growing up and I remember many, many sermons on the 'goodness' of our physical nature, usually in relation to sex.

Fudamentalists as a group within Christianity tend to be the ones to have a tendency towards a negative view and when they do its nowhere near the type that you described in your original post. In short I think your going to have a hard time finding a Christian that believes that creation is evil.

Secondly....who cares? The worlds problem is not that it feels a division between its inner and outer selves.

Frankly, I don't think you can believe in "souls" without this kind of mindset stemming from it. When people think that they are something other than matter, they find themselves in a world of stuff-not-like-them, operating a body made of stuff-not-like-them.

Thats a pretty big leap, concluding that if there is a reality other than the physical world it neccesitates a negative view of the physical world.

 

[Zoot]

Thats a pretty big leap, concluding that if there is a reality other than the physical world it neccesitates a negative view of the physical world.

It's not necessarily blatantly negative, but separate and different. I disagree with you on the degree to which this mindset of being different and not belonging in the world causes troubles.