This forum was closed on October 1st, 2010. However, the archives are open to the public and filled with vast amounts of good reading and information for you to enjoy. If you wish to meet some Wardrobians, please visit the Into the Wardrobe Facebook group.

Incarnation and Immortality?

Incarnation and Immortality?

Postby chad » November 13th, 2007, 7:52 am

I have always believed that the soul, once created, has immortality by virtue of what it is. When one dies, and after the final judgment, one either perpetually degenerates endlessly towards nothingness or goes "further up and further in" (to use Narnian language) toward God indefinitely.

I don't see any reason why I would have to hold a platonic belief in the pre-existence of souls in order to justify my belief that the soul is intrinsically immortal once it is created. I don't see any prima facie reasons why it would be incoherent to say that once man is born his soul will never go out of existence. He is immortal by virtue of what he is - made in the image of God.

Well, tonight, for the first time ever, I came across a friend of mine who has always taken for granted the very opposite belief as I have just explained. Then I found that another friend believed just the same as him. These two guys are both Eastern Orthodox, if it helps understand where they're coming from. I am, well, having a Christian identity crisis at the moment. I'm moving toward Orthodoxy. But anyhow.

To put his belief simply, we are only immortal - whether we end up in heaven or hell - in virtue of the fact that Jesus became flesh. I have never heard that before. The proof text provided was not sufficiently clear or precise on the matter.

I am, of course, familiar with the idea that Christ vanquished death. But that we would have without the incarnation, simply slipped into literal and actual non-existence, seems to me absurd! I don't see any reference in Scripture or other writings (that I know of) pointing to a place in Scripture where this is suggested. I've always understood Christ conquering death to refer to save us from the gradual but unending descent into eternal hell that would have been all our fates had Christ not made a way. But my friends were suggesting that it is just apparent that this conquering of death refers to the fact that without Christ's incarnation every single one of us would eventually stop existing one day. So, according to my friends, the implication is that an eternal hell would not have existed without the incarnation of Jesus. This is something I've never heard before either.

I have to say, I'm really confused.
User avatar
chad
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 92
Joined: Nov 2005
Location: California

Trippy

Postby Jesse Hove » November 13th, 2007, 11:10 am

I suppose I would be close to your freinds but would make a slight change in that, we are not only immortal based on the incarnation but we only exist - whether we end up in heaven or hell - in virtue of the fact that Jesus became flesh.

This stems from the idea of Cross before creation, that all humanity was created specifically for the incarnation and eventual sacrifice of Christ. In this sense the soul would have no other purpose than to be connected to Christ, and the immortality that this brings. The soul would not then even exist if the incarnation did not happen. Of course this theory always brings into question the mystery of who is going to hell and why. But that is the mystery of the cross and salvation that will not be answered until Christ's return.
Jesse Hove
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 38
Joined: Apr 2007

Re: Incarnation and Immortality?

Postby Ben2747 » November 13th, 2007, 4:14 pm

Ben2747
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 255
Joined: Jul 2007

Postby Robert » November 15th, 2007, 11:33 am

[I am] Freudian Viennese by night, by day [I am] Marxian Muscovite

--Robert Frost--
User avatar
Robert
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 579
Joined: Jul 2004
Location: Under the stars and in the midst of things

Re: Incarnation and Immortality?

Postby chad » November 18th, 2007, 1:24 am

User avatar
chad
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 92
Joined: Nov 2005
Location: California

Re: Incarnation and Immortality?

Postby Ben2747 » November 18th, 2007, 5:12 pm

Ben2747
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 255
Joined: Jul 2007

Re: Incarnation and Immortality?

Postby Adam » November 18th, 2007, 6:54 pm

Chad,

If I understand the Greek Fathers correctly, their argument against the essential immortality of the soul (even of those who believed in the pre-existence of souls) would be that immortality or being is the essential quality of God, and that humanity appropriates this quality to the extent that we participate in the Godhead.

Our participation in the Godhead has always been through the Second Person; through the Word we were created, and if the habit of sin has distracted us and separated us from God, then through the Word we must be recreated.

Your notion that the image of God is the source of immortality is correct, though the Fathers say that the image has been clouded, causing our descent into non-existence. The incarnation is the renewal of the image, renewing our immortality.

As for the matter of an eternal hell, this is a much more complicated matter. Many Greeks and Ethiopics would suggest that hell is a temporal purification to cleanse the soul for heaven; others suggest that it is a temporal degeneration into nothingness, or even instantaneous non-existence, a metaphorical "place" that symbolizes "no place." However, no Greek doctrine with which I am familiar suggests that hell is a place of eternal torment; the wicked soul that is close to God will continue to exist by it's proximity to His being while experiencing the pain of purification by it's proximity to His holiness; the soul that is far from God will simply cease to exist, a body that can breath, to be sure, but dwelling in a place without air.

As to the accidental nature of immortality, the Greeks, not in obscure dialogues but in the work of Athanasius himself (who wrote our Trinitarian creed), claim that the incarnation was intended before and apart from the necessity which arose by the separation of sin.

The metaphors of Scripture, and of Revelation in particular, and the context of various parables and allegories (moral, aesthetic, ethical, physical, et cetera) make the notion of "proof-texts" very difficult, and while a fair argument could be made for the interpretation provided above, I can only smile and think of a conversation with a Greek monk in Jerusalem, who, when asked for a Scriptural reference for a particular legend he was telling, only scoffed good-naturedly and replied "You protestants will never understand; we wrote the Bible. If we had written down everything, what would we have left to talk about?"
"Love is the only art that poorly imitates nature."
Adam
Wardrobian
 
Posts: 1077
Joined: Dec 2000


Return to Religion, Science, and Philosophy

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered members and 15 guests

cron