I want to spend some time writing up something longer but mind soul spirit life and body are terms with some ancient import and significant nuance in Greek. I'd be careful applying them in English without similar nuance.
dds08 said:
In a world without the presence of sin?
My father and I were watching the Lucy movie yesterday starring Morgan Freeman and Scarlet Johansson.
He made the argument that God knew that with the serpent in the garden of Eden would play a part in sin; that the world would eventually be what it is today. He commented that, you would have thought God would have protected Adam and Eve from the serpent.
But before all those comments, I made the comment that all the things Lucy was doing in the movie, becuase she supposedly had 100% capacity of her brains mental functioning, is bogus because there is no way humans were meant to time travel and read minds, control people, and the such.
All this got me to thinking, is it possible to have a world such as Perelandra or Malacandria in CS Lewis Space Trilogy? Where the inhabitants have free will yet live sinless lives?
But it is the shallow approach that matters according to the Good Word. That is to say, being "born again" is all that really matters when it comes down to it. Sure you may go further in self improvement after you are born again, but what does it really matter when compared to eternity?k2aggie07 said:
I think your criticisms can only be pointed toward a relatively shallow approach to Christianity.
The entirety of a Christian's salvation is through a purification of self in mind, body, and soul. The freedom we have in Christ is to be freed from our passions (pathema) which are certainly the "programming" you describe.
How can you say heaven is a place without sin? It seems one angel, in particular, was susceptible to pride/vanity. This was the highest ranking, cherubim, angel too we're talking.Aggrad08 said:
Free will is a common excuse for sin. But usually christians dont characterize heaven as a place without free will but do consider it as a place without sin.
I would say free will combined with human frailty and imperfection cannot exist without sin. Perhaps perfect beings can pull it off e.g. angles. In which case the question becomes why did God bother with the humanity bit.
What choice was this?chuckd said:"Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world..."Quote:
Can free will exist in a world without the presence of sin?
Adam made a rational choice without the presence of sin.
kinda far fetched and hard to wrap my brain around but. OK I follow this for the most part.k2aggie07 said:
St Maximos talks about this a bit in his cosmology, I think it's in Ambiguum 7. When we are in God, in heaven, we can only cease our motion in God.
Found the quote. He writes:Quote:
everything that has received its being ex nihilo is in motion (since all things are necessarily carried along toward some cause), then noting that moves has yet come to rest, because its capacity for appetitive movement has not yet come to repose in what it ultimately desires, for nothing but the appearance of the ultimate object of desire can bring to rest that which is carried along by the power of its own nature.
no created being has yet ceased from the natural power that moves it to its proper end, neither has it found rest from the activity that impels it toward its proper end.
[rational creatures] are moved from their natural beginning in being toward a voluntary end in well-being. For the end of the motion of things that are moved is to rest within eternal well-being itself, just as their beginning was being itself, which is God, who is the giver of being and the bestower of the grace of well-being, for he is the beginning and the end. For from God come both our general power of motion (for he is our beginning), and the particular way that we move toward him, for he is our end.
...I am not implying the destruction of our power of self-determination, but rather affirming our fixed and unchangeable natural disposition, that is, a voluntary surrender of the will, so that from the same source whence we received our being, we should also long to receive being moved, like an image that has ascended to its archetype, corresponding to it completely, in the way that an impression corresponds to its stamp, so that henceforth it has neither the inclination nor the ability to be carried elsewhere.