anthropology

I want to share my article with you. This is about the link between Mind and Social / Environmental-Issues. The article is directly related to Spirituality. The fast-paced, consumerist lifestyle of Industrial Society is causing exponential rise in psychological problems besides destroying the environment. All issues are interlinked.

Well, nothing’s happened for awhile on this board, so I thought I’d try to seed a discussion.

In my Sunday School we’ve begun discussing the intermediate state, and I was presented with a view that I hadn’t heard before — which surprised me. After awhile you think you’ve heard everything. What suprised me more is it made a bit of sense.

The idea was, there is no such thing as a disembodied soul. Nearly doing away with the traditional (Greek?) dualism that we often read into Pauline anthropology. When we die we go to be with the Lord in a “heavenly body.” Whatever that is, but definitely physical. Based partially on 1 Cor 15:

I’m currently reading a book by Nancy Pearcey titled “Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity.” She states the following:

“In Genesis, God gives what we might call the first job description: ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill he earth and subdue it.’ The first phrase, ‘be fruitful and multiply’ means to develop the social world: build families, churches, schools, cities, governments, laws. The second phrase, ‘subdue the earth,’ means to harness the natural world: plant crops, build bridges, design computers, compose music. This passage is sometimes called the Cultural Mandate because it tells us that our original purpose was to create cultures, build civilizations-nothing less.”

Hi, this is my first post to OpenSourceTheology.net.

Now I just want to check whether other readers of this site agree with my radical opinion.

I claim that no one true Christian ever married with an unbeliever. I claim this based on certain words in a letter to Corinthians (“can marry only in the Lord”).

See http://ex-code.com/~porton/bible/unbelieving-spouse.html (part 2 of this text). There is my exegesis including my non-traditional translation variants of this Bible fragment from Greek.

The best description of a biblical anthropology I’ve found comes through the work of Rene Girard. He roots the basis of identity in desire, and that our desires are mediated to us through a model. He names this desire mimesis or mimetic desire. The implication of mimesis is that when we desire things that cannot be shared, we develop rivalries. This leads to alienation, resentment, chaos and even murder.

This problem finds “resolution” through the following process: As a group of people live in this chaotic rivalry, two people find themselves joining together in their resentment of the same individual. This creates a gravitational pull which draws in others until all join except one. All the hostility is redirected to this one scapegoat and the newly formed community collectively murders the scapegoat. Suddenly “peace” is present, so the community finds it important to “remember” this event. The scapegoat is deified for the peace he/she brought, and ascribed magical powers. This places latent fears within the community for the retribution of the scapegoat. The breakout of rivalry is the basic fear and order is maintained through prohibition, myth and ritual based on the founding murder. All religions have vestiges of a partially hidden founding murder. All religions place god on the side of the winners, with the losers in life deserving their fate. If the fear of the god fades, rivalry re-emerges and another founding murder regenerates.

One theological question that emerges from the story of humanity is, “to what extent has the imago Dei been corrupted as a result of the fall of humanity?” Or stated positively, “how much of the imago Dei is retained in fallen humanity?” This would appear to be a core issue when we discuss Christianity’s encounter with a postmodern culture. Our view of humanity drives the way in which we present the gospel. If, for example, we view God’s image created in humanity as corrupt our gospel message will tend to focus on resolving the cause of corruption. However, if our view suggests that humanity is essentially good our gospel message might focus on humanity’s ability to please God.