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Some Final Thoughts on Body and Soul

Saturday, August 04th, 2012 | Author:

By now you have struggled through the implications of Matthew 10:28, Yeshua’s supposed endorsement of the “body-soul” dualism that we have been exploring for the last 4 days.  Perhaps we haven’t solved the riddle of the translation, but we have at least learned these few things:

1.  The “body-soul” or “body-mind-soul” or “body-spirit-soul” concepts found in most Christian theology are akin to those Greek philosophical systems found in Pythagoras and Plato.  They do not have readily available counterparts in Hebraic thought.

2.  Hebrew has no dualistic terms that approximate the categories found in Greek philosophy.  The Tanakh does not embrace, endorse or support the idea of the separation of Man into various parts.

3.  Since we believe Yeshua did not embrace this Greek dualism, the text in Matthew is either a) corrupt, b) an addition by someone else, c) a mangled translation of an attempt to convey a Hebrew concept in Greek language, or d) an idiomatic expression in Hebrew that was mistranslated as a word-for-word concept into Greek.

4.  We ruled out a) and b) above and determined that the most likely explanation for Matthew 10:28 is that it was spoken as a Hebrew idiom but badly translated into Greek, and subsequently forced to fit a Greek paradigm.  Since the Church had already adopted a Greek metaphysics by the time our versions of the Greek text of Matthew came into existence, it would not have caused in startled suspicion to read the text as “body and soul.”  The culture already assumed such a dualism was biblical.

With this in mind, we suggested that the appropriate idiomatic translation might be something like this: “Do not fear those who are able to inflict terrible means of death upon the body.  Rather fear the one who is capable of wasting away life.”  This idiomatic expression is also ironic (a common tactic employed by Yeshua) because the one who is able to waste away life is NOT God but rather you and I.  In other words, Yeshua is teaching us that not fulfilling God’s purposes for our lives is the equivalent of destroying life and WE ARE RESPONSIBLE.

Why is this so difficult to discern from the current Greek of Matthew 10:28 and virtually all the English translations?  Because English adopts the Greek paradigm of Man, breaking the unity of the embodied person into pieces which are subsequently treated differently.  To put is simply, English (and Greek) do NOT have the needed linguistic forms or ideas necessary to translate this Hebrew idiomatic expression.  Much like the HEbrew concept of hesed, Greek is simply inadequate to convey the Hebrew meaning.

Try talking to someone about what it means to be human but do not use any reference to body or soul.  You will see just how much our own thought patterns and language is saturated with this Greek idea.  Try explaining that the biblical text does not contain the idea of an immortal, disembodied soul and you will probably be considered a heretic.  Try explaining what it means to “sleep in the earth” until the Day of Judgment.  All of our Christian ideas about heaven and hell, reward and punishment, eternal existence, etc. come under attack.  No wonder people have such a terrible time when they try to answer the question, “What would this have meant to the audience that first heard it?”

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Losing Your Way (4)

Saturday, August 04th, 2012 | Author:

And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.  Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.  Matthew 10:28  ESV

Soul – Greek dualism proposes that Man consists of at least two parts:  body (soma) and soul (psyche).  According to Greek philosophical thinking following Plato, the psyche is the superior part; eternal, pure, heavenly and intended to return to God who created it.  The body is the earthly part; corrupt, material, base, filled with mortal desires, impure and the prison house of the soul.  Death separates these two parts, allowing the soul to escape the body and achieve freedom from the material world.  Adapting this thinking to Christian theology, the early Church fathers asserted that God is interested in a man’s “soul” rather than his body.  It is the soul that is eternal and therefore must be redeemed in order to dwell eternally with the Father.  Those who do not receive the forgiveness of God through Jesus Christ are bound to the eternal torment of their souls in hell.  Since the body is temporal, declarations of faith achieved through torture are justifiable because they save the soul from eternal punishment at the minor expense of the agony of the body.  What matters most is the saving of souls.  What matters least is the condition of men in this transient world.  In Christian thought, Jesus was crucified in Plato’s cave so that men might experience God’s glory.

The problem, of course, is that Yeshua wasn’t a Greek philosopher.

When we try to understand the Greek word psyche from a Hebrew perspective, we must first trace the Greek meaning back to its development following Pythagoras.[1]  Pythagoras introduced the idea of reward and punishment in the afterlife.  If there is going to be reward and punishment in another life, then there must be some essence of the person that survives death, and that essence, according to Pythagoras, is the “soul,” the psyche.  For the first time, men thought of the body as a prison of the soul.  By 500 BC, the idea of an immortal soul was part of the popular culture of ancient Greece.  From this point, Greek thinking developed the themes that the body was evil and wicked but the soul was good and pure.  In addition, the soul was the rational element that constituted what it meant to be human while the body was that part of man most connected to animal behavior.  By the time of Plato, the psyche was considered the center of thought, emotion and will – essentially all the human attributes – while the body was the weight the soul had to carry in this life until death finally released it from prison.

If this description of the soul resonates with your understanding of Christian theology, don’t be surprised.  Hellenism greatly influenced the thought of the early Church fathers.  Greek philosophy played a significant part in the formation of Christian doctrine in the first few centuries of the official Church.  The crucial idea of an afterlife of reward or punishment is now central to Christian thinking.  But it wasn’t part of the worldview of the Tanakh.  As rabbinic thought was influenced by Hellenism, the idea of reward and punishment in an afterlife became a part of Jewish thinking.  But there were significant differences.  Jewish thought never viewed the body as a prison of the soul.  After all, God created man embodied.  The body was not evil.  Embodied man made choices that determined his ultimate end, but even that end was not disembodied spirit.  As we have learned, Man is soma.  The implicit dualism between good and evil, spiritual and material, soul and body, is not part of Hebraic thinking.

This adds more difficulty to understanding Matthew 10:28.  All the Hebrew texts use the word nephesh for the Greek psyche.  But nephesh is not “soul” in opposition to “body.”  Nephesh is “person,” the whole of what it means to be an embodied human.  Only in Greek dualism is body opposed to soul.  If Yeshua used the word nephesh in this verse, then He could not be suggesting a separation of body and soul.  Nephesh is the homogenization of human being.  It is not divisible into parts.  That makes our text in Hebrew almost unintelligible as it stands.  “Do not fear those who can kill the dead body but cannot kill the entire embodied person.  Rather fear the one who can kill both the entire embodied person and the dead body in Gehenna.”  What in the world can this mean?  The point is this:  any translation of the Hebrew ideas into Greek categories of body and soul is unintelligible.

We are left with only two options if we insist on reading the text as it is written.  Either the translator of Yeshua’s Hebrew statement changed the thought into Greek categories that were not part of Yeshua’s original thinking OR Yeshua was also influenced by Hellenism and He embraced the Greek dichotomy of body and soul.  Neither of these seems acceptable.  That leaves us with two other choices.  First, the text itself is not original and was added to Matthew’s gospel by someone else who embraced Greek thinking OR, second, this entire text is some kind of idiomatic expression and is mangled in translation.  Now you get to decide.  What makes more sense given the Hebraic worldview of Yeshua?  And what does this mean for the integrity of the Greek text of our New Testament?

Topical Index:  soul, psyche, Hellenism, dualism, soma, body, Matthew 10:28


[1] It’s interesting that in the earlier Homeric age the word psyche meant “vital force” of life, much closer to the Hebrew idea of nephesh hayah than the subsequent idea of psyche found in Greek philosophy.

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Losing Your Way (3)

Friday, August 03rd, 2012 | Author:

And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.  Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.  Matthew 10:28  ESV

Body – In this verse, the translator of Yeshua’s comment uses the Greek word soma.  We might expect soma to be the substitute for basar (Hebrew: flesh), but the LXX has no fixed relationship between soma and basar, probably because Hebrew has no special word for “body.”  Sometimes basar is translated by sarx.  Sometimes the Greek soma translates the Hebrew gewiyya or geshem.  Schweizer notes, “The term soma offers a concept that is not yet developed in Hebrew and hence the translators use it with some hesitation.  In the LXX it never refers to an inorganic body, nor to reality as distinct from words, nor to a macro- or microcosmic organism, nor to a city or people.  Unlike sarx, it does not have the intrinsic character of creatureliness or sin or earthliness.  It can denote the person as object . . .and it also suggests the human totality with the sense of corporeality. . .  soma does not occur in relation to sacrifice or to activity but in relation to God, to others, or to various forces.  The person does not stand aloof from the soma.  Soul and body together describe corruptible humanity over against wisdom or reason, but anthropological dualism arises only when soul or reason is set in juxtaposition to the body, e.g., when the body is abandoned to death but the true I survives.”[1]

Things get even more complicated when we consult the Hebrew text of the Delitzsch gospel of Matthew.  In this verse, the Hebrew word is gufah, a word that appears only twice in the Tanakh and clearly means dead body.  The Shem Tov Hebrew text uses the word gewiyya which also usually means dead body.  The only cases where gewiyya means a living body are cases where defeat and humiliation are also present.  This raises an important question.  If Yeshua used either of these terms, how does it make any sense to connect them to “kill” or “destroy”?  Can someone kill a dead body?  Once more we are faced with what appears to be in internal contradiction – or at the least an absurdity.  The only resolution seems to push us in the direction of some idiomatic expression, not a literal declaration about “body and soul.” (As we shall see, the Hebrew texts also use nephesh for the Greek word psyche – soul – but nephesh doesn’t mean “soul” in the sense that Greek uses the term, or, for that matter, in the way we use the term.)

We know that the dualism of body and soul is introduced via Greek philosophy.  While it is present in rabbinic thought after 400 BC, it is not present in the Tanakh.  On this basis, we conclude that it is not the underlying thought of Yeshua’s warning.  This conclusion is supported by the fact that Paul does not endorse the Greek dualism either.  In Paul’s writings, soma is a technical term for “person.”  Paul endorses the older meaning of the Tanakh that human existence is embodied existence.  The body is not simply an outer shell that surrounds the eternal “soul.”  The soma is the person.  “soma can be understood as man as the object of an action and man as the subject of an action.  He has a relationship with himself.”[2]  This should remind us of the origin of Man, a creature who is defined by relationship, not by biological or spiritual elements.  In fact, Genesis chapter 2 suggests that the formation of the woman taken from the man creates an essential relationship that was once involuntary and internal but is now voluntary and external.

Before we look at the idea of “soul” (Greek psyche), we can offer a temporary idiomatic translation of this verse.  “Do not fear those who are able to cause terrible forms of death but cannot kill the nephesh [soul?].  Rather, fear him who can be cut off from life by wasting it away [in Gehenna?].”  Will this idiomatic translation suffice?  That depends on what Yeshua meant with the word He used that is translated as psyche (soul).

Topical Index: body, soma, soul, psyche, kill, apokteino, destroy, apollumi, Matthew 10:28


[1] Eduard Schweizer, soma, TDNT (Abridged), p. 1143.

[2] J. A. Motyer, “Body” in The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Vol 1., p. 235.

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Losing Your Way (2)

Thursday, August 02nd, 2012 | Author:

And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.  Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.  Matthew 10:28  ESV

Destroy – [WARNING:  This a long because the subject is complicated.]  Does Yeshua teach the destruction of the soul?  If He does, doesn’t this stand in utter contradiction to the Christian doctrine of the immortality of the soul?  Is this verse really nothing more than an endorsement of Greek dualism in the mouth of a Hebrew prophet?

Since it seems very unlikely that Yeshua taught Greek dualism, we will have to replace this Greek language with Hebraic concepts.  That means “Do not fear those who kill” also requires some re-interpretation.  The verb for “to kill” in Greek is apokteino, an intensive form of the verb kteino, “to slay, to kill, to destroy.”  The Hebrew parallel is harag (e.g. Psalm 78:47), but the Hebrew verb is never about “eternal” life.  It is about killing, war, fratricide and the slaughter of men and animals in this life.  We noticed that the Greek text distinguishes two verbs for the termination of life in this verse.  Whatever Yeshua said in the second half of the verse, He apparently did not employ the same verb used in the first half, otherwise it would make no sense for the translator to provide two different Greek verbs, apokteino and apollumi.  We may conclude from an Hebraic perspective that the opening statement of this verse is about death as we know it on this earth, especially horrendous death as a result of aggravated violence.  The intensive Greek verb provides justification for an idiomatic translation such as “Do not fear those who are able cause terrible forms of death.”  We still have to deal with the application of this action to “body and soul,” but before we can do that, we need to examine the second verb in this verse.  It isn’t apokteino.  That itself is strange.  Why is the second verb different than the first?  Aren’t both verbs about death?  What are we to do with apollumi – to destroy?

In his article on the Greek word apollumi, Albrecht Oepke draws attention to the “familiar Jewish expression avad nephsho, an idiom for ‘trifling away one’s life.’”[1]  This Jewish background is particularly relevant to this text.  It helps us distinguish between the Greek implication that Yeshua is speaking about eternal damnation and the Hebrew implication that Yeshua is speaking idiomatically about the consequences of living a lawless existence.

The apparent theological contradiction in the Greek text is set aside if the words in this Greek translation really attempt to capture a Hebrew idiom about pointless, lawless living.  If Yeshua’s worldview is rabbinic, first century, conservative Judaism, then the Hebrew idiom would have readily come to mind when He uttered these words.  His audience would not think about a Greek dichotomy between body and soul since no such dichotomy existed in Hebrew thought and there is no word for “body” in Hebrew.  Instead, they would have been reminded of the absolute necessity of purposeful living, that is, living according to God’s instructions in order to accomplish God’s purposes here and now.  They would have heard Yeshua teaching about the senseless waste of a life that comes from not acknowledging the sovereignty of God.

Let’s attempt to understand this verse from its Hebrew perspective.  First we should note that it won’t do much good to attempt a word-for-word backwards translation from Greek to Hebrew.  Idioms resist wooden word-for-word renderings.  Idiomatically, the opening thought of this verse is probably something like this:  “Do not fear those who are able to bring about violent termination of life.”  The idiom does not allow us to posit a distinction between body and soul.  But if our idiomatic translation is correct, we still have to deal with the question, “How come the Greek text says ‘body and soul’?”

Suddenly things get far more complicated.  We have already acknowledged that there is no Hebrew word for the Greek idea of “body” (soma).  When soma is used for an Hebraic concept, the meaning is always the whole person or even a dead body, but never a body as distinct from a “soul.”  Schweizer says, “There is no sense of his [man’s] standing at a distance from himself or regarding his corporeality as something which can finally be parted from him.”[2]  In other words, even when the biblical texts use the word soma (body), the Hebraic worldview does not mean that the “body” is a separate element of human existence.  As Bultmann remarks, “Man does not have a soma; he is soma.”[3]  The fundamental Hebraic concept of human existence is embodied existence.  Every translation that suggests a division of human existence into separate ontological parts relies on a Greek paradigm, not a Hebrew one.

What does this mean for Matthew’s account of Yeshua’s warning?  It means that Yeshua could not have suggested the supposed separation of body and soul.  The translator introduced this division because there was no other way to capture the Hebraic point of view.  Why would the translator change the Hebrew idiom in this way?  The answer to this question comes from a brief historical analysis of rabbinic literature prior to the birth of Yeshua.

Rabbinic thought began to be influenced by Greek philosophy as early as 400 BC.  By the time of the Maccabees, the Greek distinction between body and soul was already present in rabbinic written material.  Therefore, in The Book of Sirach, Wisdom of Solomon, Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Testament of Judah and 2 Esdras we find the distinction between body and soul with the emphasis placed on the eternal and undefiled soul in opposition to the material, temporal and corrupt body.  In these writings, the rabbis suggested that death separated body and soul; that the body remains on earth but the soul is taken to heaven.  This teaching stands in opposition to the older teaching of the Tanakh that the embodied person returns to the earth at death but is resurrected at the Judgment.  This means that by the time Yeshua taught, the rabbinic view, influenced by Hellenism, existed alongside the more conservative view of the Tanakh.  It is possible that the translator of Yeshua’s Hebrew statement recorded in Matthew was also influenced by this rabbinic material and therefore converted Yeshua’s Hebraic view into a view that would have been acceptable by rabbinic Judaism in the first century but did not reflect the older view of the Tanakh.

While we may not be able to prove this hypothesis, what we do know for certain is this:  the idea that Man is composed of parts (whether body and soul or body, mind and soul-spirit) is not found in Hebraic thought before the influence of Hellenism and is not consistent with the view of the Tanakh.  If Yeshua is a reformer, one who calls the people of Israel back to the strict teaching of the Tanakh, it is simply impossible that He would embrace the Greek dualism of body and soul.  It is far more likely that His words have been reconstructed in translation.

Topical Index:  body, soma, soul, psyche, kill, apokteino, destroy, apollumi, Matthew 10:28

 

[1] Albrecht Oepke, apollumi, TDNT, Vol. 1, p. 394.

[2] Eduard Schweizer, soma, TDNT, Vol. 7, p. 1048.

[3] R. Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, Vol. 1, p. 194.

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Losing Your Way (1)

Wednesday, August 01st, 2012 | Author:

And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.  Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.  Matthew 10:28  ESV

Destroy – It is my intention, over the next several days, to deal with the concept of body and soul.  We can begin with this verse since it is often used to support a Christian separation of body and soul.  This study will take some time as it is difficult to articulate the changes in thought between Greek and Hebrew on these topics.  Both languages lack words that allow us to translate from one paradigm to the other.  Furthermore, the implications for our views of death, heaven, the afterlife and many eschatological topics are quite significant.  We begin with Epictetus.

Epictetus, a Greek philosopher of the first century (born 55 AD), said that the death of the body is not to be feared, but only the death of the soul.[1]  Does that sound familiar?  You thought that Yeshua’s statement was unique, but what about Epictetus?  Are we to assume that Yeshua did nothing more than mimic what Greek philosophy was already thinking?  After all, Epictetus’ statement comes from a chain thought among the Greeks that goes back to at least pre-Platonic views.  Is this verse, so often used to support a body-soul dualism, just warmed-over Greek thinking?

As soon as we begin to examine the ideas, we are confronted with monumental translation problems in this verse in Matthew.  The problems are not simply about which words to use to translate the Greek text into English.  Nor are the problems simply about translating Matthew’s Greek back into the original language of Yeshua.  In this verse, translation must arise from understanding the opposing paradigms of the Greek and Hebrew world.  The result of an investigation into the thought structures behind the words leaves us, perhaps, with an entirely different understanding of what Yeshua really said.  All of the difficulties begin with the fact that in Hebrew there is no word for body.  If that is the case, then how is it possible for the Greek translation of Yeshua’s speech to include the dualism of “body and soul”?

When we read this verse from the paradigm of the Church, we often think Yeshua is expressing a warning about our spiritual condition.  We are seduced by the “body and soul” dichotomy inherent in Greek thought.  Therefore, we conclude that Yeshua must also embrace this dichotomy.  Because we assume that the Platonic distinction between the material and the spiritual is a biblical idea, we imagine Yeshua is concentrating on the “soul” of a man rather than a man’s physical body.  We then conclude that the most important thing in life is not life here (which is transient, corrupt and without eternal value) but rather life somewhere else – in heaven, of course.  This philosophical orientation causes us to read this verse as if Yeshua is saying, “Don’t worry about your life in this world.  Worry about your life in the next world,” or “Don’t worry about men who can only kill your physical existence.  Worry about God who can destroy both the physical and spiritual in hell.”

Even without the issues that arise when we try to back-translate this text into Hebrew, we are left with internal contradictions in the Greek itself.  First, we should notice that this verse opposes “to kill” (apokteino) with “to destroy” (apollumi).  While the meaning of the two verbs is similar, it is not identical.  If it were, there would be no reason to use two different Greek verbs in the same sentence.  Whatever Yeshua actually said, the Greek translator thought it necessary to use two different verbs to capture that thought.  But even the use of apollumi is problematic.  In what sense is the body and soul destroyed in hell?  The adoption of the Platonic idea of the immortality of the soul stands in opposition to the plain meaning of this statement.  According to Christian-Platonic doctrine, the soul is eternal.  It cannot be destroyed.  Therefore, the translation of apolesai as “who can destroy” contradicts the Christian idea of the soul.  Even if we are tempted to reduce the strength of the translation to “who can kill,” then we must ignore the intensive apo attached to the verb (apo + ollumi) and we must offer some reasonable explanation why this verb isn’t the same as apokteino, used in the opening phrase.

You can’t have it both ways.  If this verse is an accurate rendering of Yeshua’s statement, then either the soul is eternal and cannot be destroyed (or killed) or Yeshua is correct and the soul can be destroyed.  Is the doctrine of the eternal soul correct, and Yeshua wrong, or is it the other way around?  Are we really facing theological contradictions or is something else amiss?

It seems to me that the real problem is not in these apparent contradictions but rather in the Greek rendering of Yeshua’s Hebraic thought.

Stay tuned.

Topical Index:  Matthew 10:28, apollumi, destroy, apokteino, kill, body, soul

 

[1] Eduard Schweizer, soma, TDNT, Vol. 7, p. 1036 referencing Epictetus, Discourses, I, 5, 4.

YESTERDAY I FORGOT to post a Today’s Word.  To make up for this oversight, here is a short audio file about the final lessons we learn from our study of Ruth.

If you haven’t followed the audio study of Ruth, you can do so by clicking here.

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Body of Lies

Wednesday, September 02nd, 2009 | Author:

Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, . . Galatians 5:19

Impurity – The Greek is akatharsia. This word comes from kathairo (we derive the English “catharsis”). Here Paul makes it a negative, so the meaning is “not cleansed”. The background of katharos is ritual cleansing. It is not the same word that is used for the purity of holiness before God. That word is hagnos (it comes from a word meaning “to stand in awe”). Why would Paul speak of ritual cleansing rather than purity of heart? This doesn’t seem to make sense. After all, he was not writing to Jews. His audience may not have known all the Jewish laws for ritual purification. And he is trying to press the point of being separated from the sins of the world. Wouldn’t he choose hagnos rather than katharos?

The answer lies in the Old Testament background of the word katharos. The equivalent Hebrew word for “cleanse” is taher. It is used more than 200 times in the Old Testament. In almost every case, it is about ritual purity. These are the actions that need to be taken before, during and after religious events. They included ritual washing of hands, preparations of sacrifices, prayers and many other details. But the intention of all of these actions is to point us toward God’s holiness, not to make us holy. The Bible says over and over that no amount of ritual conformity on our part will ever make us holy and acceptable to God. Only God can clean us up from the inside. God will do the real cleansing. He will wash away all the guilt and all the judgment. He will forgive.

When Paul uses the Greek word akatharsia, he is saying that these people have not allowed God to wash them clean. They are still practicing the art of self-justification. They still believe that they can become pure on their own. When we see this connection, the damnation that Paul brings upon his first century audience really hits home now. Our present religious rituals, like rote prayers, communion without consecration, baptism without commitment, Easter and Christmas celebrations, attending church and any other actions we do, cannot replace what God has to do if we are to be His people. Without God’s cleansing, none of the rest of this matters. With God’s cleansing, all of it is a proclamation that we have been washed by our Creator. Either way, it is not about us. Being cleansed today means letting God remove the guilt and sin that has polluted my life. That’s a job I can’t do for myself.

Paul is condemning those who think they can make it to God their way.

But he is also saying more than this. He uses akatharsia in a sequence. The sequence is “adultery, fornication, akatharsia, lustfulness” – four words that he groups into his comments about sex sins. People who practice the art of self-justification also violate God’s sovereignty over their bodies. They believe that they are in control. They believe in the rights of human beings to decide their own fate. Whether it is abortion or intercourse, they think that it’s up to them. They have not understood the ritual of consecration to God. So, akatharsia also belongs in the sex sins group. It is the description of a life that serves itself.

There is still more. Association with those who were impure violated ritual purity. So it is with akatharsia. If we associate with those who flaunt God’s sovereignty, we are tainted with their impurity. We are unclean by contact and implicit endorsement. If you aren’t standing up for God’s authority, you are lying down with the unclean. This is why Paul says to the church in Corinth, “If you allow sexual misconduct in your group, all of you share in the guilt and blame”. Impurity is a contagious disease. It will spread wherever it is not resisted.

Topical Index: impurity, ritual, akatharsia, clean, justification, body, Galatians 5:19

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Connected

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 | Author:

and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:2

And – How many times have you heard this verse? Dozens, I’ll bet, but we often miss the connection in this verse. It is not a stand-alone declaration of spiritual progression. It is tied to something else – the part that comes before the “and”. Without the connection, the rest of Paul’s exhortation isn’t effective.

kai in Greek is such a simple word. Obviously, it’s used thousands of times. Nevertheless, its frequency doesn’t not mean it is not important. In this verse, it’s vital. We will never be transformed unless we take the first step and the first step is not found in this verse.

What’s the first step? “Present your body a living sacrifice.” Ah, now we see why Paul speaks about the renewing of your mind in this verse. He has already covered the sacrifice of your body in the previous verse. The two are tied together. Paul is not endorsing a separation of the mental and the physical (a Greek dichotomy). He is being a good Hebrew. Mind and body are one. If you won’t sacrifice your body, you cannot renew your mind.

Oh, darn (or something stronger)! It would have been so much easier to separate body and mind. It would have been so convenient to take the mental-spiritual route and focus my religious attention on my thoughts instead of my deeds. That’s what I really want (says the yetzer ha’ra). Just let me contemplate the divine, improve my spiritual intuition and revel in the wonder of the words. But don’t ask me to give up my bodily desires. Don’t ask me to put my behavior on the altar. I don’t mind giving God my mind as long as I can hang on to what I do with my body. Being a “carnal” Christian is a pretty good deal. It allows me to have it both ways.

Of course, that little obnoxious word kai ruins everything. If I am going to experience transformation, if I am going to know what it means to renew my mind, then I must sacrifice my body first. Obedience comes before knowledge. Sacrifice before renewal. There is no spiritual development in mind only. If you aren’t experiencing daily delight in the Spirit, look first to the body. You might find something that didn’t get placed on the altar.

Topical Index: body, mind, renewal, sacrifice, Romans 12:2, kai

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Carnal?

Friday, August 07th, 2009 | Author:

because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able {to do so,} Romans 8:7

The Mind Set On The Flesh – How are you doing in your fight for sinless perfection? Are you winning the battle every day or have you suffered defeats? Are you a sanctified soul or a carnal Christian?

Do these questions bother you?  They should.

Somewhere along the way, Christianity embraced the Greek metaphysics of the body/mind/soul split. When this alien concept crept into Christian thinking, it eventually led to the postulation of a carnal Christian, the believer who has confessed Christ as Savior but does not live with Christ as Lord. This is the person whose life is characterized by actions that do not glorify God but at the same time claims God’s forgiveness and acceptance. The “carnal” Christian has a body under sin’s control but a soul that belongs to God. What? Does that mean God saves only part of this person? Does that mean that what happens in my body doesn’t really matter as long as my soul is saved? A careful reading of the Bible endorses none of this Greek nonsense, but it certainly is a popular way of explaining behavior. Perhaps we need to take another look at Paul’s famous comments about “carnal” Christians (the King James translation of this phrase).

The critical Greek word is phronema. This word covers the entire translated phrase, “the mind set on”. Phronema means “what one has in mind, purposes or thoughts.” In this case, Paul says the purpose or thoughts of this mental condition is sarx, the flesh. This should remind us of the passage in Genesis 6:5, “the intent of the thoughts of the heart.” But notice that the Hebrew equivalent does not suggest a split spiritual state where men confess God but act disobediently. In the Genesis equivalent, the thoughts of their minds were given over to evil and, as a result, God brought judgment upon the earth. These were a long way from the “carnal” Christian bifurcation we find today. In Genesis, intent and purpose in thoughts leads directly to judgment, not excuse. In the ancient world, if your mind was filled with purposes of the flesh, you were not standing in God’s grace. You were not redeemed. You died in the flood along with all the other evil people in the world because the mind whose purposes and intents are determined by sarx is the enemy of God. In Hebrew thought, this is yester ha’ra run amuck.

Paul is a Jewish Messianic rabbi. Do you suppose that he entertained the Greek tripartate division of human beings (body, mind and soul)? Not likely. Paul’s anthropology was homogenized; the neshama or nefesh was one person all mixed up together embodied in this world. God doesn’t save the soul and leave the body to rot. That’s Greek, not Hebrew. So, if Paul would never have accepted the division of human being into parts, then how could he possibly suggest that spiritual existence could be divided between the carnal and the spiritual? If the purposes and intents of my mind (read neshama or nefesh) are filled with hostility toward God, doesn’t that force us to conclude that such a person is not redeemed? After all, this person is an enemy, not a humble seeker. This person is dominated by the yester ha’ra, not struggling against the evil inclination in order to be obedient to the Lord.

Does that mean that Christians are only those who no longer experience the fight for personal holiness? Of course not. That fight goes on for a long, long time. But the person who isn’t fighting probably isn’t domesticated to God. I am either motivated to obey and struggling to do so, or I am capitulating to the evil inclination and comfortable with the result. I am either fighting for God or fighting against Him. There are no fence-sitters in this war.

Topical Index: yester ha’ra, sarx, phronema, mind, body, soul, Genesis 6:5, Romans 8:7, carnal

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Who Lives Next Door? (1)

Friday, June 19th, 2009 | Author:

And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service and to building up the body of Christ.  Ephesians 4:11-12

Equipping  - Why did the Lord provide the Body with all of these gifted people?  What is the purpose of those sent, those who reveal, those who bring good news, those who shepherd and those who instruct?  Paul doesn’t leave the question unanswered.  It is for equipping.  Now, what does that mean?

The Greek word here is a combination of kata and artios.   It means “fitted together” or “perfectly complete.”  Imagine all of the pieces that go into the construction of a house.  Each one is important to the finished product and each one depends on the others.  The foundation is not greater than the trusses.  The roof is not superior to the walls.  Unless they are all fashioned together, the house is useless.  It will not serve its purpose.  In the same way, an apostle is not elevated above a teacher, nor a prophet above a pastor.  Each one has a role to play.  There is no hierarchy of importance in house building.  It is the end product that matters, not the individual pieces.  It’s the fit that matters!

OK, now that we have that settled, what is the end product?  If you looked around, you might think that the end product of all this cooperative effort is a building called the church.  After all, if you want to meet those who claim to be apostles, prophets, pastors and teachers, you will probably find them in church buildings.  But we know, of course, that the building itself is not the goal.  In fact, there were no “church” buildings during the entire history of the New Testament.  So, the end goal is not literally a construction project.  It is about the people who make up the Body.  They are to be built up for a purpose and that purpose is works of service.  That means that the equipped body, the collection of those who are redeemed, is designed to do something.  They are to serve.

Ah, that must be that the body collects the offering, greets people at the door, arranges flowers, sings in the choir and knocks on doors with soul-winning intentions.  I don’t think so!  Paul intends us to see that we are equipped in order to make a difference in the lives of others. Paul’s Hebrew background adds an element found in Jewish Law.  Israel’s social policy stood on the foundation of God’s command concerning the neighbor.  Leviticus 19:18 was the inescapable obligation of service as an essential part of the religious experience.  “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” left no equivocation about the obligation entailed in community.  In the Hebrew view, willingness to service the needs of your neighbor are inextricably bound to service to God.  The Hebrew culture is defined not only by its exclusiveness in the worship of Yahweh but also by its divinely instituted relationship to the larger community.  No man exists simply to improve his own individual self-understanding.  His very existence is tied to the well-being of his fellow men. 

Contemporary Christianity often finds itself uneasily straddling both the Greek and Hebrew views of a readiness to serve.  On the one hand, we have been thoroughly indoctrinated by the post-modern culture where individualism reigns supreme.  Freedom is often viewed solely within the Greek mindset as my right to self-determination without obligation to any others.  In this view, if I choose to act on behalf of another, I do so from enlightened self-interest, not from a submersion of individual identity into the consciousness of the community.  Acts of charity motivated by a Greek worldview may be magnanimous, but they are not expressions of self-emptying in response to a divine imperative.  The church falls prey to this cult of the individual when it promotes service as a means of goal accomplishment.  Levitical charity does not ask for measurable returns.  It demands only unreserved distribution in the face of need.  Where budgets, program considerations and political implications blunt the demand to serve the “neighbor”, the church enters into the Greek world of calculated generosity.  It hears the Levitical call, but resists unwavering response because it is trapped in the polis of a world conformed to the thought patterns of the Greeks.  Even the designation of “neighbor” becomes problematical whenever “neighbor” is subjected to a socio-political calculus.

Jesus strengthened the concept of service.  Service is now not only an obligation issued by God; it is the defining mark of true discipleship.  Those who resist the call for self-emptying volunteers cannot enter into the true destiny of Man, nor will they find a welcome home with God.  Service is the human mission.

So, what does it mean to serve my neighbor?  You might want to think about that question until tomorrow.

Topical Index:  equip, serve, oikodome, church, body, Ephesians 4:11-12, Leviticus 19:18  

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BODY SONG

Tuesday, February 03rd, 2009 | Author:

Paul J. Meyer, the founder of the self-improvement industry, once said that he is an inverted paranoid.  He believes that the whole world has conspired to do him good.  That powerful idea alters everything about life.  It shifts all of our being and doing from a posture of defense and protection to a posture of exuberant enjoyment and celebration.  But Paul Meyer was not the first person to promote this idea.  He had a predecessor, also named Paul.

 

In the letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul tells us that everything works together for good for those who are loved by God and called according to His purposes.  God Himself is the ultimate inverted paranoid.  He actually created the universe with good in mind.  He planned that everything would be of benefit.  That’s the way He wanted it.  We are all familiar with this famous verse in Romans (8:28).  But we may not have noticed that the connection that Paul makes with a thought from 6:13.  It is worth examining with care.  In 6:13, Paul reveals the secret melody of the universe.

 

Romans 6:13  “and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.”

 

This verse is written in three-part harmony.  One part is found in the word “present”.  One part is in the word “members” and the last part is in the word “instruments”. 

 

Present is the Greek verb paristano.  It is used twice in this verse.  It comes from the activity of a royal court.  Today we are often unaware of the court rituals that were commonplace in ancient times.  If order for someone to be “presented” to royalty, protocol had to be rigorously followed.  Usually the king designated a particular person as the “presenter”.  Being a “presenter” meant access to the king, not simply as his servant, but as one who had status and privilege that ordinary subjects did not enjoy.  This person was at the king’s disposal and ready at hand.  He performed an official function by bring subjects before the king. 

 

This official ceremonial theme is also present when the idea is transferred to religious worship.  The temple of God is no less a place of royalty and presenting before the King is no less ceremonial.  But here the word takes on the concept of sacrifice.  The presenter is not simply fulfilling the role of introducing someone to God’s court.  The presenter is offering himself in an official ceremony as a sacrifice to the King.

 

Imagine the scene from Isaiah’s vision.  God’s robe fills the temple.  Angels hover overhead shouting “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts”.  The entire structure trembles at His voice.  Smoke fills the air.  This is the place of worship – and of sacrifice.  And sacrifice is the proper response before a holy Being.  Isaiah recognized immediately that he was unworthy to even be there.

 

Paul suggests that you and I stand in that same arena.  The Holy God, the Lord of hosts, confronts us.  Our only proper response is obeisance and sacrifice.  Paul is not making a casual suggestion.  He is saying that confronted by the holy God we have only one choice if we are to live.  Isaiah said it quite clearly, “Woe is me.” 

 

Modern religion has significantly diluted this idea.  We no longer view ourselves as dependent creatures face to face with the Creator.  We don’t think of the spectacular heights of His temple, the awesome power of His voice, the blinding light of His countenance or the magnificence of His angels.  Democracy has reduced us to critical citizens of the most common denominator.  We consider all that pomp and circumstance arcane.  We would rather watch it on television.  Now when we walk into church we are not thinking about the splendor of God.  We are thinking about the air conditioning.  We aren’t focused on reverence before the King of kings.  The drummer in the band distracts us.  Church is another form of entertainment – designed to please us and produce a spiritual “high” – rather than a place where we express our desperate dependence and total submission to God.

 

Paul would have none of that.  He knew that presenting was an act of sacrifice, done in a ceremonial protocol that raised humble submission to an act of glorification.  Worship is not about me.  It is about Him.  And sacrifice that focuses on me is far a field from a response to the holiness of God.

 

Present your members, says Paul.  The word for “members” is mele.  It literally means parts of the body.  Notice that Paul views the parts of the body as instruments of either righteousness or unrighteousness.  There is no suggestion that these body members are essentially good or essentially evil.  Whether they are used for good or evil depends on the presentation.  What is presented to God is sacrificed for His use.  What is presented to self is sacrificed to my use.  My hand, my foot, my arm or any other part of my body can be presented to the King or be offered to my own ego.  The parts of my body are no different than any other possession under my control.  They are neutral until I present them. 

 

Most of us are familiar with this interpretation of “members”.  We might not fully appreciate the fact that every body part can be offered to God.  We often struggle to believe that some parts we are unhappy or ashamed about can still be presented to His royal court.  But we acknowledge the truth of this claim, even if we don’t live it.  But Paul may be choosing his words much more carefully than we first imagine.  He may be painting two pictures with the same canvas – a sort of ancient hologram.  There is something here beneath the surface that shows us a deeper harmony.

 

Mele is a Greek word that has a secondary meaning – a meaning that gives us a different picture and expands our appreciation of the idea of presentation.  In classical Greek, mele also mean “song” or “melody”.  This usage is very old.  Paul would certainly have been familiar with this alternative.  Perhaps this secondary meaning helps us to expand the picture Paul wishes us to see.

 

Paul is an Old Testament man.  His thought patterns are rooted in images of the Hebrew Scriptures.  “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord.”  “Come before Him with joyful singing.”  “Enter into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise.”  These thoughts from the 100th Psalm are repeated over and over in the Old Testament.  God’s royal court is a place of celebration.  It is filled with the melodies of angels worshipping the Lord of Hosts.  The throne room of His palace is no somber, dreadful place.  It is filled with power, light and majesty.  It is the temple of the greatest symphony every written – the symphony of the universe.

 

Now, says Paul, understand that your body is His temple.  Every member of your body is playing a song – your body song.  It is a score written by God Himself, and it is in harmony with all that He has written for every part of the creation.  When you present your members to Him, you are joining a great orchestra.  Your song is added to this grand melody.  Present your song as your sacrifice and offering to Him.  He will take the song written in your body and make from it various instruments in His orchestra. 

 

We have a cliché that expresses this profoundly spiritual thought.  We just don’t realize how spiritually based it is.  We say, “Today I am just out of tune” or “I didn’t feel like I was tuned in” or “I just need to be tuned in to myself”.  These expressions implicitly recognize that life is intended to be harmonious.  We know when we are in disharmony.  We have an intuitive sense of our own body song.  It is a “spiritual” thing. 

 

Amazingly, even non-believers understand being out of tune.  This sense of disharmony, of creating bad “vibes”, is universal with Man.  God has written the melody very, very deeply in our bodies.  It is a melody that demands to be synchronized with the rest of His creation.  When we fight the divine symphony of the universe, we fight the song written into our own bodies.  We create noise instead of music.

 

There really is a natural harmony to things.  God wrote the score.  When we try to play our own tunes, we discover that we are not in synch with the divine symphony.  Paul recognized this.  As the great natural theologian, he simply points us to what is written inside us.  You and I have the choice of joining the choir of the angels or creating a demonic noise.  It all depends on which conductor we decide to be presented to.  There is no part of your body that does not have the song written into it.  There is no part of your body that cannot play the melody of heaven.  And if Paul is right, if your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, then you are alive with the music of the King.  That entire symphony is playing inside you. 

 

Today, may I present for Your listening pleasure, my body song, performed on the instruments You have given me. 

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