TWO WEEKS AGO, I attended this enrichment lecture on humanness. Based on philosophy, which was extremely thought-provoking and interesting, what I found rather amusing was that the whole lecture ended with us having to define humanness ourselves. Well, that's besides the point.
How do you define humanness? What is the essence of the human? The Greeks coined the term 'ousia' and Aristotle used it to develop his philosophy on humanness. Throw this Greek word into your essays and the marker will be impressed.
One of the many ambiguities of defining the ousia of Man is the controversy of the soul. If you say that the soul would define a human, you mean that non-humans do not possess this intangible and invisible soul. The conflict is, how do you actually PROVE that there is a soul or otherwise? You can't do it by science. Science is the validator of religion, of the logical and of the infallible. Therefore, it is a rather shaky stand to parrot-cry 'There is a soul!'.
If you agree with what I had just written, may God have mercy on you. YES, humans have souls and non-humans do not. The human is made of three components - the body, the mind and the soul. The former two are common in all living organisms, excluding unicellular organisms and what-nots. However, it is the distinctive soul that the human naturally possesses that allows him to have the capacity to develop higher-order thinking skills, such as 'evaluation' (one of Mrs Yap's most frequently-used words), invention and aesthetic appreciation. Since we are all contemporaries of modernism, you may now apply your logic to assess the extent to which animals are able to compose music, study science and create civilisation.
The Bible gives us a steadfast proposition of this belief of the soul as the ousia.
'And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground,
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;
and man became a living soul.'
Genesis 2:7
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;
and man became a living soul.'
Genesis 2:7
The recognition of a soul is imperative for the Christian, because it acknowledges Man was, is and will still be made in the image of the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
'So God created man in His own image'
Genesis 1:27
Genesis 1:27
Being made in the image of God is not in the literal sense, but as in human behaviour and instinctive beliefs. God is eternal, with no beginning and no end; Man is eternal (through the soul), with a beginning and no end. This means that in God's plan, Man was to live eternally before the Fall which lead to sin, of which the wage is blood and death. God is compassionate, merciful, just and loving; we find that these are inherent qualities that humans possess. Though we may not know it, we have an inclination towards that which is light and is good and a hope that all good will last. The concepts of moral uprighteousness and its eternity is similarly imbibed by our Creator. The ousia of the human is the soul. Tis' especially significant because it is this soul that will gain a new, glorious and incorruptible body upon rapture to live in the Place of golden gates and pearly streets. This is the ultimate destination of the Christian, and will thus shape the manner in which his life is lived in.
Sadly, creationism has been abandoned by the society in its quest for so-called creativity and liberalism. 'I do what I want, and it's absolutely none of your business. So get out of my life NOW!' There is no ultimate destination that the modern man knows, thus leading to the sense of futility or the temporality of life. Life is ambiguous and the future is somewhat misty because man is not definite about who he essentially is and thus what his cause for existence is. Some societal flaws inflicted are hedonism, homosexuality and unfounded abortion. God's unadulterated Word, however, has provided an infallible explanation of all we need to know for our salvation. However, it would boil down to the fact that faith is about the unseen and trusting that there is sturdy ground even as if you take the next step in darkness.
Do you believe in the soul that God created for us?
Sadly, creationism has been abandoned by the society in its quest for so-called creativity and liberalism. 'I do what I want, and it's absolutely none of your business. So get out of my life NOW!' There is no ultimate destination that the modern man knows, thus leading to the sense of futility or the temporality of life. Life is ambiguous and the future is somewhat misty because man is not definite about who he essentially is and thus what his cause for existence is. Some societal flaws inflicted are hedonism, homosexuality and unfounded abortion. God's unadulterated Word, however, has provided an infallible explanation of all we need to know for our salvation. However, it would boil down to the fact that faith is about the unseen and trusting that there is sturdy ground even as if you take the next step in darkness.
Do you believe in the soul that God created for us?
0 comments:
Post a Comment