The Jewish Zohar Shekhinah and the Christian, & Mormon Holy Spirit

muhammad_isa said:
You make it sound like a game. I see it as a lot more serious.



I suppose it depends what you mean by suffers .. of course I believe that Jesus suffered more than others .. he ascended to
heaven to be with God .. and he will return as we can see from the scriptures .. he is the Messiah.

How you can say that nobody else ever suffers, I cannot for the life of me understand why. o_O
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Simple. You either don’t understand what I said, or you choose to ignore it.
 
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muhammad_isa said:
You want to make your own idea of reality, to fit in with an intuitive feeling that God will only let us suffer in this life,
but not the next .. because He is "only Loving" .. so ignoring what is taught in Matthew.
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Interesting. I don't think it will last forever this so-called hell and punishment just because say, off chance, I ended up committing adultery. The punishment simply does nothing to justify being tortured for oh say 345,234,788,009,345,213,234,876,909,567,345,233,222,611,120,789,456,345,678,655,233,211,909,899,678,666,458,345,211,212,499,633,679,967,577,456,345,002,456,632,878,970, millenia. That is simply nonsense of the highest caliber when we do realize that eternity makes this horrendously gigantically very Looooooooooooong time seem like a mere eye blink. It just ain't gonna happen. I don't care what book says otherwise, since I believe in the BALANCE of mercy and justice, not pure justice, nor pure mercy. I'm a Kabbalist that way ya know.........
 
PricelessPearl said:
We have life in the Son of God and no other way. Period! Everything thing else is delusion; death; being asleep.
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Your total dismissal of any path other than the one you travel, your utter disdain for those other paths, means it is unlikely down the road we will be engaging in conversation.

Still, I wish you well on your journey.
 
RabbiO said:
Your total dismissal of any path other than the one you travel, your utter disdain for those other paths, means it is unlikely down the road we will be engaging in conversation.

Still, I wish you well on your journey.
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You and I haven’t engaged before.

I have no disdain for any other path; quite the contrary. I support absolute freedom. It is everyone’s prerogative to believe as they want.

I was not speaking to any other beliefs other than my own, in qualifying my stance on the subject.

It can be translated into whichever religion one may have.

Is it necessary for me to state before writing anything “I am speaking from my perspective; this is what I believe; this is how scripture speaks to me; this is my experience? I would think that was obvious. I don’t expect it of others; and I most certainly don’t expect others must believe as I do.

I won’t be offended if you don’t chat with me (as I said, you haven’t before now).

Shalom
 
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ScholarlySeeker said:
I don't care what book says otherwise, since I believe in the BALANCE of mercy and justiice..
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Are you saying that I DON'T believe in the balance of mercy and justiice?
Do you believe in an eternal heaven?

Is it justice, for somebody to go to heaven for say 345,234,788,009,345,213,234,876,909,567,345,233,222,611,120,789,456,345,678,655,233,211,909,899,678,666,458,345,211,212,499,633,679,967,577,456,345,002,456,632,878,970, millenia?

What do you think heaven is?
Would it be heaven to be in a beautiful garden with delicious food and good companions,
if you were totally schizoid?
 
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PricelessPearl said:
Is it necessary for me to state before writing anything “I am speaking from my perspective;
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General rule of thumb: the closer you get to absolute statements, the better to qualify them by "in my opinion" or something similar. This is after all an interfaith place.

Carry on, please :)
 
Perhaps eternity means time extended infinitely forward backward in time. It is a natural temporal concept. But Spirit surrounds and contains and permeates time and space and nature. Scriptures use human words trying to show spiritual truths to natural minds. Natural law is derived from spiritual law 'through a glass darkly' but natural law and spiritual law often seem to differ?

How 'long' would it take Mao Tse Tung to expurgate the karma of causing 70 million deaths, first having to recognize his sin, and then having to try to reparate for it to every individual -- feeling in himself the suffering he has caused to each one, weeping for them, wishing he could go back and fix the damage? Terrible suffering. They are at peace, but he is tormented by what he has done?

Of course the utterly pitiless Mao did not believe in life after death.
Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16:19-31)
 
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RJM Corbet said:
..Scriptures use human words trying to show spiritual truths to natural minds..
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Agreed.

RJM Corbet said:
How 'long' would it take Mao Tse Tung to expurgate the karma of causing 70 million deaths, first having to recognize his sin, and then having to try to reparate for it to every individual -- feeling in himself the suffering he has caused to each one, weeping for them, wishing he could go back and fix the damage? Terrible suffering. They are at peace, but he is tormented by what he has done?
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Yes .. the notion of being able to "come out of hell", is due to having faith [ even if it is as small as a mustard seed ]
..without faith, it is not possible.

If somebody falls from grace and starts blaspheming and denying God's wisdom or existence, it requires serious
repentance to recover faith. Is it possible to repent after death?
That is the big question, I would have thought.
 
@RJM Corbet
We get the same notion of repentance when considering somebody who has committed a crime and sent to prison.
Is the person sorry for what they have done or not?

Is it possible that a person who is in prison can be "corrected" and rejoin society and no longer commit crimes?
Yes, it is .. but it is also possible that they will never "get out".

One could argue that a person who knows very well that God exists, but chooses to deny it and mislead people in this world, is a person that cannot get out of hell. They have had their chance to repent. They know they are going to die.
How could such a person be trusted in heaven?
What sort of heaven would it be, if one was surrounded by lies and deceit?
 
muhammad_isa said:
Is it possible to repent after death?
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I suppose it depends on how much of 'me' continues as spirit when my 'nature' is gone? Death is going to be a very significant transformation?
 
muhammad_isa said:
They have had their chance to repent. They know they are going to die.
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I believe there are perhaps infinite other dimensions beyond this dimension of nature, where we might find ourselves on a continual journey ever nearer to God.

I find it hard to believe that one life here is followed by a binary simplicity of heaven or hell thereafter. But who really knows?
 
RJM Corbet said:
I find it hard to believe that one life here is followed by a binary simplicity of heaven or hell thereafter. But who really knows?
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That is where the Bible comes in? :)

Those who persist in living in a state of mortal sin and do not repent before death subject themselves to hell, an everlasting separation from God. The church teaches that no one is condemned to hell without having freely decided to reject God. No one is predestined to hell and no one can determine with absolute certainty who has been condemned to hell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church

I strongly believe that !
..and so did our medieval ancestors who built the cathedrals.
 
muhammad_isa said:
Agreed.



Yes .. the notion of being able to "come out of hell", is due to having faith [ even if it is as small as a mustard seed ]
..without faith, it is not possible.

If somebody falls from grace and starts blaspheming and denying God's wisdom or existence, it requires serious
repentance to recover faith. Is it possible to repent after death?
That is the big question, I would have thought.
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I would wonder, how much can occur before temporal life and after temporal death? Are we even able to see what spirits really are? I think sometimes we think of our spirits as having diminished abilities when not attached to flesh and blood, but what if those abilities are instead quite alive and well without the body?
 
The Catholic doctrine of eternal hell is correct. It has a strong scriptural basis.
What is NOT correct is that souls are created. They are pre-existent as is God.
If that were not the case, then what does God "make" them from?

The idea of "blotting out a soul" is simply wrong .. "bits of God material" are just that, and are eternal.

84 Say: Each one doth according to his rule of conduct, and thy Lord is best aware of him whose way is right.
85 They will ask thee concerning the Spirit. Say: The Spirit is by command of my Lord, and of knowledge ye have been vouchsafed but little.
86 And if We willed We could withdraw that which We have revealed unto thee, then wouldst thou find no guardian for thee against Us in respect thereof.
- Qur'an The Night Journey -
 
Thomas said:
Are human souls are not "bits of God material"?.
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Right, I believe there is more than one viewpoint on this.
Ibn al-Nafis is a well known scholar of Islamic philosophy and Medicine in the 13th century.
He concluded that "the soul is related primarily neither to the spirit nor to any organ, but rather to the entire matter whose temperament is prepared to receive that soul" and he defined the soul as nothing other than "what a human indicates by saying ‘I’."

As I have previously commented, that envisages the concept of "soul" as being mind and body, and the term "spirit" referring to a non-material essence.

There again, Ibn Sina, another philosopher from the Islamic golden age stated:
Then contemplate the following: can he be assured of the existence of himself? He does not have any doubt in that his self exists, without thereby asserting that he has any exterior limbs, nor any internal organs, neither heart nor brain, nor any one of the exterior things at all; but rather he can affirm the existence of himself, without thereby asserting there that this self has any extension in space.
...
In itself, the soul is an immaterial substance.
 
Christian view on origin of a soul
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There are 3 theories creationism, traducianism and pre-existence .. the latter being the Islamic viewpoint.
[ and I believe the Arian viewpoint too ]

Most Christians believe in creationism which states that the soul was created at some time between conception and birth.

Traducianism teaches that the immaterial aspect is transmitted through natural generation along with the body, the material aspect of human beings. That is, human propagation is of the whole being, both material and immaterial aspects: an individual's soul is derived from the soul of one or both parents. This implies that only the soul of Adam was created directly by God.

However, I personally ask what it actually means that a soul is "created". i.e. from what "material" and what is the nature of that material
 
Then the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.
- Genesis 2:7 -

But there is a spirit within people, the breath of the Almighty within them, that makes them intelligent.
– Job 32:8 -

If God were to take back his spirit and withdraw his breath, all life would cease, and humanity would turn again to dust.
– Job 34:14 -
 
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