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Father Thomas Moore says it best in my
view, an existential Christian realization of the soul and its journey: “Spirituality doesn’t grow like a flower;
rather, it comes into being like a temple or an illuminated manuscript, through
hard work, imagination and skill.”
The anthropological reality of Christian
humanity is an acceptance of the totality of being both physically (material/ sarx [flesh]) real and spiritually (non-material)
real (non-reductive physicalism). To my
understanding and genuine belief to even begin to realize union with Christ and
move into a regenerative state of being—the lifestyle of GRACE; the path of the
disciple takes is into an existential awareness (deep personal
interrelatedness) and confirmation of the soul as real.
Theologian Paul Tillich speaks about the
manifestation of the spiritual presence in the spirit of man as a dimension of
life that unites the power of being with the meaning of being; it is both
empirical and transcendent. “The human spirit as a dimension of life is
ambiguous, as all life is, whereas the Divine Spirit creates unambiguous life.
The multi-dimensional unity of life has functioned to preclude dualistic and
supranaturalistic doctrines of man in himself and his relation to God.”
I have come to synthesize this
perspective to mean that the “soul” is thus the existential spiritual vessel to
be shaped, rebuilt, renewed and influenced by the divine Spirit of God. Scientific explanation of the conscience
merely explains the magnificence of creation for the Spirit continues, is
infinite and is not to be reduced but share phenomenological space being the
empirical reality of the flesh and finite world.
Spiritual formation (full development or
Teleioi) seen from an
existential lens into the Body of Christ is an individual as well as corporate
effort to realize spiritual identity and empirical identity in both senses of
the World in light of discipleship.
We
must remember what Jesus says in John 17:14-21
“14I
have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not
belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 15I am
not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from
the evil one. 16They do not belong to the world, just as I do not
belong to the world.
17Sanctify them in
the truth; your word is truth. 18As you have sent me into the world,
so I have sent them into the world. 19And for their sakes I sanctify
myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.
20”I ask not only
on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through
their word, 21that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me
and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you
have sent me.”
John, the Gospel writer, has Jesus
needing to both educate his disciples about their humanity and the Holy Spirit
but also to have them begin to understand their spiritual formation task at
hand. Jesus, the Messiah, Lord, the Word
and Son of God needed his disciples to engage in existentially realizing their
missional role (as future servant leaders)as beginning to be spiritually
developed through faith and love in the soul and then physically as the fruits
of faith in the world.
Martin Luther would have understood this
in terms of realizing the “two kingdoms” or “two governments” doctrine as well
as relating to forensic justification. “God has ordained the two governments:
the spiritual, which by the Holy Spirit under Christ makes Christians and pious
people; and the secular, which restrains the unchristian and wicked so that
they are obliged to keep the peace outwardly… The laws of worldly government
extend no farther than to life and property and what is external upon earth.
For over the soul God can and will let no one rule but himself. Therefore,
where temporal power presumes to prescribe laws for the soul, it encroaches
upon God's government and only misleads and destroys souls. We desire to make
this so clear that everyone shall grasp it, and that the princes and bishops
may see what fools they are when they seek to coerce the people with their laws
and commandments into believing one thing or another.”
Let’s unpack this more, Biblically:
In
St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians, chapter two in particular highlights both
a profound Christological statement of Christ’s incarnational reality and
humility but also a concrete sketch of the Divine and the human—empirically and
spiritually. The cost of discipleship is
being/ becoming in union with Christ—a discipline built by faith which is
nurtured by the Holy Spirit and bears the spiritual fruits of Grace.
Philippians
2:5-13
“5Let
the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 6who, though he
was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be
exploited, 7but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being
born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8he humbled
himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. 9Therefore
God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10so
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and
under the earth, 11and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ
is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
12Therefore, my
beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much
more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; 13for
it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his
good pleasure.”
This pericope begins with Paul
existentially instructing them to BE in union with Christ in
thought/conscience/spirit. Paul goes
further in retelling the Gospel story of salvation as Christ’s incarnational
reality of being fully human and fully divine but choosing obedience to deny
the self as an existential suppression/death of ego in favor of humility into
being/becoming Grace for us all. Our
worship is but a gracious response born of the Spirit being justification by
grace through faith. Faith and love are existentially exampled in our
regenerative spiritual selves. As St.
Paul concludes in verse thirteen—it is God’s Holy Spirit that guides us towards
intentional selflessness—to love both God and neighbor through our soul. The soul is the tabernacle of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit works with our spiritual
selves to battle through our human, worldly tendencies (spiritual formation) to
live into being/ becoming the New Creation empirically (and spiritually!).
Coming back to Luther’s understanding of
this in light of forensic justification is as Gerhard Forde says: “Faith born
of the imputation of total righteousness will see the truth of the human
condition, the reality and totality of human sin as well as sanctification
realized through this faith.” I believe
that the only way we can understand as well as operate from a “non-reductive
physicalism or dualistic” understanding of being not only of the flesh and of
the spirit as well as being both saint and sinner (realization of the fall) is
through Justification.
Living into the lifestyle of Grace is my
term for existentially realizing both faith and life through
justification. In order for us to
develop the grounding of the soul’s metaphysical or transcendent identity in
union with Christ, we must realize the consequences of where we are (earth),
who we are (human) and whose we are (children of God). These consequences are bound to both Law and
Gospel as well as the existential laws of being and becoming in creation. Thomas Moore incorporates this in saying that
the sacrifice of the self—that is, the making sacred of the
personality—naturally leads to a life sensitive to all that is not the
self. He sees personality in a sense as
being the soul and this existential and faith shaped awareness as ethics or the
fruit of Grace.
In conclusion, understanding humanity in
a theological, anthropological context takes digging deep into an existential
realization of the identity and function of the soul and the body in unity and
in union with Christ.
Bibliography:
·
McReynolds, Paul
R.;
“Word Study Greek/English New Testament;”
Tyndale Publishers Carol Stream, Illinois 1999 BS1965.5
·
Forde, Gerhard O.; “A More
Radical Gospel; Essays on Eschatology, Authority, Atonement and Ecumenism;”
Lutheran Quarterly Books series; Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Grand
Rapid/Cambridge 2004 BX8065.3.F67
·
Tillich, Paul; “Systemic Theology Volume III; Life and the
Spirit, History and the Kingdom of God;” University of Chicago Press
Chicago, Illinois 1963 ISBN: 0-226-80339-2
·
Moore, Thomas; “The Soul’s
Religion; Cultivating a Profoundly Spiritual Way of Life;” Harper Collins
Publishers NYNY 2002 BL624.M66445
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