Creation and Its Records: A Brief Statement of Christian Belief with Reference to Modern Facts and Ancient ScriptureBaden-Powell, B. H. (Baden Henry)
Religion
Creation and Its Records: A Brief Statement of Christian Belief with Reference to Modern Facts and Ancient Scripture
Baden-Powell, B. H. (Baden Henry)
Bible and science; Creation; Religion and science
It is idle to speculate whether the "nephesh" of the animals, or the
"living self" of the man, is an entity separate from the body, and
capable of existing _per se_--of its own inherent nature--apart from
it. We do not know that animal forms are the clothing of a lower-graded
but separate spiritual form, or that such an animal soul or spirit can
exist separately from the body; and we do not _know_ (from the
Bible)--whatever may be the current language on the subject--that man's
spirit is in its nature capable of anything like permanent separate
existence.[1] Man is essentially one; and when the physical change
called death passes over him, it does not utterly obliterate the whole
being. The non-material element is not affected any more than it is by
the sleep of every night; and the man will be ultimately raised, not a
spiritual or immaterial form, but provided, as before, with a body, only
one of a higher capacity and better adapted to its higher
environments--the "spiritual body" of St. Paul, in a word. The original
union of mind and matter is, on any possible theory, mysterious; and the
separation of them for a time is neither less so, nor more. All this is
perfectly true, whether the non-material element in man's nature is
_necessarily_, inherently and _by nature_, immortal or not--a question
which I do not desire to enter on.
Hence it is that a certain element of truth is recognized in the protest
of the Edinburgh Reviewer. On the other hand, as we have not only
intelligence, emotions (which are possessed in lower degree by animals),
self-consciousness, the power of abstract reasoning, and the higher
faculties of the imagination,[2] but also the consciousness of God and
the commanding sense of right and wrong; and seeing that the last-named
are different in kind from the former, we give them a separate name, and
speak of the moral or spiritual nature or capacity of man, as well as
the intellectual or mental. Some (by the way) choose "moral" to include
both, holding that ethical perceptions arise out of (or are intimately
connected with) our sense of God. Others would make a further
distinction, and confine "moral" to the (supposed) bare ethical
perception of duty or of right and wrong, and add "spiritual" to
distinguish the highest faculty of all, whereby man holds communion with
his Maker and recognizes his relation to Him.
[Footnote 1: This remark does not, of course, in any way touch the
question whether the spiritual part of a man is conscious in the
interval between death and resurrection, or whether it can be made
sensible in any way whatever to living persons.]
[Footnote 2: The poetic sense, the perception of the beautiful, &c.]
Whether this further distinction is justified or not, there is a
distinction between the moral and the purely intellectual; and we are
justified in using different terms for things that are _practically_
different. This the Edinburgh Reviewer seems to have forgotten.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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