Since we are talking about what it means to die, I think this, more or less semantic point, only serves to muddy the water but it is true that He whom we call Jesus was not always a man but became a man at the incarnation. The point is, however, that Jesus Christ, the man, exists right now - as a man with a physical body and scares left by the crucifixion. At what point do you suggest He could have ceased to exist and why would you suggest such a thing?
Going back to what it means to be human and what death is, in the view I'm espousing here, if a human dies, and there is no function or sentience or relationship or anything, it's as if he ceased to exist. And if a human is made up of three parts, then when one of those parts ceases to exist (the body, in your view), then either he has ceased to be human, or your view is incorrect. You say something similar down below: "We also know that man is a three fold being. You have a soul, a spirit and a body (I Thessalonians 5:23 and elsewhere). Your soul is you. It is your mind, emotions, personality, etc. Your spirit is that part of you that interacts with the spiritual realm and your body is that which interacts with the physical realm. This is the way in which man was created and so a disembodied spirit is an incomplete creature."
I would contest that "your soul is you" in the way that you mean it, because your body is you, too.
[Mat 18:8 KJV] Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast [them] from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.
[Mat 18:9 KJV] And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast [it] from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.
and
[Job 19:25 KJV] For I know [that] my redeemer liveth, and [that] he shall stand at the latter [day] upon the earth:
[Job 19:26 KJV] And [though] after my skin [worms] destroy this [body], yet in my flesh shall I see God:
[Job 19:27 KJV] Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; [though] my reins be consumed within me.
Yes. At least in some meaningful way. (
Matthew 27:46 &
Mark 15:34).
I answered directly because I understand the thrust of the question but you should be careful not to fall into thinking that the Trinity doctrine is some kind of self-contradictory teaching. Your question could be read in manner that would imply that God is both singular and triune in the same sense. That is not what the bible teaches. So suffice it to say that in whatever sense they are seperate persons, they can be seperated from each other's fellowship, as Jesus Himself indicated happened while He was still on the cross.
I have no idea except that one is in some location, either spiritually or physically (or both) apart from the others.
Good! We're both having trouble understanding the Trinity. So we should both be careful when we use our faulty understanding of the trinity to say what may or may not have happened to Jesus, the man.
Again, your speech seems to at least imply a contradiction that is not there.
Is there one and only one God?
Yes!
Is that one God triune in nature?
Yes!
Two separate questions, the former has to do with the quantity of a thing, the latter has to do with the nature of that thing. There are lots of things around you that have a similar quality and you understand it intuitively. A tree has roots, a trunk, branches and leaves. The leaves aren't the trunk and the trunk isn't the roots but all are not only one with the tree, they are the tree. And it gets really complicated if you try to get specific about where the roots end and the trunk begins and where trunk ends and the branches begin or where the branches end and the leaves begin. The closer you look, the more the boundaries are blurred into non-existence but if you remove a leaf, that leaf is dead because you've cut it off from it's source of life. It may not look dead right away but with time, the truth of its condition is made apparent.
God is THE source of life. He is Life itself. Thus, to reject God is to embrace death and to be separated from Him is the very definition of death.
I'm not trying to imply or emphasize a contradiction. I'm trying to show that I don't understand the trinity, and you seem to be in agreement with me on that.
I like your illustration, because it both shows and doesn't show how the trinity and how man's tripartite nature work, as you've suggested.
And because we are having trouble, it makes sense not to hold to our views too strongly--but to have these kinds of conversations to sharpen iron on iron.
If God is the source of life, then when that source is removed, what is left? death. Not life in another form, right? The leaf that is removed from the tree ceases to have any semblance of life, eventually. Now, God could take a leaf and cause it to be alive again, even if it is not attached to the tree, because He's the source of life. We see this happened with Aaron's rod that budded.
Because the place of the dead in your view is a holding tank of disembodied spirits, and the place of the dead in my view is the grave--a hole in the ground where the remains of people are put until they are resurrected. Which of these two views are more obviously supported by scripture? I.e., where's a verse that talks about disembodied spirits and all the things they can do without a body?
Because it is in conflict with scripture. Jesus Himself said that He would be in paradise that day and not only that but He couldn't have taken up His life again, as Jesus explicitly said He had the power to do (John 10:18), if He had been in some sort of an unconscious dormant state.
Now, I understand that the bible says that Jesus was raised by the power of the Holy Spirit and that is entirely true and it immediately gets back into a discussion about the Trinity and where does one member start and that other end and to what degree are they are the same thing, etc, etc and so I readily admit that it is a complex issue that we have not been given sufficient information about to have the ability to discuss it is any great detail but, I submit that the details don't really matter for our purposes because the fact is that, to whatever extent God the Son is distinct from the Father and Holy Spirit, it was Him and ONLY Him (i.e. God the Son) who laid down His life. It wasn't the Father who was in the grave for three days. So, even if we granted that you're right for the sake of argument, how would God the Son being in an unconscious dormant state not be a significant separation from the rest of the Godhead?
We talked about the "today with me in paradise" or "today, with me in paradise" verse already. Just repeating it doesn't make your view correct, anymore than the appeal to the democratic process of translators did. They could easily be exhibiting confirmation bias.
I am admitting that I don't know how it works for Jesus to die (be completely nonfunctional for 3 days) when He is an integral part of the Godhead. I'm just suggesting that the same type of problem exists for your view--that of separation when God is tripartite. Therefore, we have more work to do in this area before we give up and declare "mystery".
We know biblically that there is a spiritual realm and a physical realm. We also know that man is a three fold being. You have a soul, a spirit and a body (I Thessalonians 5:23 and elsewhere). Your soul is you. It is your mind, emotions, personality, etc. Your spirit is that part of you that interacts with the spiritual realm and your body is that which interacts with the physical realm. This is the way in which man was created and so a disembodied spirit is an incomplete creature.
I should point out that, as we've already been discussing, it is rather more complex than what I just said because your soul, spirit and body are all integrated in a manner that makes all but impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. We know for example that your mind is housed, at least to a great degree, within your physical brain (and perhaps to some significant degree, your physical heart as well) and where the boundary is between the two is less than clear.
I appreciate your caveat, and your recognition that a disembodied spirit is an incomplete creature. My point above is that if the creature is defined as having all those parts, then the creature has ceased to exist when any one of those parts goes away. In your tree anal
No. Use of scripture in this manner (i.e. ignoring the context) is not proper. It makes it possible for you to have ANY wacky doctrine that you can dream up and utterly impossible to falsify any theological claim. The context here makes clear what is being said. It is not trying to say that we ARE the dust of the ground but that our bodies are. It was Adam's BODY that was made from the dust of the ground and Moses was simply saying that our body will decompose back into that which it was made from.
The context is VERY clear. God breathes into the man and he becomes a living creature. when the breath is removed, he stops being a living creature, and goes back to what he was before--dust (though it would still look like him for a little while). That breath being removed is described in several ways, but the most common and perhaps most pertinent to our conversation is when it is used of Jesus: "And He gave up the ghost" in the KJV. Here are a few other times it is used, but in the NKJV:
[Gen 25:8 NKJV] Then Abraham
breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full [of years], and was gathered to his people.
[Gen 25:17 NKJV] These [were] the years of the life of Ishmael: one hundred and thirty-seven years; and he
breathed his last and died, and was gathered to his people.
[Gen 35:29 NKJV] So Isaac
breathed his last and died, and was gathered to his people, [being] old and full of days. And his sons Esau and Jacob buried him.
[Mar 15:37 NKJV] And Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and
breathed His last.
Incidentally, I've seen people attempt to suggest that because the Hebrew and Greek words used in the Bible for 'spirit' or 'soul' are words that can also mean breath that they are therefore the same thing. This is just not so. When one word means two (or more) things, that doesn't make the those separate things the same thing. The right side of your house is not related in any way to a constitutional right nor is it related to being right (i.e. neither factually correct nor morally right). There are some such uses of words were the meanings over lap but even then they aren't synonymous to the point that they are talking about the same thing. As always, the specific meaning of a word is determined by the context in which it is used.
There is a similar thing that goes on in the bible with angels and stars. It seems the bible intentionally blurs the distinction between the two to the point that at some places its rather hard to tell whether its talking about stars or angels but this does NOT mean that the stars we see in the sky are angels, as I've seen more than one Christian teacher attempt to assert.
Yet, you seem to think that the scholarly opinion is worthwhile when it fits your view. I've just showed (above) where the it's not just "people", but scholars providing what is usually a very reliable translation that think the word for "ghost" or "spirit" should be translated "breath". And if so, then it changes what we think about when we talk about the spirit of a man.
That's not the only spirit, of course. A person's "will" (what he desires to do, or his plans) might also be considered his "spirit", or "soul". But you can see that either a person's "breath" or a person's "will" would not necessarily have to be a surviving part of the person when the person's body dies.
[Psa 146:4 NKJV] His spirit departs, he returns to his earth; In that very day his plans perish.
That particular verse might very talk of all three parts of the tripartite human--his "spirit", him returning to earth bodily, and his plans, or "will" or "soul". And none of them survive, if spirit = breath, and it isn't a thing in and of itself (it departs, and the man is dead).