When I choked up and cried while giving the eulogy for my mother-in-law, I was very surprised. I had no control over the sobs. The my will and choice was to do the opposite, it was I who was sobbing, no one else. How do I make sense of the problem with agency, with my body whence these emotions must have come and my reason.
Two problems in the traditional theological account of human being
1: the imago dei
If we take the imago dei as being a capacity that we share with God, then it makes sense that the capacity for rational thought is what has been thought of as the sense in which we are in his image.
2: body and soul
While rejecting a platonic view of soul and body as individual and distinct entities, the early fathers held to a psychosomatic duality, a body and soul which were both created good, but were still in essence distinct.
For Descartes, however, the mind and the soul are completely independent of the body.
This raises the question of how medical science is able to demonstrate the reliance of the mind upon the physical brain. So, though it modified it, the church's acceptance of platonic dualism seems, perhaps, to not be necessary.
The human being as a whole being
1: The Aristotelian dualism of Thomas Aquinas
While the person is not reducible to the physical atoms that make up a body, what is encountered in interacting with a person is not other than that found in that body. The idea does not exist without its expression.
2. the imago dei as the whole being addressed by God
the imago dei must be seen in the way in which the second Adam redeems the image, and enables the regeneration and creation of the new self, which we put on as being renewed after the image of its creator.
Human image in genesis is given in the context of rule. And as given to rule, the being is created with the capacities to do so. It is with the whole being that the person is to respond in love to God, ala Deuteronomy.
For the task of ordering and caring for, humans have been given remarkable abilities, including the ability to think. It not only recognises order, but also able participants in bringing order to it!
Yet we are not called to merely a dominion over the world, but a dominion within it. 1) Our emotions alert us to our community and collective task. 2) We are to be affected by it, as well as affecting it.
The image is not so much a metaphysical one, but a historico-narrative one. We have a job to do, working with the God who gave it to us.
Thus our capacities reflect the job we've been given, and the image takes in everything about us as human.
3. beyond body-soul dualism
Man does not have a nephesh, he is a nephesh. - Hans Volfffff (unsure whether it starts with W or V and how many f's are at the end.)(Linden says it's Wolff. W and two ff's.)
Our 'with-Christness' consists in his love. (ie, our life with Christ is not a bit of our soul that got caught up to heaven)
Our capacity for emotion is a part of our full body, as human, but also as a sign of our limitedness as finite creations. Very good. But as corrupted as the rest.
On Being Moved
1: 'responsive agency'
We are affected by the world around us, and also are pushed around by emotions inside us.
Feeling revulsion when we are intending to sin which stops us from doing so, is a point at which emotions serve us well. Suppressing emotion at that point is a consequence of the sinful nature.
Jesus' emotions condition his agency in his encounters with crowds, etc. Our emotions tell us a truth about the world and our experience in it.
2: bodily feelings
We can't experience anything outside of our bodies, even our dreams.
Our bodies belong to us as an aspect of our whole being. There's no experience that we have that happens outside of or apart from our body.
There's no non-material part of us which more readily is sanctified or may commune with God. Paul prays wholisticly, for mind, body and soul for the Philippians.
3: thinking and feeling as components of knowing
Turning concepts into substantives, we rationally separate ourselves from ourselves. Compartmentalising actually disintegrates us. These nouns could perhaps be talked about as verbs, thinking and feeling. These are activities carried out by a person.
What we call our subjectivity is vital for us to gain knowledge. A judge's objectivity is a reorientation of our subjectivity to a particular person.
Questions:
Q: What about those with disabilities, if our ability to speech is a part of the image?
A: The speech ability is not the image, but is the equipment given by God because a person is in the image. Their dignity is derived from the fact that they're addressed by God and called on by God.
Q: Some people have tried to use a tripartite division to explain humanity, thoughts?
A: Soul and spirit are generally pretty much synonymous, so the question becomes what is
Q: If there's no body-soul dualism, then can you give an account of ghosts.
A: No, I can't. But I know you have a different view of this. Zombies I'd be more able to explain.
Q: Jesus said to the thief, today you'll be with me in paradise, what does it mean?
A: Well, whatever happened on that day, the today was when Jesus went into the tomb. So the today wasn't necessarily literal in that sense. Hard to make ontological conclusions based on a promise to this guy, that's not the point.
Q: Will we still have emotions in our resurrected body? Ie, anger, etc.
A: There's no need for mourning. We're created for a responsive agency, so we'll encounter things and be moved by them. That would suit our finite, created being. But I'd imagine a completely reconditioned emotional life. Miroslav Volf has talked about how we'll be able to have joy despite knowledge of the past.
Q: Are our faculties also analogous to God's nature, or simply given by God as the task only.
A: No, the image is the task, not the capacity. So we create, but we create from stuff not nothing.
Q: So can we say that from you would say that God feels?
A: There is some analogy from our being to God's. Yet I am hesitant to ascribe exactly our feelings to God. The analogy has to have some content to it, but I don't want to say exactly how much.
Q:
A: