TE,souls, and essential essence

Susan B (susan-brassfield@ou.edu)
Tue, 14 Sep 1999 21:34:24 -0500 (CDT)

At 08:24 PM 9/14/99 -0400, Loren Haarsma wrote:

>But there are other concepts in that word "soul" which simply require
>God's supernatural activity: the establishment of a personal relationship
>between creature and Creator; moral accountability; life after death.

according to an historian friend of mine, Paul (from the New Testament) was
from Tarsus which was a Greek colony. He was quite entranced with Greek
philosophy and larded his version of Christianity with it. One of these
Greek ideas was Plato's concept of essential essences and that is where the
idea of the "soul" came from.

I'd be curious if anybody knows whether or not Jews have an "essential
essence" idea like the soul.

To tie this back to evolution, Lineaus also had this idea about essential
essences and that is upon what he based the idea of "species." The reason we
have such a hard time defining "species" is because the lines between all
closely related animals are very blured.

Susan

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