The primary tool the Modern World uses to define reality is Science. It is the bedrock of its understanding of Objective Reality. Though, in my opinion, it is a limited philosophy, and its axioms struggle to define the immaterial world. Consequently concluding, the unseen realm must be an illusion.
One axiom is the belief that if you can uncover the hidden essence of a thing, then you can better understand it. This is why there is greater interest in quantum physics, over the study of massive objects. We build advanced telescopes to look into the deep past of the Universe, to try and discover the building blocks which led to the first proto-galaxies.
If we can understand the smallest things which make up the largest, then we can have a better understanding of them.
The Person and The Individual
Throughout this series, I have tried to use the term Individual when referring to the Modern understanding of a human and use the word Person when talking about the Biblical framework. These two terms have separate meanings.
The Modern idea of an Individual is its the smallest unit of society. It’s the building block and the essence of Modern culture. Like atoms make up molecules, individuals make up communities. They are separate units which build together to create human social-reality.
Consequently, the Individual then becomes sacred, the centre of Western societies. And we know this, because it is legally protected through human rights legislation and regulations.
On the other hand, a Person is someone in a relationship. They live in a matrix of ‘other persons’. They are not self contained like the concept of the Individual. They are not alone, but they are connected. Persons are fathers, mothers, sons and daughters. They exist amongst groups of friends, family members, local communities and nation states.
Unlike Individuals, Persons are not the building blocks of society. Society comes together through the relationships between the persons, the families, non-family groups and the whole culture.
In this framework, there are no individual building blocks. We understand society by having regard to the relationships between all the various elements. Rather than just looking at the individual alone.
An example is a dismantled chair. I may have all the building blocks for the chair, but it is not a chair, unless it is arranged in a specific way.
When we look at a constructed chair, we can notice the parts. We see the whole chair, but also the craftsmanship which brings it altogether. The chair is also not just the parts arrange in a specific way, but is also the relationship between the whole chair and the constituting parts.
This may seem a strange way to start this post, but we will now look deeper at what a person is. Please keep the chair example in mind.
Whole Person Identity
In this series, I have identified six parts of a human:
Spirit
Soul
Heart
Mind (Nous)
Body
Flesh
The final and seventh part of my model is the whole person.
Just as I wrote above, if we understand society with a holistic and relational approach, so too we can understand the human. We can’t split out the soul and discuss it without regard to its relationship to the other parts. We can’t split off the flesh, but then continue to describe the human experience.
Like the chair example above, the Human is made up of six parts, and the seventh part is the whole person.
All these parts come together as one. But the whole person is not the sum of the constituenting parts, but is relationship to all the other parts.
This may seem weird for our Modern scientific minds, but once we see everything works through and exists through relationships, we have a better understating of a human.
My Human Model
Here is the model, which I’ve put together from reading Scripture. I may have this wrong, but it has helped me to understand myself in a way outside the Modern Scientific framework.
Let’s go through this.
The Immaterial part of the whole person is within the Spiritual Realm. It is made up of the Spirit, Soul, Heart and Nous.
The Spirit is the guiding principle of the person, but is also influenced by the Heart. The Heart is where our treasure is, and what we treasure has an impact on how we see ourselves and what we focus on.
The Nous filters out the thoughts which interact with the Heart, only allowing that which we focus on. The Nous’s focus is dependent upon the Organising Principle. If the principal of a person is worshipping God, then the thoughts regarding God will come to them, though if the thoughts are on earthly things or even sinful things, the Nous will allow those thoughts to come to them.
The Soul and Spirit both have a similar meaning in Greek, breath or wind. Whereas the Spirit is the animating force of the immaterial part of the human, the Soul animates the physical. When we physically die, the soul stops animating the body. So the relationship between the Soul and Spirit animates the Whole Person.
The relationship between Soul and Heart provides our passions and emotions. The Heart also is where we keep our memories, we were ponder thoughts and experience dreams.
The Body is the point of activity of the person. All these above elements influence the Body. The Flesh also puts pressure on the Body to yield to its desires, while the immaterial part tries to influence the Body to act in accordance to its will.
So the Flesh may fancy a doughnut and pressurises the Body to eat it. But the immaterial part says, ‘We don’t need a doughnut. We aren’t hungry. And we need to lose weight’.
As I wrote in my last post, the Flesh is the physical part of a person. So, the Flesh is the ear, but the activity of hearing is part of the Body. The Flesh exists in the physical realm. While the Body is the connection point between the two.
I still don’t think I have this completely correct. And this is simply where my thinking has got to.
When I’ve shared this model with people in my real life, they have found it interesting and then ask about demon possession. I won’t cover this here, but I will likely write a series on demonology using this model, later in the year.
Individuals and the Trinity
Have you noticed the Trinity is made up of three persons and not three individuals? It’s because God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are in relationship. Their existence is connected in the One God through relationship.
If they were separate Individuals, then they would be three gods joined in a godhead. But as they are persons, they only exist in a relational framework.
Human+ and Trans-Humanism
This topic is becoming more relevant as our culture becomes more technological advanced. There are many influencers around the World who are pushing this agenda.
The idea is that we can use technology to augment our physical bodies, through gene manipulation, computer chip implants and technological wearables. This would make us Human+. An improvement on the ‘original design’.
Eventually, we would be able to replace the whole physical human with a machine body. As a machine body could be more easily repaired and maintained, then it would effectively mean we could live forever.
This dream (or nightmare) is only possible if the Modern understanding of the immaterial person is correct. Only if our mind is the self-contained essence of who we actually are and we aren’t a being who exist in a web of relationships.
The ancient and biblical framework suggests that we are more than just our ‘thinking’. If the plan is to take ‘mind scans’ of an individual and upload that into a computer, then it still doesn’t replicate the person. A person is more than a mind. They have a flesh, a body and a community they live in. All of which have deep and profound effects on how they think, they express themselves and what they treasure.
A mind in a machine is not a human, it is a trans-human. But rather than raising them up to immortality and to stand amongst the gods, it will draw them down into a timeless artificial Hell.
Thank you for reading this article. I place a paywall here, so I can discuss more sensitive topics. Beyond this paywall, I discuss the steps our culture is taking today to move towards trans-humanism, this includes the Trans and Queer Movements.
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