souls...

[Tenshi no Ai]

Here's a question I've been scratching my head at (and I REALLY hope it doesn't turn into a debate, but I'm asking the question seriously...)

They say that animal's can't go to heaven because quote: "they do not own souls". Now that is NOT the topic (and please, don't debate on what you think! Last thing I want is a locked topic :/) But what I'm REALLY asking, is what does it mean to possess a soul? New Webster's Dictionary defines "soul" as:"the spiritual principle in man; the moral and emotional part of man's nature."

So... does that mean because we have emotions and morals it means we possess a soul? I know on movies where they quote the person who does wrong "do you not own a soul?"

Or... is it just being human? Or... is it just the fact that we are God's chosen creation? (Because if it was the morals things it would be post-apple eating or something :/)

Hmmm... yeah confused! People are too complex! @_@ Once again, please try to refrain from hot-debating... then again this topic might be closed automatically I'm not sure^^ I'd post on TWeb you see, but they're IQ is over the roofs for me to understand :/ I have another confusing q on things but I'll see how this one goes before I post anything else.

[Ingemar]

All I know is that in the Bible, all living things have a soul. In Hebrew, the soul that animals have is nefesh and the kind of soul only people have is n'shama.

[termyt]

The definition for "soul" varies widely depending on who you talk to.

Humans alone are created in the image of God and that is the root of the difference between us and other animals. I doubt the exact nature of the soul can be known by us while we inhabit these physical bodies, so there is a lot of debate over exactly what the soul is.

Emotions are not unique to humans. Our emotions are much more complex than those of animals, but whether that is because of our souls or not, I don't know.

[Fsiphskilm]

[b]An

[Yumie]

Lol, my biology teacher put it this way: In heaven, we will be perfectly happy. If it takes there being animals in heaven to make us perfectly happy, then animals will be there.

And if we can be perfectly happy in heaven without animals being there, then we won't mind their abscence it will we??

But in all reality, I don't know that I would say that animals don't have souls, I'm not really sure about it. I guess that's one of those things we'll only know for sure AFTER we die. And then we won't care anymore, lol. Sorry I can't be of more help!

[Scribs]

Hmm, I can see this getting pretty nasty in a little while...

I htink that all humans have souls because we are made in God's Image. What impications this entails I am not qualified to asses. I dont think that Animals have souls, but will withhold my opinion on wether they will be in heavan so as not to add fuel to the fires of debate.

[Stephen]

Here we go again...*sigh* Keep this debate free, or its gonna get locked faster then I can eat Rangoons at an all you can eat buffet.

[Nate]

I'd say the major difference between animal souls and human souls (assuming that animals have souls, which I will for the sake of agreement), is that we are capable of understanding the difference between right and wrong. Animals can't understand that, not in a definitive sense. They can be trained to do and not do certain things, but they can't understand sin, or the effects of sin, or the like.

That's my take on it.

[Linksquest]

[quote="Yumie"]Lol, my biology teacher put it this way: In heaven, we will be perfectly happy. If it takes there being animals in heaven to make us perfectly happy, then animals will be there.

And if we can be perfectly happy in heaven without animals being there, then we won't mind their abscence it will we?? ]

WHOA! it sounds like you have not only a christian bio teacher, but an awsome one as well! ^^.

Let's look at the bible shall we!
(VERSES ARE FROM THE NIV BIBLE)



GENESIS 1:20-30

20 And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky." 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth." 23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.

24 And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

29 Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food." And it was so.




So God have given man the dominion over the other animals... nothing about souls has been mentioned! Man is in the image of God, while the other creatures aren't.






[B]Genesis 2:7

7 the LORD God formed the man [e] from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.






God personally breathed the breath of life into man. (could the "breath of life" be the soul that differentiats man from beast?)

I am not really making a stance on this, cause i'm not really sure any of us can "KNOW" teh answer to this, though we can have opinions.



This story from the bible shows that donkey's can have a sense of the supernatural:



Numbers 22:26-30

26 Then the angel of the LORD moved on ahead and stood in a narrow place where there was no room to turn, either to the right or to the left. 27 When the donkey saw the angel of the LORD, she lay down under Balaam, and he was angry and beat her with his staff. 28 Then the LORD opened the donkey's mouth, and she said to Balaam, "What have I done to you to make you beat me these three times?"

29 Balaam answered the donkey, "You have made a fool of me! If I had a sword in my hand, I would kill you right now."

30 The donkey said to Balaam, "Am I not your own donkey, which you have always ridden, to this day? Have I been in the habit of doing this to you?"
"No," he said.



What is so interesting with this, that you may not have caught, is that this female donkey saw the Angel, when Balaam, a human, did not. This was before "the LORD opened the donkey's mouth." Had the donkey thought these thoughts, but only couldn't physically speak? I don't know.



Read Numbers 22 if you want to know more of this story!

[GhostontheNet]

A better set of definitions for the term "soul" can be found at:

The animating and vital principle in humans, credited with the faculties of thought, action, and emotion and often conceived as an immaterial entity.

The spiritual nature of humans, regarded as immortal, separable from the body at death, and susceptible to happiness or misery in a future state.

The disembodied spirit of a dead human.

A human: “the homes of some nine hundred souls” (Garrison Keillor).

The central or integral part; the vital core: “It saddens me that this network... may lose its soul, which is after all the quest for news” (Marvin Kalb).

A person considered as the perfect embodiment of an intangible quality; a personification: I am the very soul of discretion.

A person's emotional or moral nature: “An actor is... often a soul which wishes to reveal itself to the world but dare not” (Alec Guinness).

A sense of ethnic pride among Black people and especially African Americans, expressed in areas such as language, social customs, religion, and music.

A strong, deeply felt emotion conveyed by a speaker, a performer, or an artist.

Soul music.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

As to our people who say Animals definately do not survive death and will not be resurrected, they ignore Ecclesiastes' unanswered cautionary,

Ecclesiastes 3:20-21 ESV (20) All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return. (21) Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth?

Now if they're there they certainly wouldn't percieve it the way people do. Animals have neither the perceptions of guilt, honor, shame, and naturally do many things that would be unquestionably evil in humans, but because they lack these they do no evil (though they can be a danger, killing attacking pets was never meant to punish the animal as to eliminate its danger to the community). At best, animals would percieve the EVER-LIVING as their great caretaker. Now, in my own opinion, the strong New Eden and New Creation theme of the end of Revelation lends strongly to there being animals in such a place, and to me it seems rather tedious to create a new set rather than simply reviving all the animals that already existed - such is admittedly merely speculative though.

[Nate]

So God have given man the dominion over the other animals... nothing about souls has been mentioned! Man is in the image of God, while the other creatures aren't.

This is purely speculative as well and a bit off topic, but I'd like to comment here.

I think when the Bible states that man is in the image of God, it may mean in the way of a soul. Let's look at it logically.

Obviously, we were not in the image of God in that we knew the difference between right and wrong. Remember, that was the sin, Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil when they were specifically told not to by God. Only after they ate from this tree did they know the difference between good and evil.

Second, I'm pretty sure that we're not in the image of God in a sense of physical attributes. God is an infinite Being, and omnipresent...He's everywhere. And I mean...I'm pretty sure we don't "look like God" because why would God have a nose? Or ears? Or hair? Granted, maybe He does have these physical features, I do not deny that, but I don't think He does.

So that would leave the essence of spirituality...the soul and spirit. That is what defines us from the animals. Now to say that an animal can't get into Heaven isn't quite true, because certain passages seem to indicate that there will be animals in the new Creation. And also remember the warning that our good friend GhostontheNet posted.

This is why I speculate that animals don't have souls, but just because they don't have souls doesn't mean they won't go to Heaven, they will be there because God wants them to be.

"And that's the end of my show, DONK."

[SP1]

Had man not eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, where would we be? Happy...sure. Sinless...probably. Self-aware? Hmm. We can speculate about these things because we are different, but I am not sure that means we (alone) have souls. Other creatures might just carry on a different level of existence (soul-wise). Or not. Maybe a symptom of a soul is the capacity to love (agape) and recognize or be drawn to God.

[GhostontheNet]

Kaemmerite: Erm, as noted by Ingemar way back, the have souls in at least one sense of the Hebrew "souls", that is nephesh. Personally, I wonder these days whether man has a soul in the sense of an "immaterial self" or Plato's "finer particles", or whether the immediate post-mortem existence is simply a gift of the EVER-LIVING even to those who go to shame and condemnation (I do not consider Volt's concept that neither the just nor the condemned goes to anything other than a highly literal sleep till resurrection day to be an option that stacks up to all the data).

Had man not eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, where would we be? Happy...sure. Sinless...probably. Self-aware? Hmm. We can speculate about these things because we are different, but I am not sure that means we (alone) have souls. Other creatures might just carry on a different level of existence (soul-wise). Or not. Maybe a symptom of a soul is the capacity to love (agape) and recognize or be drawn to God.

This makes the big assumption that self-awareness is part of knowledge of good and evil, the EVER-LIVING unhesitatingly seems to hold that the man and the woman were capable of knowing what they did.

[Fsiphskilm]

This is no

[GhostontheNet]

This is now My favorite Thread.

The Thing I love about the bible is that, NOTHING is what it seems. There's always a metaphore responsible for confusing scholars and chritians. God's way of letting us know, we're all a bunch of fools, some have PHD's but are still fools like the rest of us.

Faith over Knowledge.

The best thing to do would be to stick to your original Opinion, go with what you know, avoid "what-if" questions, and keep your mind open, but cautious.

I confess open doubt that the EVER-LIVING went out of His way to confuse all readers though.

[~Natsumi Lam~]

i think possessing a soul is more than a definition... a soul gives us the conscience of right and wrong.. wisdom of what we can do with the right and wrong and the ability to look to the future, past and present... all leading to the idea that we need something more and something greater to fill a hole that we know is there. A soul allows for our mind, body [at times], and feelings to know there is a hole. One needs something to hold the perverbal "hole". You need something, a conscoius something to know something is missing. And that is the key to being man. A man also desires to be greater in person[some dont but they are look at as second class to most] not in might only.

Now animals, i think, lack that ability to desire something greater in their person...their desires reside in the abilitly to be the "Alpha" dog , not the "Alpha" individual. Meaning, personal betterment. Dogs know right and wrong, but they can not reflect on the right and wrong and why it is that way. They dont desire a betterment of self, or a sence of selflessness. A soul is moving past instinct into wisdom and choices. A animal doesnt desire a greater calling, a personal "fate", or a desire to find where you "fit" in Gods plan. An animal doesnt have a hole to have someone greater and omnipotent in their life. So, i think , animals lack that dwelling place where the "hole" lies, the soul.

So, i think God made it that way because he said we have " dominion [sp?]" over all creature. If animals had souls they would be more rebellious and not obey God in their jobs of ultimate submission. Besides if i knew a cow had a soul i wouldnt enjoy having a steak as much!!!!

~Natsumi Lam~

[Fsiphskilm]

[quote="Ghoston

[Mr. SmartyPants]

Salvation is free to all who accept.
Wisedom belongs to those who work for it.

But wisdom is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit

keyword.... gift

[Linksquest]

Well the one thing is that the donkey in Numbers 22:26-30 could see that angel when Balaam couldn't. Maybe they don't have the same "soul" as we do; but they still have an awareness to things of spiritual nature.

[GhostontheNet]

Now animals, i think, lack that ability to desire something greater in their person...their desires reside in the abilitly to be the "Alpha" dog , not the "Alpha" individual. Meaning, personal betterment. Dogs know right and wrong, but they can not reflect on the right and wrong and why it is that way.

I do not think dogs know right and wrong, I think they know, or rather learn, what the alpha being, including possibly humans, will not tolerate and will retaliate against, one way or another (squirt bottles or harsher means).

So, i think God made it that way because he said we have " dominion [sp?]" over all creature. If animals had souls they would be more rebellious and not obey God in their jobs of ultimate submission.

Are we indirectly implying, if this is followed through to its end, that the soul that the EVER-LIVING gave man is in fact the cause of his fall, and by extension He is responsible?

Besides if i knew a cow had a soul i wouldnt enjoy having a steak as much!!!!

The price of your life is the death of other beings, its better I think to honor the creatures that pay for your life. Perhaps the ultimate dishonor for the dead animal is to be poorly prepared or the like.

Volt: That's an amusing saying, though my favorite is still "Read the Bible literarily, not literally!" -Jaltus. Still, altogether the Bible does not simply reduce to "salvation" although that is a major theme.

[Fsiphskilm]

[quote="Mr.

[Nate]

Er...Volt, I will be respectful to the mods here by not engaging you in theological debate, but I strongly disagree with you on a number of points, and you are being quite off topic.

"You ain't gettin nothing for free"

What about Solomon?

[SP1]

This makes the big assumption that self-awareness is part of knowledge of good and evil, the EVER-LIVING unhesitatingly seems to hold that the man and the woman were capable of knowing what they did.

Well, I suppose given that (before that tree problem) Adam walked and talked with God in the garden, we can put him in a state of thoughtfulness, that is, other than a blissful "animal" like existence. Otherwise there wouldn't be too much to talk about. Perhaps if I could recall these things at the time I made a post, it would work better.

[Ashley]

Guys, keep it informed and polite or it will get locked. I'm already having my doubts about it.

[GhostontheNet]

So to me Bible = Salvation+Honor+submission+wisedom+background stories+history+Guidelines+codes of conduct+daily bread+soul food.

To this may be added "Who is this God, what is He doing, and what will He do in the future?"

[Fsiphskilm]

[quote="kae

[GhostontheNet]

Totally agreed. I'll mension it no more.

I really want to know what you disagree with me on, drop me a PM. And of course as always, understand that the world of God is rather big, there's lots of different ways to look at it. Thus CAA's stance on no Theological Debates, which i have a hard time enforcing on myself. Thus a Personal Relationship is required, rather than something standardized or Cookie Cut.

I'm only human, I can't get everything right. Sometimes I can't get anything right.

I definately wouldn't accuse you of debating on this one, and what you did say was productive, from my end it was an example of building upon each other's foundations. I too tend to be a prelude of locked threads for the theological debates rule, but I do so in a way that I sometimes actually get complimented when the thread is locked, only once have I been attacked by a rather amusing haiku. While this site best reflects out of anywhere I have ever seen the way the one holy catholic and apostolic Church, what Paul calls the Body of Christ, should be, I think there is mmuch room and opportunity for growth and new understanding through discussion and debates undertaken with the proper heart and attitude can be extremely productive and beneficial, and it is here that I think the CAA could be improved to a degree. Having the old "what about those who never heard?" thread locked when none of the participants were arguing in the least, when answers to the question do not fall along denominational lines, on the grounds of hypothetical trolls that had not shown up is perhaps symptomatic.

[Ashley]

For the sake of clarification, let me throw in something as the founder who created the rules in the first place. CAA does not allow debates because it is not our primary purpose to set people right theologically; it is to provide a place of fellowship among Christian otaku and hopefully show others the light of Christ living within us; God willing, others can be saved through our witnesses. To allow debates is to allow potentially vicious ones, and those destroy the fellowship here; people do not forget who said what, even if it was in a different forum. That fellowship is just never worth the cost of intellectually proving someone else wrong. Enough on that rabbit trail, I just felt the need to speak up.

[battletech]

When it says God made man in his image. God is three Father,Son, Spirit. Man also is three body, spirit, soul. Read 1 Thess. 5:23. Animals have souls what thy do not have is a spirit. A Soul is somethings life force. It's the mind, will and personality.
The spirit is what experiences and communes with God.

[wilson1112000]

For the sake of clarification, let me throw in something as the founder who created the rules in the first place. CAA does not allow debates because it is not our primary purpose to set people right theologically; it is to provide a place of fellowship among Christian otaku and hopefully show others the light of Christ living within us; God willing, others can be saved through our witnesses. To allow debates is to allow potentially vicious ones, and those destroy the fellowship here; people do not forget who said what, even if it was in a different forum. That fellowship is just never worth the cost of intellectually proving someone else wrong. Enough on that rabbit trail, I just felt the need to speak up.

Way to tell it, Ashley!

Personaly, I don't know how God deals with this situation with animals, nor will I pretend to know. I will trust that God will do what he wants in this matter, and as Ashley said, debateing it won't truely help any. Especially the lost people that come to this site.

(Sorry for butting in, guys. Just wanted to put my two cents in the bucket.)