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  • From: "Liz Fried" <lizfried AT umich.edu>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: RE: C-P: Paul and Plato
  • Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1999 21:00:46 -0400


> From: Jeffrey B. Gibson
Who answered me when I wrote:
>
> >
> >. What is ontological dualism? Sorry.
> >
>
> Ontology is a philosophical term that generally has to do with a
> theory of the nature
> of reality, what the really real is like. Plato's ontology. like
> that of a great deal
> of Eastern thought, was that the world of becoming--the world of
> our senses and the
> world of which the body is a part--was not really real. What
> **was** real, and
> therefore of ultimate significance, was the immaterial world of
> Being -- of which the
> PSUCH, being immortal, indivisible, and immaterial, was a part.
> His body/soul contrast
> has to do with describing the nature of what is really real, and
> thus contributes not
> only (a) to the view that what the world is made of is two
> essential things: the (ever
> changing, and therefore nor really real) material, and the
> (permanent, unchanging, and
> thus really real) immaterial world, of which the soul, and the
> forms or essences of
> things like beauty, goodness, courage, truth -- by which we
> recognize any particular
> instance or action or object or person as beautiful, good true,
> etc.; and (b) to the
> view that the body and the world of sensation of which it is a
> part and which it
> transmits to the soul is by its very nature evil. It is no
> accident that Gnosticism
> and (neo)Platonism share similar devaluations of the created order.
>
> Moral dualism, in which much of Paul's language of SARX is
> grounded, is centered in a
> focus on, and an advocacy of one of, two competing (ethical)
> value systems --
> affirmations or orientations toward, or evaluations of, how one
> or a particular
> people claiming a certain identity (the people of God) should
> "walk" while **in** the
> world. It **assumes** a particular ontology (the God of Israel
> stands behind the
> created order, the created order is material and material things
> are ultimately real
> and good, bodily life is the really real life), but is not
> dealing directly with it.

OK, I understood all this, I hadn't a name for it. I think Paul's dualism
is the Platonic kind. Now how could one tell the difference? I think Paul
thinks the real true Jerusalem is not the earthly one, which is temporal and
impermanent. The really real Jerusalem is the heavenly one. The "ideal"
form, as it were.
I think the importance of Christ to him is that he can die to the body, and
be alive in the spirit. This strikes me as an abnegation of the created
order, of the body, of bodily life, and the taking on of what he deems a
spiritual existence. That to me is the point of Christ's death. By
participating in that death, you can change from an earthly, temperal,
fleshy existence, to an a spiritual existence which is eternal life.

Otherwise I don't understand the benefit to be gained from Christ's death.

I appreciate your discussing this with me.

Liz

Lisbeth S. Fried
Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies
New York University
51 Washington Sq. S.
New York, NY 10012
lqf9256 AT is3.nyu.edu
lizfried AT umich.edu





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