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One of the most famous answers to this question comes in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, question 1:
Q1. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever.
If you look there, they highlight 1 Corinthians 10:31, Romans 11:36, and Psalm 73:25-28.
I believe this is a typical answer to the question from a Reformed ...
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It seems clear that Catholic Church debunked Origen's claim that souls were created and existed before conception and birth.
It is more accurate to say "rejected" than "debunked" but there is substantial theological support to that rejection(cf. below). Certainly the soul is there before birth according to current teaching of the RCC. Current teaching ...
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Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries International, two young-earth creationist organizations, have similar answers to this question. They don't attribute a direct supernatural cause, but instead attribute the age drop-off primarily to genetics.
Both cite several factors:
Environmental changes following the flood: probably nothing more than a minor ...
answered Sep 10 '15 at 23:02
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11
In 1661, Pope Alexander VII released the Bull "Sollicitudo omnium eccl.," which reads in part:
The devotion to the most blessed Virgin Mary is indeed of long standing among the faithful of Christ who believe that her soul, from the first instant of its creation and infusion into her body, was preserved immune by a special grace and privilege of God from ...
answered Feb 19 '19 at 13:50
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9
According to The Family: A Proclamation to the World,
IN THE PREMORTAL REALM, spirit sons and daughters knew and worshipped
God as their Eternal Father and accepted His plan by which His
children could obtain a physical body and gain earthly experience to
progress toward perfection and ultimately realize their divine destiny
as heirs of eternal ...
8
There is an interesting passage in the magnificat in Luke,
The phrase in verses 2:56,47 seems to indicate that Spirit and Soul basicly mean the same thing. Jewish verse uses a technique called parallelism where one line says something, and the next ,the same thing but using diifferent words for emphasis.
It might be pushing it a bit but the phrasing ...
8
You seem to be asking for a definitive verse in scripture that states or implies that the soul has a gender. There is no such verse (it seems), and indexes to mentions of gender list nothing concrete. However:
God made humans, "in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them" (Genesis 1:26), and this was so before the fall. This passage ...
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I think the general understanding among Christians is that God, properly understood, is unique in both nature and office when considering His full nature and full office. That is, there's no other being that is is His own essence (nature) or is the creator of all things (office). (Summa, Part 1, Question 3)
However, your question, as stated, seems to be ...
8
My lay, minimally-researched Catholic understanding may not necessarily qualify, since Catholicism doesn't require a belief in evolution. But ... well, here I go:
In my understanding, it would be the first creature capable of bearing God's image. That is, it would be the first creature capable of love, but with freedom of will, and capable of contemplating ...
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The discussion of the origin of the human soul/spirit (on this topic they are generally spoken of as one immaterial part) is a very old one in Christian history. There are many serious implications which the debate has commonly hinged on, particularly regarding the transmission of Adam's original sin and guilt. However varied those theories may be, a basic ...
8
You seem to have a misunderstanding of what death is. Death is separation, not ceasing to exist. Spiritual birth is required because of spiritual death.
spiritual death- separation from God (the first source is the Fall and the second is our own disobedience)
physical death- separation of the spirit from the body
Both deaths came because of the Fall, and ...
8
This quote is often attributed to one of the early church fathers, usually to Bernard of Clairvaux or Saint Augustine, although the earliest reference in print was in 1896. There is no historical evidence that links the quote to Clairvaux or Augustine. It is part of a textbook on human anatomy by Joseph Hyrtl
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I believe that the "chief end of man", or "why man was created" can be summed up in what Jesus said when a lawyer asked him a question.
Matthew 20:36ff
"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" And He said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the great and ...
7
Mainline Seminaries
I went to a very conservative seminary and read Girard's Scapegoat, though the overall position of the school disagreed with it. However, that we read it indicates its prevalence in academic institutions. Others I know who went to mainline seminaries, however, are very well versed in Girard.
In Rowan Williams' (former archbishop of ...
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It's at least true that others in the early church taught doctrines that resembled Origen's. However, not all who did would normally be considered "church fathers," and even among those who unambiguously are, there's debate over how similar their teachings actually were to Origen's.
Of course, proponents of the doctrine will naturally find more ...
answered Jun 25 '15 at 18:51
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7
This answer is from the perspective of the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), and of the various denominations that accept his theology, commonly called "New Church" or "Swedenborgian" denominations.
Swedenborg taught that there are no angels pre-created as a separate race, nor did any such pre-created angels fall from heaven to become Satan and ...
7
The Catholic Church has not issued a definitive teaching on this topic. There are certain boundaries that have been established, e.g. that our souls have not always existed but rather were created by God, and that the soul is definitely present within the body at conception. The exact timing, however, is not known, and, indeed, the Church has no firm ...
7
According to the Catholic Church (Council of Trent's Decree Concerning Original Sin):
this sin of Adam…in its origin is one, and being transfused into all by propagation, not by imitation [of the parents' vices, bad example, etc.], is in each one as his own
St. Thomas Aquinas, in Summa Theologica I-II q. 81 a. 1 ("Whether the first sin of our first ...
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I'm not sure if you'd include Mormonism as a Christian denomination, but the Mormon church definitely believes this. They believe that people were "Heavenly Father's" spirit children in heaven, who are now in the flesh on earth: Spirit Children of Heavenly Parents.
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By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state. It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice [sic]. And that is why original sin is called &...
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If you do an in depth study of the the Greek on 'soul' and 'spirit' they are essentially the same thing. However they are different is that one is viewed heavenward, and one earthward. The soul is the essential life of man ‘looking earthward’ and the ‘spirit’ that same principle of life breathed (like wind) into man from God, that can look towards and ...
6
There doesn't need to be a Biblical reason for this. There are some terms that mean a certain thing because that is the definition of the term.
From Dictionary.com:
gen·der 1 [jen-der] Show IPA noun
Grammar . a. (in many languages) a set of classes that together include all nouns, membership in a particular class being shown by the
form of the ...
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I hold multiple views on creation. My personal view under the assumption that human evolution occurred in a Darwinian manner descending from apes is that humanity existed in a non-image of God state (no spirit) prior to Adam and Eve. There is some Biblical support for this. Genesis 4:13 indicates that when Cain was sent away, he indicates that whoever ...
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In the verse you quoted, John 1:12-13, the Greek words for "children of God" is "tekna Theou." (Notice that "tekna" is always referring to "little children.")
Contrast this with John 3:16 which uses "monogene huion" or "only Son." The term "monogene" being the one containing the notion of "the only offspring" or "the only begotten one."
(Also, anywhere ...
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Historically, the answer to the race issue has been the Table of Nations in Genesis 10.
From Nigel Tomes:
The tradition that Ham was a black man developed much later. It is a Rabbinical elaboration,7 not explicitly formulated until the Babylonian Talmud of 500 AD. Hence this concept belongs in the category of Jewish “myths and unending genealogies” (1 Tim.1:...
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First, let's have some slightly more in-depth definitions. Charles Hodge describes what traducianists believe as follows:
Traducianists on the one hand deny that the soul is created; and on the other hand, they affirm that it is produced by the law of generation, being as truly derived from the parents as the body. The whole man, soul and body, is ...
answered Jul 27 '15 at 15:39
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An "avatar" is a Hindu term and is a "deliberate descent of a deity to Earth", the coming of a Hindu god in the flesh, if you will. For Christianity, Jesus Christ would fulfill this purpose, not regular people. In English, the term is more closely translated as "incarnation", but more accurately as "appearance" or "manifestation". <-- also per above link.
...
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The challenge in answering this question is that we do not have most of Origen's original work. Proponents of reincarnation argue that translators and scribes made Origen's works more palatable to orthodox Christianity, and excised the most significant pro-reincarnation sections of his works.
One quote commonly attributed to Origen does not appear to exist ...
answered Jun 25 '15 at 22:37
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There are no other common Christian denominations that believe in a pre-mortal existence of man.
There are instances of individual Christians with this belief.
Clementine, quoting Peter, said in Clementine Recognitions:
Last of all He made man whose real nature, however, is older and for whose sake all this was created.
Origen of Alexandria (ca. 200 AD) ...
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