Summary of Entries on Animals
I love animals. Anyone who knows me well knows that. I am not an animal rights activist or a vegetarian -- I think humans have worth beyond that of animals -- but I would never kill an animal (I do not consider insects animals,) if I could avoid it. I would never hunt for sport. I would not want to hunt for food
( Read more... )
That is absolutely correct; this is -- in a sense -- a matter of semantics. Yet sometimes semantics are important to discuss....
When I use the words "soul" and "spirit," in regard to religion or the special aspects of humans, I simply mean that part of a person that remains after physical death.
And you share that definition with many. What concerns me is that when one looks at the Old and New Testaments in the original languages, it becomes doubtful that this definition is the one used by the Bible. If religion is important, I think it is important to understand what was really meant in the Bible by those terms. I will go into more detail on what I mean by this in a summary I mean to finish this week sometime, but as far as animals go, in the Bible, they are said very specifically to have both "souls" and "spirits" but never "hearts" -- in the Old Testament at least -- regardless of how you wish to define those words. If you wish to use definitions other than the ones used in the Bible, that is fine, but most who claim that animals don't have souls do it for supposedly "Biblical" reasons.
It is also likely that a soul never ever exists apart from a body according to the Bible -- another concept in disagreement with common teaching. (Again, I'll clarify more later, but I am in no way at all saying that the Bible does not teach eternal life or life after death -- it does.)
Reply
Leave a comment