General The Hebrew mind Vs "Western" mind

[benadam1974]

In any attempt to understand the Biblical view of man, it is of paramount importance, as A. R. Johnson says,

"to take note of the fact that Israelite thinking, like that of the so-called 'primitive' peoples of the present day, is predominantly synthetic. It is characterized in large measure by what has been called the grasping of totality."

Biblical scholarship has established quite conclusively that there is no dichotomous concept of man in the Bible, such as is found in Greek and Hindu thought. The Biblical view of man is holistic, not dualistic. The notion of the soul as an immortal entity which enters the body at birth and leaves it at death is quite foreign to the biblical view of man. The biblical view is that man is a unity; he is a unity of soul, body, flesh, mind, etc., all together constituting the whole man. None of the constituent elements is capable of separating itself from the total structure and continuing to live after death The biblical view is that God created man entire, and in his entirety he must be saved (salvation means wholeness). The biblical message is concerned with the ultimate fulfilment of the total life of man.
(The Problem of the Self in Buddhism and Christianity, Lynn A. Silva, 1979, p 75.)

 

[LeeB]

The real person is the human spirit of the person. The body does not go back to God at death. The body is at death dead but the spirit while being "asleep" is not dead. Our human spirit is part of what makes us in God's image because God is spirit and so are we. It is the spirits of just men made perfect. It is the destruction of the flesh so that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. The flesh profits nothing.