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The concept of spiritual death has varying meanings in various uses and contexts.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(November 2010) |
The concept of spiritual death has varying meanings in various uses and contexts.
Although Buddhists occasionally use the term 'spiritual death,' there is no consensus about the meaning because the Buddha himself never used the term, hence the controversy. It has crept into use in recent decades. The closest he came to it, is in the term Parābhava, meaning 'spiritual ruination.' The various ways to spiritual ruination is expounded in the Parābhava Sutta. [1] For example, the Sutta says: ‘If a man is fond of sleep, fond of society, and does not exert himself, but is idle and ill-tempered, that is the cause of spiritual ruination.’
The Sutta concludes:
'‘Having contemplated these ruined men in the world, the wise and noble man with perfect vision of things according to reality partakes of the world of the fortunate.'
For Buddhadasa spiritual death stems from attachment to good and evil, and means dukkha , i.e. 'suffering'. [2] He says: "Once we know about good and evil, we attach to them ... This causes dukkha [suffering] and dukkha is death, spiritual death." (ibid, p.9)
Thus, for Buddhadasa spiritual death stems from attachment to good and evil, and equals suffering; whereas for Christianity, it stems from sin, and equals either separation from God, or the death of the soul. It is hard to see, from Buddhadasa's point of view, in spiritual death, what actually dies.
Sangharakshita uses the term "spiritual death" to describe insight meditation practice. [3] In this case, spiritual death is something good, favourable.
He says: "The term 'spiritual death' may be slightly off-putting, but it isn’t meant to suggest physical death. What ‘dies’ are all our illusions and delusions about who we are and how things are. This is usually spoken of as ‘insight practice’ (vipassana)." (ibid).
In Christian theology, spiritual death is separation from God caused by sin. [4]
"Your sins have separated you and God" (Isaiah 59:2).
This spiritual death is alternatively regarded as the death of the soul:
"The soul that sins shall die." (Ezekiel 18:4).
Ezekiel 18:4 is translated as "The soul that sins shall die," by both Christians and Jews. But the nature of the soul in Judaism is uncertain. [5] So how Jews understand Ezekiel is a matter of controversy. [6] [7] [8]
And therefore what Spiritual Death means in Judaism is uncertain. Nonetheless, if spiritual death is the death of the soul, sin is the cause of it, whatever it is.
Spiritual death is dealt with in the Bhagavad Gita Chapter 16, which says that those of demoniac nature engage in harmful, horrible works meant to destroy the world. They become envious of God, who is situated in their own bodies. Being the lowest among men, they are cast into demoniac life, and never approach Krishna. Gradually they sink down to the most abominable type of existence. [9] Here death means rebirth in the demonic realm, as well as separation from God. Whether the soul is destroyed in unclear, but certainly the Hindus and Christians are united on the cause of spiritual death, namely evil conduct or sin.
For theosophists, spiritual death stems from sinfulness, and equals the death of the soul, or separation between one's higher and lower nature, or between the soul and the body. Here is a quote from Blavatsky:
"While yet in the body which has lost its higher “Soul” through its vices, there is still hope for such a person. He may be still redeemed and made to turn on his material nature; in which case either an intense feeling of repentance, or one single earnest appeal to the Soul that has fled, or best of all, an active effort to mend one’s ways, may bring the Soul back again. The thread or connection is not altogether broken, so it is not yet beyond hearing a strong spiritual appeal."
And this is from Geoffrey Hodson:
"When a person deliberately and without due thought of the consequences—especially broken vows—gives up the whole enterprise of endeavoring to quicken the rate of evolutionary development for the sake of all humankind, he becomes traitorous... When a person does fall by continuing to direct attention to material goals; to assume old and undesirable habits of body; and to take pleasure in uncontrolled, sensual emotions and selfish, possessive, prideful thinking, then inevitably a curtain or veil is drawn across the hitherto gradually thinning barrier between his higher and the lower natures, thereby shutting off communication between the immortal, spiritual soul and the mortal, personal human being."
Socrates taught that whereas single acts of wrongdoing injure the soul, multiple or serious acts of wrongdoing, or those that go unpunished, threaten ultimately to ruin it.
"The most exquisite and devastating damage one can do to one's soul, then, is through wrongdoing." [10]
Latter-Day Saints say there are two forms of spiritual death. Firstly, humans are spiritually dead until they are redeemed:
“All mankind, by the fall of Adam being cut off from the presence of the Lord, are considered as dead, both as to things temporal and to things spiritual”
Secondly, spiritual death comes as a result of disobedience. Sins make humans unclean and unable to dwell in the presence of God.
Through the Atonement, Jesus Christ offers redemption from both types of spiritual death. [11]
Followers of Ascended Master movements such as the Theosophical Society, I AM Foundation, and Elizabeth Clare Prophet have a different definition of the second death, the final extinguishing of the identity of a soul deemed by God to be beyond redemption. In this theology, people are believed to continue to reincarnate for many lifetimes on Earth with one of two final outcomes: 1) Reunion with God in the ritual of the Ascension, like Jesus, or 2) Final judgment at the "court of the sacred fire," where the soul would be destroyed forever.[ citation needed ]
John B. Calhoun saw the social breakdown of a population of mice given ample resources as a second death. He saw this as a metaphor for the potential fate of man in an overcrowded but resource rich environment and made reference to the second death of the Book of Revelation. [12] Conservative Christian writers, such as Bill Perkins, have echoed this warning. [13]
In his famous anti-war address "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence," delivered 4 April 1967 at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City, Martin Luther King Jr. observed that "[a] nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
A devil is the personification of evil as it is conceived in various cultures and religious traditions. It is seen as the objectification of a hostile and destructive force. Jeffrey Burton Russell states that the different conceptions of the devil can be summed up as 1) a principle of evil independent from God, 2) an aspect of God, 3) a created being turning evil, and 4) a symbol of human evil.
Duḥkha (Sanskrit: दुःख; Pali: dukkha), 'unease', "standing unstable," commonly translated as "suffering", "pain", or "unhappiness", is an important concept in Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism. Its meaning depends on the context, and may refer more specifically to the "unsatisfactoriness" or "unease" of transient existence, which we crave or grasp for when we are ignorant of this transientness. In Buddhism, dukkha is part of the first of the Four Noble Truths and one of the three marks of existence. The term also appears in scriptures of Hinduism, such as the Upanishads, in discussions of moksha.
In Buddhism, the Four Noble Truths are "the truths of the noble one ," a statement of how things really are when seen correctly. The truths are:
Karma is an ancient Indian concept that refers to an action, work, or deed, and its effect or consequences. In Indian religions, the term more specifically refers to a principle of cause and effect, often descriptively called the principle of karma, wherein individuals' intent and actions (cause) influence their future (effect): Good intent and good deeds contribute to good karma and happier rebirths, while bad intent and bad deeds contribute to bad karma and worse rebirths. In some scriptures, however, there is no link between rebirth and karma. Karma is often misunderstood as fate, destiny, or predetermination.
Original sin in Christian theology refers to the condition of sinfulness that all humans share, which is inherited from Adam and Eve due to the Fall, involving the loss of original righteousness and the distortion of the Image of God. The biblical basis for the belief is generally found in Genesis 3, and in texts such as Psalm 51:5 and Romans 5:12–21.
Salvation is the state of being saved or protected from harm or a dire situation. In religion and theology, salvation generally refers to the deliverance of the soul from sin and its consequences. The academic study of salvation is called soteriology.
Lust is an intense desire for something. Lust can take any form such as the lust for sexuality, money, or power. It can take such mundane forms as the lust for food as distinct from the need for food or lust for redolence, when one is lusting for a particular smell that brings back memories. It is similar to but distinguished from passion, in that passion propels individuals to achieve benevolent goals whilst lust does not.
In Christian theology, spiritual death is separation from God caused by sin.
The fall of man, the fall of Adam, or simply the Fall, is a term used in Christianity to describe the transition of the first man and woman from a state of innocent obedience to God to a state of guilty disobedience. The doctrine of the Fall comes from a biblical interpretation of Genesis, chapters 1–3. At first, Adam and Eve lived with God in the Garden of Eden, but the serpent tempted them into eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which God had forbidden. After doing so, they became ashamed of their nakedness and God expelled them from the Garden to prevent them from eating the fruit of the tree of life and becoming immortal.
Christocentrism is a doctrinal term within Christianity, describing theological positions that focus on Jesus Christ, the second person of the Christian Trinity, in relation to the Godhead/God the Father (theocentric) or the Holy Spirit (pneumocentric). Christocentric theologies make Christ the central theme about which all other theological positions/doctrines are oriented.
Natural evil is evil for which "no non-divine agent can be held morally responsible" and is chiefly derived from the operation of the laws of nature. It is defined in contrast to moral evil, which is directly "caused by human activity". In Christian theology, natural evil is often discussed as a rebuttal to the free will defense against the theological problem of evil. The argument goes that the free will defense can only justify the presence of moral evil in light of an omnibenevolent god, and that natural evil remains unaccounted for. Hence, some atheists argue that the existence of natural evil challenges belief in the existence, omnibenevolence, or omnipotence of God or any deity.
The New Church can refer to any of several historically related Christian denominations that developed under the influence of the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). The Swedenborgian tradition is considered to be a part of Restorationist Christianity.
Conceptions of God in classical theist, monotheist, pantheist, and panentheist traditions – or of the supreme deity in henotheistic religions – can extend to various levels of abstraction:
The theology of the Cross or staurology is a term coined by the German theologian Martin Luther to refer to theology that posits "the cross" as the only source of knowledge concerning who God is and how God saves. It is contrasted with the "theology of glory", which places greater emphasis on human abilities and human reason.
In Christian theology, Hell is the place or state into which, by God's definitive judgment, unrepentant sinners pass in the general judgment, or, as some Christians believe, immediately after death. Its character is inferred from teaching in the biblical texts, some of which, interpreted literally, have given rise to the popular idea of Hell. Theologians today generally see Hell as the logical consequence of rejecting union with God and with God's justice and mercy.
Eastern Orthodox theology is the theology particular to the Eastern Orthodox Church. It is characterized by monotheistic Trinitarianism, belief in the Incarnation of the divine Logos or only-begotten Son of God, cataphatic theology with apophatic theology, a hermeneutic defined by a Sacred Tradition, a catholic ecclesiology, a theology of the person, and a principally recapitulative and therapeutic soteriology.
The Hebrew term kareth, or extirpation, is a form of punishment for sin, mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and later Jewish writings. The typical Biblical phrase used is "that soul shall be cut off from its people" or a slight variation of this. Several different suggestions have been made for the understanding of this punishment in the Bible and in rabbinic thought.
In Christianity, sin is an immoral act and transgression of divine law. The doctrine of sin is central to the Christian faith, since its basic message is about redemption in Christ.
In Christianity, annihilationism is the belief that after the Last Judgment, all damned humans and fallen angels including Satan will be totally destroyed and their consciousness extinguished rather than suffering forever in Hell. Annihilationism stands in contrast to both the belief in eternal torment and to the universalist belief that everyone will be saved. However, it is also possible to hold to a partial annihilationism, believing unsaved humans to be obliterated, but demonic beings to suffer forever.
Religious responses to the problem of evil are concerned with reconciling the existence of evil and suffering with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God. The problem of evil is acute for monotheistic religions such as Christianity, Islam, and Judaism whose religion is based on such a God. But the question of "why does evil exist?" has also been studied in religions that are non-theistic or polytheistic, such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism.
