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Harvest Festival, new iPad and unexpected competition at the swimming pool. Also, I need help with a little bit of theology…….
This week’s 60 Second Saint is Saint Crainnach
Links:
Joseph Reninger’s Blogs:
http://zombieparentsguide.blogspot.com/
http://jrlentblog.blogspot.com/
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http://www.catholicstuffpodcast.com/Catholic_Stuff_You_Should_Know/Catholic_Stuff_Home.html
End Music “Book of Ephesians”, by Jeremy Bonner, available through www.musicalley.com
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I was just listening to this episode of your podcast and heard your comments about Frank Sheed’s book.
I went to Amazon and did a lookup to see what the passage said and found the relevant material (gotta love Amazon).
Anyway – from what I was able to decipher about it, is that Mr. Sheed was saying that all living creatures (man, animals, vegetables, etc) have a life prinicipal. This being the soul. However, only Man has a spirit that is not spirit alone, it is also a soul. We have a spirit so that we in the likeness of God who is spirit.
Animals and other living things on the other hand, according to Sheed, have only souls. They do not share in the divine likeness as Man does because they do not have spirits.
That’s how I took what he said.
I think it would be more accurate to say that ‘all of creation’ bears the image and likeness of God, but that Man (humanity – not male or femal but both) share in a very special way in the image and likeness of God in that we have reason. You don’t see dogs thinking about their existence. The Catholic Church teaches that all of creation bears light to knowledge and love of God and that by ‘looking around’ we get to ‘see’ God better. We cannot ‘see’ God with our eyes or any of our senses because He is spirit, but we can see the fruit of his creation, which is a reflextion of God. Creation was created for man to draw closer to God. Prior to the fall, we were at one with nature and nature, including animals, did not eat each other and lived in harmony with man and all creatures. The fall disrupted no only man, but all of nature. Many speculate we were all plant eaters, but that animal on animal killing is a product of the fall. Likely the reason Darwin lost his faith. There is so much violence in the animal world, just look at the front page of any newspaper. The soul is the animating principle of the body. We are all body and soul – hylomorphic in nature, even trees, dogs, cats, etc. But only man is reasoning. I love when people say, our DNA is 99% of that of the apes. Well, that may very well be true, but we are matter and spirit, and the ape doens’t have all our matter, and is missing much of our spirit. They have their own spirit int he form of a soul, but it’s probably 90% DIFFERENT than that of man. We only see matter in today’s world, and don’t recognize we are a combination of both. Again, hylomorphic in nature.
Thanks Ninov (and to Bill) for taking the time to go into such detail; it really is kind of you. I think that I was starting from the wrong vantage point when I started to read Mr Sheed’s book, which meant that I just couldn’t take the next step in following his argument. Thanks to all the feedback from good people such as yourself, it makes much more sense. Interestingly, I can’t a bit of a Catholic Answers live broadcast in which Jimmy Akin seemed to be addressing this issue, so I’ll try to catch the podcast release to see how he explains it. Thanks again, God Bless, Sean.