In secondness, the realm of actuality, the Stoic \u201cbody\u201d parallels \u201cacts of moral impotence\u201d.<\/p>\n
The parallel makes sense in terms of the Pagan Worldview.\u00a0 The Platonic \u201cbody\u201d was not so much \u201cthe temple of the soul\u201d as it was the \u201cprison of the soul\u201d.\u00a0 The Divine World was good and immaterial.\u00a0 Earthen Matter was evil and a thing to escape.\u00a0 The goal of the individual was to ascend, to return to the source, and to leave this body behind.<\/p>\n
Thus, Augustine\u2019s parallel resonated with his listeners, who had converted from various Pagan religions.\u00a0 Yet, there was a twist.<\/p>\n
He introduced his own version of \u201cconcupiscence\u201d.\u00a0 Instead of the person\u2019s weaknesses coming from the hard knocks of a descending soul accreting a body, they came from a prior descent, the Descent of Adam and Eve.<\/p>\n
This removed the spirit-descent and replaced it with \u201cthe readily observable consequences of a historical moment\u201d.<\/p>\n
It also removed the \u201csoul\u201d as the normal context that animates the \u201cbody\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 Concupiscence is \u201csoul-less\u201d.\u00a0 As soon as one puts an animating principle over \u201cthe moral impotence that is the body\u201d, one is constructing a delusion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In secondness, the realm of actuality, the Stoic \u201cbody\u201d parallels \u201cacts of moral impotence\u201d. The parallel makes sense in terms of the Pagan Worldview.\u00a0 The Platonic \u201cbody\u201d was not so much \u201cthe temple of the soul\u201d as it was the \u201cprison of the soul\u201d.\u00a0 The Divine World was good and immaterial.\u00a0 Earthen Matter was evil […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-science-of-original-sin"],"yoast_head":"\n