And thanks for transforming my understanding of the natural man! This all rings so true. “on an entirely human level”
is how I experience “the natural anthropos” (I can’t bring myself to use the phrase natural woman because then a song I don’t love starts playing unceasingly in my mind...) -- I think of it as “being left totally to my own devices” without the help of the spirit. And I love the idea of the enemy of God being the opposite of growth and becoming -- and the “become as a child” and “grow up” aren’t really opposites -- you have to see yourself as a child to embrace a growth mindset. And you have to be willing to mature and not remain and adult to grow :-)
lol @ "the natural woman," and yes, "the natural anthropos" is probably the safest way to describe it. I like the way you are talking about this--Nephi says "For the Spirit of the Lord will not always strive with man. And when the Spirit ceaseth to strive with man, then cometh speedy destruction" (2 Nephi 26:11). When it ceases to strive, at that moment you become the psuchikos anthropos.
Alma 41:11 spells this out extremely clearly: "And now my son, all men that are in a state of nature—or I would say, in a carnal state—are in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity. They are without God in the world, and they have gone contrary to the nature of God. Therefore they are in a state contrary to the nature of happiness." That's the psuchikos anthropos. Paul uses "carnal" in 1 Corinthians 3 as a way of describing the people who don't have the spirit and to this verse is connected to the 1 Corinthians ideas as well (I think I mentioned the 1 Corinthians 3 stuff in a footnote).
So much good stuff here! First, this is my favorite paragraph: “The new birth, described in so many passages in the Bible and the scriptures of the restoration, is a transformation of our character and our desires. But it is also an epistemological transformation, in that we go from the psychikos person to the pneumatikos person and therefore acquire brand-new ways of knowing. New vistas of knowledge unfold to the one who is born of God, for the Spirit begins to act on them and their bodies such that they become able to know things that they could not otherwise know.”. Have you read L.A. Paul’s book Transformative Experience? Because these are exactly the two dimensions of transformation she talks about -- transformation of our values and preferences (character) and epistemological transformation -- we gain the ability to know things we couldn’t have know before the transformation. Thank you for helping me see this continuity with the scriptures! And these two transformations are why she thinks we can’t rationally and from a first-person respective choose to be transformed -- but that’s a conversation for another day!
I've heard about Paul's book but I haven't read it, and I didn't know that those were the two dimensions of transformation, but it looks like I agree! I've heard her and other people talk about the transformative experience thing and it did seem to me like some of what she was saying was very applicable to religious transformations in particular. There are so many scriptures that talk about the new birth and there's pretty clearly an epistemological aspect to some of them.
And thanks for transforming my understanding of the natural man! This all rings so true. “on an entirely human level”
is how I experience “the natural anthropos” (I can’t bring myself to use the phrase natural woman because then a song I don’t love starts playing unceasingly in my mind...) -- I think of it as “being left totally to my own devices” without the help of the spirit. And I love the idea of the enemy of God being the opposite of growth and becoming -- and the “become as a child” and “grow up” aren’t really opposites -- you have to see yourself as a child to embrace a growth mindset. And you have to be willing to mature and not remain and adult to grow :-)
lol @ "the natural woman," and yes, "the natural anthropos" is probably the safest way to describe it. I like the way you are talking about this--Nephi says "For the Spirit of the Lord will not always strive with man. And when the Spirit ceaseth to strive with man, then cometh speedy destruction" (2 Nephi 26:11). When it ceases to strive, at that moment you become the psuchikos anthropos.
Alma 41:11 spells this out extremely clearly: "And now my son, all men that are in a state of nature—or I would say, in a carnal state—are in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity. They are without God in the world, and they have gone contrary to the nature of God. Therefore they are in a state contrary to the nature of happiness." That's the psuchikos anthropos. Paul uses "carnal" in 1 Corinthians 3 as a way of describing the people who don't have the spirit and to this verse is connected to the 1 Corinthians ideas as well (I think I mentioned the 1 Corinthians 3 stuff in a footnote).
So much good stuff here! First, this is my favorite paragraph: “The new birth, described in so many passages in the Bible and the scriptures of the restoration, is a transformation of our character and our desires. But it is also an epistemological transformation, in that we go from the psychikos person to the pneumatikos person and therefore acquire brand-new ways of knowing. New vistas of knowledge unfold to the one who is born of God, for the Spirit begins to act on them and their bodies such that they become able to know things that they could not otherwise know.”. Have you read L.A. Paul’s book Transformative Experience? Because these are exactly the two dimensions of transformation she talks about -- transformation of our values and preferences (character) and epistemological transformation -- we gain the ability to know things we couldn’t have know before the transformation. Thank you for helping me see this continuity with the scriptures! And these two transformations are why she thinks we can’t rationally and from a first-person respective choose to be transformed -- but that’s a conversation for another day!
I've heard about Paul's book but I haven't read it, and I didn't know that those were the two dimensions of transformation, but it looks like I agree! I've heard her and other people talk about the transformative experience thing and it did seem to me like some of what she was saying was very applicable to religious transformations in particular. There are so many scriptures that talk about the new birth and there's pretty clearly an epistemological aspect to some of them.