The human tendency is to look at life within the confined space of this world and there is nothing wrong in it as we are born and brought up within this material world. We start with the material kind of life nourishing our body and should end with the spiritual life that helps the soul to shine forth. St. Paul says the same in 1 Corinthians, 15: 46 and the whole chapter is about the resurrection of Jesus and our own resurrection and different kinds of bodies including the "spiritual bodies". The main difference between the physical and the spiritual is that while the former is temporal and temporary, the latter is eternal and never-ending. The physical and the material, represented by the body, does not have life in itself and is not suitable for eternal life by itself. The spiritual and the immaterial is fit for holding life in itself that is also eternal and can communicate the same to the body turning it into a "spiritual body".
The things go wrong the moment we adhere to this world and its attractions in such a way that we are enslaved by them. There is no harm in using the world and the material things in it in order to grow physically strong that should be but a prelude to help explore our soul's life in its fullness. Normally, there is no separation between the two till death and yet for spiritual growth we have to be conscious of the two with opposite natures for managing harmony and real growth. Jesus exhorted us to leave everything behind starting with our self in order to follow him (See Mark, 8: 34). Leaving everything behind is incompatible with our deadly attachment to the things and persons of this world and is made possible with our detachment from them even as we live among them and interact with them. Jesus also advised us to store our treasure in heaven since our heart is where our treasure is (See Matthew, 6: 20-21).
From the use of language by both Jesus and Paul, it is clear that our ordinary everyday language is good enough to explain divine mysteries to ordinary people. For, sophisticated people will try to thwart the simple explanations offered through ordinary language by their sophistries gained from various kinds of philosophies. However, they are on the way to meet disaster as their sophistries cannot stand without the solid support of ordinary language. Even the scientific language ultimately has to depend on the ordinary language for a sure footing for the highly developed special language used in their investigations. Therefore, the validity of the ordinary language,if used to express highly placed matters of divine life, cannot be questioned by empirical sciences. The final reason for the same is that both scientific and religious languages are independent of each other where one may not impose its own views on the other. In Wittgenstein's thinking, they belong to different "language-games" independent of each other and therefore the one cannot be questioned by the other in the matter of meaningful use of language.
The independence of language-games from each other may be compared with the games we usually play, say cricket and football. Because their rules are different no one will say that either of them is not a game nor will they be judged for correctness and acceptability by means of the rules of any one of them on the other. Similarly, religious and scientific languages belong to two different language-games with different rules of their particular languages learnt from the communities they belong to. Agreements in their communications arise from conventions and social customs learnt from the kind of life they have been living through. This being the case, both Jesus and Paul as well as others after them, formed communities of disciples and believers to whom they could communicate divine mysteries meaningfully. In this context we should be able to see how the new life is eternal life.
The things go wrong the moment we adhere to this world and its attractions in such a way that we are enslaved by them. There is no harm in using the world and the material things in it in order to grow physically strong that should be but a prelude to help explore our soul's life in its fullness. Normally, there is no separation between the two till death and yet for spiritual growth we have to be conscious of the two with opposite natures for managing harmony and real growth. Jesus exhorted us to leave everything behind starting with our self in order to follow him (See Mark, 8: 34). Leaving everything behind is incompatible with our deadly attachment to the things and persons of this world and is made possible with our detachment from them even as we live among them and interact with them. Jesus also advised us to store our treasure in heaven since our heart is where our treasure is (See Matthew, 6: 20-21).
From the use of language by both Jesus and Paul, it is clear that our ordinary everyday language is good enough to explain divine mysteries to ordinary people. For, sophisticated people will try to thwart the simple explanations offered through ordinary language by their sophistries gained from various kinds of philosophies. However, they are on the way to meet disaster as their sophistries cannot stand without the solid support of ordinary language. Even the scientific language ultimately has to depend on the ordinary language for a sure footing for the highly developed special language used in their investigations. Therefore, the validity of the ordinary language,if used to express highly placed matters of divine life, cannot be questioned by empirical sciences. The final reason for the same is that both scientific and religious languages are independent of each other where one may not impose its own views on the other. In Wittgenstein's thinking, they belong to different "language-games" independent of each other and therefore the one cannot be questioned by the other in the matter of meaningful use of language.
The independence of language-games from each other may be compared with the games we usually play, say cricket and football. Because their rules are different no one will say that either of them is not a game nor will they be judged for correctness and acceptability by means of the rules of any one of them on the other. Similarly, religious and scientific languages belong to two different language-games with different rules of their particular languages learnt from the communities they belong to. Agreements in their communications arise from conventions and social customs learnt from the kind of life they have been living through. This being the case, both Jesus and Paul as well as others after them, formed communities of disciples and believers to whom they could communicate divine mysteries meaningfully. In this context we should be able to see how the new life is eternal life.
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