The complex assemblages of spiritual particles interacting and forming larger assemblies gives us a clue as to the possible understanding of the world of spiritual phenomenon.
The spiritual nature of the individual elementary particles is never lost, only combined and amalgamated into larger units. Each complex unit has its own spiritual property and nature that arises due to the particular conformation of its subsets.
The Negative DP and Positive DP each have a unique spirit type. They form together to create larger particles whether they be electron or positron masses, quarks, subatomic zoo particles, atoms, or molecules.
The Negative DP and Positive DP have a spiritual nature, and thus any particle combination they form will have a spiritual nature, and that nature will be unique depending on the particular configuration of its spiritual components.
Given the variety of combinations of DP-DP organization, we see the possibility of innumerable unique composite spirits forming as these elemental spirits amalgamate to form their larger composite body.
For example: the proton and neutron are assemblies of quarks (or electron and positron masses) all of which are composed of DPs, and all of which are spirits. The specific balanced spatial and temporal relationship between these DPs create the variety and uniqueness of the macro-collection of these elemental spirits. Thus, the proton and neutron are new composite spiritual entities which when viewed as an aggregate entity has its own identity, somewhat like a personality, set of habits, or character that can be characterized by the set of rules it follows.
But the rules that the proton and neutron obey are not the primary rules which God ordained for particles, or that particle. Rather, the rules of the composite-entities are the natural consequence of the primary rules of Conscious Particle interaction.
Thus, the rules of behavior for larger particles result from the complex summations of the more elementary effects acting at deeper levels of structure. A composite spirit has a place in creating the larger reality, a commonly occurring, and stable particle has a much larger place in shaping the ultimate manifestation of daily reality. In effect, the assemblages identified, and the rules they follow, are shorthand ways of describing the rules of nature. Thus, because of the wide variety of particles, and their methods of interaction, physics can appear to be very complex. But in fact, the reality underlying these complex interactions all reduces to the rules of interaction followed by the DPs.
Thus we shall call these spiritual assemblages of DPs a Composite Spirit. This in turn helps explain our sense of nature-spirits, and gives understanding for the powerful human drive throughout history to erect idols and totems in worship of the various animals and forces of nature. Even in modern culture we may use vernacular of spirit to describe the spirit of nations, cities, places, objects, and animals.
The human frame has the same underlying particulate spiritual structure as does any animal, plant, or mineral, and as a result has a nature that reflects his structure, both in terms of function and soul nature.
But, humans appear to be more than just the sum of the spirits that compose the material frame. The Bible informs us that man was created in the likeness of God. I believe that this refers to our spirit, the capabilities we have for love, discrimination between right and wrong, the capacity to feel the full spectrum of emotions, and the ability to learn, create, and related. A great portion of our nature may be automatically given to us by our genetic animal heritage. But, in addition to the animal nature, there is a divine spirit that also inhabits the human frame. We shall call the portion of the psychic anatomy which arises from the structure of the body, the soul.
It appears that every man has a war raging inside between the pull to pander to his animal passions and the spirit that calls him to Godliness. Some resolve the struggle by declaring that there is no God, that the words of the Bible were ancient myths passed on by men, and hence their guilt is an irrational emotional response brought about by rigid closed minded obsolete culturation. Thus, a common method to deal with the guilt is to find a religion, social philosophy, or intellectual rationalization that allows one to continue to please the flesh, and thereby attempt to negate the conscience that haunts the man who has fallen afoul of God’s direction.
The possession of a spirit at the center of our being gives us the capacity for self-awareness. The implication of having a spirit and a soul is that we can identify with either perspective. From the viewpoint of the spirit, we can stand outside our circumstance and watch the passions of our soul and have the freedom to choose how to act, speak, and think, rather than reflexively responding to our circumstance.
The body-soul complex appears to have the ability to perceive and compute, and influence our actions by generating powerful primal passions. And we hypothesize that these abilities have arisen as a natural consequence of the particular configuration of spirit-particle assembly that composes every atom of our cells, tissues, organs, and systems.
Such a thesis does not argue for an evolution-based creation. Rather, we see in the very structure of every living thing a creation so complex and subtle that God’s handiwork alone can explain the generation of bodies and souls of immense capability. Thus, on every level of body soul, and spirit, we have need of a creator, a divine planner to organize the pattern and substance of each life form to execute its purposes. Likewise, each body-soul-spirit complex must contain within its being, the pattern of its own essence in order to reproduce and diversify. Such a miraculous assembly of spiritual pieces speaks well of a creator who has either given the creation sufficient intelligence to self-assemble; or His craftsmanship in directing the design and initial assembly of the individual species-units of life.
But if the Bible is correct, we also possess not only a body-soul that arises somewhat naturally from the ground substance of the particulate-spirits that compose the body; we also possess a God-given spirit that inhabits and can supercede the passions of the body-soul.
And, while the details and divisions of this spiritual anatomy are not well delineated, we are given some direction in how we should approach life by knowing that this distinction exists. The spirit, being naïve to the ways of the flesh, could be pulled along by the body-soul and its strong self preserving passions. But, when the spirit is introduced to the concepts of Godly regulation of the body-soul, a division becomes apparent. Something inside us knows that life consists of more than simply satisfying the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, and the pride of life. Upon hearing the words of life, we are challenged to divine truth and error in each and every circumstance of our life. Such is the new birth, when we commit our spirit to following the Lordship of Jesus Christ. In that day we have begun the long process of dividing soul and spirit, and taking charge of forces that direct our destiny.
Little by little, circumstance after circumstance, we are called to examine every aspect of our psyche, and to reign in and sanctify our every passion, and bring them each into alignment with His way of relationship.
Again, the implication of the conscious particle theory is that the summation of the particles comprising our physical frame has within it the capacity to generate thoughts, desires, and emotions; the totality of which is the body-soul. These particle phenomena, and their underlying essence, are spiritual in nature. In some miraculous way their assembly provides the psychic force that produces the various forms of lust; these passions then drive men to satisfy the desires of the body. Thus, as humans with a body-soul, and a divine spirit, we must discern the lust of the flesh from the Way of God, and choose the higher path. Such is the challenge of humanity, to choose to moderate the survival-oriented pulls of natural forces with the righteous patterns of Godly judgement and conduct.
Such an expectation is unique among all life and matter. God has not given any other entity the awareness of flesh and Godliness, and given the opportunity to choose to follow this higher standard. But, the human body-soul is similar to all other life forms in that the structure of the animal frame provides the capability for perception, self-awareness, control systems for action and reaction, internal vision, memory, thought, desire, and emotion.
The level of awareness, emotion, and processing of the human is on a much higher than the rest of the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. Still, humanity resides on the life-gradient of functional capability. Man is merely at the apex of the spectrum of awareness and action capacity. This gradient has manifested via the mechanism of the increasingly complex nervous systems. We see the ascent of life-complexity rising from the simplest plants, invertebrates, reptiles, mammals, and man. The nervous system is the quintessential determinant of life-complexity as it provides the physical level metaphor for direct spiritual perception, and the medium by which the spirit can actually perceive.
The soul is the composite assembly of particulate spirits that comprise the systems, organs, tissues, cells, organelles, metabolic biochemical machinery and neuro-hormonal sensory and control function. The soul is the composite of the spiritual matrix which forms automatically as a result of the physical conformation. The Human Spirit is divinely created, and overlies the soul and the dynamic interaction and conflict between spirit and soul generates the challenge for growth of character.
We are each named, known and loved by God as His children. He desires relationship, and right though, speech, and action opens up the pathway to intimacy with Him. Likewise, error, disobedience, and rebellion break our fellowship with God and we lose resonance with Him and His Way.
God is a God of justice, perfection, and lawful purity. As humans, we do not have the capability for such perfection; in fact, fallibility, wrong judgment, misperception, prideful disobedience, and lustful self-satisfaction are built into our very body-soul nature. Thus, to restore relationship with God, we must handle the debt of violation incurred by our failed adherence to His way.
But, God’s punishment for even the slightest violation of His Law is death. The Old Testament clearly elaborates the fundamental nature of His creation as being a lawful cause and effect world. Nature itself speaks to this survival of the fittest, “compete and win or die” pressure placed on every aspect of the creation.
But, after having established the platform of nature and the physical universe, God brought in a new dispensation, an era where man could be redeemed by grace. The lawful nature of the universe required death for error and disobedience. It is as though error and disobedience are currencies that generate automatically with their commission, and then remain alive as spiritual entities forever until the condition for their dissolution is met. As such, God met the requirement needed for paying the spiritual debt incurred by our disobedience by incarnating as a human, living a perfect life, enduring all the types of challenges and temptations encountered by man, and then being tortured and executed unjustly. It was this perfect sacrifice, which was the acceptable condition for the substitutionary satisfaction of the debt we incurred by our errors, and thus allowed restoration of fellowship.
The debt has been paid in principle, but it is not paid in actuality until we choose to accept that free gift. The gift of being saved from the separation from life and fellowship with God is always available, but it requires accepting the gift. Thus, we are confronted with the question of how to appropriate this propitiation for our sins. In a word, we must submit to the Lordship of the Holy Spirit in governing our lives. It is He that is the counselor and comforter of our souls, the Spirit sent to us from Jesus when He died and returned to heaven. It is by submitting to that spirit that our Spirit becomes alive. In the constant confession of our errors, we remain free of the burden caused by sin. By always listening to the voice of Him who urges us to walk in the way of perfection, we give life and reality to our words of commitment to that Lordship of Jesus in our life.
Biblical text informs us of God’s intent for Christ to die for us from the beginning of the creation in the scripture that declares He was, “The lamb slain before the foundation of the earth.” This piece of data implies that the fall of man was known, and a plan was already put in place for redeeming man from that fall.
The emergence of evil: God is the author of the entirety of the creation. His intent was that the creation manifests the joy of relationship that comes from following His perfect way. But since man was given free will, and chose to violate God’s way, man began to behave in ways that manifested a spirit other than the spirit of God. Just as the plant and animal souls manifested from the assembly of the smaller spiritual elements, so does the spirit of evil arise. Note the word “evil” is the opposite of the word “live”. Coincidence possibly, but it illustrates the nature of evil, it produces death, the opposite of life. The inevitable penalty for violating God’s law is death, and the patterns of behavior that fall outside of God’s way are the patterns of death.
Question, “How did the sacrifice of the perfect spotless lamb atone for the death we deserve by virtue of our evil acts?” The answer is that death is a pattern that has its origin and birth in violation. Violation by its very nature is death and produces death. Essentially death is a warrant looking for a victim to satisfy its claim. Death and violation are patterns of energy, patterns of potential action that seek to satisfy themselves by completing themselves in the actual act of extinguishing life. But, if death were to consume the life of one undeserving of death, that spirit of death would be swallowed up in life. Such is the case with men who have given themselves to violation, and repent, and call upon the sacrificial death of Christ to be applied to satisfy the hunger of the evil that seeks their death. In such cases the sinner can walk away, free from the torment of the spirit that seeks to take his life.
Question, “How can the sacrifice of one man be applied to all men, through all ages?” The answer is that the spirit of God’s sacrifice is an eternal living spirit. There is no limit to the amount of violation that can be extinguished by this spirit. Once this spirit existed, it exists eternally. The spirit of death, which is the right to exact the punishment of death from the sinner, lives only until the debt is satisfied. But, the debt of a punishment undeserved can never be extinguished. No amount of attribution of the spirit of the slain lamb can diminish its existence or life force – once created it cannot die.
Question: “How can a person lay claim to this life-saving promise?” The key to appropriating this free gift is the acknowledgment of error (confession), and the commitment of one’s heart to right action (repentance). The essence and embodiment of perfection is the person and spirit of Jesus Christ. It is to this standard, this spirit of perfect Godliness that we seek to embody in our own lives. Such a bowing of one’s heart to righteousness is in the family of bowing to the Lordship of Jesus. It is only a short step at that point to fully embrace the person, history, purpose, and way of Jesus as our Lord.
Question: “At what point are we saved, and go to Heaven, and avoid burning forever in the fires of Hell?” The answer to this question will probably have to be answered by God. It is clear from scripture that Jesus said, “I am the way the truth, and the light, and no man cometh unto the father but by me.” Thus, in some way we must acknowledge Jesus as our Lord. God has no doubt made provision for those who have literally never heard of the person of Jesus and his sacrificial substitutionary death on our behalf. Nevertheless, for those who have been graced with the good fortune to be able to learn of Jesus, His ways, His teachings, and in some way develop a heart connection that re-enlivens his spirit, this is a blessing. Such a full experience of Jesus as Lord and brother, and savior, and counselor, and Almighty God, and companion and guide, allows who forms this spirit in his heart to be guided in straight paths, and be strongly comforted and supported in what is right. Heaven begins on earth for the man whose God is the Lord.
Question: “Is there scriptural evidence for the spirit of man existing prior to our birth?” Refer to the Bible text that says, “He knew us before we were in our mother’s womb.” This scripture provides us with another piece of evidence that our Spirit is divinely implanted by God – not the natural effect of genetic or material processes. Thus we are ever more convinced of the distinction between spirit and the body-soul. The spirit being the divine gift, the sovereign placement of a transcendent spirit. The body-soul being the more time-bound aspect of our being which has arisen naturally and unavoidably as a result of the conformation of the particles associated with our genetic framework.