20080525

Three in one: Humans


And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.


So there existed this man named Nee To-sheng, which in English is Watchman Nee. He lived in the twentieth century, and he died in prison on account of his faith in what Kurt Haley refers to as "that love."


Br'er Watchman taught (probably in some book like The Breaking of the Outer Man and the Release of the Spirit, but I'll need to check) that from this verse, which he thought pivotal to understanding some other passages in the Bible, we receive a trinitarian notion of what humans are. So the dust of the ground is Adam's body, his physical form, what John Sewell calls his earth suit. And the very breath of God is Adam's life-breath, his motive force, that marvelous synergy that distinguishes corpses from babies and belles and beaus. And the life of the man is in the relation of body and spirit, the "living being" of the passage above.

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