Lesson 29

Critical thinking and logic are the basic tools God gave humans to intellectually determine what is true. Reasoning out the problem with the three basic laws of logic will help us find true answers. The law of noncontradiction explains that if something is true, then the opposite is false. So if an animal is a dog, then the same animal can not be a pig. The law of excluded middle explains how opposite propositions can not both be true. If an animal is a dog, it can not also be a pig. There is no middle ground. The law of identity explains how each thing is identical to itself. An individual dog is identical only to that individual dog. When speaking about an animal species, a pig is only identical to a pig. Critical thinking helps us determine what thoughts and facts are relevant in our search for the truth. When searching for the truth of God, we are safest to stay within the words he has given to us in the Bible. When we begin to trust in what others believe to be true, rather than what God’s word has revealed as truth, it’s easy to become confused. Ancient Israel is a good example of this. The Jewish nation always followed their leaders into worshipping other gods. There were only a handful of citizens who would not allow themselves to be led into sin, choosing instead to stay true to God. For all their dedication in keeping the words of God accurate from one manuscript to the other, the Jews did not keep his truths. One truth most Jews abandoned was that of humanities mortality, rather than acknowledging that life after death can only be supplied by God. From the second temple on they joined along with most of mankind in believing man possessed an immortal soul. Happily following man instead of God, they freely admit their belief in the immortal soul is not found in the Bible but comes from their leading scholars and rabies who believed the philosophies of Plato. Using scholarly wisdom as truth, Jews have not changed much since the days of Isaiah. How can Christians demand their immortal soul beliefs originate in the Old Testament, when the Jews candidly admit those origins are not biblical? What do Christians know about the Old Testament that the Jews do not? Which laws of reason did you use to arrive at your answer?

Soul in the Bible. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The traditional concept of an immaterial and immortal soul distinct from the body was not found in Judaism before the Babylonian exile, but developed as a result of interaction with Persian and Hellenistic philosophies. Accordingly, the Hebrew word נֶ֫פֶשׁ‎, nephesh, although translated as “soul” in some older English Bibles, actually has a meaning closer to “living being”. Nephesh was rendered in the Septuagint as ψυχή (psūchê), the Greek word for soul. The New Testament also uses the word ψυχή, but with the Hebrew meaning and not the Greek.

Matthew 15:7-9 Revised Standard Version
7 You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: 8 This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; 9 in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.’”