In terms of my agenda on this Blog of arguing for a basic compatibility between the Theology and Metaphysics of Stoicism and The Bible, The World Soul is probably the biggest obstacle, at first glance no one sees anything like that in The Bible.
Well I’m going to start actually with 1st John Chapter 5. Even if you agree with Bible Sceptics that verse 7 wasn’t originally there, what’s said in verses 6 and 8 reads like the Spirit/Pneuma in The Earth is a Stoic World Soul, especially when we remember that the Stoic meaning of Pneuma was that word’s standard default meaning in the 1st and early 2nd Centuries, it wasn’t until Platonist Christianity starts to emerge in the mid 2nd Century that we start seeing the non Material definition of Pneuma develop.
But I do believe verse 7 was always there, and what it says being placed in the middle of this adds a heavy implication that the Pneuma in The Earth and the Holy Pneuma may be the same Pneuma.
Then we add Ecclesiastes 12:7 saying The Spirit returns to God as the Dust returns to the Earth resembles the Stoic view of what happens at physical death. (But remember what Christianity adds that Pagan Gentile Stoicism did not have was The Resurrection, which in my view makes this verse of Ecclesiastes not wrong but simply not the end.) Because I’ve already argued that The God of The Bible is Immanent within the Universe not outside of it like in Platonism.
Deuteronomy 32:22 tells us that God’s Fire burns in the Depths of The Earth, that’s what Sheol/Hades/Hell actually means in The Bible, the Heart of The Earth.
Combined with what I’ve already talked about on this Blog regarding the Divine Presence being like Fire and how that ties into the Stoic connection between Pneuma and Fire. And a World Soul concept is hinted at in The Bible.
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