Sorry to ruin the fun but I’m afraid this sale is impossible. Gwern lacks the proprietary rights to his own soul. As the apostle St Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians (chapter 6), “Or know you not, that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost, who is in you, whom you have from God; and you are not your own? For you are bought with a great price. Glorify and bear God in your body.” It clearly states that “you are not your own” which at least applies to baptized Christians (and as a confirmed Catholic, it may even apply to a higher degree). Unless gwern provides some scriptural basis for this sale, it cannot proceed. Even when Satan tempted Christ, the only proferred exchange was worship in return for temporal power. There are no cases (even hypothetical ones) of a direct sale of one’s soul in the Church’s Tradition.
In exchange for ruining this sale, I’ll pray for your soul for free.
This seems inapplicable to me; I haven’t agreed to sell my soul yet, and so far the bidding hasn’t been too active so it will hardly be for ‘a great price’.
I’d like to ruin gwern’s sale too, but my misspent youth as a philosophy major just came back to haunt me.
[EDIT: This paragraph is completely wrong; see below. The end of 1 Corin 6:19 does not say “you are not your own”; it literally says “and [it] is not your own” (= καὶ οὐκ ἐστε ἑαυτῶν) with an omitted subject. The only real possibility is the subject of the previous phrase, which you rendered as “your members.” (= τὸ σῶμα ὑμῶν) I find this problematic (and not “clearly stated”), because σῶμα means both the Church as a group (usually in the form, “the body of Christ”) and the physical body, as it does in e.g. Mat 10:28: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”]
Since in context 1 Corin 6:12-20 is about sexual immorality, I find the latter interpretation more compelling.
Regarding the Catholic tradition, time was when the Church claimed the authority to discharge sin from the soul in exchange for money.
Sorry to ruin the fun but I’m afraid this sale is impossible. Gwern lacks the proprietary rights to his own soul. As the apostle St Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians (chapter 6), “Or know you not, that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost, who is in you, whom you have from God; and you are not your own? For you are bought with a great price. Glorify and bear God in your body.” It clearly states that “you are not your own” which at least applies to baptized Christians (and as a confirmed Catholic, it may even apply to a higher degree). Unless gwern provides some scriptural basis for this sale, it cannot proceed. Even when Satan tempted Christ, the only proferred exchange was worship in return for temporal power. There are no cases (even hypothetical ones) of a direct sale of one’s soul in the Church’s Tradition.
In exchange for ruining this sale, I’ll pray for your soul for free.
That’s because Satan knows there’s no such thing as a soul, and he is disinclined to lie.
This seems inapplicable to me; I haven’t agreed to sell my soul yet, and so far the bidding hasn’t been too active so it will hardly be for ‘a great price’.
I believe the “great price” is referring to God sacrificing Jesus to redeem the souls of all humanity, including (presumably) you.
But I’m hardly a biblical scholar; see below, lol.
Sure, but presumably I still have control over the disposition of my soul, otherwise that’s basically a Calvinist theology, no?
I’d like to ruin gwern’s sale too, but my misspent youth as a philosophy major just came back to haunt me.
[EDIT: This paragraph is completely wrong; see below. The end of 1 Corin 6:19 does not say “you are not your own”; it literally says “and [it] is not your own” (= καὶ οὐκ ἐστε ἑαυτῶν) with an omitted subject. The only real possibility is the subject of the previous phrase, which you rendered as “your members.” (= τὸ σῶμα ὑμῶν) I find this problematic (and not “clearly stated”), because σῶμα means both the Church as a group (usually in the form, “the body of Christ”) and the physical body, as it does in e.g. Mat 10:28: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”]
Since in context 1 Corin 6:12-20 is about sexual immorality, I find the latter interpretation more compelling.
Regarding the Catholic tradition, time was when the Church claimed the authority to discharge sin from the soul in exchange for money.
You are wrong about this—here’s the inflection of the word: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%B5%E1%BC%B0%CE%BC%CE%AF#Ancient_Greek
“ἐστε” is second person plural (“you are”) NOT third person singular (“it is”).
Oh, blast. My biblical Greek is obviously too old. Retracting paragraph.