The March 16, 1999 television chat show, Larry King Live, featured five panelists: Robert Thurman, professor of Buddhism studies at Columbia University; Marianne Williamson, New Age author and spokesperson for the spiritist-channeled Course in Miracles; Rabbi David Aaron, expert on and proponent of Kabbalah, an occult/mystical/gnostic interpretation of Judaism; Deepak Chopra, charismatic spokesperson for a popular version of Hindu monistic thought; and Franklin Graham, head of Samaritans Purse, a Christian humanitarian organization, and son of Billy Graham, the renowned American evangelist.
What is the soul?
Though these five differed on many points, they seemed to reach a consensus in understanding “soul.” In fact, Deepak Chopra voiced agreement with Graham’s understanding of the soul. We have long heard Billy Graham say words like: “You have a soul and it will go to heaven or hell when you die.”
According to this idea, the soul is a mysterious, spiritual and immortal part of the human being that leaves the cold, dead body at death. Those on Larry King’s program who believed in some form of reincarnation were able to agree together about the soul though, from their own traditions, they might have used other symbols to express the same thing.
Due to a revival of Geek philosophy in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., Greek dualism infiltrated the Christian Church mainly through the work of Thomas Aquinas and his Summa Theologica, which became the fountainhead of Catholic theology throughout the Dark Ages. Greek dualistic thought posits the theory that the mind, spirit and soul are good, even divine, while on the other hand, the body, flesh and matter are bad, the repository of evil. So it was the soul that mattered, the soul that needed saving; the body was simply a temporary prison for the soul.
Soul and Self
Confusion concerning the nature of the soul has a powerful influence among the people of Mill Valley where I minister. Though the doctrine is not biblical, and is absent from the teaching of the early church, the idea that the soul is the focus of evangelistic efforts persists in many Christian traditions. Franklin Graham was concerned about the soul. He should have been concerned about the whole person; body, mind, soul, and spirit.
So many in my community believe in reincarnation that Graham’s doctrine on the soul would not be troublesome for them. The soul? Well, they say, it needs purifying and experiences endless lifetimes anyway. These people do not like to think that they will be resurrected to stand before the judgment of God. “My soul” is one thing; “myself” is another.
Total Resurrection
The biblical doctrine is one of bodily resurrection, not the floating away of an immortal soul. We are whole, integrated beings, though the Bible writers spoke variously of mind, heart, body, flesh, spirit and soul for the sake of emphasis. A person is all of these and more, a whole being responsible to God in the totality and indivisibility of his nature. What we are in total will be raised from the dead, either to eternal life or eternal death. We do not have immortality in and of ourselves. This truth is found in 1 Corinthians 15:53: “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality” (NKJV).
Soul confusion must be countered by the truth of the resurrection, even if it means parting from long-established ways of thinking and preaching. Let us not give the unconverted comfort by implying that they have only some ethereal soul to be concerned about.
Additional Commentary
Probably more Christians than not hold to the idea of a soul that is somehow inside the body and survives biological death. This is understandable, because the Church in the fourth century incorporated the idea into its theology, and it has remained ever since.
Flourishing in the fourth century was a revival of Greek philosophy, mainly dualism of the Neo-Platonic or Neo-Aristotelian varieties.1
1 Dualism, among other things, viewed the body as bad, even evil, while the mind, spirit, soul, were good and connected to the divine. The body then became the prison house of the soul, which supposedly pre-existed and entered human bodies, transmigrated or left them upon death. The Eastern concepts of karma and reincarnation are dependent upon this understanding of soul.Over a millennium later the reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin, both ministers (priests) in the Roman Catholic Church, retained their Church’s doctrine of the soul, despite expounding salvation by grace through faith alone. Only the more radical reformers, the Anabaptists, looked for their theological foundations further back in history before Augustine of Hippo (A.D. 354-430), the great Pauline theologian, who incorporated the construct of the separate existence of the soul in the human being. The famous Augustine, one of my heroes of the Church, nevertheless was steeped in Greek philosophy and blended the dualistic concept of the soul into his Christian views. Thomas Aquinas (A.D. 1225-1274), another great theologian, then included the Greek influenced doctrine of the soul in his Summa Theologica, minus the portion about the transmigration and pre-existence of the soul that was common to Greek philosophy.
The Christian Protestant denominations originating out of the Reformation inherited the concept of the soul. From Luther comes the Lutheran denominations; from John Calvin and John Knox come the Reformed and Presbyterian churches, followed by the Congregational churches, the Anglican Church, and by extension both American Episcopal and Methodist churches, plus all the offshoots from these denominations. Not all the Baptists, who followed the Anabaptists, rejected the Greek influenced soul view, but many did. Pentecostals and charismatics hold a variety of concepts about the soul.
Biblical passages having to do with the soul
We first encounter the word “soul” in Genesis 2:7: “Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” And the reader would be correct in protesting, where is the word “soul?” The version quoted is the English Standard Version (hereafter ESV) and has replaced “soul” with “creature.” And why? Because “creature” is a better rendering of the Hebrew nephesh than soul. The point is that God created a human being.
The King James Version (hereafter KJV) and older English versions of the Bible translate nephesh as “soul,” and so the term has stuck. Furthermore, soul has come to acquire something close to the idea of “ghost,” and not because of anything biblical. And in fact, in Job 11:20 and Jeremiah 15:9, the KJV translates the Hebrew nephesh with ghost.
In Deuteronomy 6:5 we find the greatest of the commandments: “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” The Hebrew word for soul here is from nephesh. The point of the commandment, however, means that we are to love God with all of us, and thus the bringing together of three words that were commonly used to describe different aspects or characteristics of all that is human – heart, soul, might.2
2 Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:5 and inserts the word “mind” along with heart, soul, and strength. See Mark 12:30 and Luke 10:27. Thus Jesus interprets the fulfilling of the greatest commandment to include the mind; thus love of God is conscious and thoughtful.
Many Christians, including editors of biblical texts, unreasonably retain how the KJV translated many words, due to the extreme, yet appropriate popularity of that version of the Bible; therefore, the word “soul” pops up frequently in the Old Testament. But it means creature, person, or living being, and it does not refer to something ethereal and separate from a body. It is better said that a human being is a soul. To say a human being has a soul is not a biblical construct. And those who disagree I advise to investigate the issue and not to simply rely on tradition.
There are literally dozens of passages in the Old Testament where it is clear that the English word soul really means person. For the purposes of this book, two examples will be given that are characteristic of the lot. The first is from Exodus 1:5, and the KJV is, “And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls: for Joseph was in Egypt already.” Two times the word “souls” appears, and in both cases the Hebrew word is nephesh. Now the same verse in the ESV: “All the descendants of Jacob were seventy persons; Joseph was already in Egypt” (Exodus 1:5). In one instance, nephesh is translated “descendants” and in the second “persons.” The ESV gives the most natural of the translations and is more accurately reflective of the Hebrew writer’s mindset.
The second example is from Psalm 6:3-4, and the KJV is, “My soul is also sore vexed: but thou, O LORD, how long? Return, O LORD, deliver my soul: oh save me for thy mercies’ sake.” In both cases soul is nephesh. The same verse in the ESV reads, “My soul also is greatly troubled. But you, O LORD–how long? Turn, O LORD, deliver me for the sake of your steadfast love.” Nephesh is the Hebrew word translated “soul” in “my soul” and “me” in “deliver me.” In the first instance the ESV translators have the emotional experience of the writer in mind – King David’s emotional state of mind to be exact – and so the term “soul” meets the literary requirement to better convey emotion. In the second instance “me” is more appropriate, as David is directly referring to his person. This second instance from the Psalms illustrates a wide range of translation possibilities, but “soul” speaks to us in a poetic manner.
The Greek translation of the Hebrew Scripture known as the Septuagint or LXX is a translation made by Jewish scholars in Alexandria Egypt in the early part of the second century before Christ. In it, psyche is used in place of nephesh in both passages, Exodus 1:5 and Psalm 6:3-4, and is consistently the case throughout the translation.
Turning our attention now to the English versions of the New Testament, we see that psyche is sometimes translated “soul.” With the exception of the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts, the New Testament was written by Jews who inherited the Jewish understanding of the soul. Jews did not believe, in complete distinction from the Greeks, that the soul was anything other than the whole person. Old and even new translations of the New Testament tend to pull toward the KJV and translate psyche as soul. Again, we are looking at tradition.
Let us consider a couple of examples. One is Matthew 2:20: “Saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for they are dead which sought the young child’s life” (KJV). “Life” is psyche, so the KJV used the proper word, thus revealing that the KJV translators knew the correct translation. The ESV also has “life” here. We will remember that psyche is the Greek equivalent for the Hebrew nephesh.
A second example is Matthew 10:39: “He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it” (KJV). “Life” in both places is psyche.
Mark 3:4 is helpful: “And he saith unto them, Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill?” Here “save life” uses psyche for life and is the antonym for “kill.” Obviously, Jesus has in mind a person and not a ghost, soul, or something else of an ethereal nature, which, according to some, could not be killed anyway.
And this is the problem with importing into the Judaeo/ Christian Scripture the concept of a soul that does not die or cannot be extinguished. The biblical worldview is resurrection. Jesus was resurrected; even He had no soul that survived the crucifixion. Furthermore, when Jesus cried out, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” (Luke 23:46), “spirit” in the sentence is from the Greek pneuma and can be translated spirit, breath, or wind. It was essentially an idiom, a statement that would have been well understood by those who heard Him and that meant simply, “Father, as I am now dying I trust in You” – a final confession of faith.
Let us close with 1 Corinthians 15:45. First the KJV: “The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.” Soul is psyche and spirit pneuma. The ESV translates it, “The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.” Adam was a person, not something without a body. Jesus is the last Adam, the one who brought life and not death.