Soul

In everyday conversation the word soul can mean at least two things: (1) a precious human person (as in “Two hundred souls were lost in the plane crash”) and (2) the eternal or immortal part of a human being, an incorruptible core (as in “We commit the body to the grave knowing that she still lives in her soul”). We will see that the first is actually closer to biblical truth than the second (compare Acts 27:37 KJV). In the Bible soul and spirit are sometimes used interchangeably to speak of the interior of persons, especially in their longings for relationship with God. Add to this confusion one more word: the universal word heart as a metaphor for the motivating center of a person. This complex use of words reflects the contemporary confusion about what makes human beings “tick” and what constitutes a spiritual person. Gaining a biblical view of soul is important for several everyday matters: a healthy and holy sexuality, the nature of true spirituality, how we are to treat our bodies, why we have spiritual conflict and what happens at death. The Old and New Testaments use a wide range of terms to describe the way human beings are made, and these must now be considered.

Soul Words in the Old Testament

In the Old Testament the word spirit (ruah) literally means “wind,” “breath” or “moving air.” Spirit normally means the “person empowered by God” (compare Numbers 11:26). Most commonly it refers to God and humankind in dynamic relation (Wolff, p. 39) rather than something innate to human beings that motivates persons to search beyond themselves.

Heart (leb) refers to the physical center of the body, both to the beating organ (the physical heart) and, more generally, to the breast enclosed by the rib cage (2 Samuel 18:14). But heart is most commonly used metaphorically for the mental and spiritual center of the human person (“the secrets of the heart”; Psalm 44:21). Heart life is expressed in (1) feelings (“A happy heart makes the face cheerful”; Proverbs 15:13), (2) longings and desires (“You have granted him the desire of his heart”; Psalm 21:2), (3) thinking and reasoning (“Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom”; Psalm 90:12) and (4) decisions of the will (“In his heart a man plans his course”; Proverbs 16:9). As Hans Wolff notes, “The Israelite finds it difficult to distinguish linguistically between `perceiving’ and `choosing,’ between `hearing’ and `obeying,’ ” a difficulty that “comes from the factual impossibility of dividing theory and practice” (p. 51). Often the Old Testament uses heart where we would today commonly use spirit, that is, in passages that refer to relationship with God, where we would use brain as an organ of thinking and where we would use will for the power to make decisions.

Soul (nephesh) is a word complicated by its almost universal translation into the Greek psychē, from which we get English words like psychology. More often than not, however, soul in the Old Testament does not refer to the spiritual/emotional part of a person that can be disconnected from bodily life. Soul refers to the person as a longing person (Wolff, p. 10). After God breathed into Adam the breath of life, Adam “became a living being” (nephesh; Genesis 2:7). Sometimes nephesh is used for the throat through which the breath of life passes, showing that the word in Old Testament usage does not mean the spiritual part of a person but rather a person with all kinds of longings—sensual and more-than-sensual. So the soul is often frightened, despairing, weak, despondent, disquieted and even bitter. It can also be satisfied, happy and at rest with God and itself.

As the organ of vital needs, the soul must be satisfied for a person to go on living. Satan, in the duel with God, must spare Job’s nephesh, which simply means his life (Job 2:6). Life, for biblical persons, is total and cannot be segmented into two parts: a disposable shell (the body) and an indestructible spirit core (the soul). Thus the familiar psalm “Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name” (Psalm 103:1) could be simply and helpfully translated “Bless the Lord, O my life!”

It is impossible to have a fully biblical view of human personhood without taking this Old Testament perspective seriously. This is especially important because the church has historically been influenced by Greek philosophy in dividing the person into compartments. Biblically the soul is not a mere part of the person but an expression of the person as whole. Nephesh (soul), ruah (spirit) and leb (heart) refer to basic dimensions of our experience of life in relation to God (Pedersen, 1:102-6). This background is essential to the New Testament message about the dignity of human persons.

Soul Words in the New Testament

The New Testament assumed the Old and maintained the inspired view of the essential unity of the human person. Most significant of all, the New Testament hope is not for the immortality of the soul—an essentially Greek concept that involves disparaging the body as a useless encumbrance to the life of the spirit. Instead, the great hope in Christ after death is the resurrection of the body—full personal and expressive life in a new heaven and a new earth.

Tragically, much Christian theology has relegated the body to the domain of this world. The body then is something intrinsically sinful, a prison for the soul. At the same time it is assumed that faith concerns the spirit, which is not of this world. Viewed this way, salvation and spirituality are escapes from bodily life: this diminishes such ordinary things as eating, working and sleeping. The spiritual person is thus one who abandons sexual expression and lives the celibate life or spends his or her life in spiritual ministry. In contrast, the problem of humankind, according to the Bible, lies not in the body (sōma) but in the will. What we need is not to get rid of our bodies but to get a new heart (Ezekiel 11:19).

When we receive Christ, we get saved, not just our souls in the Greek sense. This is a two-stage process. First, our souls are substantially saved by being inseminated by God’s Spirit, thus giving us new bodily and personal life on earth. Second, after death and when Christ comes again, we are given a new and perfect embodiment through the resurrection of our entire selves, bodies included.

Our passions do not come from the physical body (perceived as the source of sin) while ideas and moral convictions come from the soul (perceived as the center and source of righteousness). The body is not the prison house of the soul and its seducer into sin (Harder, p. 682; Dunn, p. 692). The soul is the seat of life, as indicated in the words of Jesus, “For whoever wants to save his life [soul] will lose it, but whoever loses his life [soul] for me and for the gospel will save it” (Mark 8:35).

A related word in the New Testament is spirit. Here again there is harmony with Old Testament thought. Spirit is that capacity in human beings that relates them to a realm of reality beyond ordinary observation and human control (Dunn, p. 693). God encounters people immediately through the spirit (Romans 8:16; 2 Tim. 4:22). But it is, once again, a dimension of the whole person. So the popular debate as to whether human nature is two parts (soul-body) or three (spirit-soul-body), the latter based largely on one text (1 Thes. 5:23), is unhelpful, a recent major scholarly work on the subject notwithstanding (Cooper). “The human person is a `soul’ by virtue of being a `body’ made alive by the `breath’ (or Spirit) of God” (Colwell, p. 29). The spirit is not one compartment of the Christian person—one boxcar in a three-car train (spirit-soul-body) in which each car could be uncoupled. The spirit is simply one dimension of personhood in a totally integrated personhood that is expressed in bodily activity, emotional life and intellectual thought (soul).

Far from being three separate compartments, the human person is a psycho-pneuma-somatic unity. Touch a person’s body and you have touched the person—a crucial Christian contribution to the matter of sexuality. We never have sex with bodies but with souls, meaning persons! Touch the emotions and you touch persons. Touch the spirit and you have touched the whole person. In biblical anthropology we do not have a body or soul or spirit. We are a body, a soul, a spirit.

Soul and spirit are sometimes in Scripture used interchangeably to refer to the whole person seeking after God: “My soul thirsts . . . for the living God” (Psalm 42:2). But sometimes the word of God penetrates “even to dividing soul and spirit” (Hebrews 4:12). When such a distinction is made, soul is normally used for the expressiveness of human personhood in emotions and thoughts: “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” (Matthew 26:38). The spirit is most commonly that inmost mysterious self, a self known mainly to God, though sometimes known through spiritual self-consciousness (1 Cor. 2:11). It is characterized by our restless longing to know God for whom we were made. This distinction is further illustrated in 1 Cor. 15. With an obvious play on words, Paul says that life in this world is characterized by our experience of a “soulish” body—a body expressive of emotions and thoughts and influenced by our environment. The actual words used are sōma psychikcon (natural body). After the resurrection of the body when Christ comes again, we will be raised a spiritual (or Spirit-ual) body (sōma pneumatikon), a body that expresses perfectly life in the Spirit (1 Cor. 15:44). In the spiritual body we will perfectly conform to the image of Christ.

On Being a Soul Person

What does all this mean for everyday life? First, everyday spirituality looks toward a perfectly embodied soul life. The final end of the Christian life then is not a spirituality freed from body but a spiritual body; it is not an unencumbered angelic existence like that claimed by the superspiritual Corinthians but a fully embodied spirituality. The ultimate goal is not to be an immortal soul in heaven but a full-orbed person in the new heaven and new earth with all of its redeemed bodily existence: expressive worship, creative activity, meaningful work and emotional freedom—the threefold sabbath rest of God, humankind and creation.

Second, in view of our final end, everyday bodily life is hopeful. While in this life all healing is partial, we anticipate the final healing in the resurrection of the body. Work in this life is meaningful, not only because it is an expression of our ensouled body and glorifies God by making God’s world work, but also because it is, through faith, hope and love, a participation in the new heaven and the new earth. Sexual life is never merely physical but is a spiritual and “soulish” ministry within the marriage covenant anticipating the final day when all heaven is marriage (the wedding supper of the Lamb).

Third, ministry touches whole persons. Psychosomatic medicine has recognized the relationship of bodily and emotional health. But ministry to people must go a step further and become psycho-pneuma-somatic, recognizing the whole person in relation (or out of relation) to God. Above all this has implications for spiritual growth since Christian growth can never be an out-of-body holiness, an unemotional piety or anti-intellectual God-consciousness. Christian growth is growth as men and women—gender-related spiritual growth (see Femininity).

Fourth, being a soul person (and a whole person) means being relationally alive through love. We are most godlike in relationships. Persons are not the same as individuals. We are persons not in our individual life but in relationship to God and others. We were created male and female in the image of the triune God—built by love, in love and for love, called into existence by a personal God who is love within a triune community. So that which most links us with the living God—the soul—links us with our neighbor and with the Christian community.

Finally, Christian spirituality is not a human achievement (through disciplines and practices) but a response to the Spirit’s initiative. Soul and spirit, as we have seen, refer to ways that people can be alive to God. It is a great mistake to consider Christian spirituality as the cultivation of our inbuilt desire for transcendence. Christian spirituality is essentially Spirit-uality—God’s empowering presence calling human beings into dynamic relation and expressiveness. Many of the occasions in which spirit and spiritual are used in the New Testament should be capitalized, though few translations indicate this. Spiritual growth is Spirit-growth. Spiritual gifts are gifts of the Spirit. Spiritual life is walking in the Spirit. God makes us fully alive as bodily persons, fully alive together and fully alive forever.

» See also: Body

» See also: Faith Development

» See also: Individual

» See also: Sexuality

» See also: Spiritual Conflict

» See also: Spiritual Disciplines

» See also: Spiritual Growth

References and Resources

J. E. Colwell, “Anthropology,” in New Dictionary of Theology, ed. S. B. Ferguson and D. F. Wright (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1988) 28-30; J. W. Cooper, Body, Soul & Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989); J. Dunn, “Spirit/Holy Spirit,” in New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, ed. C. Brown (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979) 3:689-707; G. D. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1993); G. Harder, “Soul,” in New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, ed. C. Brown (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979) 3:676-86; J. Pedersen, Israel: Its Life and Culture, vols. 1-2 (Oxford: Geoffrey Cumberlege, 1964); H. W. Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament, trans. M. Kohl (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981).

—R. Paul Stevens