The first time I heard about this I was pretty confused. Christians questioning the existence of our immortal souls? Is this some sort of heresy? Shouldn't the existence of our souls be a given with Christians?
However, as I've read and understood a bit more about the concepts being debated I've become a lot more sympathetic. There's some interesting stuff here. Today I'll lay out the argument. Next week I'll lay out why it matters... because it does.
The reemergence of soul questioning has been led by Dr. Nancey Murphy (widow of renowned Baptist theologian, James McClendon. Both McClendon and Murphy were profs at Fuller Theological Seminary. She still is). You can read all about it in Murphey's 2006 book, "Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? (Current Issues in Theology)". I don't know her complete stance but I've read snippets of this book, a few interviews with her, and an article or two by other authors who support her views.
These people who say that we don't have a "soul" are actually trying to correct (what they perceive to be) a corruption that exists within Biblical Theology.
The gist of it is this: modern Christians have unintentionally bought into Greek dualism. The ancient Greek philosophers (especially Plato) advocated the view that the physical and the
spiritual are separate. Once the physical life ends our separate, spiritual essence, the PSYCHE (Greek word for "soul") carries on into the shadowy afterlife. A version of this mode of thought was quite common during the time of the early church: the heresy of gnosticism.Anyway, much, much later the thinkers of the Enlightenment, like Descartes, picked up on these Greek ideas and they became inextricable interwoven into the worldview of Modernism. Thus, the vast majority of the Western world has this vague notion that we are spiritual beings but don't really know what that means. Christians, in their attempts to reach this Modern worldview have latched onto this concept and said that, yes, we do have a spiritual aspect to who we are: we all have "souls." And when we die we get to go to heaven (whatever that is)!
Sounds a bit like Greek dualism, doesn't it?
According to Murphy and her camp, this is not what the Bible teaches. The problem is that when we read the New Testament and we see the Greek word, PSYCHE, translated as "soul" we automatically think about the Greek perspective on PSYCHE: dualism. However, the tricky thing about reading (especially the Gospels) the NT is that, while it is written in Greek, most of the worldview that we're dealing with is actually Hebrew.
Greek language. Hebrew culture.
The Hebrew word for "soul" is NEPHESH. The basic meaning of NEPHESH is "breath." In the Bible both animals (Gen 1:30) and humans (2:7) have NEPHESH. In fact, according to Mounces Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, the Hebrew understanding of NEPHESH "... encompasses the entire person, body and soul. It is not that a person has a soul; rather, a human being is a soul... NEPHESH is so closely identified with the whole person that is can even mean a corpse..."
This is a pretty different concept of "soul" than most of us are used to.
So, the argument is that humans are one integrous being. There is no such thing as a disembodied "soul" that goes somewhere when we die. The physical and the spiritual aspects of God's creation cannot be separated.
I'm still working through this one, so let's do it together:
What do you think?
Is this pretty out there or is there something to it?
What scriptures come to mind?
What issues are tied together with this?
10 comments:
In 1 Cor. 15:44 it talks about the natural body and the spiritual body. This leads me to believe that there are two different forms in one. Also, when Paul is talking in Rom. 7:14-25 about the struggle of the sinful nature in the body he says, "Who will rescue me from this body of death?" It seems like his mind is fighting with his sinful body and it just seems like there are two different parts of a person. Obviously it's doesn't directly say in either of those passages, but it seems as though the earthly body, or physical body, is separate from our spiritual being. That's what I've always thought from passages such as those, but that's why you're blog is here... to enlighten us all. :)
But that's not to say that I believe when I die my spirit will float away from my body and drift off to pie heaven. But if our "spirit" (for the sake of argument) is really not separate but a part of our body, than are we destroying people's chances of rising with Christ in the last days when we cremate them? Because we're destroying their body and therefore destroying them entirely.
Ahhhh. Why?! Do you have to make our brains hurt? I'm looking forward to next week on "why it matters" because right now all I need to believe is that I will be with Jesus one day.
This is pretty much what you said regarding your dictionary findings, I wrote it after reading only half the post, so it's a bit of the same... basically I'm saying that I agree with your paragraph on humans being one integrous being:
I've read that it's very important to understand that whenever Paul talks about soul, body, spirit, etc. he's actually talking about one complete being simply seen from one particular angle of emphasis.
Like looking at one diamond, but focusing on one side at a time.
It's a commonly used Jewish rhetorical device, apparently.
So he's not speaking from a dualist view of a soul that is of an entirely different substance than your body, mind, or spirit.
And with passages like 1 Cor 15 it's tricky because there's some stuff that gets lost in translation... the Greek actually is saying that there's a body that's 'animated' by the spiritual, and on that's 'animated' by the physical. But they're both still bodies. So it's not a real, physical body and then a floating, spiritual soul. It's two actual beings, fueled by different things.
---Mike
Oh, and Tim, I read the first chapter of "the Book of Three" but my sickly brain is to muddled to understand it well enough. The first chapter certainly was interesting though.
I don't think that I find either of these scriptures very problematic.
We need to remember that in the 1Cor15 passage Paul's discussion is about the ressurection of the dead. Paul is saying that our current body/'integrous being' is perishable but that our raised body/'integrous being' will be imperishable.
Both are 'real', 'physical' bodies but "it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual" (1Cor15:46). So, now we live in our "natural" bodies, then we will be raised in our "spiritual" bodies.
I agree with Mike; both are normal 'real' bodies, it's just that when we are raised we will be transformed into the likeness of Christ's ressurection body (1Cor15:49). This is why Christ is called the "FIRSTBORN OF THE DEAD" by both Paul(Col 1:18)and John(Rev1:5).
Keep it coming!! :)
Here's an expansion on the term NEPHESH from 'Vine's Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words.'
"...The real difficulty of the term is seen in the inability of almost all English translations to find a consistent equivalent or even a small group of high-frequency equivalents for the term. The kjv alone uses over 28 different English terms for this one Hebrew word. The problem with the English term "soul" is that no actual equivalent of the term or the idea behind it is represented in the Hebrew language. The Hebrew system of thought does not include the combination or opposition of the terms "body" and "soul," which are really Greek and Latin in origin..."
Hey, did you ever see the Simpson's episode when Bart sold his soul? Then he had a dream about heaven (I think) and everyone was playing and doing things with their soul but Bart was all alone. I think we shouldn't sell our soul's. You know, just in case we need them later. If they exist.
Tim S.
Does "selling our souls" have particular relevance to the discussion or is it mere joviality?
My particular point of interest is in which context the word for "soul" is used in. How do the biblical authors with a Greek worldview and Hebrew language use NEPHESH?
Ultimately this will not affect my salvation and will not shake my belief systems but on the same hand I NEED to know more!
Can next week's post come quicker please!?
P.S - I blogged finally...
This is excellent! I have been brooding on this topic for weeks, but I will try to restrain myself with my comments...
The separation of mind and body is so completely essential to the Western viewpoint that I think we take it for granted. Cartesian Dualism (the dualism of Descartes, that is) dictates the way we do science, medicine etc...
But this division of body and soul is simply not present in the OT.
At this point it begins to be a little difficult to see the Bible as one homogenous whole. It seems that the Israelites of the OT saw no division between body and soul and in the NT, there clearly is such a division. Also as Tim has pointed out, the whole thing seems to have started with Greek philosophy which were the prevalent ideas at the time of the writing of the NT.
So all this begs the question, how did the cultural ideas of the time of writing have an effect on the bible? If the division of body-soul was not believed in the OT and was in the NT, then what are we supposed to believe?
This all becomes increasingly problematic as we begin to look at the historical background for other parts of the Bible and what seem like changes in theology but can be traced to the culture of the time. It all gets very tricky...
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