There is an ongoing debate about the relationship between body and soul. Two key point of views, or theories are at the forefront of this argument, one of Dualism, and the other of Psychophysical unity. The dualistic theory was the accepted by the Greek philosophers Plato and Socrates. This theory stated that the body and soul are two entirely different entities, while Psychophysical unity, a theory suggested by H. Wheeler Robinson, states that the soul and body are one, inseparable entity. In this chapter, the author seeks to shed light on these theories, and see which one prevails.
If you take a poll asking everyday Christians, “what is soul in relation to the body,” most will reply with a dualistic point of view saying that the soul and the body are two separate entities. To begin contradicting this theory, we run into a few problems. Christians have been taught this belief since they committed their lived to Christ. A theory that has been held onto for so long sinks hooks into those who believe. An example of this would be when Copernicus and Galileo said the earth was not the center of the universe. This statement had major backlash in both the religious and secular cultures since the view that the earth was the center of the universe had been held for so long. Thus the view was rejected at first, but soon became accepted as fact.
Across all religions, there is an agreement that people do have souls. The idea of the soul is not based in scripture. Instead, the idea of the soul came from Greek thought, then infiltrated and permeated Christian theology. The third century philosopher and father of theology, Origin, was the origin of this infiltration. He built Christian doctrine around the idea of the soul. Both Saint Augustine and John Calvin supported these in the years to come, solidifying the dualistic theory into Christian doctrine.
It is the duty of twelfth century bible scholars to unravel the tangled mess of biblical images of human nature from Greek philosophy. One big difference between the Hebrew and Greek is that Hebrew takes a monistic standpoint, saying the body and soul are one, while Greek takes a dualistic point of view, saying that the body and soul are two separate things. Although Greek is dualistic overall, there is no one concept accepted between Greek philosophers on the subject of body-soul relationship. In contrast to this, bible is not meant to be taken as overall scientific truth. Rather, we should look to it as a book about acts of God’s love.
What is soul in the Old Testament? In Hebrew, it is nephesh. This word is used over eight hundred times in the Old Testament. This word is said to be mistranslated whereas instead of soul it actually refers to the whole living being. The Hebrew view is that we do not have nephesh, we are nephesh, one that terminates at death.
The New testaments Greek parallel to Hebrews nephesh is psyche. In many cases, psyche does not literally mean “soul.” In Acts 7:14, if psyche was translated as soul, we would read, “And Joseph sent and summoned Jacob his father and all his kindred, seventy-five ‘souls’ in all.” Did Joseph really drag souls out of those he summoned? A solution to this is that a man does not have a soul, he is a soul.
In the New Testament, we do see a Hebrew-Christian understanding of psychophysical unity in regards to life after death. If you were to ask Christians today about life after death, most would answer that the soul leaves the body to join God in heaven for eternity. In reality, the New Testament does not teach this at all, rather it teaches about the embodied spirit. We do not pass away and our souls move on, we die. When Lazarus died, Jesus knew that the soul does not exist, and we do not move on immediately after death. He makes the statement that Lazarus had fallen asleep, but not that some spiritual body had transcended.
We have hope though. In the apostle’s creed, it says “I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” The key words are resurrection of the body, followed by the life everlasting. Death is not followed by extinction; rather it is followed by the renewal of life when Jesus calls us back, in which we retain our individual identities. This view of the restored mind and body unit supports other biblical statements about the psychophysical unit. We do not have a soul, rather we are the soul. The Bible tells us to care for our bodies as it is a temple for the Holy Spirit. In knowing this we should do all we can in every field to advance the care of our beings, where mind, body, and soul are recognized as one unit.
I thought it funny reading this chapter after I had ended my last summary on the question, “where does that leave the relationship for body and soul?” The psychophysical view has perked my interest to where I will begin studying it in more detail. It brings about excellent points to support its theory such as the mistranslation and usage of the words nephesh and psyche. A counterargument would be, if we are an embodied spirit, how do we explain out of body experiences? Perhaps these are just visions granted to us to understand what is happening from a different perspective. How do you explain 1 Thessalonians 5:23 which says, ‘And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” In the arguments presented, the word psyche should not be translated as soul, but in this case it would seem that soul id the intended translation of this. We could argue that this is no more than Greek philosophy influencing Paul as he wrote, but that would beg the question of how much of the bible is personal beliefs of the authors, or true God spoken word. In any case, I am not fully inclined to bear all my weight on the rod of psychophysical unity on the evidence provided in this small chapter, but I will study into it more to see how solid its structure is.
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