172 – Soul or Spirit?
I am down to the last ten questions at tentpegsquestion@yahoo.com and will switch gears for a time if more don’t come in soon. But don’t think you have to makeup new ones… or bizarre ones… to keep me busy! Here is one that we haven’t addressed before:
Is there a difference between ’soul’ and ’spirit’? If our soul goes to a place of waiting upon the moment of our death (either paradise, or torment), what will come out of the grave at the Lord’s return according to I Cor 15, I Th 4, Rev 20? Will this be the immortal body that joins with our soul awaiting final judgement? Is this immortal body our spirit, ie. spiritual body?
You ARE a soul. You HAVE a spirit. In the Bible, the word “soul” in Hebrew is “nephesh” and it refers to the whole person. It is YOU. It is your body, your intellect, your personality… that wonderful stew that is you. The word “spirit” is, in the Hebrew, “ruach” and always refers to the immaterial, supernatural, unfleshly part of a human being. In the New Testament, written in Greek, the words “soul” and “spirit” are “psyche” and “pneuma.” Maybe that makes it a bit plainer since we use the word “psyche” as the basis for any study of the way people think and act — psychology, psychiatry, etc.
The soul is what makes you… you. It is how you relate to others. The spirit relates to God. It is what is reborn when you come to God in faith (i.e. born again of water and spirit).
Even animals have souls in that they have personalities and are, every single one, unique. Maybe we can see their unique nature and maybe we can’t, but we know it is there because they are alive! Being alive requires more than a collection of veins and cells — it requires that something special that only comes from the hand of God. When anything is alive, it is called a soul.
(The founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and his heir didn’t grasp this and, therefore, made some horrendous, elementary errors about life, death, spirit, and resurrection)
As for resurrection, we don’t have all the answers. Paul tells us we will be transformed in the twinkling of an eye. Peter tells us that everything will slam to a halt and the earth and the elements will be dissolved. We are told that Jesus will bring the spirits of the faithful with him and that everyone will be resurrected. Putting it all together — and there is always danger is grabbing a verse here and a verse here and devising an orthodoxy, isn’t there? — the standard story is that our bodies will be resurrected and recreated. Our original atoms will not be hunted down and assembled, for our new bodies are transformed into bodies without errors, faults, or weaknesses (very similar to the body I now inhabit…. ok, maybe not). Those who already died — the orthodox story goes — will have those new bodies join their spirits in the air and “so shall we ever be with the Lord.”
Bits and pieces of this could be argued, no question. Will we who have died in Christ, and are, therefore, spirits, once again be spirits AND souls when we are rejoined to a new body? I have no idea. I confess that I don’t worry over much about such things. I doubt that Jesus will do anything with us after we die that would displease us. Do I need a body to do whatever is next in His plan for us? If so, I’ll have a pretty good one — and I’m rather excited about that possibility. If I don’t need a body to do what it is I will be doing in eternity, I’m sure I will appreciate being forever free from that whole “shampoo, rinse, repeat” cycle of body care.
April 24th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Check out the contrast in 1 Cor 15, Patrick. The contrast between the “natural man” and the “spiritual man” is literally a contrast between psuchikos (soulish, soul-driven) and pneumatikos (spiritual, spirit-driven). It is one of the most interesting passages for me.
April 24th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
There’s so much to learn here and you always make it fun! Thanks!
April 24th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
I agree that the body appearance really isn’t an issue to be concerned about. I am curious whether us jolly and round folk will continue to be round. I don’t question the jolly part since I already know we will have joy.
April 24th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
Being in the funeral business (death brokers) and very open about our being Christ-followers, I am often asked how a cremated body can ever be put back together again! People just don’t seem to be able to grasp the creative power of God. I ask them if they think people who died in the World Trade Center Towers have a chance of life after death / salvation. Of course they believe those people do … then the light comes on! Those bodies just ceased to exist! The ultimate form of cremation. I also tell them, having seen exhumed bodies that were buried for decades, the cremation process does in about 90 minutes what nature does in about 60-70 years. It all goes back to very fine dust-like material.
April 25th, 2009 at 12:22 am
The founders of Jehovah’s Witnesses would agree entirely with your third paragraph, but not the ones that follow. If you ARE a soul, how can you also be said to have a soul? In the view of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the soul makes you…you, because it IS you.
April 25th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
I believe C.S. Lewis said it best when he said, “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You HAVE a body.”
April 25th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
Gen 2:7 And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Mt:10:28: And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
Does this not make an argument that Soul and Spirit are one and the same?
April 25th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
Gen 3:19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou [art], and unto dust shalt thou return.
1Cor:15:35: But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?
36: Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die:
37: And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain:
38: But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.
I believe Gen. and Paul tells us the body that we sow will not be the body we receive at resurrection.
April 26th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
I tremble to speak, because I hold CS Lewis in such high esteem, but that line is one of a few where his thinking does not escape the Greco/Western reading of his training and tradition. The quote from Genesis 2:7 makes it pretty plain that it was not until flesh and God’s ‘ruach’ came together that a living soul existed.
Laymond, I agree with your second comment, but your first one is way off-base. You can’t clip two lines out of the huge body of Scriptures that refer to soul and spirit, paste them together, and make a conclusion like that.
Since Paul contrasts soul vs. spirit in 1 Cor 15, I am compelled to think they are different, at least in his mind.
April 26th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
I meant to say also, at the end of my first paragraph, that in 2 Cor 5:1-5, Paul makes an argument that a spirit-flesh unity is what we were made to be — death shatters that unity, and since God doesn’t want us to remain naked (bodiless), a new body is ready for those who are at present resting naked.
April 27th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Nick said, The quote from Genesis 2:7 makes it pretty plain that it was not until flesh and God’s ‘ruach’ came together that a living soul existed.”
Nick, please explain, how can you kill the body, without destroying the body, spirit relationship, which you call the soul.
Mt:10:28: And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
Nick, I take what you said to mean that a baby is not a living soul until the first breath is drawn.