Jesus We Talk About Soul With Wings
Dear Thomas,
In your sixteenth question, you ask about the soul. You state, “Where did the idea of each man having an immortal soul that has a life all its own come from?
There is nothing in the physical body that science can identify as the soul. Is the soul supposed to be a living thing within us or just a metaphor describing the essence or summation of a person?”
There is a variety of thought on this subject. Part of that variety may stem from man’s natural effort to describe the functions of his being. We each have unique physical features.
Traits such as eye color, skin pigment, size, weight, and age are visually recognizable features that are different for each person. But physical features don’t describe character, attitudes, memory, or all the other intrinsic elements that make up the total characteristics of each human being.
The human brain collects information and generates the activity of our thinking and movement. The functions of our mind include housing language, data, thoughts, feelings, and emotions; controlling our reactions and responses; and facilitating our power to choose or will.
It is our total consciousness, all made alive by breath within the physical body. The mind is the very essence of a person’s individuality and uniqueness.
May I repeat a few thoughts from previous discussions? All through my letters, I have described the soul as a person’s mind, emotions, and will. As stated in your question, I think you could call the soul a metaphor for the essence or summation of a person.
Our physical body gives movement and life to our thinking. The brain, the nervous system, and the body work together to allow movement and expression, turning thoughts into action.
At this level of description, man could be described as a two-part being, a physical being, and a mental being—that is, a body and a soul.
Yet there remains one more element that is unique to man, namely the ability to be connected to a divine Spirit. I think we could realistically describe man as body, soul, and spirit. In reality, I don t think man is divisible at all, except for the purpose of describing the functions of his being.
But our understanding of the physical nature of man, the role of the soul, and one’s spirit connectedness will ultimately influence and reflect on the understanding of the nature and character of God and even to the end of sin and sinners.
Therefore, the way we describe the nature of the soul as it is ascribed to man becomes very important. Does our use of the word soul refer to the whole person or to the activity of his or her mind, emotions, and will?
Do we refer to the soul as separate from the body and having an existence of its own? Might some call this separateness our spiritual essence in our former or future spirit life? In a word, the soul has taken on quite different meanings within different religious constructs.
Genesis 2:7 says, “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 being”—that is, a conscious, physical human being.
Older translations like the King James Version use the term living soul. In the traditional Hebrew concept of man, he was viewed as a conscious, living, physical person. Man did not exist in any form without a body, a brain, and breath.
Genesis 2 is clear about the creatureliness of man and states that man was created out of the dust of the earth or from elements that are all found on earth. Genesis 3:19 clearly states that man returns to the dust of the earth upon dying.
This is why Scripture speaks so emphatically about a bodily resurrection. Though we were made in God’s image, we were also created as physical creatures for this earthly environment.
At the resurrection, we will be remade as physical creatures. As far as Scripture is concerned, the word soul is used primarily in a metaphorical sense to represent the whole person.
Even today whenever a natural disaster strikes, we often speak of the number of souls that were lost, meaning physical, thinking, feeling human beings. Pastors often talk of mission trips that saw X number of souls saved, meaning physical, thinking, and feeling human beings who accepted the good news found in Jesus Christ.
Christianity is concerned with the whole man, his physical well-being, his mental state, and his spiritual condition. Christian thought gets into trouble when it divides man into separate parts that exist independently of the others.
Difficulties arise when man is viewed as three parts—one part being his physical body, another being his brain or mind, and another being his soul or his eternal, living essence that exists outside of his physical and mental properties.
History has shown the consequence when Christianity views the soul as a separate entity that goes to heaven and is thus concerned only with what happens to the soul.
In that mindset, it is acceptable to kill or torture the body and mind if it leads to saving the soul. Aspects of the Crusades come to mind here. Jesus, however, spent a lot of his time healing physical bodies.
How can we describe the uniqueness of an individual person? It is here that I think the meaning of the word soul shifts within the context of the way the word is used.
In order to describe the conscious uniqueness and essence of individual persons, their personalities, talents, and abilities, we use the word soul.
We sometimes use the term soul to denote something separate from a person’s physical being. Sometimes soul is used to describe a person’s relationship with God.
For example, Matthew 16:26 says, “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.”
I prefer to describe God’s relationship with us and our relationship with Him in the realm of the spiritual aspect of our being. A person may be either alive or dead in spirit, yet that does not necessarily describe a soul that is separable from the body.
Being alive in spirit or dead in spirit, however, will certainly affect the mind, emotions, and will as well as the way we treat our physical bodies.
Just as we do with many other things, we can describe our humanness in parts—arms and legs, flesh and blood, mind and body, and spirit as “Christ in you” and “you in Christ.” Each describes a function or aspect of the person, but it is not the whole person.
A person is not parts but the sun of the parts. The understanding of this singular whole in describing the nature of a person will certainly affect the belief of what happens to man in life as well as at death. My use of the word soul describes the mind, emotions, and will.
The words heart and soul can also be used as metaphors. Thus, my belief concerning what happens to a person at death is different from those who view the soul as an immortal element of a person’s being that leaves the body and thus has to go somewhere upon death.
A Christian person’s death can be thought of as falling into a temporary sleep in Christ. That is why 1 Corinthians 15:8, speaking of a time between Jesus’ resurrection and His ascension, says, “After that, he appeared to more than Five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.”
Luke 8:52-53, where Jesus was speaking of a girl who had died, makes a similar observation. “She is not dead but asleep. They laughed at him, knowing that she was dead.”
On another occasion Jesus, knowing that Lazarus was dead, said to His disciples, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to wake him up” (John 11:11; see also verses 12-14).
The apostle Paul also spoke of death as a form of sleep. In 1 Corinthians 11:30, he said, “And a number of you have fallen asleep.” In speaking of the bodily resurrection at the second coming of Christ, he said, “We will not all sleep” (1 Cor.15:51).
And in the Old Testament, Daniel 12:2 says, “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake.” Ecclesiastes 9:5 says, “For the living know that they will die, but the dead [those in a temporary state of sleep until the resurrection] know nothing.”
Christians who follow this thought of the nature of man also understand that when a person dies, he returns to the dust of the earth but in every facet remains in the memory of God, the Creator, and Sustainer ofall things, the “you in Christ.” As Colossians 3:3-4 says,
When Scripture speaks of the soul, it is talking about the essence of the person as a whole; acting, thinking, and relating through its physical form.
At the second coming of Christ and the resurrection, God will, as the apostle Paul states in 1 Corinthians 15:50-57, recreate us from perishable to imperishable, mortal to immortal.
Furthermore, Scripture describes Jesus as “the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal” (1 Tim. 6:15-16). The apostle Paul described the time of this transition event in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-15.
Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of the men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring [to heaven at the time of the resurrection at Jesus’ second coming] with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.
According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.
We do not have life in any form by right. Life is a gift, not an eternal birthright once we come into being. We look forward to the body, soul (mind, emotions, and will), and spirit resurrection much like Jesus’ resurrection with His glorified body.
We don’t come into being with a soul described as a disembodied spirit that by its very nature is immortal. There is no immortality to the body, the soul (mind, emotions, and will), or any other part of created man’s physical and mental properties.
Any life is only by and through the grace of God in Jesus Christ. “Jesus was firstborn from death among many brothers and sisters and the first fruits of those who sleep in death” (1 Cor. 15:20).
Christ is coming back to earth for the whole person—body, soul, and spirit. It will be the resurrection of the whole person in Christ Jesus.
I think it is an error to describe man as body, mind, and soul. That is describing a man in the Platonic sense, where the soul has life in and of itself but is confined to the body during its physical life.
An extension of this thought is that the soul is a part of man implanted in him by the Creator at the time of his physical conception.
Thus, man is a special creature made in the image and likeness of God, a creature who possesses an immortal soul though he has fallen into sin. At death, this soul is released from the body to ascend to God for judgment.
Most current Christian thinking goes something like this: If God is eternal and immortal and if we are created in the image of God, then there must be a part of us that is like God—that is, immortal.
Thus, the soul (in the platonic sense) would have to live beyond and separate from the body. It doesn’t require a body in order to have life, but it begins within a human body at the start of life.
At death, the souls (in the platonic sense) of the righteous are saved and go immediately to heaven to be with God, and the souls of the lost pass immediately and irreversibly to the confinements of eternal torment in hell.
This would be the immortality of the soul. Another explanation is the unconditional immortality of the soul (in the platonic sense), which says that lost souls wait in the torment of hell until the last judgment and destruction in the lake of fire. This view assumes that if the soul is the creation of God, then God can undo this creation as part of the end of sin and sinners.
Holding to the view of immortality versus conditional immortality of the soul creates many dilemmas for Christians. If the soul is immortal as mentioned, it has to go somewhere forever, for it can never be extinguished.
And if hell is eternal torment, then how do we square this understanding with a God who sustains all things and is absolute agape love personified?
Either the soul (in the platonic sense) as a separate entity within a person is mortal, or it is immortal. It either has an end or goes to eternal punishment.
Going back to the soul in the platonic sense, the Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and others believed in an element within man that was immortal.
This element was trapped within our physicality. At death, this soul was released and no longer suffered the confines and sufferings experienced within the earthbound mortal body.
This Hellenization of thought within the early Church gave rise to much of Christianity’s thoughts on the immortality of the soul that exists even to this day.
I can understand how the idea of the soul as a disembodied spirit has persisted. There have been many reports of out-of-body experiences down through the ages from near-death events or from drugs.
They often leave a lasting and vivid memory to those who experience them. From these experiences, it is assumed that conscious thought doesn’t need any physicality. Further, those thoughts seem to come with seeing, hearing, and even touching.
The brain is a marvelous and even mysterious aspect of our being. How and why dreams, hallucinations, and out-of-body experiences come about probably has more to do with brain chemistry than a person’s disembodied spirit. The capacity of the brain can do many things, which people have reported.
Some have the gift of clairvoyance or knowing of things not in sight. Others have experienced the gift of telepathy or communicating thoughts outside of sensory means.
Prior to the entrance of sin, humans probably had many abilities that were lost. Yet all these experiences come with the presence of one’s physical properties, which include one’s physical brain functions and body.
One’s out-of-body or near-death experience, just like dreams, may be complicated and involved yet may only take a few seconds of brain activity. Certainly, we have all had dreams where we see ourselves in an out-of-body fashion.
Out-of-body and near-death experiences may only take a second or so of brain function. It may be a little like one’s experience ofan alive and conscious impending potentially fatal accident where one’s sense of time gets elongated.
It makes more sense to me to attribute these experiences to a change in brain chemistry than any experience of actual thought consciousness beyond and outside our physicality.
There may be one other aspect to explain out-of-body or near-death experiences. Certainly, Scripture records times when God has given individuals visions of the future.
Might God give individuals a glimpse of future heaven as an aid to faith and hope for the promised reality after Jesus’ second coming and the resurrection?
There is one thing that seems to be clear in nearly all out-of-body or near-death experiences. Those receiving the vision see others either here on earth in their present mortal state or those departed and now in heaven as physical, breathing, thinking, relating, beautiful, youthful human beings in their glorified state.
I don’t think I have ever heard of anyone describing beings in heaven as disembodied spirits. Why God would use the timing of a person’s near¬ death experience to give such visions would be speculation on my part.
It may be as simple as the receptivity of society to give credence to the vision because of the number of reports of such near-death experiences and God’s way of adding aid to our faith and hope in the promise of all things someday created new.
As stated earlier, at the core of Christian understanding is the hope of resurrection and recreation with a new body, soul (mind, emotions, and will), and spirit, wherein we receive a glorified body that is immortal. This happens at Christ’s second coming, not at death in the form of a disembodied spirit. Let me echo the apostle Paul describing the event in 1 Thessalonians 4: 16-17.
Thus, the description of the nature of man and the soul really does have a bearing on our understanding of God’s rescue, Christ’s second coming, and the end of us or the eternal and immortal beginning of us.
It also is quite relevant to our understanding of what happens at death—or sleep, as it were—as we rest in Christ Jesus and await His second coming and the resurrection. Do we wake at the second coming of Jesus and receive new glorified bodies, or do our souls (in the platonic sense) come back with Christ to receive our glorified bodies at Jesus’ second coming? Scripture seems to validate the former.
Concerning His soon departure from earth, Jesus said to His disciples, “In my Father’s house there are many rooms [permanent dwelling places]; if it were not so, I would have told you.
I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back [His second coming] and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14:2—3). Note that Jesus did not say we, meaning “your souls and I,” are going to come back.
The apostle John said in 1 John 5:11-12, “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.” Furthermore, Jesus said,
In other words, believing in Jesus Christ and having an ongoing relationship with Him allows us to experience eternal life beginning even now in this life.
At the time of death, it will seem but a nanosecond before we are awakened and alive, seeing Jesus coming again as He said He would do.
There is no consciousness of time during this sleep death. Thus, there is effectively no death for those who are in Christ Jesus. We may sleep, but we won’t die.
It seems that Jesus’ ascension and His return to earth will be in a physical form just as the disciples saw Him go. It seems that we die in our physical forms and will be raised in physical forms as well.
The time from our dying to the time of our resurrection is like an unconscious sleep or rest in Jesus, who is eager to wake us up when He returns. It would be nice if we could ask Lazarus about his experience of coming back from the grave after he had been dead for four days (see John 11).
Did Lazarus as a spirit soul go directly to the bliss of heaven only to be called back to the pain and struggles of his earthly life? Or was Lazarus asleep in Christ and thus spent only a moment from unconsciousness to consciousness?
Many derive great comfort from believing that their loved ones are with Jesus the moment after they die rather than languishing in a long sleep death until Christ’s second coming and the resurrection.
I personally never understood how heaven would be a joyful place for our deceased loved ones if they were conscious of the continuing sorrow, pain, and suffering of those they left behind.
Personally would rather think of a departed loved one as sleeping in Christ for a split second before they are awakened to meet Jesus Christ at His second coming.
Understanding the soul as that part of my physical being that thinks (mind), emotes (emotion), and decides (will) gives me comfort when I ponder my own demise. I see no delight in being a disembodied spirit that continues to see the consequence of the pain and suffering of those I left behind.
At the end of mortal life, I look forward to an unconscious sleep death where I am hidden in Christ, waiting to be called back to an immortal, glorified life by the Jesus we talk about at His second coming. It makes me smile just to think about it.
Your friend,
Matt