Soul
SOUL
The ancients supposed the soul, or rather the animating principle of life, to reside in the breath, that it departed from the body with the breath. Hence the Hebrew and Greek words which, when they refer to man, in our Bibles are translated “soul,” are usually rendered “life” or “breath” when they refer to animals, Gen 2:7 7:15 Nu 16:22 Job 12:10 34:14,15 Psa 104:29 Ecc 12:7 Mal 17:25 .But together with this principle of life, which is common to men and brutes, and which in brutes perishes with the body, there is in man a spiritual, reasonable, and immortal soul, the seat of our thoughts, affections, and reasonings, which distinguishes us from the brute creation, and in which chiefly consists our resemblance to God, Gen 1:26 . This must be spiritual, because it thinks; it must be immortal, because it is spiritual. Scripture ascribes to man alone understanding, conscience, the knowledge of God, wisdom, immortality, and the hope of future everlasting happiness. It threatens men only with punishment in another life, and with the pains of hell. In some places the Bible seems to distinguish soul from spirit, 1Th 5:23 Heb 4:12 : the organ of our sensations, appetites, and passions, allied to the body, form the nobler portion of our nature which most allies man to God. Yet we are to conceive of them as one indivisible and spiritual being, called also the mind and the heart, spoken of variously as living, feeling, understanding, reasoning, willing, etc. Its usual designation is the soul.The immortality of the soul is a fundamental doctrine of revealed religion. The ancient patriarchs lived and died persuaded of this truth; and it was in the hope of another life that they received the promises. Compare Gen 50:22 Num 23:10 1Sa 28:13-15 2Sa 12:23 Job 19:25,26 Ecc 12:7 Heb 11:13-16 . In the gospel “life and immortality,” and the worth of immortal souls, are fully brought to light, Mat 16:26 1Co 15:45-57 2Ti 1:10 . To save the souls of men, Christ freely devoted himself to death; and how does it become us to labor and toil and strive, in our respective spheres, to promote the great work for which He bled and died!
Fuente: American Tract Society Bible Dictionary
Soul
()
1. While primarily denotes the animal soul or vital principle (Lat. anima), and hence is equivalent to life, soul is not used in the NT outside of the Gospels (the Authorized Version of Mat 16:26, Mar 8:36 f.; but cf. the Revised Version ) to render in this meaning of the word, life being always employed instead (Act 20:10; Act 20:24, Php 2:30 etc.). Occasionally, however, soul is employed of the subject, whether man (1Co 15:45, Rev 18:13 or lower animal (Rev 16:3; cf. Rev 8:9), in which the principle of life inheres. Cf. article Life and Death.
2. Frequently soul denotes the subject in the distinctness of his existence as an individual, and so is only an emphatic designation of the man himself. Every soul (Act 2:43; Act 3:23, Rom 13:1) is equivalent to every one; and the plural souls is often used in cases of enumeration as a synonym for persons (e.g. three thousand souls, Act 2:41; eight souls, 1Pe 3:20).
3. While in its original meaning soul refers to the physical or animal life, in its ordinary use it denotes the inner and higher as distinguished from the bodily nature of man-that in him which is the seat of thought, feeling, and will, and especially that which is the subject of the Christian salvation (1Th 2:8, Heb 6:19; Heb 10:39; Heb 13:17, Jam 5:20, 1Pe 1:9, 3Jn 1:2). In this meaning the word is frequently associated with spirit (), but usually in such a way as to show that there is no intention of so distinguishing between the two as to imply that man is possessed of a tripartite nature-body, soul, and spirit-or that the soul is concerned with earthly things while the spirit relates itself to God and heaven. When St. Paul writes, Stand fast in one spirit, with one soul striving for the faith of the gospel (Php 1:27 Revised Version ), it seems evident that he is using the terms in a manner analogous to the parallelism of Hebrew poetry (cf. Luk 1:46 f.). And when St. James (Jam 2:26) declares that the body without the spirit is dead (cf. Mat 10:28, which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul), he is certainly not making use of spirit in a more exalted sense than that in which soul is employed when he speaks of the word which is able to save your souls (Mat 1:21), or declares that he who converts a sinner from the error of his ways shall save a soul from death (Mat 5:20).
4. In a few cases soul denotes the inner and higher part of mans being as disembodied, but still living a life of its own after it has been separated from the physical part which is subject to corruption (Act 2:27, Rev 6:9; Rev 20:4).
5. There is another use of soul, however, in which it appears to be definitely distinguished from spirit (1Th 5:23, Heb 4:12). These passages might seem to lend some support to trichotomist views, if it were not that the use of the derived adjectives (lit. [Note: literally, literature.] soulish; Authorized Version natural, sensual) and (Authorized Version spiritual) points not to any psychological distinction in the elements of human nature, but to a theological distinction between two stages of religious experience. This distinction of soulish and spiritual, which is especially characteristic of St. Paul (1Co 2:11-16; 1Co 15:42-47; cf. Jam 3:15, Jud 1:19), is evidently, as the contexts show, one between the natural or unregenerate man and the regenerate man who is living through grace under the power of the Divine Spirit. And so when St. Paul, in the passage above referred to, writes, And may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire (1Th 5:23), he probably means by soul the human individuality with all its natural powers, and by spirit that individuality as charged with the new Divine potencies of the Christian life. And when the author of Hebrews (Heb 4:12) describes the word of God as piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, this should perhaps be taken not as a mere rhetorical accumulation of terms (A. B. Davidson, Hebrews, 1882, in loc.), much less as suggesting a psychological distinction between the sensuous soul and the rational spirit, but rather as pointing to a power possessed by the Divine word of discriminating between the natural and the regenerate heart and of bringing conviction to both alike. See, further, article Spirit, Spiritual.
Literature.-H. Cremer, Bib.-Theol. Lex. of NT Greek3, 1880, p. 582; J. Laidlaw, The Bible Doctrine of Man, 1895, pp. 87 ff., 135 f.; W. P. Dickson, St. Pauls Use of the Terms Flesh and Spirit, 1883, p. 193 ff.; Expository Times x. [1898-99] 2.
J. C. Lambert.
Fuente: Dictionary of the Apostolic Church
SOUL
That vital, immaterial, active substance, or principle, in man, whereby he perceives, remembers, reasons, and wills. It is rather to be described as to its operations, than to be defined as to its essence. Various, indeed, have been the opinions of philosophers concerning its substance. The Epicureans thought it a subtile air, composed of atoms, or primitive corpuscles. The Stoics maintained it was a flame, or portion of heavenly light. The Cartesians make thinking the essence of the soul. Some hold that man is endowed with three kinds of soul, viz. the rational, which is purely spiritual, and infused by the immediate inspiration of God: the irrational or sensitive, which being common to man and brutes, is supposed to be formed of the elements: and, lastly, the vegetative soul, or principle of growth and nutrition, as the first is of understanding, and the second of animal life. The rational soul is simple, uncompounded, and immaterial, not composed of matter and form; for matter can never think and move of itself as the soul does.
In the fourth volume of the Memoirs of the Literacy and Philosophical Society of Manchester, the reader will find a very valuable paper, by Dr. Ferrier, proving by evidence apparently complete, that every part of the brain has been injured without affecting the act of thought. It will be difficult for any man to peruse this without being convinced that the modern theory of the Materialists is shaken from its very foundation. The immortality of the soul may be argued from its vast capacities, boundless desires, great improvements, dissatisfaction with the present state, and desire of some kind of religion. It is also argued from the consent of all nations; the consciousness that men have of sinning; the sting of conscience; the justice and providence of God. How far these arguments are conclusive I will not say; but the safest, and, in fact, the only sure ground to go upon to prove this doctrine is the word of God, where we at once see it clearly established, Mat 10:28. Mat 25:46. Dan 12:2. 2Ti 1:10. 1Th 4:17-18. Joh 10:1-42. But as this article belongs rather to metaphysics than to theology, we refer the reader to A. Baxter on the Soul; Locke on the Understanding; Watts’s Ontology; Jackson on Matter and Spirit; Flavel on the Soul; More’s Immortality of the Soul; Hartley on Man; Bp. Porteus’s Sermons, ser. 5, 6, 7. vol. 1:; Doddridge’s Lectures, lec. 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97; Drew’s Essay on the Immateriality and Immortality of the Soul. Care of the Soul.
See CARE.
Fuente: Theological Dictionary
soul
Ultimate interior principle of the life (ability to move self) of living bodies. There are three kinds of souls, vegetative or plant, animal, and rational (human). The soul is the “substantial form” of the living body, determining its species, e.g., geranium, dog, man. It is itself a substance and not an accident of the body; an incomplete substance, since it is by its nature destined for union with a body. According to Thomist doctrine, some disagreeing, there is in each living body only one substantial form, the soul, the principle of all informing, vivifying, and operating. The human or rational soul is the ultimate interior principle vivifying the human body and rendering man capable of performing all his vital acts. Pope Pius IX declared it to be Catholic doctrine that the rational soul is the true, per se, and immediate form of the body. The soul is the proper object of the science of psychology (Greek: psyche, soul). Unfortunately much of the science that goes under the name, is more physiology than psychology. The human soul is integrally simple, has no part outside of part; otherwise ideation, judging, and reasoning cannot be explained; is spiritual since its operations are spiritual, as knowing the spiritual, the abstract, and the universal, reflecting on self, enjoying spiritual things, exercising freedom; internally immortal since spiritual, and externally immortal since God will not annihilate it. Scripture clearly teaches its immortality. The human soul is in the whole body and in each part of the body. It is created by God and, according to the more common modern opinion, infused into the body at the first instant of the latter’s existence; created “to God’s image and likeness” since, similar to God, the soul is a spirit endowed with intellect and free will. The union between soul and body is substantial, resulting in one complete substance, which is a human person if we except the body and soul of Christ. Scripture informs us that the human soul will be judged after death, will be consigned to heaven or to hell, and on the Day of General Judgment renited with its body, the composite thenceforth to enjoy the Beatific Vision or to suffer the torments of the damned, for eternity.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Soul
(Greek psyche; Latin anima; French ame; German Seele).
The question of the reality of the soul and its distinction from the body is among the most important problems of philosophy, for with it is bound up the doctrine of a future life. Various theories as to the nature of the soul have claimed to be reconcilable with the tenet of immortality, but it is a sure instinct that leads us to suspect every attack on the substantiality or spirituality of the soul as an assault on the belief in existence after death. The soul may be defined as the ultimate internal principle by which we think, feel, and will, and by which our bodies are animated. The term “mind” usually denotes this principle as the subject of our conscious states, while “soul” denotes the source of our vegetative activities as well. That our vital activities proceed from a principle capable of subsisting in itself, is the thesis of the substantiality of the soul: that this principle is not itself composite, extended, corporeal, or essentially and intrinsically dependent on the body, is the doctrine of spirituality. If there be a life after death, clearly the agent or subject of our vital activities must be capable of an existence separate from the body. The belief in an animating principle in some sense distinct from the body is an almost inevitable inference from the observed facts of life. Even uncivilized peoples arrive at the concept of the soul almost without reflection, certainly without any severe mental effort. The mysteries of birth and death, the lapse of conscious life during sleep and in swooning, even the commonest operations of imagination and memory, which abstract a man from his bodily presence even while awake-all such facts invincibly suggest the existence of something besides the visible organism, internal to it, but to a large extent independent of it, and leading a life of its own. In the rude psychology of the primitive nations, the soul is often represented as actually migrating to and fro during dreams and trances, and after death haunting the neighbourhood of its body. Nearly always it is figured as something extremely volatile, a perfume or a breath. Often, as among the Fijians, it is represented as a miniature replica of the body, so small as to be invisible. The Samoans have a name for the soul which means “that which comes and goes”. Many peoples, such as the Dyaks and Sumatrans, bind various parts of the body with cords during sickness to prevent the escape of the soul. In short, all the evidence goes to show that Dualism, however uncritical and inconsistent, is the instinctive creed of “primitive man” (see ANIMISM).
THE SOUL IN ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY
Early literature bears the same stamp of Dualism. In the “Rig-Veda” and other liturgical books of India, we find frequent references to the coming and going of manas (mind or soul). Indian philosophy, whether Brahminic or Buddhistic, with its various systems of metempsychosis, accentuated the distinction of soul and body, making the bodily life a mere transitory episode in the existence of the soul. They all taught the doctrine of limited immortality, ending either with the periodic world-destruction (Brahminism) or with attainment of Nirvana (Buddhism). The doctrine of a world-soul in a highly abstract form is met with as early as the eighth century before Christ, when we find it described as “the unseen seer, the unheard hearer, the unthought thinker, the unknown knower, the Eternal in which space is woven and which is woven in it.”
In Greece, on the other hand, the first essays of philosophy took a positive and somewhat materialistic direction, inherited from the pre-philosophic age, from Homer and the early Greek religion. In Homer, while the distinction of soul and body is recognized, the soul is hardly conceived as possessing a substantial existence of its own. Severed from the body, it is a mere shadow, incapable of energetic life. The philosophers did something to correct such views. The earliest school was that of the Hylozoists; these conceived the soul as a kind of cosmic force, and attributed animation to the whole of nature. Any natural force might be designated psyche: thus Thales uses this term for the attractive force of the magnet, and similar language is quoted even from Anaxagoras and Democritus. With this we may compare the “mind-stuff” theory and Pan-psychism of certain modern scientists. Other philosophers again described the soul’s nature in terms of substance. Anaximander gives it an aeriform constitution, Heraclitus describes it as a fire. The fundamental thought is the same. The cosmic ether or fire is the subtlest of the elements, the nourishing flame which imparts heat, life, sense, and intelligence to all things in their several degrees and kinds. The Pythagoreans taught that the soul is a harmony, its essence consisting in those perfect mathematical ratios which are the law of the universe and the music of the heavenly spheres. With this doctrine was combined, according to Cicero, the belief in a universal world-spirit, from which all particular souls are derived.
All these early theories were cosmological rather than psychological in character. Theology, physics, and mental science were not as yet distinguished. It is only with the rise of dialectic and the growing recognition of the problem of knowledge that a genuinely psychological theory became possible. In Plato the two standpoints, the cosmological and the epistemological, are found combined. Thus in the “Timaeus” (p. 30) we find an account derived from Pythagorean sources of the origin of the soul. First the world-soul is created according to the laws of mathematical symmetry and musical concord. It is composed of two elements, one an element of “sameness” (tauton), corresponding to the universal and intelligible order of truth, and the other an element of distinction or “otherness” (thateron), corresponding to the world of sensible and particular existences. The individual human soul is constructed on the same plan. Sometimes, as in the “Phaedrus”, Plato teaches the doctrine of plurality of souls (cf. the well-known allegory of the charioteer and the two steeds in that dialogue). The rational soul was located in the head, the passionate or spirited soul in the breast, the appetitive soul in the abdomen. In the “Republic”, instead of the triple soul, we find the doctrine of three elements within the complex unity of the single soul. The question of immortality was a principal subject of Plato’s speculations. His account of the origin of the soul in the “Timaeus” leads him to deny the intrinsic immortality even of the world-soul, and to admit only an immortality conditional on the good pleasure of God. In the “Phaedo” the chief argument for the immortality of the soul is based on the nature of intellectual knowledge interpreted on the theory of reminiscence; this of course implies the pre-existence of the soul, and perhaps in strict logic its eternal pre-existence. There is also an argument from the soul’s necessary participation in the idea of life, which, it is argued, makes the idea of its extinction impossible. These various lines of argument are nowhere harmonized in Plato (see IMMORTALITY). The Platonic doctrine tended to an extreme Transcendentalism. Soul and body are distinct orders of reality, and bodily existence involves a kind of violence to the higher part of our composite nature. The body is the “prison”, the “tomb”, or even, as some later Platonists expressed it, the “hell” of the soul. In Aristotle this error is avoided. His definition of the soul as “the first entelechy of a physical organized body potentially possessing life” emphasizes the closeness of the union of soul and body. The difficulty in his theory is to determine what degree of distinctness or separateness from the matter of the body is to be conceded to the human soul. He fully recognizes the spiritual element in thought and describes the “active intellect” (nous poetikos) as “separate and impassible”, but the precise relation of this active intellect to the individual mind is a hopelessly obscure question in Aristotle’s psychology. (See INTELLECT; MIND.)
The Stoics taught that all existence is material, and described the soul as a breath pervading the body. They also called it Divine, a particle of God (apospasma tou theu) — it was composed of the most refined and ethereal matter. Eight distinct parts of the soul were recognized by them: the ruling reason (to hegemonikon) the five senses; the procreative powers. Absolute immortality they denied; relative immortality, terminating with the universal conflagration and destruction of all things, some of them (e. g. Cleanthes and Chrysippus) admitted in the case of the wise man; others, such as Panaetius and Posidonius, denied even this, arguing that, as the soul began with the body, so it must end with it.
Epicureanism accepted the Atomist theory of Leucippus and Democritus. Soul consists of the finest grained atoms in the universe, finer even than those of wind and heat which they resemble: hence the exquisite fluency of the soul’s movements in thought and sensation. The soul-atoms themselves, however, could not exercise their functions if they were not kept together by the body. It is this which gives shape and consistency to the group. If this is destroyed, the atoms escape and life is dissolved; if it is injured, part of the soul is lost, but enough may be left to maintain life. The Lucretian version of Epicureanism distinguishes between animus and anima: the latter only is soul in the biological sense, the former is the higher, directing principle (to hegemonikon) in the Stoic terminology, whose seat is the heart, the centre of the cognitive and emotional life.
THE SOUL IN CHRISTIAN THOUGHT
Graeco-Roman philosophy made no further progress in the doctrine of the soul in the age immediately preceding the Christian era. None of the existing theories had found general acceptance, and in the literature of the period an eclectic spirit nearly akin to Scepticism predominated. Of the strife and fusion of systems at this time the works of Cicero are the best example. On the question of the soul he is by turns Platonic and Pythagorean, while he confesses that the Stoic and Epicurean systems have each an attraction for him. Such was the state of the question in the West at the dawn of Christianity. In Jewish circles a like uncertainty prevailed. The Sadducees were Materialists, denying immortality and all spiritual existence. The Pharisees maintained these doctrines, adding belief in pre-existence and transmigration. The psychology of the Rabbins is founded on the Sacred Books, particularly the account of the creation of man in Genesis. Three terms are used for the soul: nephesh, nuah, and neshamah; the first was taken to refer to the animal and vegetative nature, the second to the ethical principle, the third to the purely spiritual intelligence. At all events, it is evident that the Old Testament throughout either asserts or implies the distinct reality of the soul. An important contribution to later Jewish thought was the infusion of Platonism into it by Philo of Alexandria. He taught the immediately Divine origin of the soul, its pre-existence and transmigration; he contrasts the pneuma, or spiritual essence, with the soul proper, the source of vital phenomena, whose seat is the blood; finally he revived the old Platonic Dualism, attributing the origin of sin and evil to the union of spirit with matter.
It was Christianity that, after many centuries of struggle, applied the final criticisms to the various psychologies of antiquity, and brought their scattered elements of truth to full focus. The tendency of Christ’s teaching was to centre all interest in the spiritual side of man’s nature; the salvation or loss of the soul is the great issue of existence. The Gospel language is popular, not technical. Psyche and pneuma are used indifferently either for the principle of natural life or for spirit in the strict sense. Body and soul are recognized as a dualism and their values contrasted: “Fear ye not them that kill the body . . . but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
In St. Paul we find a more technical phraseology employed with great consistency. Psyche is now appropriated to the purely natural life; pneuma to the life of supernatural religion, the principle of which is the Holy Spirit, dwelling and operating in the heart. The opposition of flesh and spirit is accentuated afresh (Romans 1:18, etc.). This Pauline system, presented to a world already prepossessed in favour of a quasi-Platonic Dualism, occasioned one of the earliest widespread forms of error among Christian writers — the doctrine of the Trichotomy. According to this, man, perfect man (teleios) consists of three parts: body, soul, spirit (soma, psyche, pneuma). Body and soul come by natural generation; spirit is given to the regenerate Christian alone. Thus, the “newness of life”, of which St. Paul speaks, was conceived by some as a superadded entity, a kind of oversoul sublimating the “natural man” into a higher species. This doctrine was variously distorted in the different Gnostic systems. The Gnostics divided man into three classes: pneumatici or spiritual, psychici or animal, choici or earthy. To each class they ascribed a different origin and destiny. The spiritual were of the seed of Achemoth, and were destined to return in time whence they had sprung — namely, into the pleroma. Even in this life they are exempted from the possibility of a fall from their high calling; they therefore stand in no need of good works, and have nothing to fear from the contaminations of the world and the flesh. This class consists of course of the Gnostics themselves. The psychici are in a lower position: they have capacities for spiritual life which they must cultivate by good works. They stand in a middle place, and may either rise to the spiritual or sink to the hylic level. In this category stands the Christian Church at large. Lastly, the earthy souls are a mere material emanation, destined to perish: the matter of which they are composed being incapable of salvation (me gar einai ten hylen dektiken soterias). This class contains the multitudes of the merely natural man.
Two features claim attention in this the earliest essay towards a complete anthropology within the Christian Church: an extreme spirituality is attributed to “the perfect”; immortality is conditional for the second class of souls, not an intrinsic attribute of all souls. It is probable that originally the terms pneumatici, psychici, and choici denoted at first elements which were observed to exist in all souls, and that it was only by an afterthought that they were employed, according to the respective predominance of these elements in different cases, to represent supposed real classes of men. The doctrine of the four temperaments and the Stoic ideal of the Wise Man afford a parallel for the personification of abstract qualities. The true genius of Christianity, expressed by the Fathers of the early centuries, rejected Gnosticism. The ascription to a creature of an absolutely spiritual nature, and the claim to endless existence asserted as a strictly de jure privilege in the case of the “perfect”, seemed to them an encroachment on the incommunicable attributes of God. The theory of Emanation too was seen to be a derogation from the dignity of the Divine nature For this reason, St. Justin, supposing that the doctrine of natural immortality logically implies eternal existence, rejects it, making this attribute (like Plato in the “Timaeus”) dependent on the free will of God; at the same time he plainly asserts the de facto immortality of every human soul. The doctrine of conservation, as the necessary complement of creation, was not yet elaborated. Even in Scholastic philosophy, which asserts natural immortality, the abstract possibility of annihilation through an act of God’s absolute power is also admitted. Similarly, Tatian denies the simplicity of the soul, claiming that absolute simplicity belongs to God alone. All other beings, he held, are composed of matter and spirit. Here again it would be rash to urge a charge of Materialism. Many of these writers failed to distinguish between corporeity in strict essence and corporeity as a necessary or natural concomitant. Thus the soul may itself be incorporeal and yet require a body as a condition of its existence. In this sense St. Irenaeus attributes a certain “corporeal character” to the soul; he represents it as possessing the form of its body, as water possesses the form of its containing vessel. At the same time, he teaches fairly explicitly the incorporeal nature of the soul. He also sometimes uses what seems to be the language of the Trichotomists, as when he says that in the Resurrection men shall have each their own body, soul, and spirit. But such an interpretation is impossible in view of his whole position in regard to the Gnostic controversy.
The dubious language of these writers can only be understood in relation to the system they were opposing. By assigning a literal divinity to a certain small aristocracy of souls, Gnosticism set aside the doctrine of Creation and the whole Christian idea of God’s relation to man. On the other side, by its extreme dualism of matter and spirit, and its denial to matter (i.e. the flesh) of all capacity for spiritual influences, it involved the rejection of cardinal doctrines like the Resurrection of the Body and even of the Incarnation itself in any proper sense. The orthodox teacher had to emphasize: the soul’s distinction from God and subjection to Him; its affinities with matter. The two converse truths — those of the soul’s affinity with the Divine nature and its radical distinction from matter, were apt to be obscured in comparison. It was only afterwards and very gradually, with the development of the doctrine of grace, with the fuller recognition of the supernatural order as such, and the realization of the Person and Office of the Holy Spirit, that the various errors connected with the pneuma ceased to be a stumbling-block to Christian psychology. Indeed, similar errors have accompanied almost every subsequent form of heterodox Illuminism and Mysticism.
Tertullian’s treatise “De Anima” has been called the first Christian classic on psychology proper. The author aims to show the failure of all philosophies to elucidate the nature of the soul, and argues eloquently that Christ alone can teach mankind the truth on such subjects. His own doctrine, however, is simply the refined Materialism of the Stoics, supported by arguments from medicine and physiology and by ingenious interpretations of Scripture, in which the unavoidable materialism of language is made to establish a metaphysical Materialism. Tertullian is the founder of the theory of Traducianism, which derives the rational soul ex traduce, i.e. by procreation from the soul of the parent. For Tertullian this was a necessary consequence of Materialism. Later writers found in the doctrine a convenient explanation of the transmission of original sin. St. Jerome says that in his day it was the common theory in the West. Theologians have long abandoned it, however, in favour of Creationism, as it seems to compromise the spirituality of the soul. Origen taught the pre-existence of the soul. Terrestrial life is a punishment and a remedy for prenatal sin. “Soul” is properly degraded spirit: flesh is a condition of alienation and bondage (cf. Comment. ad Romans 1:18). Spirit, however, finite spirit, can exist only in a body, albeit of a glorious and ethereal nature.
Neo-Platonism, which through St. Augustine contributed so much to spiritual philosophy, belongs to this period. Like Gnosticism, it uses emanations. The primeval and eternal One begets by emanation nous (intelligence); and from nous in turn springs psyche (soul), which is the image of nous, but distinct from it. Matter is a still later emanation. Soul has relations to both ends of the scale of reality, and its perfection lies in turning towards the Divine Unity from which it came. In everything, the neo-Platonist recognized the absolute primacy of the soul with respect to the body. Thus, the mind is always active, even in sense — perception — it is only the body that is passively affected by external stimuli. Similarly Plotinus prefers to say that the body is in the soul rather than vice versa: and he seems to have been the first to conceive the peculiar manner of the soul’s location as an undivided and universal presence pervading the organism (tota in toto et tota in singulis partibus). It is impossible to give more than a very brief notice of the psychology of St. Augustine. His contributions to every branch of the science were immense; the senses, the emotions, imagination, memory, the will, and the intellect — he explored them all, and there is scarcely any subsequent development of importance that he did not forestall. He is the founder of the introspective method. Noverim Te, noverim me was an intellectual no less than a devotional aspiration with him. The following are perhaps the chief points for our present purpose: he opposes body and soul on the ground of the irreducible distinction of thought and extension (cf. DESCARTES). St. Augustine, however, lays more stress on the volitional activities than did the French Idealists. As against the Manichaeans he always asserts the worth and dignity of the body. Like Aristotle he makes the soul the final cause of the body. As God is the Good or Summum Bonum of the soul, so is the soul the good of the body. The origin of the soul is perhaps beyond our ken. He never definitely decided between Traducianism and Creationism. As regards spirituality, he is everywhere most explicit, but it is interesting as an indication of the futile subtleties current at the time to find him warning a friend against the controversy on the corporeality of the soul, seeing that the term “corpus” was used in so many different senses. “Corpus, non caro” is his own description of the angelic body.
Medieval psychology prior to the Aristotelean revival was affected by neo-Platonism, Augustinianism, and mystical influences derived from the works of pseudo-Dionysius. This fusion produced sometimes, notably in Scotus Eriugena, a pantheistic theory of the soul. All individual existence is but the development of the Divine life, in which all things are destined to be resumed. The Arabian commentators, Averroes and Avicenna, had interpreted Aristotle’s psychology in a pantheistic sense. St. Thomas, with the rest of the Schoolmen, amends this portion of the Aristotelean tradition, accepting the rest with no important modifications. St. Thomas’s doctrine is briefly as follows: the rational soul, which is one with the sensitive and vegetative principle, is the form of the body. This was defined as of faith by the Council of Vienne of 1311; the soul is a substance, but an incomplete substance, i. e. it has a natural aptitude and exigency for existence in the body, in conjunction with which it makes up the substantial unity of human nature; though connaturally related to the body, it is itself absolutely simple, i.e. of an unextended and spiritual nature. It is not wholly immersed in matter, its higher operations being intrinsically independent of the organism; the rational soul is produced by special creation at the moment when the organism is sufficiently developed to receive it. In the first stage of embryonic development, the vital principle has merely vegetative powers; then a sensitive soul comes into being, educed from the evolving potencies of the organism — later yet, this is replaced by the perfect rational soul, which is essentially immaterial and so postulates a special creative act. Many modern theologians have abandoned this last point of St. Thomas’s teaching, and maintain that a fully rational soul is infused into the embryo at the first moment of its existence.
THE SOUL IN MODERN THOUGHT
Modern speculations respecting the soul have taken two main directions, Idealism and Materialism. Agnosticism need not be reckoned as a third and distinct answer to the problem, since, as a matter of fact, all actual agnosticisms have an easily recognized bias towards one or other of the two solutions aforesaid. Both Idealism and Materialism in present-day philosophy merge into Monism, which is probably the most influential system outside the Catholic Church.
History
Descartes conceived the soul as essentially thinking (i.e. conscious) substance, and body as essentially extended substance. The two are thus simply disparate realities, with no vital connection between them. This is significantly marked by his theory of the soul’s location in the body. Unlike the Scholastics he confines it to a single point — the pineal gland — from which it is supposed to control the various organs and muscles through the medium of the “animal spirits”, a kind of fluid circulating through the body. Thus, to say the least, the soul’s biological functions are made very remote and indirect, and were in fact later on reduced almost to a nullity: the lower life was violently severed from the higher, and regarded as a simple mechanism. In the Cartesian theory animals are mere automata. It is only by the Divine assistance that action between soul and body is possible. The Occasionalists went further, denying all interaction whatever, and making the correspondence of the two sets of facts a pure result of the action of God. The Leibnizian theory of Pre-established Harmony similarly refuses to admit any inter-causal relation. The superior monad (soul) and the aggregate of inferior monads which go to make up the body are like two clocks constructed with perfect art so as always to agree. They register alike, but independently: they are still two clocks, not one. This awkward Dualism was entirely got rid of by Spinoza. For him there is but one, infinite substance, of which thought and extension are only attributes. Thought comprehends extension, and by that very fact shows that it is at root one with that which it comprehends. The alleged irreducible distinction is transcended: soul and body are neither of them substances, but each is a property of the one substance. Each in its sphere is the counterpart of the other. This is the meaning of the definition, “Soul is the Idea of Body”. Soul is the counterpart within the sphere of the attribute of thought of that particular mode of the attribute of extension which we call the body. Such was the fate of Cartesianism.
English Idealism had a different course. Berkeley had begun by denying the existence of material substance, which he reduced merely to a series of impressions in the sentient mind. Mind is the only substance. Hume finished the argument by dissolving mind itself into its phenomena, a loose collection of “impressions and ideas”. The Sensist school (Condillac etc.) and the Associationists (Hartley, the Mills, and Bain) continued in similar fashion to regard the mind as constituted by its phenomena or “states”, and the growth of modern positive psychology has tended to encourage this attitude. But to rest in Phenomenalism as a theory is impossible, as its ablest advocates themselves have seen. Thus J.S. Mill, while describing the mind as merely “a series [i.e. of conscious phenomena] aware of itself as a series”, is forced to admit that such a conception involves an unresolved paradox. Again, W. James’s assertion that “the passing thought is itself the Thinker”, which “appropriates” all past thoughts in the “stream of consciousness”, simply blinks the question. For surely there is something which in its turn “appropriates” the passing thought itself and the entire stream of past and future thoughts as well, viz. the self-conscious, self-asserting “I” the substantial ultimate of our mental life. To be in this sense “monarch of all it surveys” in introspective observation and reflective self-consciousness, to appropriate without itself being appropriated by anything else, to be the genuine owner of a certain limited section of reality (the stream of consciousness), this is to be a free and sovereign (though finite) personality, a self-conscious, spiritual substance in the language of Catholic metaphysics.
Criticism
The foregoing discussion partly anticipates our criticism of Materialism (q. v.). The father of modern Materialism is Hobbes, who accepted the theory of Epicurus, and reduced all spirits either to phantoms of the imagination or to matter in a highly rarefied state. This theory need not detain us here. Later Materialism has three main sources: Newtonian physics, which taught men to regard matter, not as inert and passive, but as instinct with force. Why should not life and consciousness be among its unexplored potencies? (Priestley, Tyndall, etc.) Tyndall himself provides the answer admitting that the chasm that separates psychical facts from material phenomena is “intellectually impassable”. Writers, therefore, who make thought a mere “secretion of the brain” or a “phosphorescence” of its substance (Vogt, Moleschott) may be simply ignored. In reply to the more serious Materialism, spiritualist philosophers need only re-assert the admissions of the Materialists themselves, that there is an impassable chasm between the two classes of facts. Psychophysics, it is alleged, shows the most minute dependence of mind-functions upon brain-states. The two orders of facts are therefore perfectly continuous, and, though they may be superficially different yet they must be after all radically one. Mental phenomena may be styled an epiphenomenon or byproduct of material force (Huxley). The answer is the same as before. There is no analogy for an epiphenomenon being separated by an “impassable chasm” from the causal series to which it belongs. The term is, in fact, a mere verbal subterfuge. The only sound principle in such arguments is the principle that essential or “impassable” distinctions in the effect can be explained only by similar distinctions in the cause. This is the principle on which Dualism as we have explained it, rests. Merely to find relations, however close, between mental and physiological facts does not advance us an inch towards transcending this Dualism. It only enriches and fills out our concept of it. The mutual compenetration of soul and body in their activities is just what Catholic philosophy (anticipating positive science) had taught for centuries. Man is two and one, a divisible but a vital unity. Evolutionism endeavours to explain the origin of the soul from merely material forces. Spirit is not the basis and principle; rather it is the ultimate efflorescence of the Cosmos. If we ask then “what was the original basis out of which spirit and all things arose?” we are told it was the Unknowable (Spencer). This system must be treated as Materialistic Monism. The answer to it is that, as the outcome of the Unknowable has a spiritual character, the Unknowable itself (assuming its reality) must be spiritual.
As regards monistic systems generally, it belongs rather to cosmology to discuss them. We take our stand on the consciousness of individual personality, which consciousness is a distinct deliverance of our very highest faculties, growing more and more explicit with the strengthening of our moral and intellectual being. This consciousness is emphatic, as against the figments of a fallaciously abstract reason, in asserting the self-subsistence (and at the same time the finitude) of our being, i.e. it declares that we are independent inasmuch as we are truly persons or selves, not mere attributes or adjectives, while at the same time, by exhibiting our manifold limitations, it directs us to a higher Cause on which our being depends.
Such is the Catholic doctrine on the nature, unity, substantiality, spirituality, and origin of the soul. It is the only system consistent with Christian faith, and, we may add, morals, for both Materialism and Monism logically cut away the foundations of these. The foregoing historical sketch will have served also to show another advantage it possesses — namely, that it is by far the most comprehensive, and at the same time discriminating, syntheseis of whatever is best in rival systems. It recognizes the physical conditions of the soul’s activity with the Materialist, and its spiritual aspect with the Idealist, while with the Monist it insists on the vital unity of human life. It enshrines the principles of ancient speculation, and is ready to receive and assimilate the fruits of modern research.
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MICHAEL MAHER AND JOSEPH BOLAND Transcribed by Tomas Hancil and Joseph P. Thomas
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIVCopyright © 1912 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, July 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Soul
(prop. , , the rational spirit; but occasionally , , the animal principle of life), that vital, immaterial, active substance, or principles in man whereby he perceives, remembers, reasons, and wills. The rational soul is simple, uncompounded, and immaterial, not composed of matter and form; for matter can never think and move of itself as the soul does. In the fourth volume of the Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester the reader will find a very valuable paper by Dr. Ferrier, proving, by evidence apparently complete, that every part of the brain has been injured without affecting the act of thought. It will be difficult for any man to peruse this without being convinced that the modern theory of the Materialists is shaken from its very foundation. SEE MATERIALISM.
The soul is rather to be described as to its operation than to be defined as to its essence. Various, indeed, have been the opinions of philosophers concerning its substance. In the second book of his treatise , Aristotle has given two definitions of it. In the first of these he calls it the Entelechy (), or first form of an organized body which has potential life. The Epicureans thought it a subtle air, composed of atoms, or primitive corpuscles. The Stoics maintained it was a flame, or portion of heavenly light. The Cartesians make thinking the essence of the soul. Critics, a Sophist, regarded the blood as the seat and substratum of the soul. According to Plato, The first or invisible element of the soul in man is the instrument of rational cognition, the other element is the organ of perception and representation. With this soul, having its seat in the head, are combined the courageous and the appetitive souls, the whole resembling the composite force of a driver and two steeds. Aristotle distinguished several forms of soul, viz. the rational, which is purely spiritual; and infused by the immediate inspiration of God; the appetitice, which was the source of desire and will the motive of locomotion; the sensitive, which, being common to man and brutes, is supposed to be formed of the element, and is the cause of sensation and feeling and, lastly, the vegetative soul, or principle of growth and nutrition, as the first is of understanding, and the second of animal life.
Modern philosophy has made many attempts to define the soul, of which we give the following resume. It is not I that thinks, but it thinks in me; and it is not I that am, but it is something in me (Baggesen, Zeitschr. von Fichte, 34, 153). Spirit is a substance, immediately immanent in thinking, or of which thinking is immediately the form of activity. Spirit is thinking substance, the soul is dynamically present in the entire organism (Chalybais, ibid. 20, 69). We are compelled to suppose that there must be a real essence as the substantial bearer of all psychical conditions. This essence is the soul. It must stand with other real essences in causal relation, in order to the generation in it of manifold internal conditions. In brief, the soul needs the body, the body needs the soul (Cornelius, Zeitschr. fir exacte Philosophie, 4, 99-102). In the organism formed of atoms, which are spiritual essences, one unfolds its spiritual force to the point of self- consciousness; this atom, which as gas form atom interpenetrates the entire organism and occupies space as a center, is the soul (Drossbach, Harmonie der Ergebnisse d. Naturforschung, p. 101-129, 229). The phenomena of body and soul hang together as internal and external phenomena of the same essence. This primary essence is, however, nothing more than the conjunction of phenomena themselves in the unitv of the general consciousness. The soul becomes aware only of its own proper phenomena, the body becomes aware only through that which appears of it to the soul itself. It is a common essence which appears externally as body, internally as soul (Fechner, Physical. und philosoph. Atonzenlehre, 2d ed. p. 258, 259). The soul is no more than nature; it is a phenomenon of the internal sense (J.G. Fichte, Grundlage d. ges. Wissenschaftslehre, 1794, 1802). The fact of self consciousness can only be explained on the supposition that the soul is a real essence, distinct from the organism, capable of reflection upon itself, that is, of consciousness. Soul and body are diverse substances, but in the most intimate union and mutual interpenetration. It is the idea of its body. Every soul acquires for itself an organic body.
The external material body is but the changing image of the internal process of soul and life (I.H. Fichte, Zeitschr. 12, 246; 25, 176-178). Spirit is but a higher potency, a mere continuation of development of the animal soul, and the animal soul itself is a mere exaltation of the vital force of the plant. These three principles are in man, in virtue of his self consciousness, comprehended in one and the same Ego (Fischer, Metaphysik, p. 36-38; Sitz der Seele, p. 8, 16). The soul is a substantial essence. The inmost essence, the Ego, is unattainable to our cognition (Frohschammer, Athehaumn, 2, 116, 119). The body is the same life as the soul, and yet they may be spoken of as lying asunder. A soul without body would be nothing living, and the converse is true. The soul posits and produces itself; it has a body in itself, not without which it composes one total and actual, and in which it is omnipresent (Hegel, Wereke, 5, 16; 8, 22, 23; 15, 339; 18, 29, 93). We have no cognition of what is strictly the essence of our soul. We cannot reach the Ego itself with our consciousness; we can only reach it in the constantly shifting modifications, as it thinks, feels, wills, especially as it possesses the power of representation. The soul is a simple essence without parts, and without plurality in its quality, whose intellectual manifoldness is conditioned by a varied concurrence with other and yet real essences (Herbart, Werke, 1, 193, etc.). The Ego is an absolute unity, and, as it is no object of outward sense, is immaterial; and though it is present in space, and operates in it, occupies no space and has no special place in the body. The body is, rather, but the form of the soul; and birth, life; and death are but the diverse conditions of the soul. The conception of soul can only be reached by deductions (Kant, Vorlesungen uber Metaphysik, p. 133-254; Werke, 7, 60-78). The what of the soul, its nature, comes as little into view as does the essential nature of things in general; the essential nature of the soul in itself remains unknown to us before it comes into a situation within which alone its life unfolds itself.
The soul is also the focus into which flow together the movements of the bodily life that play hither and thither. The. soul neither arises from the body nor from nothing, but goes forth from the substance of the infinite with the same substantiality which pertains to all the actual in nature that has sprung from the same infinite source. Our personality is not composed of body and soul; rather does our true essence lie exclusively in the soul. The spirit is something higher than the soul. In the spirit is the unity of our being, our true Ego. The soul is but an element in its service. At death the soul passes away, the spirit ripens to a new existence (Lotze, Mlikrokosmus; Sfreitschriften, 1, 138). The soul, the consciousness a posteriori, is nothing but the individual being, so far as it is conscious, and can neither be, nor be thought of, apart from that individual being (Schellwien, Seyn und Bewusstseyn, p. 117, 122). The Ego which now apprehends itself as sentient or percipient, now as putting forth effort, willing, etc., knows itself at the same time as one and the same, the same abiding self. It is but an expression of this consciousness of unity when we speak of our own soul, and impute to it this or that predicate; that is, when we distinguish our own soul, with its manifold characteristics, from ourselves, and in this act implicitly contrast ourselves as unity with the mutation and manifoldness of our intellectual life (Ulrici, Glauben und Wissen, p. 64-66; Zeitschr. von Fichte, 36, 232; Gott u. die Natur, p. 414-417).
Modern philosophers in Germany thus make a distinction between (Seele) and (Geist), or spirit and soul; but they reverse the relative significance of these terms. Prof. G.H. Schubert says that the soul is the inferior part of our intellectual nature, while the spirit is that part of our nature which tends to the purely rational, the lofty and divine. The doctrine of the natural and the spiritual (q.v.) man, which we find in the writings of Paul, may, it has been thought, have formed the basis upon which this mental dualism has been founded. The plainest and most common distinction taken in the use of the words soul and mind is, that in speaking of the mind of man we refer more to the various powers which it possesses, or the various operations which it performs; and in speaking of the soul of man we refer rather to the nature and destiny of the human being. The following distinguishing features of spirit, mind, and soul have been given: The first denotes the animating faculty, the breath of intelligence, the inspiring principle, the spring of energy, and the prompter of exertion; the second is the recording power, the preserver of impressions, the storer of deductions, the nurse of knowledge, and the parent of thought; the last is the disembodied, ethereal, self conscious being, concentrating in itself all the purest and most refined of human excellences, every generous affection, every benevolent disposition, every intellectual attainment, every ennobling virtue, and every exalting aspiration (The Purpose of Existence [1850, 12mo], p. 79). , spirit, when considered separately signifies the principle of life; , mind, the principle of intelligence. According to Plutarch, spirit is the cause and beginning of motion, and mind of order and harmony with respect to motion. Together they signify an intelligent soul. Thus we say the immortality of the soul, and the powers of the mind (Fleming, Vocabulary of Science, s.v.). SEE MIND.
In the Holy Scriptures three principles are recognized (see especially 1Th 5:23) as essential components of man the soul (, ), the spirit (, ), and the body (, , or ); but these are not accurately, much less scientifically, defined. The first and the last of these elements clearly correspond to the material or physical and the immaterial or spiritual parts of man’s nature, i.e. the soul and the body, as ordinarily defined by modern philosophers and scientists; but the middle term, the spirit, is hard to be distinguished. Yet in all earthly creatures, even in the lowest forms of animals, there is clearly observable a principle, inherent indeed in the body, and yet distinct from the rational faculty of man or the instinctive intelligence of brutes. This is usually styled the animate principle, or briefly life. It is this which molds the whole physical organism, and for this end controls, and to a large degree overrides, mere chemical and inorganic laws, producing combinations and results impossible to unvitalized substance. This power or essence for it has not yet been determined whether it be distinct from or a mere result of the combination of soul and body has hitherto eluded the analysis of scientific and philosophical research, and it will probably remain an inscrutable secret; but it is a sufficiently separate element of human and animal nature to warrant the distinctive use of a special term for it by the Biblical writers (which is carefully observed by them in the original, although frequently obscured in the English version). Thus spirit (, ) is never applied to God or to angelic beings, who are incorporeal; nor, on the other hand, is soul (, ) ever used of beasts (except in Ecc 3:19; Ecc 3:21, where it is evidently employed out of its proper sense for the sake of uniformity). Yet life () is ascribed equally to all these classes of existence, although those only who have bodies are endowed with the organic locomotive principle (Gen 1:20; Gen 2:7). SEE PSYCHOLOGY.
On the general subject, see Baxter, On the Soul; Drew, Immateriality and Immortality of the Soul; Doddridge; Lectures, p. 92-97; Flavel, On the Soul; Locke, On the Understanding; oore, Immortality of the Soul; Ueberweg, Hist. of Philosophy. SEE SPIRIT.
Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
Soul
When the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews says that the word of God pierces ‘to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit’ (Heb 4:12), and when St. Paul prays that the ‘spirit, soul, and body’ of his converts may be preserved blameless (1Th 5:23), a psychological division of the immaterial part of human nature is drawn which is exactly similar to what we find running through the whole O.T. The Bible proceeds up on the supposition that there are two spheres of existence, which may be called mind and matter; it tells us that the key to the mystery of the universe is to be found, not in the material substance of which it is composed, nor in the agencies or influences which cause the phenomena of nature to follow one another in regular sequence, but to a Mastermind, who plans all things by his wisdom, and sustains them by his power. The Scriptures bring the immaterial world very close to every one of us; and whilst we are all only too conscious of our relation to things fleeting and physical, the Sacred Record reminds us on every page that we are the offspring of the absolute and unchanging Source of all existence. A man is sometimes tempted to say, ‘I will believe only what I see;’ but the first puff of wind or the first shock of electricity tells him that he must enlarge his creed. If he still stops short by asserting his faith only in the forces which affect matter, he will find himself confronted by the fact that the matter which composes the human frame becomes by that very circumstance subject to forces and influences to which all other matter is a stranger. He finds a world with in as well as a world without, and he is compelled to acknowledge that his physical frame is the tenement of a super-physical being which he calls self, and which is on the one h and a recipient of knowledge and feeling obtained through the instrumentality of the body, and on the other h and an agent originating or generating a force which tells up on the outer world.
It is in respect to this inner life and its workings that man is the child of God. his structure is of soil, earth-born, allied with all physical existence, and subjected to the laws of light, heat, electricity, gravitation, and such like, as muc has if it were so many atoms of vegetable or mineral matter. But the immaterial existence which permeates that structure, investing it with consciousness, flooding it with sensibilities, illuminating it with understanding, enabling it to plan, to forecast, to will, to rule, to make laws, to sympathise, to love–This ego, this pulse of existence, this nucleus of feeling and thought and action, is a denizen of an immaterial sphere of being, though ordained by God its Father to live and grow and be developed with in the tabernacle of flesh.
The Hebrew equivalent for the word ‘soul’ in almost every passage in the O.T. is Nephesh (), which answers to in the Greek. The cognate verb Naphash, to refresh, is found in Exo 23:12; Exo 31:17, and 2Sa 16:14 : [ in Assyrian, napistu, which means ‘life,’ is connected with napdsu, to ‘expand,’ and hence to ‘breathe’ (Sayce).] The word Nephesh has various shades of meaning and of rendering, which must be gathered as far as possible under one or two heads. The soul is, properly speaking, the animating principle of the body, and is the common property of man and beast. Thus, in Lev 24:18, we read, ‘He that killeth a beast shall make it good; beast for beast;’ this is literally, ‘He that smiteth the soul of a beast shall recompense it; soul for soul.’ It is also used with respect to the lower animals in Gen 1:21; Gen 1:24; Gen 2:19; Lev 11:46, al., in which passages it has been rendered creature.
In some passages nephesh has been rendered ‘anyone;’ the word is thus used in an indefinite sense, the soul representing the person, as when we speak of a city containing so many thous and ‘souls.’ Thus, we read in Lev 2:1, ‘When any (lit. ‘a soul’) will offer a meat offering;’ Lev 24:17, ‘He that killeth any man,’ lit. ‘that smiteth any soul of man’–the soul representing the life; Num 19:11, ‘He that toucheth the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven days,’ lit. ‘he that toucheth the dead (part) of any soul of a man shall be unclean seven days;’ also verse 13, 31:19, and Num 35:11; Num 35:15; Num 35:30 in these passages a dead body is regarded as that which ought properly to be animated by the soul, but owing to the law whereby man has to return to the dust, the spectacle is seen of a soulless body, which is to be regarded as ceremonially unclean. Compare Lev 21:11; Num 5:2; Num 6:6; Num 6:11; Num 9:6-7; Num 9:10.
In Psa 17:9, ‘deadly enemies’ are literally ‘enemies of my soul or life.’ in Job 11:20, ‘the giving up of the ghost’ is ‘the puffing forth of the soul.’ So also in Jer 15:9, the literal rendering is ‘she hath puffed forth the soul.’
The soul is thus the source of animation to the body; in other words, it is the life, whether of man or beast. Accordingly, Nephesh is rendered ‘life’ in Gen 19:17; Gen 19:19, where we read of Lot’s life being saved; Gen 32:30, ‘I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved;’ Gen 44:30, ‘H is life is bound up in the lad’s life;’ Exo 21:23, ‘Thou shalt give life for life;’ verse 30, ‘He shall give for the ransom of his life whatsoever is laid up on him.’
In Deu 24:7, we read, ‘If a man be found stealing any (lit. ‘a soul’) of his brethren,’ &c.; so in Eze 27:13, ‘They traded the persons (lit. ‘the souls’) of men.’ by the use of the word Nepheshhere the wickedness of treating men as goods and chattels to be bought and sold is practically reprobated. this doubtless is the crime referred to in Rev 18:13. Perhaps the word ‘person’ in the sense in which we speak of an offence against a man’s person, or of a personal injury, is the best rendering in such passages. It is adopted in Gen 14:21; Lev 27:2 (where both men and beasts are referred to); Num 5:6; Num 19:18, and Eze 16:5. A similar rendering is self, which is found in Lev 11:43, 1Ki 19:4, and Isa 5:14.
In some passages the word soul is added to give emphasis, as in Gen 27:31, &c., ‘that thy soul may bless me.’ Compare Mat 26:38.
In Hebrew, as in most other languages, the shedding of a man’s blood was a phrase used to represent the taking of his life, for ‘the blood is the life.’ in this oft-repeated phrase (e.g. Lev 17:11; Lev 17:14) we see that the blood is (i.e. represents) ‘the soul;’ and if the one flows out from the body, the other passes away too in Pro 28:17, we read literally, ‘The man that doeth violence to the blood of a soul shall flee into the pit;’ so in Eze 33:6, ‘If the sword come and take away a soul (A. V. ‘person’) from among them . his blood will I require at the watchman’s hands;’ Jon 1:14, ‘Let us not perish for this man’s life, and lay not up on us innocent blood.’
This mystical identification of the blood and the life is of great interest as bearing up on the atoning work of Christ. We are told that He poured out his soul unto death, and that He shed his blood for the remission of sins. Evidently the shedding of the blood was the outward and visible sign of the severance of the soul from the body in death; and this severance is regarded as a voluntary sacrifice offered by the Divine Son, in accordance with his Father’s will, as the means of putting away sin.
But the Nephesh or soul is something more than the bare animating principle of the body; at least, if it is regarded in this light, a large view must be taken of that mysterious organisation which we call the body, and it must include the bodily appetites and desires. The word is rendered ‘appetite’ in Pro 23:2, and Ecc 6:7. Compare the words of Israel, ‘our soul loatheth this light food’ (Num 21:5). Other passages in which a similar idea is presented are Ecc 6:9, al. (desire); Isa 56:11 (greedy); Exo 15:9, al. (lust); Psa 105:22, al. (pleasure); Deu 21:14, al. (will).
Nephesh is also rendered mind and heart in several places where these words are used in the sense of desire and inclination, e.g. Gen 23:8; 2Ki 9:15.
Thus the soul, according to the O.T., is the personal centre of desire, inclination, and appetite, and its normal condition is to be operating in or through means of a physical organisation, whether human or otherwise. Hence, when we read that man or Adam became a living soul (Gen 2:7), we are to understand that the structure which had been moulded from the dust became the habitation and, to a certain extent, the servant of an ego or conscious centre of desire or appetite. When the soul departs (Gen 35:18), the body becomes untenanted, and the ego which has grown with the growth of the body is dislodged from its habitation. It may, however, return again to its old home through the operation of God, as was the case with the widow’s child (1Ki 17:21; compare Psa 16:10).
The fact that the desires to which the soul gives birth are often counter to the will of God fixes sin up on the soul; accordingly, we read, ‘the soul that sinneth it shall die’ (Eze 18:4). Hence the need of atonement for the soul (Lev 17:11), and of its conversion or restoration to a life of conformity with God’s law (Psa 19:7; Psa 34:22).
In the N.T. often signifies life, as in Mat 2:20, ‘Those who seek the life of the young child;’ Mat 6:25, ‘Be not solicitous. for your life’ (or animal existence) in Mat 10:28, a distinction is drawn between the destruction of the body, which man can effect, and the perdition or ru in of the soul as well as the body in Gehenna, which only God can bring about. Sometimes there seems to be a play up on the word, as when the Saviour says ‘he that loseth his life or soul (in the ordinary sense of the word) shall find it’ (in a new and higher sense), Mat 10:30; Mat 16:25. When describing his mission, our Lord plainly said that He came to give his soul or life a ransom for many (Mat 20:28) in Act 2:27, St. Peter quotes the Psalm (16:10), ‘Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades.’ this passage certainly might be taken to signify, ‘thou wilt not leave my dead body in the grave;’ but it is far more in accordance with the usage of the two important words soul and Hades to understand that the animating principle, the ego, of our Saviour was not to remain in the nether world.
Fuente: Synonyms of the Old Testament
SOUL
Like the word spirit, the word soul has a variety of meanings in English. There is some variety also in the usages of the original words from which soul has been translated. In the Hebrew of the Old Testament the word is nephesh. In the Greek of the New Testament the word is psyche.
Old Testament usage
The writers of the Old Testament did not speak of the soul as something that exists apart from the body. To them, soul (or nephesh) meant life. Both animals and people are nephesh, living creatures. Older English versions of the Bible have created misunderstanding by the translation man became a living soul (Gen 2:7), for the words translated living soul are the same words as earlier translated living creatures (Gen 1:21; Gen 1:24). All animal life is nephesh (or psyche; Rev 8:9), though human nephesh is of a higher order than the nephesh of other animals (Gen 2:19-22).
From this it is easy to see how nephesh came to refer to the whole person. We should understand a person not as consisting of a combination of a lifeless body and a bodiless soul, but as a perfect unity, a living body. Thus nephesh may be translated person; even if translated soul, it may mean no more than person or life (Exo 1:5; Num 9:13; Eze 18:4; Eze 18:27). A reference to someones nephesh may simply be a reference to the person (Psa 6:3-4; Psa 35:9; Isa 1:14) or the persons life (Gen 35:18; 1Ki 17:22; Psa 33:19).
New Testament usage
Similarly in the New Testament psyche can be used to mean no more than person (Act 2:41; Act 2:43; Act 7:14; Rom 2:9; Rom 13:1). Again, a reference to someones psyche may simply be a reference to the person (Mat 12:18; Mat 26:38; Luk 1:46; Luk 12:19; 1Th 2:8; Heb 10:38) or the persons life (Mat 16:26; 1Co 15:45; Php 2:30; 1Pe 4:19). Sometimes soul appears to be the same as heart, which in the Bible usually refers to the whole of a persons inner life (Pro 2:10; Act 4:32; see HEART; HUMANITY, HUMANKIND).
A person characterized by psyche is an ordinary person of the world, one who lives solely according to the principles and values of sinful human society the natural person, in contrast to the spiritual person. The latter is one who has new principles and values because of the Spirit of God within (1Co 2:12-16; cf. Jud 1:19; see FLESH; SPIRIT).
Human uniqueness
Both Old and New Testaments teach that when people die they do not cease to exist. The body returns to dust (Gen 3:19; Ecc 3:20), but the person lives on in a place, or state, of the dead, which the Hebrew calls sheol and the Greek calls hades (Psa 6:5; Psa 88:3-5; Luk 16:22-23; see HADES; SHEOL). The Old Testament does not say in what way people live on after death. Certainly, they live on as a conscious personal beings, but that personal being is not complete, for it has no body (Psa 49:14; Eze 26:20).
The New Testament also is unclear on the subject of a persons existence after death. It speaks of the bodiless person after death sometimes as a soul (Act 2:27; Rev 6:9; Rev 20:4), sometimes as a spirit (Heb 12:23; 1Pe 3:18), but again the person, being bodiless, is not complete. Also, this existence as a bodiless person is only temporary, just as the decay of the body in the grave is only temporary. That is why the Bible encourages believers to look for their eternal destiny not in the endless existence of some bodiless soul or spirit, but in the resurrection of the body to a new and glorious life (1Co 15:42-53; Php 3:20-21).
Since there is more to a human life than what people experience during their earthly existence, psyche naturally developed a meaning relating to more than normal earthly life. Eternal destiny also is involved (Mat 10:28; Mat 16:26; Heb 10:38-39).
From this usage, psyche developed an even richer meaning. It became the word most commonly used among Christians to describe the higher or more spiritual aspect of human life that is popularly called the soul (Heb 6:19; Heb 13:17; Jam 1:21; 1Pe 1:9; 1Pe 1:22; 1Pe 2:11; 1Pe 2:25; 3Jn 1:2).
Fuente: Bridgeway Bible Dictionary
Soul
SOUL.In every act of thinking, a distinction exists between the thinker and his thought, or, as it is otherwise expressed, between the self and the not-self, the ego and the non-ego, the thinking subject and the object of thought. This ego, self, or thinking subject, is denominated the soul (, , ), or spirit (, ; see Spirit); often also, both in the OT and NT, the heart (, , ; see Heart). In the OT the soul is sometimes confused with the blood or with some important physical organ, but in the NT it is clearly distinguished from the body as an immaterial principle, the seat of conscious personality, and essentially immortal (Mat 10:28 etc.; see Immortality). There was much speculation in our Lords time, and had been for some two centuries, on the mysterious questions of the souls origin and destiny. Some, following Plato and Philo, believed in its eternal pre-existence (cf. Wis 8:19 Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885 ); others (mainly orthodox Rabbis) in its creation at the creation of the world (cf. 2Es 4:35 ff.); others in its premundane creation (Slavonic Enoch 23:5); others (perhaps the majority) in its concreation with the body, which is apparently the doctrine of the OT (Isa 44:2; Isa 44:24; Isa 49:1; Isa 49:5, Job 31:15). A few supported the Platonic speculation of metempsychosis (so apparently Josephus; see BJ iii. viii. 5). The disciples of Jesus were aware of these discussions, and on one occasion asked Him whether a certain man had been born blind as a penalty for sins committed by him in a previous state of existence. It is a significant illustration of the economy of revelation that Jesus avoided entering upon the discussion (Joh 9:2). [Note: The Creationist view of the souls origin was held by all Jews in our Lords time. The Traducianist hypothesis first appears in Tertullian (a.d. 200).]
1. The use of in the Gospels.In the Pauline Epistles, as is well known, there is frequently a decided difference of meaning between and . There is used for the principle of life of the natural man, while , is the principle of supernatural life which manifests itself in the regenerate Christian. Hence the derivative (literally soulish) comes to be used in a depreciatory, and even in a bad sense (1Co 12:14; 1Co 15:44, Jam 3:15, Jud 1:19). But in the Gospels there is no such distinction of usage. As applied to the human soul, and are synonyms throughout the range of their meaning. Thus in the sense of natural life, we have Mar 3:4, cf. Joh 13:37 (); and Mat 27:50, cf. Luk 23:46, Joh 19:30 (). (For the lower sense of , cf. also Mar 8:12, Luk 8:55; Luk 24:37; Luk 24:39, Joh 11:33; Joh 13:21). , as well as , is used quite normally for the soul in its highest religious activities (see, e.g., Luk 1:46, where the identity of and is especially apparent; Mat 11:29; Mat 22:37, ||; cf. 1Pe 2:11; 1Pe 2:25; 1Pe 4:19, 2Pe 2:8 etc.; and even in the Pauline Epp. see 2Co 1:23, Eph 6:8, Php 1:27; cf. Heb 6:19; Heb 13:17). In one passage (Joh 10:24) seems even to stand for the rational or deliberating faculty (, ). There is, however, between and , as used in the Gospels, one slight distinction. emphasizes more strongly than the idea of individual personality. Hence (not ) is used for individuals or persons (Act 27:37, 1Pe 3:20); and it is usual to speak of the salvation or loss of the rather than of the (Mat 6:25; Mat 10:39; Mat 16:25-26, Mar 8:35, Luk 9:24; Luk 17:33; Luk 21:19, Joh 12:25, Heb 10:39, Jam 1:21; Jam 5:20, 1Pe 1:9). Yet the salvation of the is alluded to (1Co 5:5, 1Th 5:23). , however, is not by any means a strictly impersonal term (see Mat 5:16, Heb 1:14). It is used like to denote a disembodied soul (Luk 24:37; Luk 24:39, Heb 12:23, 1Pe 3:18, Rev 6:9; Rev 20:4). In Mat 12:18 (a quotation from Isa 42:1) God is said to possess a . In Joh 4:24 He is said to be spirit ().
The following particular statements about the soul () are made in the Gospels. As the principle of physical life it is sustained by food (Mat 6:25); as the organ of spiritual life it magnifies the Lord (Luk 1:46). It is capable of physical and sensuous pleasure (Luk 12:19), also of spiritual rest and refreshment (Mat 11:29). It can suffer acute sorrow (Luk 2:35) and anxiety (Joh 10:24). It can grieve (Mat 26:38) and love (Mat 22:37). It can be lost and saved (Mat 10:39 etc.). At death it is yielded up (Joh 10:11; Joh 10:15; Joh 12:21), but survives as a personal self-conscious being (Mat 10:39 etc.).* [Note: It follows from this, that in the view of Jesus and the Twelve, the and of man are not distinct principles or entities, as, according to some, St. Paul affirms in 1Th 5:23, cf. Heb 4:12. The language of the Gospels makes decisively for the unity of the soul, and for a dichotomy of man (body and soul), not for a trichotomy (body, soul, and spirit).] See, further, Spirit.
2. Christs teaching about the soul.According to Jesus, the soul, being a mans inmost self, the seat of his self-conscious personality, and inherently immortal (Mat 10:28), is precious beyond all price. Nothing can be accepted in exchange for it, and the gain of the whole world will not compensate for its loss (Mat 16:26). Jesus drives home this truth in the parable of the Rich Fool, who said to his soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry; and whom God rebuked with the awful words, Thou fool, this night they (i.e. the ministers of my vengeance) require of thee thy soul (Luk 12:18-21). Much is said in the Gospels about the gain or loss of the soul, generally with a play upon the double meaning of (life or soul). Most of these passages take the form of exhortations to martyrdom, as, for instance, Mat 10:39 He that findeth his soul (i.e. he that saves his life by denying me in time of persecution), shall lose it (by eternal punishment in Gehenna); and he that loseth his soul for my sake (i.e. he who confesses me in time of persecution, and suffers a martyrs death), shall find it (in heaven); (see also Mat 16:25, Luk 17:33, Joh 12:35). All these passages refer primarily to martyrdom, but in their secondary applications teach that even lesser sufferings and trials endured patiently for Christs sake have as their reward the salvation of the soul (Mat 10:38). The same idea is expressed in Luk 14:26, where the strange phrase to hate the soul is a rhetorical expression for willingness to suffer martyrdom or any lesser inconvenience for Jesus sake (cf. also Joh 12:25). The gain or salvation of the soul means certainly its eternal happiness in heaven, and the loss or destruction of the soul, as certainly, not its annihilation, but its eternal punishment in Gehenna. The endlessness of the souls final retribution is not simply an inference from the souls immortality, but is exegetically established from Mat 25:46 etc. According to the conceptions represented in the parable of Dives and Lazarus, retribution does not wait till the Last Day, but begins as soon as the soul leaves the body. At death the disembodied soul passes to a middle state (Hades), where, if righteous, it experiences rest and refreshment in Abrahams bosom, or Paradise; or, if unrighteous, expiatory punishment (symbolized as a tormenting flame) in a limbus or prison, which is separated by an impassable barrier from the abodes of the righteous. The disembodied souls are represented as conscious and intelligent, able to converse with one another, and interested in the welfare of their friends upon earth (Luk 16:19; Luk 23:43, 1Pe 3:18, Rev 6:9).
The most important question about the intermediate state is whether spiritual change is possible in it. The point has been keenly debated, but the affirmative opinion seems to have the better exegetical support. For (1) the NT represents not death, but the Second Advent, as the time when the soul will render its final account to God. Presumably; therefore, the middle state is included in the period of probation. (2) Christ appears to the present writer to teach that some sins may be forgiven after death (Mat 12:32); and at least to hint that even grievous sinners may be released from torments, after adequately expiating their crimes (Mat 5:26). (3) The torments of Dives seem to nave been remedial in effect, causing him for the first time to interest himself in the spiritual welfare of others (Luk 16:27). (4) The descent of Christ into Hades, and His preaching to the disobedient spirits there (1Pe 3:18), plainly presuppose the possibility of repentance after death.* [Note: the striking words of Clement of Alexandria: The Apostles, following the Lord, preached the gospel to those in Hades. [Gods] punishments [in Hades) are saving and disciplinary, leading to conversion, and choosing rather the repentance than the death of a sinner. Did not the same dispensation obtain in Hades, so that even there, all the souls, on hearing the preaching, might either exhibit repentance, or confess that their punishment was just because they believed not? (Strom. vi. 6). See also the Shepherd of Hermas, Simil. ix. 16: These Apostles and teachers, having fallen asleep, preached also to those who had fallen asleep before them, and themselves gave the seal of their preaching.]
At the Last Day, according to Jesus, there will be a bodily resurrection of all men, followed by a final judgment, and a final settlement of the destiny of each soul (Mat 25:31-46). The resurrection of the wicked is clearly taught in Mat 10:28, Joh 5:29. See, further, Resurrection of the Dead, Eschatology, Abraham ($ Abrahams bosom), Paradise, Hell [Descent into].
Jesus claimed to stand in the same relation to human souls as God Himself; and as the Lord of souls issued the universal invitation, Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden and ye shall find rest unto your souls (Mat 11:28-29). He also declared that His special object in coming into the world was to save souls (Luk 9:56) by laying down His own soul as a ransom (Joh 10:11; Joh 10:15; Joh 17:3).
3. The soul of Jesus.If Jesus was perfect man, it follows that He must have possessed not only a human body, but also a human soul and a human spirit; and this is, in fact, the doctrine of the Gospels and of the NT generally. Thus He came to give His soul () a ransom for many (Mat 20:28 ||). After the interview with the Greeks (Joh 12:27), His soul () was troubled, and He doubted what to say. In Gethsemane His soul was exceeding sorrowful ( , Mat 26:38 ||). There are similar references to His human spirit. He groaned (or was angry) in spirit ( , Joh 11:33); and was troubled in spirit ( , Joh 13:21). On the cross He commended His spirit to God ( , Luk 23:46), and yielded up His spirit ( , Mat 27:50; , Joh 19:30). After death, His Divine Personality, still in hypostatic (i.e. personal) union with His disembodied human spirit, descended to Hades, and there preached to the disobedient spirits in prison (1Pe 3:18, cf. Eph 4:9); visiting also, we infer from Luk 23:43, that compartment of Hades which is reserved for the spirits of the just. It is obvious from these and other passages, that the view of Apollinaris that Christ did not possess a human soul,* [Note: Apollinaris admitted that Jesus possessed the lower or animal soul ( ), but denied to Him the distinctively human or rational soul ( ).] but that the Divine Logos took its place, is not Scriptural. The soul and spirit of Jesus were subject to human weakness and infirmity, and were therefore human, not Divine.
But the rejection of Apollinarism, and the adoption of the view that Christ possessed a perfect human soul, involves a great psychological difficulty. A perfect human soul is personal, and therefore, if Christ was perfect God and perfect man, it seems to follow that He must have been two persons, as Nestorius thought, or was supposed to think. This difficulty has never yet received a full solution. The solution of the ancient Church was that the human nature of the incarnate Christ was impersonal. The human of Christ, which, under normal conditions, would have developed independent personality, was prevented, owing to its hypostatic union with the Logos, from doing so. It attained personality, not in itself, but in the Divine Logos with which it was united; and hence, though Christ possessed a true human , His personality was single, being seated entirely in the Divine Nature. The Patristic view is open to criticism on several grounds, but it still holds the field as the best attempt to reconcile the two apparently conflicting principles of Scripture, that Christ is perfect God and perfect man, and yet only one Person. [Note: The details of the question are in the highest degree intricate, and cannot be entered upon here. The reader may consult Dorner, Person of Christ, ii. i. 116 ff., 152 ff., 201 ff., 266 ff., for an acute criticism of the Patristic view. See also Ottley, Incarnation, pt. vii. 1. 4, 2. 2.]
4. The human will of Jesus.Jesus, as possessing a human soul, possessed also a human will, for volition is one of the most characteristic activities of the soul. The Gospels regard Jesus as endowed with a human will, which, though in the end always conforming itself to the Divine will, yet did so sometimes at the cost of an inward struggle. Thus in the Agony in the Garden, Jesus prays (Luk 22:42), Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine be done ( , ). The distinction of wills is evident also in Joh 5:30 (cf. Joh 6:38) I seek not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. It is thus the teaching of Scripture that there are two wills in Christ, a Divine and a human, and that these two wills are united in one Person. The reconciliation of the two different points of view (duality of will, and unity of Person) is not easy. According to modern ideas, the faculty of willing is so essentially a function of personality, that it seems necessary to postulate two egos where there are two wills. The ancients, however, did not connect willing with personality so closely as we do; and, moreover, will is too strong a term to translate their (voluntas). , it is true, in its stronger sense, approaches the meaning of will, but more often it bears the weaker sense of wish, liking, inclination, propension. The true Greek term for will in our sense is , or more definitely , or still more definitely , or (self-determination). It is clearly in the weaker sense of inclination that is used in the Gospels, and it is probably in the same sense that Dyothelitism was declared by the Sixth General Council (a.d. 680) to be the doctrine of the Church. [Note: On the Monothelite and Dyothelite question see Dorner, op. cit. ii. i. 155 ff. The last word (even from the strictly orthodox point of view) has not yet been said upon this difficult subject.]
See also art. Incarnation in vol. i., esp, p. 812 f.
Literature.M. F. Roos, Fundamenta Psychologi ex sacra Scriptura collecta (brief, but valuable); J. T. Beck, Umriss der bibl. Seelenlehre [English translation 1877]; Bttcher, de Inferis (a storehouse of Biblical and Rabbinical material); Olshausen, de Nat. Human. Trichotomia (in Opusc. Theol.); von Rudloff, Die Lehre vom Menschen; Franz Delitzsch, Syst. d. bibl. Psychol. [English translation 1867] (learned, but fanciful); J. Laidlaw, The Bible Doctrine of Man; J. B. Heard, The Tripartite Nature of Man; W. P. Dickson, St. Pauls Use of Flesh and Spirit (contains short bibliography); Ellicott, The Threefold Nature of Man, in The Destiny of the Creature; W. R. Alger, Destiny of the Soul (contains exhaustive bibliography by Ezra Abbot); R. H. Charles, A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life; Salmond, Christian Doctrine of Immortality; F. W. H. Myers, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death; Piat, Destine de lhomme; Welldon, The Hope of Immortality; Martineau, Study of Religion, bk. 4; Mason, Purgatory; Plumptre, Spirits in Prison; Luckock, After Death; Pusey, What is of faith as to Everlasting Punishment?; C. Harris, pro Fide, c. [Note: circa, about.] xv.; A. Westphal, Chair et Esprit; Ldemann, Die Anthropologie des ap. Paulus; art. Psychology in Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible ; art. Geist in PRE [Note: RE Real-Encyklopdie fur protest. Theologic und Kirche.] 3 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred] ; artt. Soul, Eschatology, Immortality of the Soul in JE [Note: E Jewish Encyclopedia.] ; art. Eschatology in EBi [Note: Bi Encyclopaedia Biblica.] ; consult also OT Theologies of Schultz, Smend, Oehler; and the NT Theologies of Schmid, van Oosterzee, B. Weiss, Holtzmann.
C. Harris.
Fuente: A Dictionary Of Christ And The Gospels
Soul
SOUL.The use of the term in the OT (Heb. nephesh) for any animated being, whether human or animal (Gen 1:20 life, Gen 2:7), must be distinguished from the Greek philosophical use for the immaterial substance which gives life to the body, and from the use in the NT (Gr. psyche) where more stress is laid on individuality (Mat 16:26 RVm [Note: Revised Version margin.] ). As the Bible does not contain a scientific psychology, it is vain to dispute whether it teaches that mans nature is bipartite (body and soul or spirit) or tripartite (body and soul and spirit): yet a contrast between soul and spirit (Heb. rach, Gr. pneuma) may be recognized; while the latter is the universal principle imparting life from the Creator, the former is the individual organism possessed of life in the creature (Gen 2:7breath of life and living soul).In some passages the terms are used as equivalent (Isa 26:9, Luk 1:46-47, Php 1:27 RV [Note: Revised Version.] ), in others a distinction is made (Heb 4:12, 1Th 5:23). The distinction is this: soul expresses man as apart from God, a separate individual; spirit expresses man as drawing his life from God (cf. Joh 10:11, life = soul, and Joh 19:30). This separate individuality may renounce its dependence and refuse its submission to God. Hence the adjective psychical may be rendered sensual (Jam 3:15, Jud 1:19 [RVm [Note: Revised Version margin.] Or, natural. Or, animal]), or natural (1Co 2:14; 1Co 15:44-46). Probably sensual in the two passages conveys more moral meaning than the term psychical justifies, and natural is the better rendering, as expressing what belongs to the old unregenerate life in contrast with the characteristic of the new life in Christ, the spiritual (pneumatic). A parallel change in the use of the term flesh and its corresponding adjective may be noted.
Alfred E. Garvie.
Fuente: Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible
Soul
sol (, nephesh; , psuche; Latin anima):
1. Shades of Meaning in the Old Testament:
(1) Soul, like spirit, has various shades of meaning in the Old Testament, which may be summarized as follows: Soul, living being, life, self, person, desire, appetite, emotion and passion (BDB under the word). In the first instance it meant that which breathes, and as such is distinguished from basar, flesh (Isa 10:18; Deu 12:23); from she’er, the inner flesh, next the bones (Pro 11:17, his own flesh); from beten, belly (Psa 31:10, My soul and my belly are consumed with grief), etc.
(2) As the life-breath, it departs at death (Gen 35:18; Jer 15:2). Hence, the desire among Old Testament saints to be delivered from Sheol (Psa 16:10, Thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol) and from shachath, the pit (Job 33:18, He keepeth back his soul from the pit; Isa 38:17, Thou hast … delivered it (my soul) from the pit of corruption).
(3) By an easy transition the word comes to stand for the individual, personal life, the person, with two distinct shades of meaning which might best be indicated by the Latin anima and animus. As anima, soul, the life inherent in the body, the animating principle in the blood is denoted (compare Deu 12:23, Deu 12:24, ‘Only be sure that thou eat not the blood: for the blood is the soul; and thou shalt not eat the soul with the flesh’). As animus, mind, the center of our mental activities and passivities is indicated. Thus we read of ‘a hungry soul’ (Psa 107:9), ‘a weary soul’ (Jer 31:25), ‘a loathing soul’ (Lev 26:11), ‘a thirsty soul’ (Psa 42:2), ‘a grieved soul’ (Job 30:25), ‘a loving soul’ (Son 1:7), and many kindred expressions. Cremer has characterized this use of the word in a sentence: Nephesh (soul) in man is the subject of personal life, whereof pneuma or ruah (spirit) is the principle (Lexicon, under the word, 795).
(4) This individuality of man, however, may be denoted by pneuma as well, but with a distinction. Nephesh or soul can only denote the individual life with a material organization or body. Pneuma or spirit is not so restricted. Scripture speaks of spirits of just men made perfect (Heb 12:23), where there can be no thought of a material or physical or corporeal organization. They are spiritual beings freed from the assaults and defilements of the flesh (Delitzsch, in the place cited.). For an exceptional use of psuche in the same sense see Rev 6:9; Rev 20:4, and (irrespective of the meaning of Psa 16:10) Act 2:27.
2. New Testament Distinctions:
(1) In the New Testament psuche appears under more or less similar conditions as in the Old Testament. The contrast here is as carefully maintained as there. It is used where pneuma would be out of place; and yet it seems at times to be employed where pneuma might have been substituted. Thus in Joh 19:30 we read: Jesus gave up his pneuma to the Father, and, in the same Gospel (Joh 10:15), Jesus gave up His psuche for the sheep, and in Mat 20:28 He gave His psuche (not His pneuma) as a ransom – a difference which is characteristic. For the pneuma stands in quite a different relation to God from the psuche. The spirit (pneuma) is the outbreathing of God into the creature, the life-principle derived from God. The soul (psuche) is man’s individual possession, that which distinguishes one man from another and from inanimate nature. The pneuma of Christ was surrendered to the Father in death; His psuche was surrendered, His individual life was given a ransom for many. His life was given for the sheep
(2) This explains those expressions in the New Testament which bear on the salvation of the soul and its preservation in the regions of the dead. Thou wilt not leave my soul unto Hades (the world of shades) (Act 2:27); Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that worketh evil (Rom 2:9); We are … of them that have faith unto the saving of the soul (Heb 10:39); Receive … the implanted word, which is able to save your souls (Jam 1:21).
The same or similar expressions may be met with in the Old Testament in reference to the soul. Thus in Psa 49:8, the King James Version The redemption of their soul is precious and again: God will redeem my soul from the power of Sheol (Psa 49:15). Perhaps this may explain – at least this is Wendt’s explanation – why even a corpse is called nephesh or soul in the Old Testament, because, in the region of the dead, the individuality is retained and, in a measure, separated from God (compare Hag 2:13; Lev 21:11).
3. Oehler on Soul and Spirit:
The distinction between psuche and pneuma, or nephesh and ruah, to which reference has been made, may best be described in the words of Oehler (Old Testament Theology, I, 217): Man is not spirit, but has it: he is soul…. In the soul, which sprang from the spirit, and exists continually through it, lies the individuality – in the case of man, his personality, his self, his ego. He draws attention to the words of Elihu in Job (Job 33:4): ‘God’s spirit made me,’ the soul called into being; ‘and the breath of the Almighty animates me,’ the soul kept in energy and strength, in continued existence, by the Almighty, into whose hands the inbreathed spirit is surrendered, when the soul departs or is taken from us (1Ki 19:4). Hence, according to Oehler the phrases naphsh (my soul), naphshekha (thy soul) may be rendered in Latin egomet, tu ipse; but not ruh (my spirit), ruhakha (thy spirit) – soul standing for the whole person, as in Gen 12:5; Gen 17:14; Eze 18:4, etc. See PSYCHOLOGY.
Fuente: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Soul
The present article is a sequel to that on Punishment, in which literature only of the question concerning future punishment will be briefly stated. The literature of the question concerning the nature and duration of future punishment consists of the following particulars. First, its duration was believed by the heathens to be eternal. Secondly, there is a still more striking similarity between the descriptions both of the nature and duration of future punishment given in the Apocryphal books and those of the New Testament. Thus Jdt 16:17; ‘Woe to the nations which rise up against my kindred! the Lord Almighty will take vengeance on them in the day of judgment, in putting fire and worms in their flesh; and they shall feel them, and weep for ever’ (comp. Sir 7:17; Mar 9:44). These terms seem borrowed from Isaiah’s description of a different subject (Isa 66:24). Thirdly, Josephus describes the doctrine of everlasting punishment as being held by the Pharisees and Essenes: ‘that the souls of the wicked should be punished with perpetual punishment, and that there was appointed for them a perpetual prison’ (De Bell. Jud. ii. 8. 11, 14; Antiq. xviii. 1, 3). In the New Testament the nature of future punishment is almost always described by figures. ‘The most abstract description occurs in Rom 2:9-16 : ‘Tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth evil, in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men.’ Our Lord generally describes it under figures suggested by some comparison he had just before made, and in unison with it. Thus, having described future happiness under the figure of a midnight banquet, lighted up with lamps, then the state of the rejected is described under that of ‘outer darkness’ outside the mansion, and ‘gnashing’ or chattering ‘of teeth,’ from the extreme cold of an Oriental night (Mat 8:12; Luk 13:28). If ‘the end of the world’ be described by him under the figure of a harvest, then the wicked, who are represented by the tares, are accordingly gathered and burned. Our Lord also frequently represents future punishment under the idea of fire, which Calvin, on Isa 66:24, remarks, must be understood metaphorically of spiritual punishment. Indeed both the nature and variety of the figures employed by our Savior in regard to the subject fully justify Paley’s observation, ‘that our Lord’s discourses exhibit no particular description of the invisible world. The future happiness of the good and the future misery of the bad, which is all we want to be assured of, is directly and positively affirmed, and is represented by metaphors and comparisons which were plainly intended as metaphors and comparisons, and nothing more. As to the rest a solemn reserve is maintained’ (Evidences of Christianity, part ii. ch. ii.). The question of the duration of future punishment chiefly turns on the force of the words translated ‘ever,’ ‘everlasting,’ ‘never,’ which our Lord and his apostles apply to it, and which it is well known have sometimes a limited signification, and are very variously translated in the English version. Hence, therefore, it is urged on the one side, that we can never settle the precise import of these words, as applied in the New Testament to the duration of future punishment, until we shall be able also to answer the following questions; namely, Was it part of the commission of Christ and His apostles to determine this matter? and if so, In what sense were the terms they used in regard to it meant by themselves, and understood by their hearerswhether as denoting a punishment of unknown duration, or one literally coexistent with the duration of the Eternal God? On the other side it is objected, that the same word is applied both to the happiness of the righteous and the misery of the wicked, though varied in our translation of Mat 25:46 : ‘These shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.’ Upon this truly important subject we cordially acquiesce in the remark of Doddridge: ‘Miserable are they who venture their souls upon the possibility that the words in question, when applied to future punishment, may have a limited meaning.’
Fuente: Popular Cyclopedia Biblical Literature
Soul
See Spirit; Immortality; Man, Spirit; Heaven, The Future Dwelling Place of the Righteous; Wicked, Punishment of
Spirit; Immortality; Man, Spirit; Heaven, The Future Dwelling Place of the Righteous; Wicked, Punishment of
Fuente: Nave’s Topical Bible
Soul
(Gr. psyche) In Aristotle the vital principle; the formal cause, essence, or entelechy of a natural organic body. — G.R.M.
Fuente: The Dictionary of Philosophy
Soul
denotes “the breath, the breath of life,” then “the soul,” in its various meanings. The NT uses “may be analyzed approximately as follows:
(a) the natural life of the body, Mat 2:20; Luk 12:22; Act 20:10; Rev 8:9; Rev 12:11; cp. Lev 17:11; 2Sa 14:7; Est 8:11; (b) the immaterial, invisible part of man, Mat 10:28; Act 2:27; cp. 1Ki 17:21; (c) the disembodied (or “unclothed” or “naked,” 2Co 5:3-4) man, Rev 6:9; (d) the seat of personality, Luk 9:24, explained as == “own self,” Luk 9:25; Heb 6:19; Heb 10:39; cp. Isa 53:10 with 1Ti 2:6; (e) the seat of the sentient element in man, that by which he perceives, reflects, feels, desires, Mat 11:29; Luk 1:46; Luk 2:35; Act 14:2, Act 14:22; cp. Psa 84:2; Psa 139:14; Isa 26:9; (f) the seat of will and purpose, Mat 22:37; Act 4:32; Eph 6:6; Phi 1:27; Heb 12:3; cp. Num 21:4; Deu 11:13; (g) the seat of appetite, Rev 18:14; cp. Psa 107:9; Pro 6:30; Isa 5:14 (“desire”); Isa 29:8; (h) persons, individuals, Act 2:41, Act 2:43; Rom 2:9; Jam 5:20; 1Pe 3:20; 2Pe 2:14; cp. Gen 12:5; Gen 14:21 (“persons”); Lev 4:2 (‘any one’); Eze 27:13; of dead bodies, Num 6:6, lit., “dead soul;” and of animals, Lev 24:18, lit., “soul for soul;” (i) the equivalent of the personal pronoun, used for emphasis and effect:, 1st person, Joh 10:24 (“us”); Heb 10:38; cp. Gen 12:13; Num 23:10; Jdg 16:30; Psa 120:2 (“me”); 2nd person, 2Co 12:15; Heb 13:17; Jam 1:21; 1Pe 1:9; 1Pe 2:25; cp. Lev 17:11; Lev 26:15; 1Sa 1:26; 3rd person, 1Pe 4:19; 2Pe 2:8; cp. Exo 30:12; Job 32:2, Heb. “soul,” Sept. “self;” (j) an animate creature, human or other, 1Co 15:45; Rev 16:3; cp. Gen 1:24; Gen 2:7, Gen 2:19; (k) “the inward man,” the seat of the new life, Luk 21:19 (cp. Mat 10:39); 1Pe 2:11; 3Jo 1:2.
“With (j) compare a-psuchos, “soulless, inanimate,” 1Co 14:7.
“With (f) compare di-psuchos, “two-souled,” Jam 1:8; Jam 4:8; oligo-psuchos, “feeble-souled,” 1Th 5:14; iso-psuchos, “like-souled,” Phi 2:20; sum-psuchos, “joint-souled” (with one accord”), Phi 2:2.
“The language of Heb 4:12 suggests the extreme difficulty of distinguishing between the soul and the spirit, alike in their nature and in their activities. Generally speaking the spirit is the higher, the soul the lower element. The spirit may be recognized as the life principle bestowed on man by God, the soul as the resulting life constituted in the individual, the body being the material organism animated by soul and spirit.
“Body and soul are the constituents of the man according to Mat 6:25; Mat 10:28; Luk 12:20; Act 20:10; body and spirit according to Luk 8:55; 1Co 5:3; 1Co 7:34; Jam 2:26. In Mat 26:38 the emotions are associated with the soul, in Joh 13:21 with the spirit; cp. also Psa 42:11 with 1Ki 21:5. In Psa 35:9 the soul rejoices in God, in Luk 1:47 the spirit.
“Apparently, then, the relationships may be thus summed up ‘Soma, body, and pneuma, spirit, may be separated, pneuma and psuche, soul, can only be distinguished’ (Cremer).”* [* From notes on Thessalonians, by Hogg and Vine, pp. 205-207.]
Fuente: Vine’s Dictionary of New Testament Words
Soul
that immortal, immaterial, active substance or principle in man, whereby he perceives, remembers, reasons, and wills. See MATERIALISM.
Fuente: Biblical and Theological Dictionary
Soul
This word is used as a picture of, or a type of, many things.
Below is a list of some of the things which are covered by this word:
Gen 2:7 The human life
Gen 34:8 Human feelings
Gen 35:18 The human spirit
Lev 5:2 The person’s body
Lev 17:11 The whole person
Lev 17:12 The person’s body
2Ch 6:38 Purpose of heart
1Sa 18:1 Human affections
1Ki 17:21 The spirit of life
Deu 11:13 The human mind or will
Heb 10:39 The whole person
Heb 13:17 The human life
The above types cover practically all of the places where the word “soul” is used throughout the Scriptures. These passages are a guide to other Scriptures.