The soul

[Tom Davidson]

"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (neshamah); and man became a living soul (nephesh)." Genesis 2:7

Many problems arise because in translating the Hebrew 'nephesh' into the Greek 'psyche', then into English 'soul', the commonly understood definition of soul is the Greek sense, which is entirely different from the Hebrew, and thus different to the manner in which Christ uses the term.

The Greek reflects the Platonic view of the soul (psyche) as something incorporeal, (possibly) immortal, an essence (of the person) that is no part of the physical body, and likewise the physical body is no part of the soul. From here stems the concepts of reincarnation and transmigration - that the soul moves from body to body on its journey towards perfection.

This leads to an inherent dualism of body and soul, and sets the two in opposition. In the Greek worlds the soul is good, the body is evil. By extension, the spiritual is good, and the physical is evil, which again is a Platonic viewpoint that entirely contradicts Scripture, for God made the world and saw that it was good, as were are told in each successive day in Genesis 1 (except the second), but the place of the world, as a place and source of good, drops from sight from there on.

This view occurs again and again, in Platonism, gnosticism, and a whole raft of heresies that were condemned by the church. However, the church saw fit never to address the cause of the error directly, preferring the simplicity of the belief that human beings have an immortal soul which animals do not have, as an easy way of explaining how we must combat ourselves to attain salvation. Yet by implication the fault lies with the body - the sins of the flesh - as it it was the body that corrupted the soul. In fact the soul and body are one - and as the soul IS its body, they are either both corrupt, or neither of them. Scripture uses the word nephesh to describe both men and creatures as 'living' but translators used the word 'soul' for man and 'creature' for animal. The Hebrew phrase should be translated exactly the same way in both cases, and to do likewise is to mislead those who do not read Hebrew.

Catholic scholar Dom Wulstan Mork said that the soul gives life to the body, but not as a distinct substance. Adam doesn't have nephesh; he is nephesh, just as he is bashar. The body is the visible nephesh. The soul is to the body as the beat is to the heart.

Furthermore the expression 'man became a living soul' (nephesh hayyah) does not mean that at creation his body was endowed with an immortal soul, it means that by the breath of life man became a living, breathing being - the heart began to beat, the blood to circulate, the brain to think, and all the vital signs of life were activated. Simply stated, a living soul means a living being.

The term 'nephesh hayyah' is translated as 'living soul' when referring to man, but living creature when referring to animals. Animals are referred to as living creatures rather than living souls. Why? The translators accepted the belief that human beings have an immaterial, immortal soul which animals do not have - and this is entirely Greek in origin - the scriptural translators have 'glossed over' (I would not say concealed) the fact, presumably because they were so bound by current theological notions of the meaning of the word 'psyche'.

The simple truth is that 'soul' means 'life', and that which has life has soul - be it man or animal. Where there is no life, there is no soul, and where there is no soul, there is no life.

The saddest outcome of this - apart from inherent error - is the view of the world. By accepting this underlying duality, we have turned our backs on the world as having no place in the Divine Economy of Salvation. This is a tragic error. The Christian is led to believe that God is nowhere present in the world, except the in the church, and likewise we have to reject the world to be good Christians.

Adam was given dominion over the world.

We continue to desecrate and destroy it.

When God asked Abel the whereabouts of his brother, we all know the reply. When God asks us what have we done with the world he gave us, what shall we say?

Thomas
www.theveil.net

 

[Linus]

Im a little confused by your post. If everything that has life has a soul, then wouldn't all life be naturally equal? If this is the case, then why would God give Adam have dominion over the world? Could you explain this please?

 

[Tom Davidson]

Nefesh, as animal or creaturely soul, contains all that we share in common with the animal domain - flesh, blood, bones, etc.

The bible further talks of 'ruach' which translates as spirit, but which means 'wind' (hence the connection between ruach and neshamah)

Job 33:4: "The spirit (ruach) of God has made me, and the breath (neshamah) of the Almighty gives me life."

Job 34:14-15: "If he should take back his spirit (ruach) to himself, and gather to himself his breath (neshamah), all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust."

So nefesh is the animal soul in all creatures, but ruach, and neshamah, is the Spirit of God, which man alone knows.

 

[Christ Michael]

. AT EPHESUS--DISCOURSE ON THE SOUL



On leaving Athens, the travelers went by way of Troas to Ephesus, the capital of the Roman province of Asia. They made many trips out to the famous temple of Artemis of the Ephesians, about two miles from the city. Artemis was the most famous goddess of all Asia Minor and a perpetuation of the still earlier mother goddess of ancient Anatolian times. The crude idol exhibited in the enormous temple dedicated to her worship was reputed to have fallen from heaven. Not all of Ganid's early training to respect images as symbols of divinity had been eradicated, and he thought it best to purchase a little silver shrine in honor of this fertility goddess of Asia Minor. That night they talked at great length about the worship of things made with human hands.

On the third day of their stay they walked down by the river to observe the dredging of the harbor's mouth. At noon they talked with a young Phoenician who was homesick and much discouraged; but most of all he was envious of a certain young man who had received promotion over his head. Jesus spoke comforting words to him and quoted the olden Hebrew proverb: "A man's gift makes room for him and brings him before great men."

Of all the large cities they visited on this tour of the Mediterranean, they here accomplished the least of value to the subsequent work of the Christian missionaries. Christianity secured its start in Ephesus largely through the efforts of Paul, who resided here more than two years, making tents for a living and conducting lectures on religion and philosophy each night in the main audience chamber of the school of Tyrannus.

There was a progressive thinker connected with this local school of philosophy, and Jesus had several profitable sessions with him. In the course of these talks Jesus had repeatedly used the word "soul." This learned Greek finally asked him what he meant by "soul," and he replied:

"The soul is the self-reflective, truth-discerning, and spirit-perceiving part of man which forever elevates the human being above the level of the animal world. Self-consciousness, in and of itself, is not the soul. Moral self-consciousness is true human self-realization and constitutes the foundation of the human soul, and the soul is that part of man which represents the potential survival value of human experience. Moral choice and spiritual attainment, the ability to know God and the urge to be like him, are the characteristics of the soul. The soul of man cannot exist apart from moral thinking and spiritual activity. A stagnant soul is a dying soul. But the soul of man is distinct from the divine spirit which dwells within the mind. The divine spirit arrives simultaneously with the first moral activity of the human mind, and that is the occasion of the birth of the soul.

"The saving or losing of a soul has to do with whether or not the moral consciousness attains survival status through eternal alliance with its associated immortal spirit endowment. Salvation is the spiritualization of the self-realization of the moral consciousness, which thereby becomes possessed of survival value. All forms of soul conflict consist in the lack of harmony between the moral, or spiritual, self-consciousness and the purely intellectual self-consciousness.

"The human soul, when matured, ennobled, and spiritualized, approaches the heavenly status in that it comes near to being an entity intervening between the material and the spiritual, the material self and the divine spirit. The evolving soul of a human being is difficult of description and more difficult of demonstration because it is not discoverable by the methods of either material investigation or spiritual proving. Material science cannot demonstrate the existence of a soul, neither can pure spirit-testing. Notwithstanding the failure of both material science and spiritual standards to discover the existence of the human soul, every
morally conscious mortal knows of the existence of his soul as a real and actual personal experience."


[from The Urantia Book]


Cheers

 

[Tom Davidson]

This stuff is a reworking of various Hermetic and Platonic texts and although a nice piece of fiction, it is nothing more than that. Sorry. You'd do better to read the Corpus Hermeticum or the Enneads of Plotinus, all freely available on the web. I would suggest the Kaballa but you'd have to guarantee the authority of the source as it is very trendy nowadays.

If Christian I suggest meditating on the Prologue of the Gospel of St John (which shows just how contrived and inescapably 'modern' the above is), or perhaps the works of Dionysius the Areopagite, which might in its language have more appeal than the profound simplicity of Scripture.

The books of Paulo Coelho are better than this.

 

[Christ Michael]

This stuff is a reworking of various Hermetic and Platonic texts and although a nice piece of fiction, it is nothing more than that. Sorry. You'd do better to read the Corpus Hermeticum or the Enneads of Plotinus, all freely available on the web. I would suggest the Kaballa but you'd have to guarantee the authority of the source as it is very trendy nowadays.

If Christian I suggest meditating on the Prologue of the Gospel of St John (which shows just how contrived and inescapably 'modern' the above is), or perhaps the works of Dionysius the Areopagite, which might in its language have more appeal than the profound simplicity of Scripture.

The books of Paulo Coelho are better than this.

I guess Jesus Christ doesn't know what he is talking about !!!




Cheers

 

[Tom Davidson]

I would rather say the author of this book doesn't know what he's talking about.

If we are going to argue - what is the source of the material?

 

[Paraprakrti]

@Tom Davidson


My usage of the word "soul" is similar to how you described the Greek version. It constitutes an eternal, essential person who is no part of the physical body, and from which the concepts of reincarnation and transmigration arise. Although, my understanding of transmigration is not that of the soul moving upward toward perfection, necessarily. The soul may move upward or downward in this material world and never achieve perfection. It comes down to what is similar to the Christian concept that salvation doesn't come by gradual promotion, but by grace of God. To achieve perfection, according to what I follow, one has to surrender to God. Otherwise, one may at one moment be in a very high position in this material world, and then in the next moment fall to the lowest position. The spiritual world is called, "Vaikuntha", which means, "no anxieties". This material world is full of anxiety, and only by transcending it through grace of God can one achieve perfection.

I disagree that the duality of the body and soul must lead to our negligence of the world. This is a conclusion of lesser intelligent people. The body should be kept very nicely, but not indulged upon. Understanding the soul separate from the body is a necessity because those who mistake body for self are typically indulged in unrestricted sense-gratification.

I do agree with you that soul means life. All living organisms are living because they have a soul. But, contrary to many modern philosophies, I do not hold doctrine of monism to be true. The concept that our individuality is ultimately false in that *we* did not begin until God breathed life into us constitutes that our individuality will at some time perish as well. I am a firm follower of the "that which has a beginning has an end, and that which has no beginning has no end" philosophy. If our individuality had a beginning, then our individuality is ultimately an illusion and the doctrine of monism prevails. I, on the other hand, follow that both the Infinite Supersoul, God, and the infinitesimal souls, us, co-exist eternally. Also, that the two categories are eternally related to each other. The question of separation comes with the introducing of one's thinking self in relation to material energy. In and of itself, God's energies are all one with God, but relatively speaking, our identification with the material energy is what causes our ignorance of God. Although we are all constitutionally one with God, our ignorance of God separates us. Still, in any case, be it a liberated or a conditioned soul, we forever exist as individuals under the authority of God.

 

[Ronald]

Greetings Tom Davidson, from the Great State of Texas.
My long way around to say, AMEN! The Greek concept of imortal soul, is not Gods concept.
Looking forward to more of your comments.

 

[Runt]

***MOD POST***

Moving this to the Debate Forum... BTW, good topic!