I like this blog. I am glad that you are managing it. God bless. Oh, what do you think about my comments?
The term that I feel may capture the subject under discussion is “spirit” – the Greek terminology may be equivalent to breathe of life, and the psyche, or personhood – but nowadays terms include mind, and soul.
In view of the number of terms used in such discussions, I find it easier to commence with 2Cor 2:10-16. Paul talks of the spirit of man, spirit of the world, and Spirit of God – the spirituality of humanity is clearly stated by Paul. This enables us to commence with Adam, and show that becoming separated from God (often termed the fall) leaves us independent and we then arrive at our own spirituality, which is error prone. Mankind created so many erroneous accounts of spirit, that unless we are converted, we cannot understand spiritual truth – and we cannot be free from spiritual error. There is a parallel to the fallen angels, and much of pagan religions seem to include such fallen spirits. Milton incorporates the fallen spirits in his treatment of Paradise Lost, while Dante places evil human spirits with the fallen angels. In both cases, a universal outlook is presented which includes the limited understanding by Dante of the cosmological order. Milton wants to justify the ways of God to man, in which a lost paradise is regained by ‘outwitting or defeating’ the Devil. Dante’s cosmological order presents an eternal/endless activity with a given output of sinners for hell, some wayward ones in purgatory and the blessed going to heaven.
Christianity’s central focus is the ‘transformation’ or ‘conversion’ of sinners into human beings of faith, with Godly characteristics, thus saving of humanity from Satan’s characteristics. This is a practical proposition which does not immediately require an afterlife, since a Godly life would be one in which sin is removed and with this death is removed - thus the human life and God’s eternal life are not separated as they are now by sin. The question of an ‘afterlife’ is now formally a Godly life without death - eternal life. This enables us to speak of eternal souls and also death of both body and soul, without entertaining a contradiction.
It is obvious that the subject is dealt with by theology, while poetry has contributed a great deal on spiritual and emotional sensitivities. Science cannot address questions related to spirit, but materialists believe that studies of neural activity will provide all the information needed to understand sentience and intelligence – this approach negates all aspects of spirituality, just as atheism negates all belief in God. It is reasonable to conclude that while science cannot provide anything of substance, human beings will continue to seek erroneous views of spirit, even if this means ‘no-spirit’. It is noteworthy that a ‘no-spirit’ outlook goes against all recorded human history (such an outlok is extremely unscientific) – to me this further illustrates the power of the human mind to create any outlook it wishes.
That seems to be a good answer, Roger. Anthony Hoekema, late professor of Calvin Theological Seminary, says that the Greek words psyche and pneuma are used to mean that the dead survive between death and resurrection of the body at the Second Coming. It is not the Platonic idea; however, I feel God gives us eternal life when we accept Christ. Therefore, we go to the third heaven until the resurrection at the end of the age. The soul or spirit may grow in knowledge, and God takes the Christian’s mind to heaven until Jesus returns; however, it is not a soul in the sense of Platonic Philosophy. The non-material mind or soul uses the brain to communicate with the body. There is no natural immortally as the Platonists said; on the contrary, as Thomas Aquinas assumed, it can be destroyed by God. But God decides always never to destroy the soul even if a person’s pneuma goes to hell. Jesus, on the other hand, is saying that God has the ability to destroy the soul. That is what Aquinas was saying. The soul is not inherently immortal; Jesus gives us eternal life. Aristotle must have been influenced by the real God even though he did not know him. The Lord sometimes uses non-Christians to carry out his will. Look at the King of Persia and Esther. I wish to say that there is no evolution for the soul, only for the physical brain that the psyche inhabits. I hope that makes sense.
I believe I have found a true bridge between you and Roger. What he wrote to me last time is correct and you are correct. I wish I had also sent you a copy of my last answer to Roger. It involves us, Thomas Aquinas, Anthony Hoekema, Aristotle and the Bible. I respect both of you as well as the others, and I hope that all of you like the answer. Have I made a logical conclusion to the subject of this blog? I believe I have.
I my comment above about the translation of St. Paul, I meant to say 2 Corinthians 12 and not 1 Corinthians. This was an error on my part.
@Henry Just a quick note about things you can do to your posts. If you would like to edit a previous post to fix a typo or mistake, you can click on the pencil icon next to the “reply” button of the post you want to change and you can change it.
If you would like to direct a post to a particular person on a thread, you can use @ and start typing the person’s screen name and click on the right name when you see it. Then they will be notified that you said something to them, even if they aren’t checking in on the thread.
Happy discussing. 
I will have to agree that words like nephesh and ruach in the Hebrew Bible seem to indicate the total person. A friend of mine from Eastern University in Pennsylvania, Dr. Phil Carey, said that in the Book of Jonah nephesh meant the neck. In other words when Jonah was in the belly of the great fish, the water reached his neck. A nephesh can also die; it can mean a dead person. But the shade issue in the early books of the Hebrew Bible seem to indicate some survival outside of the body, even though it was a gloomy one. There was no separation from the good and the evil in the World of the Dead. By the way, the World of the Dead sounds like a Halloween horror movie. I just thought I would mention that.Take care.
@Christy
I wish to thank you for telling me this. I am a product of the mid-twentieth century who needs to get accustomed to modern computers. I wish to thank you again. God bless.
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Thank you for your comments.
They have brought to my attention that an important text has escaped my attention in this go round of discussion of life after death. That is 1 Cor 15-58 where Paul eloquently proclaimed the centrality of the important of Resurrection of Jesus Christ. [Paul also uses the image of the first Adam and the second Adam in a very interesting manner.]
What hear Paul saying is this. Death is the death of the body, because it separates the body from the mind and the spirit. Our mind and the spirit can exist separately from our body, but they are not the us. We are our body, mind, and spirit. In a real sense I understand that the Greeks believed in life after death since the souls of people existed in Hades after death, but they were “shades” or “shadows” of people, not real or full peoples.
The Jews believed in life after death based on the resurrection when bodies would be reunited with their minds and spirits. This afterlife would be done by God, rather than by the existence of an immortal soul.
The first issue Paul addresses in 1 Cor 15 is how the body as flesh and blood can exist in eternity. The answer is that it cannot. Paul’s response is that our resurrection body is a spiritual, non-physical body.
While his rationale for this view is interesting, but I think that what he really is saying is that the importance of the body is not its physically, but its function as that which gives humans form and the ability to function. We cannot act without the body, nor do we exist in a recognizable form. Thus our body is an integral part of who we are as persons, along with our minds and spirits.
The Resurrection of Jesus, the Messiah is not a message about the immortality of the “soul,” but a message from God about the Meaning of Life. It says that life has meaning, that life is good, and that the meaning of life can be found in the life of Jesus the Messiah and Logos.
To respond to the question, Do humans have a non-physical soul?, I would say that they have a non-physical mind and spirit, but not a soul as usually defined, that is immortal. When Christians and others understand that the immortal soul is not a necessary part of the Christian faith it should drop a barrier between science and theology.
@Roger,
You do make some good points here. The Gospels of Luke and John seem to say the resurrected body of Jesus was physical; however, Paul says that Jesus had a spiritual body. We must now ask ourselves: what did Paul see when Jesus appeared to him? The concept of a spiritual body was not new to Judaism. There is a non-canonical book that has Enoch appearing to a group of Jews. It says that Enoch had to “freeze” his face so that they could recognize him. That must have been cold for Enoch. If you want to know, I am just trying to be funny. Mark 12: 18-27 seems to support the view that resurrection is instantaneous. I will now leave. I have taken too much time. I am sorry. The discussion is just enjoyable.
Eddie, I must say that I will meet you in heaven one day. I will miss you on this blog as I am sure many of the rest of you will. I have a book I used in seminary called “Created in God’s Image by Anthony Hoekema.” Even though I went to a dispensational seminary, I must admit that I am an amillennialist. I wish to make a quote from this book as follows:
So at times the New Testament says that we who are believers will continue to exist in a provisional state of happiness between death and resurrection, whereas at other times it says that the “souls” or “spirits” of believers will still exist during that state. But the Bible does not use words like “soul” and “spirit” in the same way that we do; thus these passages are only intending to tell us that human beings will continue to exist between death and resurrection, while awaiting the resurrection of the body." This can be seen in Revelation 6:9.
There is no soul-sleep and we can exist without our bodies until the Second Advent of Christ. Eddie, you are correct in your interpretation. We may differ in some ways; however, that is not important. What is important is this: faith in Christ Jesus. That is worth more than all the gold in the world. Roger, you are a friend too, even though I am not too sure how closely we agree. Since I am an Arminian who believes in the Eternal Security of the Believer, I say you have the freewill to believe as you do. Take care Eddie and perhaps you may want to one day drop by again.
The soul is the central element in the religious concept of free will, as you can read on the wiki on free will in the section “metaphysical libertarianism”.
Now why would the religious arbitrarily imagine a soul thingy to do the job of choosing? Why don’t they just refer to some organ like the brain or heart as what does this job of choosing?
That is because the only way the concept of choosing can function is if it is regarded as a matter of opinion what the agency of a decision is.
We can see the brain and heart as fact, and therefore they cannot do the job of choosing. Facts are obtained by evidence forcing to a conclusion. Facts require force, while choosing requires freedom. To assert it is a fact what the agency of a decision is, is to impose the logic of being forced on the concept of choosing, which makes the concept break down.
In stead if we regard it as a matter of opinion what the agency of a decision, then the freedom in the concept of choosing is left in tact.
The main benefit for science is to stop social darwinism, where opinions are pretended as facts. Besides that it provides the only functional concept of how things are chosen, which is still a matter of fact issue.
How science can work with the concept of the soul, is for instance in forming reasonable (subjective) judgements in medicine. The concept of the soul requires that it is regarded as a matter of opinion how a patient feels. An opinion is reached by expression of emotion with free will, choosing the conclusion of how somebody feels.
The soul is who somebody is as being the owner of all decisions throughout their entire life, past, present and future. And then after somebody is dead, then the soul is judged by God, and sent to heaven or hell.
That the existence of the soul and what is in it is a matter of opinion, means that retrospectively the content of the soul can change. Like with Rick in the movie Casablanca. First he had the love in Paris, then he got ditched and decided the love was not real, then later his girl came back and he decided the love was real. So the content of the soul changed all the time, eventhough the facts about what they did in Paris were just the same facts.
I hope you are having a nice day. This is probably the last time I shall appear on this subject. Most likely, I shall move onto some other subject on the BioLogos blog. I have a question,and I mean no disrespect. In your theological or philosophical concept, do you believe in an eternal soul along with the resurrection of the body or do you accept a monist concept of human nature? As for Social Darwinism, I consider that to be something of the nineteenth century. I do not find signs of it in France or Germany. Neither do I find it in the United States or Canada. If it still exists somewhere, I agree that we should do away with it. You seem to believe in some type of soul; however, how do you relate it to your religious experience. Also, are you saying that America has Social Darwinism? You talk about medicine. Are you a doctor? If you are, I can respect that. Doctors help people who are physically ill. Believe me, I need my doctors. Some of them come from Egypt, Iran, and India. They are very kind and good to me, and I am very kind to them. I am not exactly sure what your religious philosophy is. You might belong to Islam. Perhaps you belong to some other group. I believe the Creator gave doctors to us as a gift, a means to make our lives better. In any case my friend, I wish you a good day and night. Isn’t creation a beautiful thing?
I believe in the eternal soul besides that there is the body, dualism. There is the creator category, and the creation category. God and the soul belong to the creator category, the body and the rest of the universe belongs to the creation category. When I create things, then it is my soul which does the creating. The existence of both God and the soul are categorically matters of opinion, same as that beauty is categorically a matter of opinion. The existence of all what is in the creation category is all a matter of fact issue.
Social darwinism is when people take prescriptive applicability from natural selection theory, instruction about what ought. It doesn’t have to be nazism specifically, any prescription. From what I see social darwinism still abounds. On account of natural selection theory everybody just asserts it is some kind of fact that organisms love living, that they struggle for it in surviving. That is already imposing an ought of surviving.
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A good answer, Doctor. May God bless you and your practice of medicine. I can see your point, and it is logical. Now I shall leave this portion of the blog. It has been fun talking to each one of you. Perhaps your concept of Social Darwinism is correct. The world is not always just. Perhaps God will make for us a just world someday when people shall beat plowshares into pruning hooks, and we will learn war no more.
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I wish to offer a couple of ideas to consider in regards to whether Humans have eternal spirits. These may have been mentioned in earlier posts in some way or another.
I say spirit because it is generally believed as being the part of us that survives death and enters Heaven. While the ‘soul’ seems to be attributed as being the same in some cases, biblically, the soul seems to be described as either the life-force breathed into us by God or what we become when our flesh has life breathed into it. “And man became a living soul…” The soul being anything else is not a biblical concept.
The first idea I want to discuss is the belief that living Humans do not currently possess immortal spirits. As I mentioned above, according to the Bible, we became living ‘souls’ by the joining of our bodies and life-force. But there are places in the Bible that suggest our soul is actually the God-breathed life-force itself. Animals also possess this life-force. And when we die, the flesh returns to dust and the soul returns to God whom gave it.
So from this, one may assume that when we die, we are simply gone, not conscious. Not aware of anything at all. A Million years could pass but from the moment we close our eyes in death to the moment we are raised again, it will be an instant. The dead in their graves now may be just that, dead in their graves. All they are is there, within their coffins. The dead know nothing. And we do not survive death.
But then the Bible also speaks of a resurrection of the dead. However if we cease to be upon death, then how are we presented with a new, spiritual body at this resurrection? The Bible states this spiritual body is new, not like the old one. It also describes the original body as being like a seed, which must be buried in the earth so that the flower can exist. The flower being our eternal state which we receive at the resurrection. But where and in what form are we in order to be given a new body to enter? Our brains will be dust, all our memories, thoughts and feelings seemingly gone…
There are theories regarding ‘paradise’ and ‘sheol’, that try to explain where we exist in the meantime, in between death and the resurrection, but these suggest that we must have some form of aspect within us now that survives death to end up in such a place.
The other idea assumes we indeed do have a spiritual component within us now. And revolves around the idea that the brain is simply a tool we make use of, a way to manifest our will in the World. Each area of the brain has it’s own function, and without that area of the brain, we are denied that particular function and the subsequent abilities it allows, yet we are still ‘us’. It is like trying to type a sentence that requires the use of the ‘A’ key yet it is broken or missing. We still desire to form our sentence yet we are unable. We are the puppeteer while the brain is the strings. Without the strings, we cannot move the puppet.
So we may literally be controlling our own avatars. Our will is made manifest through the use of physical organs and limbs. Our invisible selves are housed in the physical machine and we can articulate ourselves through the manipulation of the machine.
Remove the brain and ‘you’ will still exist, however, you will not be able to manifest your will or your personality in the physical World. Each of us may be a spirit inhabiting a body. The brain may not be the controller, but the controls. The receiver, not the signal. This would make diseases like dementia all the more horrifying, knowing that our loved one is trapped within their body, unable to function correctly. But does this fit with the Bible? Ultimately, any theory that is to be taken seriously must fit with the only source of information we have regarding any of this in the first place, the Bible!
At the same time, if we end up denying that we have a spirit within us now that survives death and makes us who we are as individuals, yet accept that the Bible is true, we must provide an explanation for a few stories in the Bible itself:
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If Humans possessing eternal spirits in life is in fact not biblical and we are gone when we die then what happened between Saul and the Witch of Endor? From where did the spirit of Samuel come from? The witch screamed in fear suggesting she did not expect her ritual to actually work… Perhaps God intervened? If so then all we can do is speculate on what He did.
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And if the dead are gone, how did Moses and Elijah appear to Christ? In what state did they appear? Resurrected? Are our eternal, resurrected bodies able to appear anywhere throughout time and space? Being eternal would suggest they are not limited by either… In that case, would it not be possible that our future, resurrected selves can view us sitting at our computers now? Highly unlikely it works this way but it makes you think…
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If men are gone when dead until the resurrection, how did the thief get admitted into paradise that Day? Is paradise a different place to Heaven? Does this mean Christ entered paradise upon His death too? Is this where Abraham and the poor man were/are?
*In regards to the case of Lazarus, it is clear that he was not resurrected in the end of days sense, but simply brought back to life. His life-force was breathed back into his body and he returned to a living state, however he would only go on to die again later. Like the Godly men who came back to life upon Christ’s death on the cross. This is different from being raised into a new, spiritual body in the Resurrection because the Bible states that Christ was the first to be resurrected into this new body. However, where was Lazarus between his death and his being brought back to life? When I say where was he, I do not mean his physical body, as that was laying there dead, I mean his actual self.
The Bible seems to swap back and forth between mankind having an eternal spirit which survives death (The tale of the rich and poor man, Samuel’s seance etc.) and mankind being no more upon death (Ecclesiastes).
On the reasonable chance that I will be permitted to comment on this thread (since it is quite an old thread), here are some thoughts:
Ever since the time of Jesus, there have been at least three distinct views about what we would call the soul.
[1] Sadducees:
It seems the Sadducees simply said: there isn’t one.
[2] Pharisees:
The Pharisees believed that the soul went to sleep with the death of the body. And that at the End of Days, the body would be restored, and the “soul” would be re-established with the body. Some have described this as “light-bulb metaphysics” - - where the electricity running through the bulb is like the Soul, and the light bulb is like the body. When the Bulb is broken or gone, so is the light/soul.
Paul seems to be unable to decide whether the Pharisees view of the need for the physical body was ultimately correct or not. He cannot say whether “this man” (usually thought to be Paul himself) was OUTSIDE of his physical body or not!
** 2 Corinthians 12:2**
** “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in **
** the body or out of the body I do not know–God knows.”**
[3] Essenes:
Interestingly, the popular Western view of the immediate circumstances after death is most similar to the Essene view (as described by Josephus). The Essene view was that after the physical body dies (and maybe after a 3 day waiting period in Sheol?), the worthy soul proceeds to a ‘blessed island’ or region, in a community of other worthy souls.
This is relatively consistent with the usual narratives said nowadays about a departed loved one … that his or her soul immediately moves to some other realm, and does not wait for the End of Days for a restoration of the physical body.
Going back to the light bulb metaphor, the Essene version characterizes the soul (let’s compare it to “electric energy” in the atmosphere) as able to exist and travel WITHOUT a light bulb… which I suppose could be called the Tesla Light scenario. 
George Brooks
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