I recently adopted property dualism. So id say we all defenitly could have a soul. But IMO it cant work without the substance. (My body)
Juergen Moltmann believed in instantaneous resurrection and not in the Greek immortality of the soul. Do I agree with him? No longer. I am now a dichotomist. I can see that you and I are actually talking about different things it would seem; however, I thought I would mention this as well. God bless.
When God said in Genesis 1:26 “Let us create man in our image…”, I believe this means with the soul and the capacity to make moral decisions. I don’t believe the Trinity physically looks like us as they are spirits.
In Francis Collins book, The Language of God, he states that humans are they only animal capable of altruism, which is a de-evolutionary traight as we are capable of making decisions that benefit others to our detriment, which may favor the passing of another’s DNA to the next generation over our own.
One great impact of Darwin’s work was to show how closely related we are to the rest of creation. At the time many believed animals were more of living mechanisms, even incapable of feeling pain. This changed, thankfully, with the theory of evolution.
Anyone who has spent time around animals know that they are like us, they have emotions and they even dream. I don’t believe they have the capacity to understand the concept of a diety or to make moral decisions, therefore they cannot be held responsible.
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The human spirit is in the image of God in that it can reason, think deep thoughts, and have feelings. It also can commune with the Triune God. The soul in the Old Testament is not the eternal spirit; on the contrary, it is the total person. As I said before, the word soul is a translation of the Hebrew word nephesh. That is why the New International Version translates the OT word soul (nephesh) as being. When God created Adam, he made a living being (NIV ) and KJV (soul). I will give you an example. There were sixteen souls that died in the train accident last year. Did their spirits die? No, they either went to heaven or hell until the Second Coming when the bodies and spirits will be reunited. Then they will be living beings (souls) again. Have a good Sunday and God bless. Oh, the idea of the immortality of the soul came from Plato and Greek philosophy. That concept influenced Rabbinic Judaism and Catholicism nearly 2,000 years ago. Have you ever heard of the Apocryphal Book of the Wisdom of Solomon? The spirits of my parents are in heaven until the Second Coming. Then they will come back and reunite with their bodies and rise from the dead. They will have perfect bodies to live on the new earth with God and will be complete living souls (living beings again).
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I heard someone once say ( can’t remember who ) …
" Animals have an automated soul , humans have a living soul "
The impression I got from it was that , we have a conscious connection to God through our thinking and growing minds .
We BECAME living souls through God’s action
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Whether one takes a dualist soul approach to an eventual afterlife, or an instantaneous re-embodied resurrection approach I would still hope that something of all of God’s creation from every epoch in cosmic history will be present in that future existence.
I profess to being agnostic about what kind of future by soul/personhood/embodiment will take in that future. Whatever that state of glory is I would hope to see all life that has ever existed to be there. I say that because having been a “birdwhatcher” and nature lover all my life I cannot concieve of a future exiistence without something of their colourful and majestic glory. Natural life is good and part of Christ’s present glory as the Creative Word and Energised life from the Spirit. Since it is good and from that divine love and goodness something of it I hope to see forever. The only difference will be there will be no violent deaths and no fear for any creature and wolves and lambs, eagles and sparrows will share the same happy existence with us.
These are four images I put together a year or so ago… trying to capture my thoughts on the self… the soul… the cosmic… the divine…
[ This first image shows a ruffled sheet representing the fabric of the conscious field… the more rippled and ruffled, the more significant is the conscious entity embedded in the field… in the Cosmos. ]
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[ I’m not particularly happy with this image … but the point is that the more vertically deformed the fabric of the conscious field… the more powerful the mind … and the closer to its destination it reaches. ]
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I’m interested in adopting a dog and that got me thinking: Is there a philosophical shelter where you can pick out your own mind-body metaphysical model? Is it a ‘no-kill’ shelter or do they euthanize metaphysical strays that nobody adopts or are too aggressive? [totally tongue-in-cheek here…]
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Since the title of this thread: “Do only humans have souls? / How were humans ensouled in an evolutionary process?” involves questions of Metaphysics, the answer will vary from denomination to denomination, and even from person to person.
Metaphysics, or literally “Beyond Physics” or “After Physics”, touches on topics that cannot be verified with science.
So the only way to answer such questions is to either visit the afterlife and come back with a report, or to imagine how Christian theology affects one’s concept for how things work.
For example, does God literally construct one’s soul, and then connects it to your body?
If so, when does he do that? - - while you are still in the womb, or at the moment of birth, or at some later time?
If you have a really strong view of such matters, how would you prove it? Or how would you at least say you have a “clue” for why you hold to one idea/version versus a different one held by a friend?
In a different thread, I got into a discussion about whether or not a person “sleeps until the End of Days” - - to be re-activated during the drama of the General Resurrection? The alternative scenario was that the recently departed person, at least temporarily, exists (and is awake at least most of each day), without a material body until the drama of the General Resurrection.
It immediately descended into a person viewpoint that didn’t seem to be connected to any particular evidence … other than how Hebrew words are defined.
There’s no way to know for sure it seems. And the same goes on the question of the possession of a “soul” or not.
@Reggie_O_Donoghue, considerable progress can be made if you agree that God makes each person’s soul. Do you support that idea? Or do you think the “soul” is naturally created, through natural processes, even if there wasn’t a Yahweh to do it?
Depending on how you answer will significantly influence the answers that can be offered you.
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Two potential answers:
- YHWH makes each being with it’s own soul.
- YHWH makes the first life forms with a soul, this soul evolves through it’s own process of evolution.
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Should i not use adopt? If thats not your point it flew right over my head. Sorry.
My bad. Just making a bad pun / play on words.
“Adopt” is perfectly fine.
Oh sorry, I didn’t get that! lol
I don’t have a big sense of humor. 
I beg to differ. (Get it?.. Beg… Dog… Now that is a bad pun. Yours was just fine.)
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For a different view of biblical anthropology, here is a post I made in the thread Hell, death and the 2nd death? Please reply to me there if you want to follow up. (Links to Middleton’s blog are active in the original post.)
- The human being is not composed of body + soul. Rather, we are a “complex unity,” in the words of J.R. Middleton. (See his blog post Paul on the “Soul”—Not What You Might Think)
“The man” does not receive a soul/spirit from God in Genesis 2.7. Rather, the passage merely teaches that we, like the animals, are made of earth and owe our lives (breath) to God, our Creator. (See Middleton, Humans Created Mortal, with the Possibility of Eternal Life) - When Jesus breathes on the disciples and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” in John 20, he is deliberately re-enacting Gen. 2.7. As Jesus explained to Nicodemus in chapter 3 of that same gospel, “I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God… What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must all be born from above.’" Our spiritual birth occurs when the Holy Spirit indwells our body.
- Jesus and the NT also refer to the new birth using metaphors of what was dead coming to life. Examples: “the one who hears my message and believes the one who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned, but has crossed over from death to life,” “We know that we have crossed over from death to life because we love our fellow Christians. The one who does not love remains in death,” “Let the dead bury their own dead … you go and proclaim the kingdom of God,” etc. The person without the Spirit of God is mere flesh and blood, which cannot inherit the kingdom of God. (Just as we won’t see our pets in “heaven,” but you don’t have to tell that truth to a 4-yr-old! Perhaps that’s why it is ambiguous, Phil. The entire human race is not spiritually mature enough to handle the truth!)
- There is (probably) no intermediate state, where our souls are “in heaven” with Jesus and our bodies are in the grave. Wright and Middleton somewhat disagree on this point, with Wright in favor of some kind of conscious existence after death but before the resurrection, and Middleton in favor of something resembling unconsciousness during sleep. Simply, we close our eyes in death, and open them to the resurrection. (See Middleton’s blog post, What about the Intermediate State in 2 Corinthians 5:6-8?1)
- When the last trumpet sounds, those who died in Christ rise, and those who are living are changed. (This is likely what is meant by the “first resurrection” in Rev. 20.)
- Afterward, “the dead,” great and the small, are seen standing before the throne for judgment. (This is likely the “second resurrection.”) Notice that it is “the dead” who are “judged by what was written in the books, according to their deeds.” It is my opinion that the only people being judged are those who did not participate in the first resurrection. They were “dead” even when they were living, from Jesus’ perspective. (John 5.24 again: “whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.”)
- Finally, “the second death—the lake of fire.” Personally, I am more and more coming to think that this is a true second death, or annihilation.
- Final, final thought: if you believe that the human being is composed of body + immortal soul/spirit, then you cannot escape the concept of eternal conscious existence in hell, however you choose to conceive of hell. That something immortal should cease to exist is a contradiction.
[quote=“Reggie_O_Donoghue, post:1, topic:38628, full:true”]
I like to think that all life has a soul of sorts, which evolves as the body evolves. I came to this conclusion after wondering how and when God gave evolved humans the soul. It seems like the only rational conclusion to me. Furthermore, the Hebrew word ‘Nephesh’ (soul) is given both to humans and animals.
What do you think? [/quote]
A “soul” is who you are, not something you have.
Gen 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
My apologies for the delay in responding.
Including the 2nd option is probably a good idea in a discussion like this.
Because as soon as one reads it, it comes across as so preposterous, that Option (1) all of a sudden looks like High Wisdom! :
[1] YHWH makes each being with it’s own soul.
Here’s what I say in relation to the above topic in the second chapter of the treatise, entitled "What Jesus Really Meant,: which I am still in te process of composing:
"To the degree that, as a result of mentally and emotionally processing our personal experiences, we become aware of ( i.e. ‘awaken’ to) the fact that all our lives are basically _co_extant, the ‘sense’ we have of our own ‘i’dentity expands to become other-inclusive. As we then _real_ize that just focusing on things by and for one’s ‘own’ selves simply results in our (delusionally!) living in a personally ‘i’solating thought-and-feeling ‘bubble’, we may (logically then!) choose to transcend (i.e. rise ‘above’ and evolve ‘beyond’) the limitations of whatever _self_ish perceptions and tendencies at that point, as a result of past personal and social conditioning, continue to ‘govern’ and so (in effect) ‘imprison’ us, and consequently more and more ‘freely’ grow to become more and more loving and enjoying of our ‘neighbors’ as our ‘selves’ (as advocated in Mark 12:31) in ever-widening, more and more Life-embracing circles, and therefore and thereby (in due course) fully execute our innate Source-code ‘program’ to maximally experience and express Love and Joy in relationship to and with others. This, instead of just _part_ially doing so by way of continuing to function as the same ‘old’ identity- (i.e. ego-) configurations focused on reaping and dispensing whatever Love and Joy perks they happen to particularly value as a result of prior conditioning for however long they may continue to live (as such, that is).
Not that the kind of growth and development I speak of is just possible (and, so, only evident) in _human_kind, mind you! Do a search for ‘animal friendships’ or ‘interspecies friendships’ or similar phrases on the internet, or just type these phrases or the like into YouTube’s search box maybe, if you wish to educate yourself in this regard. Though, because of the huge variety of relational experiences and the immense amount mental and emotional data-processing power necessary to meaningfully collate them all, the above-referenced process of ‘i’dentity expansion in pursuit of ‘greater’ experience and expression of Love and Joy may only reach its culmination in human body-contexts (on Earth☺that is), its operationality is abundantly apparent in the behaviors of members of other species with the requisite degree of social intelligence that act in a loving way, not just in relation to and with immediate personal family members but also in relation to and with members of other families in their social groups and, beyond that even (in cases of species with the highest degrees of social intelligence), in relation to members of other species. The latter phenomenon, of course, being most evident in cases where the psychospiritual learning and development of creatures has been accelerated by their having come into contact and consciously shared Love and Joy with more expansively loving being-doings, as some of us are. (I say some because many human souls clearly aren’t functioning at a ‘friendly’ level of development, presently at least, albeit you already know this to be the ‘sad’ truth or you wouldn’t even begin to be interested in and receptive of the kind of information contained in a communication such as this.)"
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