soul - where does it come from - where does it go to...

Soul - where does it come from - where does it go to (2) 1

The Soul:

Where does it come from?

Where does it go to?

Brian Edgar

MTh, PhD

Director of Public Theology

Australian Evangelical Alliance

The address was given at the Mind and its Potential conference, Sydney. This is a conference

which integrates many different scientific, philosophical and religious traditions.

The request was for an address from a Christian point of view which

would address the issues implied in the title.

In his ‘Ecclesiastical History of the English People’ the Venerable Bede records

the advice given by a counsellor to King Edwin of Northumbria concerning the

new teaching of the evangelist Paulinus about life after death. The counsellor

compared human life to the swift flight of a sparrow through the banqueting-hall

at dinner on a winter's day. In the midst there is a fire to warm the hall; outside,

the storms of winter rain or snow are raging. This sparrow flies swiftly in

through one door of the hall, but after a few moments of comfort in the warmth of

the room, he disappears out of another door into the wintry world from which he

came. The point was made to the king that nothing was known of what went

before this life or of what follows afterwards and that therefore, ‘if this new

teaching has brought any more certain knowledge, it seems only right that we

should follow it.’1

In the twenty first century, just as much as in the seventh, questions about human origins and

destiny lie before us. Where does humanity come from? What is our true nature? Where are

we going? In his day Edwin was advised by his counsellors to listen to the new concepts

which came from Paulinus. The question for us today is who we will listen to among the

many voices that claim to bring new knowledge.

Following are four concepts which may help our understanding. The first concerns the

objective reality of the spiritual nature of the human person – understood in opposition to

scientific reductionism but consistently with scientific research about consciousness as an

emergent, even transcendent quality of persons. The second affirms the essential, ongoing

importance of the physical body for understanding the person in both the present and future

life. This stands in opposition to spiritualisms which deny the ultimate significance of our

embodied nature. There is a stress on the integrated, unitive nature of the person as a spiritual

entity of both ‘body’ and ‘soul’. The third stresses the contingent nature of humanity as part

of the cosmos. It locates the human person as a created entity, uniquely placed and with a

calling to be with the divine. This repudiates those understandings of the person which deny

either ultimate significance or human mortality. The fourth point is a reminder of the


significance and reality of human mortality, the ultimate question of life and about human

destiny, of life beyond death and the possibility of the resurrection of the whole person.

These are the real issues of life, the questions which science, philosophy and religion should

seek to answer. In the fourth century Augustine of Hippo said,

Men go out and gaze in astonishment at high mountains, the huge waves of the

sea, the broad reaches of river, the oceans that encircle the world, or the stars in

their courses. But they pay no attention to themselves… The field of my labours

is my own self. I’m not now investigating the tracts of the heavens or measuring

the distance of the stars or trying to discover how the earth hangs in space. I am

investigating myself, my memory, my mind… What then am I, my God? What is

my nature?2

In the light of our greatly increased knowledge we join with Augustine in asking these

questions, still searching for what it means to be human.

1. Spirituality: the objective reality of the spiritual nature of the person

It is a fundamental Christian conviction that human beings are ‘spiritual’ beings with

consciousness, self-transcendence and the ability to form relationships with others and with

God. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the language of ‘soul’ began to overlap

with the more scientific language of ‘mind’ and ‘brain’. But although the terminology

shifted, some of the central issues remained the same (How does soul relate to body? How

does mind relate to brain?). Today, questions traditionally asked in terms of ‘soul’ and

‘spirituality’, cannot be answered without reference to the radical scientific advances in

mind/brain research and human consciousness. Human consciousness is sometimes claimed

to be one of the last great unsolved mysteries and the findings of neuroscience will always be

of great significance for those interested in human spirituality, as any interpretation of human

nature must take into account the fact that we live and lead our lives consciously. There are,

of course, a number of levels of consciousness3 and human spirituality is primarily

concerned with the higher levels which involve a capacity for what may be called a ‘spiritual

life’ which includes experiences of morality, religious experience, the sense of self, self-

transcendence and an awareness of God.

Traditionally ‘soul language’ has fulfilled three important functions. First and foremost, the

soul has been understood as the point at which the human meets the divine, providing the

human, spiritual capacity for knowing and relating to God. Secondly, it has provided a

rationale for the unique moral value and status usually accorded the human person and for the

moral determinations which people make. And thirdly, the notion of the soul has established

the groundwork for the belief in the possibility of life after the death of the body. The soul

has been seen as providing continuity between this life and whatever life and existence there

is beyond death.

An understanding of the soul depends upon the idea that humanity is ‘made in the image of

God’.

So God created humankind in his image,

In the image of God he created them,

Male and female he created them.4


The text does not specify more precisely the way in which humanity exists in the image of

God and this has led to great speculation: does the image subsist in human consciousness,

rationality, creativity, spirituality, relationality, sexuality or what? While there has been a

tendency to see the imago dei as related to these less tangible, and yet higher dimensions of

human life, rather than to the more physical aspects of the body, ultimately, a dichotomy of

body from soul cannot be justified and the image of God is to be found in the whole human

person as a unified body-soul. Even more precisely, it has to be understood in relation to

those passages in the writings of the Apostle Paul which (a) speak of Jesus Christ as the

perfect ‘image of the invisible God’5 and (b) to believers in Christ as being transformed into

the image of Christ.6 That is, the spirituality of the human person is affirmed and ultimately

explained as nothing other than the process whereby the person comes into relationship with

God in Jesus Christ. Human spirituality is focused on knowing and experiencing the person

of Jesus Christ and being aware of the love of God. ‘We are being transformed into his

likeness with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.’ (2

Corinthians 3:18)

An understanding such as this is, firstly, a defence of the common sense experience of the

religious and spiritual lives of many people. It is consistent with the experience people have

of transcendence and a conviction that life has meaning. The alternative is an ultimately

meaningless existence. Secondly, it is a repudiation of reductionist scientific views of the

person which seek to interpret the person solely in terms of physical phenomena. Francis

Crick (co-discoverer of the structure of DNA) wrote in his book The Astonishing Hypothesis,

‘The Astonishing Hypothesis is that ‘you’, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and

your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the

behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.’ It is a dramatic

presentation of the meaning of being human, you are nothing other than nerve cells and

molecules, especially given that it comes from a person who has iconic status in the history

of biotechnology. But understanding humanity purely in terms of molecules and cells is

absurd. Indeed, one wonders, ‘whether anyone would have bothered to read Crick’s book if

he had started it as follows: ‘I, Francis Crick, my opinions and my science, and the thoughts

expressed in this book, consist of nothing more than the random behaviour of a vast

assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.’7 I am sure that Crick would like us

to think that there was actually some meaning associated with the collection of letters,

numbers and punctuation marks which make up his book. But if his theory of human nature

is right, there is none.

Thirdly, it means that the person, being made ‘in the image of God’ and being called to be

‘transformed to the image of Christ’ is clearly human and not intrinsically divine. A realistic

understanding of the person must take into account Auschwitz and the death of more than

12,000 children everyday from starvation and other preventable causes. The twentieth

century alone saw the death of 100 million people in international wars and a further 100

million by political repression. An affirmation of humanity being made ‘in the image of

God’ and the possibility of life after death cannot be taken as a denial of the most empirically

demonstrable fact of all – that of human failure and deliberate wrong-doing! In spirituality as

in law it must be accepted that individuals bear responsibility for their actions. There can be

no denial of either the reality of wrong-doing (‘this is just a part of the universe’) or our

responsibility for it (‘the devil made me do it’). Any spirituality which does not address this

cannot be respected.


2. Physicality: the essential importance of the physical body for understanding the

person

The spiritual nature of the person is grounded in the claim that humanity is made in the

image of God. But it has to be placed alongside a second claim, also from the book of

Genesis, that humanity is also ‘made from the dust of the earth’:

The Lord God formed humanity

from the dust of the ground

and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life

and man became a living being.8

This emphasises the physicality of the person and the connection of human life with all of

creation. The body is not merely a vehicle for the soul, as something of lesser importance, to

be disposed of at a later time. The person is a unity of body and soul. These terms (body and

soul), along with mind, heart, will and consciousness refer to different aspects of the one

person: body and soul are no more separable than memory and mind, or mind and brain, or

consciousness and body. This is consistent with all human experience: that we know

ourselves in bodily life. The spiritual is not to be seen as distinct from the physical, indeed, the

spiritual can be very physical. The opposite of spiritual is not physical but ‘un-spiritual’, that

is, anything which is opposed to developing or enhancing the spiritual life.

In the past greater credence has been given to the idea of the soul as a distinct, immaterial

entity able to be separated from the body than is appropriate or common today.

Consequently, while the traditional language of ‘soul’ has overlapped more with the

language of ‘mind’ than with that of ‘brain’ it should perhaps be more accurately associated

with the contemporary language of ‘self’, as it really refers to the whole human being – not

some dissociated, immaterial, abstract entity. The person is always to be understood as flesh

and blood (or genes and neurons), just as much as the more intangible soul, spirit, mind or

consciousness. We do not have any experience which is purely mental, in the sense that the

physical brain is not also involved. All our experience is underpinned by the human brain.

This also applies to our experience of God, which is linked to brain processes as much as any

other kind of experience. God does not bypass the natural processes of the brain.

The doctrines of incarnation (God in Christ in human form9) and the physical-spiritual

resurrection of Jesus (complete with empty tomb) mean that one cannot disregard the

significance of the body for understanding the person. The body is an essential, not

accidental10 dimension of the person and this means holding to a unitary view of the person,

whether as medieval Thomistic hylomorphism11 or a more contemporary non-reductive

physicalism12 with the spiritual dimension – as related to consciousness - an emergent

property of higher processes. The mental individual emerges from the organism and is

sustained by it and is not a separate element added to the organism from outside.13

This view of a person as an essentially physical and spiritual unity also has wide ranging

ethical implications. It provides value to the embodied person (and thus stands behind the

development of hospices and the health system) and a rationale for a strong sense of social

justice (no denial of responsibility for those suffering in various bodily ways, whether from

slavery, starvation or slander). It also demonstrates that humanity stands in continuity with

the rest of creation and thus generates an environment ethic.

But where does this physical being of spirit and flesh, mind and brain, body and soul come

from?


3. Contingency: God as the foundation of the origin, nature and destiny of human life

Physically the mind emerges from the complex system of the brain. In that sense it is entirely

explicable in scientific terms, but the most comprehensive scientific explanation cannot say

why this should be so. The existence of today’s newspaper can be expressed in chemical and

physical terms of print pressed onto paper, the physical forces involved in delivery trucks

and the transfer of money for paper, yet this says exactly nothing about why it is produced

and read which has to be explained in terms of desires, goals and purposes (of proprietors to

make money; of readers to be informed; of writers to be known and paid etc). These

explanations are not mutually exclusive. It is a confusion of thought about causation to think

that purely physical explanations are sufficient to provide a basis for meaning, life, morality

and so on. Those who invoke evolution or chance as an ultimate cause and as a completely

sufficient explanation which negates the need for God are actually taking as much a

‘religious’ position as those who claim that God is an intelligent designer. The belief that

God is not needed as an explanation is a matter of ‘faith’ as much as the view that God is

needed.

On the other hand it is just as profound a mistake to assume that an argument from

‘intelligent design’ could ever prove the existence of a designer, let alone God. The argument

has some, limited value, but, in principle, God is beyond proving.

Just as you do not know how the breath

comes to the bones in the mother's womb,

so you do not know the work of God,

who makes everything.14

Contingency means that humanity, as part of the universe, has been created by God and is

entirely dependent on God for its continued existence. This is primarily a matter of faith

rather than proof, though it is consistent with rational argument. The world is not an

emanation from God, nor a part of God. This contingency provides a certainty and order to

the world which has been the historical basis of modern science (as cultures not convinced of

the stability and order of the universe will not explore the world scientifically). The human

person, as part of the world is thus made by God, body and a soul, as a unity, in divine image.

The human person therefore is not divine; is dependent upon God; has significant, but not

infinite value; is connected with the rest of the created order. A scientific (eg Darwinian)

understanding of the person is thus not contrary to convictions about a divine intelligence

behind natural processes.

4. Destiny: the resurrection of the whole person (rather than the immortality of the

soul)

It is often assumed that the Christian description of the person as ‘body and soul’ implies that it

is only the body that dies, and that the soul automatically lives on beyond the death of the

body. But the contingent nature of the human person as entirely dependent upon God means

that death is, potentially, a radical and comprehensive end to the whole of life involving the

physical dissolution of the body and spiritual death (or ‘alienation from God’, the source of

life). As has been argued, the unity of the person ties body and soul closely together, and the

Christian understanding of life beyond death is that it is dependent upon the gracious action of

God. It is not so much a case of ‘the immortality of the soul’ as of ‘the resurrection of the

dead’. The resurrection of any person is dependent upon union with Jesus Christ who was


raised from the dead. This is the guarantee of the resurrection of believers (1 Corinthians

15:20-23) and of eternal life which is a transformed state continuous with the earthly life of the

person. The possibility of eternal death (body and soul) remains for those who are not united

with Christ.

Resurrection is neither reincarnation nor the re-vivification of a corpse. It involves an

ontological change in the whole person ‘body’ and ‘soul’, a change which includes the

incorporation and transformation of the character, personality and being of the entire person.

There is a genuine point of continuity of the person who dies and who is raised. The Apostle

Paul likens it to a seed that ‘dies’ when it is sown in the ground and which comes alive again

(1 Corinthians 15: 35-58). The body is raised (hence the empty tomb of Jesus) and this is an

affirmation of the on-going value of the whole of the physical creation with which we are

connected - though this resurrection may be of such a nature that it is as unimaginable as the

transformation which takes place when matter becomes energy. The soul, as an integrated

aspect of the whole person, is also raised. There is a clear continuity of soul (personality,

characteristics etc) and it is the same person who is raised, though in a transformed state (and

not reincarnated as a ‘different’ person, with different body and different personal

characteristics, who nonetheless receives the karma of another person in a different life).

The proof of this new life is found, for the believer, in their experience of Jesus, in the

resurrection of Jesus, and in the assurance of the Holy Spirit. This awareness can be as

provable and as undeniable to the individual as the fact of their relationship with a spouse or a

close friend. But it is not objectively demonstrable to others. It is a life of faith. It is

reasonable, consistent with science and with our awareness of the world. It is known as the

love of God.

God's love was revealed among us in this way:

God sent his only Son into the world

so that we might live through him.15

1 The Venerable Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People. 2 Augustine, Confessions 9. 3 There is that basic consciousness which is the capacity to experience the external world through sense organs

and to perform cognitive operations; there is a reflexive kind of consciousness in which people monitor what

they experience and know; there is the highest level of consciousness, with complex awareness, which includes

moral and religious experience. 4 Genesis 1:27. 5 2 Corinthians. 4:4; Colossians 1:15; cf Hebrews 1:3. 6 Romans 8:29; 1 Corinthians. 15:49; 2 Corinthians. 3:18. 7 R.Carter, Body and Spirit, (unpublished paper). 8 Genesis 2:7 9 The rejection of docetism (that Jesus only appeared to be in physical human form) has been crucial in this. 10 ‘Accidental’ in the philosophical sense of not essential to being. 11 For Aquinas it is not the soul alone which is the real person, nor does the soul exist before its union with the

body. The soul is the rational soul which is the form of the person. The soul, the substantial form can only exist

in matter capable of receiving it and so the human soul can only exist in a developed and organized body. The

soul is not a substance on its own though, together body and soul are one substance. This does not mean that the

soul is dependent upon the body for its existence, it is 'infused' by God and humanity is constituted as a real

unity by the complementary causality of soul and ‘prime matter'. Aquinas' hylomorphism can easily be mis-

interpreted as a form of dualism but for Aquinas there is a dualism only in the sense that the person is only a

person when they are both body and soul. 12 See, for example, W. Brown, N. Murphy and H. N. Maloney (eds), Whatever happened to the Soul?

(Mineapolis: Fortress, 1998).


13 This view provides philosophically for a unified conception of the person. It is also consistent with non-

reductive science. That is, it is congruent with the scientific notions of consciousness as an emergent property

and of ‘top-down’ causation in complex systems. In no way does this derogate from the more widely

recognised ‘bottom-up’ causation (following D T Campbell and R W Sperry), it simply creates a dual character

of directional influence. One simple example of the power of top-down causation is the placebo effect: what the

person believed directly affected their brain activity. It is also consistent with the integrative insights of much

of modern psychology. 14 Ecclesiastes 11:5

15 1 John 4:9.

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