I cannot help but notice [that] you did not define [the soul].
I have not defined my view because I am presently engaging with yours, in a context where introducing my own would complicate the discussion unnecessarily. I would, of course, be pleased to articulate and defend my position once we have adequately considered yours. Addressing both views simultaneously would, I believe, obscure rather than clarify the points at issue.
But, just for the record, the OP is not about what the soul is, but its relationship to the body—specifically, a teaching of Greek philosophy that the two are utterly separate from and in conflict with each other. The soul is good, the body is evil. The immaterial is good, the material is bad. A teaching known as dualism. And how a form of dualism often creeps in to our own thinking.
I understand the focus of the original post, and my intent is precisely to explore those implications. I am engaging with your view as a point of departure in order to examine why dualistic assumptions continue to surface—and to suggest that they may already have. (This approach should further prove the irrelevance of my view, which is impervious to such implications—and is, for the moment, irrelevant anyway.)
For example, to say that body and soul are "distinct but not separate" implies a psychosomatic unity. However, if Smith is a psychosomatic unity, then who is consciously present with Christ when his body dies? "Smith," you would answer, "as a soul." But if that's true, if the soul is the person in that disembodied state, then we have effectively made the body non-essential to personhood—and, thus, the nose of the camel is inside the tent.
It is both, depending on what element is being discussed, how it is being discussed, and for what purpose.
It can't be both, as I hope to show, because they are mutually exclusive. Either Smith has a soul, or Smith is a soul. Reformed theologian Anthony Hoekema attempted to affirm both psychosomatic unity and conscious disembodied existence in the intermediate state (
Created in God's Image [1994]), but the tension in his position proves untenable. His view ultimately collapses into the very substance dualism he explicitly rejected—because maintaining conscious personal identity apart from the body requires the soul to function as a separable self. (I bring up Hoekema because the view you're describing closely resembles his. If there's a meaningful difference between your view and his, it has yet to surface.)
Duality presents humanity as body and soul. ... [Human being is defined] in the context of body and soul. They are distinct but not separate.
If you mean by "distinct but not separate" that body and soul are distinguishable aspects of a unified human person—the soul-as-aspect workaround proposed by Hoekema—then I would provisionally agree. But you do not maintain that view consistently. You are positing not merely distinction but separability, namely, (a) that the soul, as an immaterial aspect, can exist independently of the material body, and (b) that the soul is the person in a conscious disembodied state. To put it in other words, once you affirm conscious disembodied existence, you are no longer saying the soul and body are merely distinct; you're saying the soul is the person and can exist apart from the body. That is separability, and it's precisely why substance dualism keeps creeping in. It’s built into the very logic of saying that Smith survives his bodily death. My criticism of Hoekema applies here, I think: If the soul is an aspect of Smith, then it is not Smith. Ergo, it is not Smith that is consciously present with Christ.
Yes, indeed. That is just one of the contexts in which scripture uses the term soul, wherein
al-nefesh met means "dead soul." It is not the typical word for "body," such as
guf (גּוּף). The Hebrew in Numbers 19:13 is even more explicit:
b'met b'nefesh ha-adam asher-yamut, which reads literally as "whoever touches the dead (בְּמֵת), the soul of a human (בְּנֶפֶשׁ הָאָדָם) who has died."
(Transliteration of Hebrew characters into the Latin alphabet provided by Perplexity, an AI-driven search engine.)
It goes without saying that a soul is not visible, therefore immaterial.
Well, no, it doesn't go without saying. In your view, it's obvious that the soul is immaterial. But it's a defining parameter that needs to be said because in some views the soul is not immaterial.
[Obviously the soul is immaterial.] But what is it? That is not a question that needs answering. It is just pointing out that it does not define what a soul is. ... That is not a parameter for defining what a soul is. It is a parameter for describing things about it.
I believe it does. Definitions are built from essential attributes. In theology and philosophy, to define something is to give an account of what it is, often by stating its essential attributes—those features without which it wouldn't be what it is. For example, saying that a triangle is three-sided polygon is not merely describing it but stating what it is. Without three sides, it's not a triangle. To say that a soul is immaterial and separable from the body is definitional, asserting its ontological category—what kind of thing it is. Those are definitional parameters, not merely descriptive ones.
So, what is a soul? One thing it is, at least, is "not material," not a substance (under your definition of substance). In your view, if we are talking about something that is visible then it's not a soul ("a soul is not visible"). In other words, being immaterial is an essential attribute of a soul. (Incidentally, your claim that an immaterial "soul is not visible" is one way in which your view is self-contradictory, given your reference to the transfiguration.)
This ties in to the opening post because we are also considering the essential attributes of a person. If, when his body dies, Smith as a soul goes to be with Christ—if the soul is the person in a disembodied state—then we have effectively made the body non-essential to personhood. That soul is Smith even without his physical body. It also means the soul is essential to personhood; if there is no immaterial soul, there is no Smith. This is the nose of the camel entering the tent, because it is exactly the logic of dualism. Just as "immaterial" is essential to soul, so also "soul" is essential to personhood—but not the physical body. Such a view denies psychosomatic unity, which Hoekema did not appear to understand (but Berkouwer did).
We can [define "substance" as that which has mass and occupies space] if that is what we mean and that particular definition is directly related to what is tangible and what is not.
If you want to redefine the term from its historic usage, then I can adjust accordingly. But I want to quickly point out that you could simply agree with the normal distinction between material substance (tangible) and immaterial substance (not tangible) and say that the soul is the latter. This is not "overly nitpicking" but a striving for clarity by treating terms as used in theology and philosophy for centuries (e.g., W. L. Craig and J. P. Moreland,
Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, 2017).
[The body and soul] are distinct within the makeup of a human. That does not mean that they cannot be separated, and maybe you took my words to be saying that, but they weren't. Our soul after death is still embodied, still our body, but a spiritual body, not a material one, if the transfiguration serves as an example, as does Christ's resurrected body.
- If body and soul can be separated, and
- if the body without the soul is not Smith, but
- if the soul without the body is Smith, then
- the soul is essential to personhood but the body is not.
This is precisely the logic of substance dualism (as historically defined), and it usually leads to the Platonic notion that a spiritual body is more desirable than a natural body (1 Cor. 15:44), because the spiritual is pure whereas the natural is corrupt. (This differs from the Gnostic position articulated in the opening post, which holds that the natural world is "inherently evil" and our natural body is "an evil container.")
The point is that our body is just as much a part of who we are, as a whole person, as is our soul.
There may be a cognitive dissonance at work here, for you seem to believe that (a) the soul without the body is still Smith, but (b) the body without the soul is not Smith. If the body is not essential to personhood, then the body is not "just as much a part of who we are, as a whole person, as is our soul." It is incoherent to affirm psychosomatic unity in your language while denying it in your logic (as Hoekema did too, by the way, so you're not alone).
In [Ezekiel 18:4, I believe the writer is using the word "soul" as referring to the whole person. It could read, "The person who sins will die." Just as God declared to Adam. It was not distinguishing between the aspects of a human.
That is exactly my point. And, in fact, scripture throughout affirms the psychosomatic unity of man.
No. I believe [God] says he is able to [destroy the soul].
That was already acknowledged. I asked if you believe scripture says God won't destroy it (despite being able to). There is a difference between can and will, as I'm sure we both know.
God (can but) does not destroy the soul at the death of the person. But will he ever? I am asking because scripture does address that question and I'm inquiring about your awareness thereof.
What I said: "A human is not identical to their soul and not their body, as you suggest above." Why I said it: Context matters.
You also said, "I do believe that the soul lives on after death and is present with the Lord." Given these two statements, when Smith's body dies, who is present with the Lord? You have to say Smith.
Let me clarify the implication: You would agree that the body without the soul is no longer Smith, correct? But the soul without the body is still Smith, right? If so, then Smith is identical to his soul and not to his body (given that identity is ontological). That is how the logic necessarily unfolds.
The soul is distinct within the body as us, just as the body is us. [The soul is] not distinct from [the body], as though our body is not us.
This runs headlong into that crucial question: When Smith's body dies, who is present with the Lord? If you say Smith, then the body is not essential to personhood—because Smith still exists without it.
