Facts and
Theories as to a Future State
CHAPTER V
THE SOUL
THE Hebrew word for "soul" is (nephesh), the equivalent of
which in Greek is (psuche). A fact significant enough in view of what has
already come before us when speaking of the word for spirit, is that both
nephesh and psuche are, equally with ruach and pneuma, derived from words which
signify "to breathe." The same idea of viewless activity enters into them. Even
Dr. Thomas tells us that nephesh is from the verb to breathe, although with the
characteristic dishonesty which marks all that he says upon the subject, he
gives its primary meaning as "creature." "Nephesh," he says, "signifies
creature, also life, soul, or breathing frame, from the verb to breathe." "To
return then to the philology of our subject, I remark that by a metonomy, or
figure of speech whereby the container is put for the, thing contained, and
vice versa, nephesh, breathing-frame put for neshemet ruach chayim, which, when
in motion the frame respires. Hence nephesh signifies life also breath and
soul."?* One would think, from the admitted derivation of the word from the
verb to breathe, that the metonomy, if such there be, would be all the other
way, and that the primary meaning would be "breath," and so life or soul. In
point of fact, nephesh is only once suggested as breath in the margin of Job
xi. 20, and without necessity, and for "life" only as the principle or source
of life - a meaning easily derived from the soul being strictly that source of
life to the body. So that "soul" (in the common acceptation of the word) is
properly the primary Scriptural meaning, and the other meanings are derived
from it.
*Elpis Israel, pp. 27-29.
Dr. T., on the other
hand, stoutly contends that soul and body are one. "Now if it be asked, what do
the Scriptures define a living soul to be? The answer is, a living natural, or
animal body."* But I would ask Dr. Thomas or any other who takes the position,
if he could understand such an expression as "everything wherein there was a
living body?" You find in Gen. i. 30, "everything wherein there was a living
soul." Now if the soul be in the body, it cannot be the body, and the fact that
it is called a "living" soul precludes the possibility of translating it
"life," as materialists love to do. A "living life" would make no sense;†
a "living breath" would be no better; and the passage shuts us up to the
necessity of allowing that something is alive within the "breathing-frame"
which Dr. Thomas speaks of; so that the soul and it are distinct from each
other.
Ibid., p. 27.
*Miles Grant does not see the difference
between "living a life" and a "life living." "We often hear the expression,
‘We should live a life of virtue’; so, in the passages under
consideration, it would be correct to say, ‘and my life shall live’ "
(The Soul, p. 18). This is a notable specimen of discernment or the want of
it.. If I can talk of "giving a gift," I can therefore talk of a gift giving;
and if I can speak of thinking a thought, I can equally speak of a thought
thinking!
Dr. Thomas thinks he has Scripture for his
identification of soul and body. Let him speak for himself. "Writing about body
the apostle says, ‘There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body.*
But he does not content himself with simply declaring this truth; he goes
further, and proves it by quoting the words of Moses, saying, ‘For it is
written, the first man Adam was made into a living soul,’ and then adds,
‘the last Adam into a Spirit giving life.’ . . The proof of the
apostle’s proposition, that there is a natural body as distinct from a
spiritual body lies in the testimony that Adam was made into a living soul,
showing that he considered a natural or animal body and a living soul as one
and the same thing. If he did not, then there was no, proof in the quotation of
what he had affirmed."†
*I Cor. xv. 44. †Elpis Israel, p.
28.
Dr. Thomas had here to misquote Scripture in order to get his
argument, such as it is even then. The apostle does: not say "for," but "and."
He is not proving his statement. by the passage produced. Why should he
undertake to prove that Adam had a natural body? He is showing, rather, how the
difference between the first and last Adams, these heads of the human race,
naturally or spiritually, illustrates the difference between the natural and
the spiritual states, and confirms there being such a difference between what,
we are now and what we shall be. "Paul quotes the declaration of Moses," says
Mr. Roberts, "to prove the existence of the natural body" This writer has told
us that the spirit of man is very easily seen; now he wants proof of the
existence of the body!*
*His treatment of all this in "Man Mortal"
needs little notice, save to illustrate the hopeless difficulty of his
position. He invokes Dr. T.’s metonomy to account for Gen. i. 30, but
wisely refrains from applying it to the case in hand. I have already shown that
no meaning given by them to soul will account. for it: living body, living
creature, living life, living breath - none of them will do here. The metonomy
cannot sustain so great a burden.
He admits that there may be
"something alive" in the body, as you may call the red heat of a fire
"something alive" within the coal! This is his "inevitable fiction," of course
again, and it does, indeed, with him seem " inevitable."
To all his
blunders as to my meaning, I must refer my readers to my book itself for a
reply. Mr. R. often seems to have written his comments before he was fairly
possessed of the meaning of what he writes about.
Now, note that it is
even of "the beast of the earth," and from that down to every creeping thing of
which this is said. It is not said that the beast has a spirit; it is said that
it has a soul. So much so, that all the lower animals are called "souls," just
as much as men are. This is to be observed, for it is in itself an answer to
the materialistic theories of organization of the most complete kind. It cuts
off at once all those arguments as to the faculties of the brutes, their
display of attachment, etc., which men ground so much upon. Scripture leads us
to account for these, not by reason of their organization, but their possession
of a "living soul," as even in man, while it refers the understanding of all
human things (I Cor. ii. 11) to the spirit which only man possesses - his
sensual faculties,* appetites, nay, his affections, etc., are ascribed to the
"living soul" - a soul so distinct from the life of the body, that they that "
kill the body" cannot "kill the soul" (Matt. x. 28).
*For a very good
account from the side of science of the difference between man and brute, I
would refer to Mivart’s "Lessons from Nature," chap. vii. (Appleton &
Co.)
Mr. Constable will perceive, therefore, that we are one with
him as to the fact that man and beast are alike possessed of living souls. We
do not disguise the truth as to this, but contend for it. When he proceeds from
this to infer that "the simple and proper meaning of the Hebrew word nephesh,
when applied to the lower creatures, is life animal life,"† he goes beyond
the record. Gen. i. 30 applies expressly to the lower creatures, and how can we
say, "everything wherein there is a living life"? The only other meaning be
ascribes to it, when applied to man, is "person" (p. 36), and "wherein there is
a living person" will scarcely do either.
†Hades, p. 34.
Gen. Goodwyn has still another definition: "The soul, as
distinguished from the mere body or soul-tabernacle, may he considered as that
combination of parts of the inner man, which is the seat of the mind and
affections, and having the breath of life gives action to the outer members of
the body. When the spirit, the animating principle, is withdrawn, the man, soul
and body, ceases to exist, dies." His Scripture for this seems to be Gen. ii.
7, "where Adam is said to have become a living soul. His inner organs received
life, or breath of existence and action."*
*Truth and Tradition.
Thus the inner organs of the body seem with him to be the soul, the
outer only, the soul-tabernacle or body. It would be well to attempt something
in the way of proof of so startling a proposition as that the lungs and other
parts not defined are not the body! "In the body," "out of the body," "absent
from the body," "putting off the tabernacle," would certainly have a new
significance in this way. But I think it scarcely needful to pursue this
further.
Man has, then, a living soul; nay, he is one. How he became so
Gen. ii. 7 informs us: "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." Now, upon the most cursory glance at this, it is evident that something
more took place in man’s creation than in the creation of the brute. It is
plain that God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life, and that
He did not into the brute’s. Roberts, indeed, contends that Psa. civ.
25-30 supplies what is omitted in Genesis. He obtains this by means of the old
confusion between God’s Spirit and the breath of life. Nor does any one
deny that "God giveth unto all life and breath and all things." The question is
why was the gift given in this especial way to man alone? "No matter," says Mr.
R., "if they all have it." But the point is, did God come in in this special
way to give merely the same gift after all? The language is phenomenal, as Old
Testament language largely is, and that makes one only the more to ask, is this
breathing of God not a form of expression pointing to the communication of
something from Himself and more akin to Himself, than is implied in water or
earth simply producing?
Surely it is so. For although what is
communicated may not be yet fully shown - and it is quite the character of an
initial revelation, that it should not be - it is plain that man has a link
here with God Himself which the beast has not.
And this is not by a higher
bodily organization. His body has been before perfected. It is by the way he
receives life. Now, if the breath of life alone were communicated (and every
beast has it as much), there is no real difference answering to this difference
of communication: the phenomenal language has no corresponding meaning. But
thus it is that man - only dust before - becomes a living soul. And that
purports that he is now characterized; as we have seen before in the beast, by
something now living within that man who was just now but dust. He is a living
soul; not by the completion of his bodily organization, but by the addition of
a new constituent of being. He is now not a mere body, nor a body instinct even
with the breath of life: he is become a "living soul."*
*Mr.
Morris’ gloss that nephesh chayah means a "vigorous soul" will be
repudiated by any scholar. In a secondary sense (chayah) is used for revival
and recovery, but its simple ordinary established meaning is "living." It is in
contrast with(hayah), "to be," as the being of a stone, for instance, is
distinct from the life of an animal.
Still, why is man called a
living soul, a title which is his in common with all the animate creation,
rather than a "living spirit," which would distinguish him from them? The
answer would seem to be that the point of contrast is not with the lower
animals, but with the class of God’s creatures to which as a moral being
man belongs. The angels are spirits, never souls. The distinction between them
and man, "made a little lower than the angels," is thus that man is a soul.
That which links him with the inferior creatures, is that which distinguishes
him from pure "spirits," such as angels are.*
*Because he has this in
common with the beasts, Mr. R. must not include that it is inferred that
man’s soul is just what the beast’s is. If "all flesh is not the same
flesh" even, why need all souls be the same .
And if God speaks of
His "soul," condescending as He does to our familiar human speech, He is never
called a soul as He is a spirit.
The fact here manifest, that the soul is
thus put for the whole man himself as what characterizes him, or gives him his
place among God’s rational creatures, serves to explain many passages
which would otherwise present difficulty. We have in our ordinary language
similar uses of the word "soul," which certainly have not grown up from a
materialistic idea of it. Thus we talk of "so many souls on board a ship,"
"every soul was lost," and no one is deceived by it. There are, however, other
renderings of the word nephesh, and other uses of soul, which we shall look at
in their place. As usual, the deniers of the Scripture doctrine make a great
display of various meanings given to the word. Says Miles Grant,* "Nephesh, the
word rendered soul, is translated in forty-four different ways in the common
English Bible. We now propose to give all these variations, and quote the texts
that contain them."
*The Soul, what is it? p. 20.
Now I
would say that nothing is more common than various renderings of the same word
in our ordinary translation. Good as it is, and in most cases giving the sense
with sufficient accuracy, it often varies from literal exactness. With all this
variation there is far less difference than would at first sight appear. Mr.
Grant himself reduces these meanings essentially to four, "creature, person,
life and desire." "Soul," of course, disappears out of this catalogue, although
it is the translation of nephesh 475 times out of 752. And we are, therefore,
to translate Gen. i. 30, "everything that creepeth upon the earth wherein there
is a living creature," or "wherein there is a living person," or "wherein there
is a living life," or "wherein there is a living desire." Choose which you
will, reader, so that you give no currency to the supposition of an immaterial
soul in man!
Mr. Grant has very ingeniously given in his book all the
variations from the ordinary meaning of the word nephesh but he has only given
select specimens of passages which retain that meaning. I will supply the
deficiency, and present him and my readers with a few of those omitted
passages:
Gen. xlii. 21: When we saw the anguish of his soul.
Numb.
xxi. 4: The soul of the people was much discouraged
Deut. xi. 18: Ye shall
lay up these my words in your soul.
I Sam. xviii. 1: The soul of Jonathan
was knit to the soul of David.
xxx. 6: The soul of all the people was
grieved.
2 Sam. v. 8: The blind that are hated of David’s soul.
Job xiv. 22: The soul within him shall mourn.
xxiii 13: What his soul
desireth, even that he doeth.
Psa. xiii. 2: How long shall I take counsel
in my soul.
cvi 15: He sent leanness into their soul.
cvii. 26: Their
soul is melted because of trouble.
cxix. 20: My soul breaketh for the
longing it hath.
Isa. x. 18: And shall consume from the soul even to the
flesh.
liii. 11: The travail of his soul.
Mic. vi. 7: The fruit of my
body for the sin of my soul.
Now, in these examples, the soul is
distinguished from both body and flesh. It longs, it grieves, it hates, it
loves. It is indeed a living thing, as Gen. i. 30 declares.
Take, again,
the New Testament equivalent of nephesh - psuche:
Matt. x. 28: Fear not
them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul.
xi. 29: Ye
shall find rest unto your souls.
xii 18: In whom my soul is well
pleased.
xxvi. 38: My soul is exceeding sorrowful
Luke i. 46: My soul
doth magnify the Lord.
John xii. 27: Now is my soul troubled.
Acts ii.
27: Thou will not leave my soul in hell (hades).
xiv. 22: Confirming the
souls of the disciples.
How impossible would it be to translate with
Mr. Constable "life" or " person" in these passages; or "body" or life" with
Dr. Thomas and his followers; or "inner organs" with Goodwyn; or "creature,
person, life or desire" with Miles Grant! Take, for instance, the very first
example, and try upon it any or all of these various renderings. Is it not
plain that not one of them will make even the smallest sense?
Mr.
Constable has indeed done his best to defend his position, but he owns that be
takes the expression in its "less obvious sense," and one to which he is
compelled, as he thinks, by "the general doctrine [of Scripture] upon this
subject." The latter assertion is surely incorrect, and a little examination
will show us that the sense he gives it is not merely the "less obvious," but
impossible.
He allows that if soul here be life, "man can and does
destroy" it. But he argues "it is a momentary death: what he has for the time
extinguished is reserved by God to shine through all eternity: it is not
therefore, in God’s eye or mind, lost, destroyed or perished."
This
will not answer, however. For it is plain that the Lord contrasts killing the
body here with destruction of body and soul in hell. Now man can only kill even
the body for a season: he cannot prevent the resurrection even of that. What he
can do as to the body he can do just as much (or as little) to the life, and
therefore there would be no ground for the distinction between the one and the
other which the passage manifestly makes. The Lord says, man can kill the body,
not the soul. Mr. Constable says he can kill the soul (or life) also, but only
for awhile; and that is equally true of the body. According to Mr. C. it should
have been "Fear not them which kill neither body nor life." This is not a "less
obvious," but an impossible sense.
But again, how could one even talk
of "killing the life" much more of "killing the body and the life"? What is
killing the body but destroying its life? I must plead ignorance as to killing
the body and the life being different things at all. Nay, further, since
"killing" is already "taking life," I must confess I fail to see how you can
talk of taking the life of life or "killing life."
Thus, then, without the
need of considering the passages with which he has sought to prop up his
argument (passages which will be examined, however, in another place) we may
safely assure ourselves that the Lord speaks of a true soul in man which man
cannot kill even for a moment. They can, for a moment, the body, but God will
raise it up. Not even for a moment can they kill the soul.
The dilemma
has been attempted to be avoided in another way. Says Miles Grant: "We think it
does not mean this present soul or life, for the reason that the destruction
threatened is not in this life, but in the world to come. Man can and does take
this life."
Therefore "soul" has to be rendered the "life to come." But
this it never means: the life to come, or life eternal, is zoe never
psuche. So much so that Goodwyn says: "Wherever the word psuche is found
it is in direct contrast with zoe, and used to express the natural life or soul
capable of being destroyed, put to death, or perishing." This is, of course, as
to the latter part of it, merely his own view, and in flat denial of the
passage before us; for how, if it be the natural life, merely, can man, who
kills the body, not kill it? But the "life to come" it is not. Psuche, in a
secondary sense, is "life," because the soul is (in effect) life to the body.
This natural life man does and can take; so that psuche here must be (spite of
the protest of materialism) that which lies back of the life itself - the
veritable soul, which out of man’s reach altogether.
Roberts
attempts an argument, however, from John xii. 25: "The man losing his life in
this world for Christ’s sake is said to save it. When? When the Son of man
comes (Matt. xvi. 25-27). If he is to save his psuche then, surely it is now a
psuche or life to come." Now the Lord’s words are that "be that loveth his
life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it
unto life eternal." How could a man keep his life to come unto life to come! It
is his present life he in some way* keeps, not merely for ever, but to life
eternal. By and by we shall look more closely into what "life eternal" is, end
shall then find it is not mere eternal existence, but far more. His human life
will enter this new condition. But that shows the distinction between the two,
and that it is this human life the Lord speaks of in the passage. As I have
said, Scripture expresses these two things by different terms: it is always
eternal zoe, never psuche; and Mr. Roberts cannot deny it..
*In what
way will be better considered further on.
But to give up here is to
give up all as to the soul’s immortality, and it is no wonder, therefore,
they hesitate. The doctrine they denounce finds in this verse as literal
expression as need be. If it be Platonic, Scripture is then Platonic; or
rather, Plato is thus far Scriptural.
Go To Chapter
Six
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