Body, Soul, Self

  Tony Flood writes:

Hard to imagine Hitchens at almost 73, had he lived. Great post, but I have a question.

Briefly, why do you refer to the soul as one's "true self"? Genesis 2:7 reports that from the dust of the ground (ha-adamah) God created ha-adam, i.e., "the man." The man became a living soul (le-nephesh hayyah) when God breathed the breath of life (nishmat hayyim) into him. The pre-animated ha-adamah was neither dead nor a "less-than-true" or incomplete human being; the animating nephesh is not the man's self or ego. When God withdraws the breath of life from a soul, that soul dies. I think know your non-Genesis source, but I want to hear it from you. Your passing comment reminded me that I had written quite a bit about this earlier this year.

 

Also interested in knowing whether there's anything you want to share from your retreat.

 

Tony is referring to this sentence of mine: "Those of us who champion  free speech miss him [Hitchens] and what he would have had to say about the current state of the world had he taken care of himself, or rather his body, his true self being his soul." What I wrote suggests that there is a difference between body and soul in a person, and that the soul is the person's self.  But why true self?  Well, if I can exist without a body, but I cannot exist without (being identical to) a soul, then 'my' soul, or rather me qua soul is 'my' true self. There are a number of different questions here, all very difficult.

 

To begin, we need to clarify our terminology. 'Soul' (psyche, anima, Seele) is ambiguous.  It could refer to the life-principle in living things.  'Soul' could also be used to refer to the subject or possessor of a person's mental states. For the Christian philosopher Richard Swinburne, "Each actual human being is essentially  a pure mental substance . . . " and ". . . a person has mental properties because their [sic] soul has mental properties." (Are We Bodies or Souls? Oxford UP, 2019, p. 80)  

 

Now ask yourself which of the following is true:

 

(A) I am (identical to) a substance the form of which is my soul and the matter of which is my body.  Anima forma corporis: the soul is the form of the body.

 

(P) I am (identical to) a purely mental substance that contingently possesses a living human body.

 

A substance may be defined as any individual entity metaphysically capable of independent existence, where 'individual' implies unrepeatability and impredicability.

 

(A) is the Aristotelian-Thomistic view. A person is one substance, the individual human being, the soul of which is not a substance. 

 

(P) is the Platonic-Cartesian view. It is substance-dualist. In the book mentioned, Swinburne defends substance dualism according to which "each human consists of two parts -- a soul (a pure mental substance) and a body (a physical substance)." (p. 141)

 

So, when I wrote in my Substack entry about Hitchens taking care of himself, or rather his body, I signaled my inclination to accept the Platonic-Cartesian view. You can destroy your body with hooch and weed, but not your soul.  

 

Now which of the two views above is more biblical? This, I take it, is the question that exercises Tony, and I suspect that his view is either (A) or neither. I suspect that Tony's view is that the Platonic-Cartesian view is wholly unbiblical and thus that Christianity has little or nothing to do with Platonism.  

 

Serendipitously, Tony's question ties in nicely with a discussion I had with a man at the monastery about Mark 12: 18-27 and Christ's argument against the Sadducees re: bodily resurrection. Don't we need Platonic souls during the time between hora mortis nostrae and general resurrection?

 

Combox open.

Comments

[Richard Norris]

I don't know the specific verse, but I am reminded of the Bible saying that there are storehouses in Heaven full of souls, as like storehouses for grain.

[Matt Hart]

Christian substance dualist here. On the exegetical question, 'living creature' is an alternative rendering to 'living soul'. I think what is meant by the Hebrew expression is something like 'creature with life force'.

Moreover, I am often surprised by the way Christain materialists avoid the clear dualistic implications of that episode in Gen. You have man made from two components: one is material, the dust of the earth, and the other is immaterial, the very breath of God. The latter is also surely the greater and more important component - it bestows value on what is otherwise worthless.

[BV]

Hi Matt,

I remember you from years ago in the glory days of blogging. As I recall, MH is not your real name, and you were a grad student somewhere.

I am with you in opposing Christian materialism. The Genesis implication is plainly dualistic. Humans are animals and thus material beings. But at some point they acquired an infusion of spirit which set them apart from every animal. The breath of God is that infusion of spirit. 'Breath of God' must be taken in a spiritual sense, not in a crass material sense. God is not an animal who physically breathes. Otherwise, he would have such-and-such lung capacity, a certain O2 uptake, etc.