4 responses

1. I have many questions:

   1) I think I heard you say that because our souls are dead that we are kept alive in body by the spirit of God. Was I understanding you correctly? if so, it reminds me of something I noticed a couple weeks ago when preparing a Bible study on the Holy Spirit: in Genesis 6:3 and Job 27:3 it appears that the Holy Spirit is the source of our life as humans.

   2) I think I heard you say that our souls are dead and will never be alive again, rather the life of Christians comes from the spirit of Christ and so in the new Heaven and Earth, our bodies will be there, but not our souls. Again did I hear you correctly?

   3) I have never been able to describe the difference between a soul and a spirit. How would you describe the difference between a soul and spirit? In your understanding, do humans have both or only a soul so that if they have a spirit they get it from God?

   3) What happens to us when we die? 🙂 I mean, if our soul is dead, and then our body dies, what are we while we wait for the resurrection. The Bible seems to indicate when Jesus speaks to the thief on the Cross and because certain people talked to the dead, that we have some sort of existence in between the death of our body and the resurrection. What is that existence if it isn’t our soul being alive? That persistence of the soul is how I had previously understood things like the Westminster Confession that describe our souls as immortal. I’m not sure how to explain a person’s persistent existence and identity. If both their soul and their body are dead.

   4) What happens to the goats? If their souls are dead and they are cast into the lake fire, after being resurrected and judged, what of them is experiencing that judgment? It would seem that the full effect of the judgment would require more than just a body, but it also seems weird to think of God being their animating spirit and they being in hell. But now I’m thinking that if our souls are currently dead and still managing to cause sin in us, whatever a dead soul is, it could still exist as a conscious and/or “animating” part of a person experiencing judgment. But now I’m starting to not understand what the word dead means if our dead souls are still doing something active to us now. I’m confused. Please help.

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   • These are the exact questions I myself have wrestled with. And I am extremely gratified these are the questions you are asking. I have come to conclusions on all of this that I think resolve the confusion and discrepancies, and I had already planned on exploring most of these questions in episodes 17 and 18 of the podcast. What is left to discuss from your questions, I will tackle at the end of episode 18 in response to your comment here. Not to leave you hanging, I’ll give brief responses to each of your questions:

     1) Yes. The Holy Spirit is the breath of life, animating all flesh (animals included). But this dispensation of Spirit is “named” as a distinct identity in humans before the fall, and also named in believers (in Christ), but not named in animals or unbelievers. Meaning the identity of animals and those who do not accept identity in Christ in the Spirit does not “return” to God with God’s Spirit upon their death. This breath of life/Holy Spirit connection is made explicit in many passages of Scripture. For instance, the very same Greek verb used to describe the enlivening of Adam (through the breath of God’s life) in the LXX is used to describe Jesus’ breathing of the Holy Spirit into the Apostles (and by connection all true believers) in John 20:22.

     2) That’s almost what I’m saying. “Soul,” which is used in the vast majority of cases in reference to humans and animals, usually refers either to a bodily creature’s mortal life or to a human’s individual self, or, put in more practical terms: soul refers to both a creature’s God-given potential to live or die in a body as well as, synecdochically, the defining identity (character, impulse, or principle) of a human’s actual, individual living in said body. In other words, it can mean “life/breath” generically of “all flesh” (including animals) or “a life and how you’ve chosen to use or enjoy it” specifically of humans. Though angels could be called souls, they are called spirits, because soul is almost always reserved for a spirit in flesh, whether human or animal. I believe “soul,” when talking about a human, describes that distinct dispensation of spiritual identity that differentiates one individual spiritually from another, particularly when that dispensation of spirit is in a body, but this dispensation persists as an identity for humans because, unlike animals, humans are responsible morally. In that sense, we have new souls in the Spirit of Christ, in the sense that our life in the body is designated to us (named) in Christ. So the Spirit of God that is granted to each believer individually in communion with Christ becomes the persistent soul of that particular person. In other words, you will have what could be called a soul (a distinct dispensation of spirit in flesh) in the New Heavens and Earth, but it will not be the soul you had at conception. That soul will not be resurrected with the believer. It has died with Jesus: we have lost it to gain a new identity in Jesus as “new creations.”

     3) As I said in the last answer, the soul and spirit are mostly distinguished in their relationship to a body. Though a soul is technically a spirit, it is not disembodied by definition. The soul of a human being is the responsible life in the body. The spirit is the principle, identity, and animus of that life in humans. When that principle, identity, or animus is considered on its own terms (concerning bodiless entities or disembodied human identities) it is often called a spirit. “Spirit” (ruach/pneuma) is most often used to designate an unembodied being (e.g., angels, God), and in its most specific aspect, most often refers to the life-giving and not merely living being of God, especially the third person of the Trinity. Biblical authors sometimes use “spirit” generically for the immaterial impulse of an embodied being, sometimes in parallel to “soul” (e.g., 1 Sam. 1:15; Isa. 26:9; Job 7:11; Luke 1:46), but this usage is not as common, and is often employed in poetry for emphasis. A “spirit” in or on human beings regularly refers to an immaterial impulse or being from outside humans or animals which affects them—sometimes as if it were their own soul or impulse (e.g., “a lying spirit,” [1 Kings 22:21; cf. 2 Chron. 18:20], “a spirit of skill” [Ex. 28:3], or “a spirit of jealousy” [Num. 5:14]), but more often when it is clearly not their own spirit (“evil spirits” or even
     the “Spirit of God” possessing or coming upon or over people). When “spirit” is used of humans as something proper or inherent to them, it is almost always
     differentiated with a possessive pronoun. In this usage, it basically refers to the human soul (the individuated “spirit” of man within him and distinct to him), with a specific (often poetic) emphasis on potency, drive, desire, passion, or will to live.

     4) My take on this is not orthodox, but I think it is biblical, so take it with 1,000 grains of salt but I have my biblical reasons for everything that follows. I believe that all those who die in Christ receive the first resurrection (the resurrection of their souls) at the moment of death. In that sense, they never taste death, as Jesus promised. Their souls are resurrected in the spirit of Christ, so they dwell in the bosom of God’s being until the bodily resurrection. And mostly they ask, “How long until the consummation, our Lord?” Or “Are we there yet?” Haha. But they still have a conscious, if not embodied life. I believe that, before the death of Jesus, the relationship of Old Testament saints was different, in that I think they had a promised and real life in God but it had not become realized or conscious in them at the point of their bodily death. They were waiting, before Christ’s resurrection, for death and the grave to be conquered in Jesus. In this sense, sheol (the grave) is spoken of in the OT as a largely indiscriminate place of death for all people where no agency of basically any kind is exercised, though still there is some persistence of identity and a name even in the grave. At the point of the resurrection however, it seems clear that Jesus emptied the grave of all believers and led forth a host of captive souls to heaven. In a sense this resurrection had already occurred in Jesus in the sense that even Abraham would have had a new identity named in Christ before the foundation of the world. So, in that sense, Jesus can say: God is not the God of the dead but the living. Abraham was alive in Christ, but Abraham did not fully experience this consciously until Jesus emptied the grave of His people in Jesus’ victory over death in His bodily resurrection. I believe at that point, Jesus revived/resurrected the souls of all those who had died in Him up to that point to join them together with His own witnesses—one of the earliest of whom would have been the thief on the cross. At that point, death and the grave totally lost their power over human beings in a most real and tangible sense. As believers, we are all given new names in Jesus. They are true names in Jesus. Meaning I am not becoming like Jesus generically. We are not all becoming some basic version of the whole Jesus. I am finding my unique reality in Jesus, and no one else shares this identity in Christ. We each have our own names in Christ. And that unique part of Jesus where I find my life is my true living soul, which soul will animate my resurrected body in its uniqueness in the bodily resurrection.

     5) So to your last question, this is the most disturbing, and again not exactly the orthodox response. I believe that unbelievers, after they die, await the final judgment. I do not know what their experience of this waiting is, but I hope, in God’s grace, it might be more like a dreamless sleep rather than a prolonged nightmare. But I have no idea. It may be that their experience between death and resurrection is like closing your eyes in slumber and waking with no sense of any time passing. Again, I don’t know. But I don’t think they have any agency between death and resurrection. Perhaps some consciousness, but more similar to the consciousness of sleeping. I think there is very good reason why most biblical authors liken death and sleeping. Before the judgment, the bodies of unbelievers are raised. But you might ask, raised with what animating principle? This is the disturbing part. It will not be with the Spirit of God. I believe the animating principle of the unbeliever in resurrection will be their souls in sin. This accounts for the hellish pain of their situation. They are technically not dead, but technically not alive. Since their bodies have been permanently joined to the animating principle of their identity in sin, they will be sin embodied. Which means they will not be capable of doing anything but sinning according to their own particular sin identity, but they will also not be capable of enjoying that sin. Sin is not intrinsically pleasurable. The only reason sin is able to have any pleasure for a season in this life is because the consequences of sin are separated from the commission of sin in order to provide space for repentance in this life. But in the next life, there is no Spirit of God (of life) to create either the separation between the sin and its punishment (i.e., the patience or forbearance of God) or the pleasure of real life (i.e., the presence of the Spirit within us granting us the possibility of pleasure). So the unbeliever post-resurrection would have neither the pleasure of sin nor the capacity to keep from sinning. He would have no choice but to operate according to his single unified identity in sin, and that compulsive behavior would receive in the moment of its commission the very consequences of evil it produced and deserved. Meaning murder would produce the immediate death on the commissioner he deserved for the act—in the very moment of the act. But this pain and death could not result in true death because there is no true life in the animating principle of the dead soul. This is as close to a zombie as you can get. This is the second death, one from which no one can ever experience relief. The worm does not die, the fire is not quenched. And, by the nature of the situation, no change could ever occur here. This would be a static condition very similar to the condition of fallen angels. And the thought of it horrifies me.

     If it turns out little of what I’m saying about the afterlife or the composition of souls etc. is true, I’m okay with that. But I’m doing my best to take the whole Bible seriously in what little or much we are told about these things. I’m not comfortable saying things the Bible directly contradicts (i.e., the soul is immortal). And I’m equally uncomfortable dismissing things the Bible clearly says. For this reason, among others, I have come to a lot of these conclusions. I hope this has helped to clear some of your confusion. Thanks for commenting, Lisa!

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2. Ep 16:
   You have made a great distinction between the body and the flesh. I would have liked to hear more about the spirit, of God, of demons, and of man. In my understanding sin is conceived in the soul by the lust of the flesh, the deceitful of riches, and the boastful pride of life. Sin is also conceived in the soul through temptation of unclean or evil spirits that we entertain. Paul warns that we must “test the spirits to see if they be of God” or evil. Falling into the enticement by temptation from evil spirit blemishes the soul and diminishes the life (Zoe) of our soul which manifests in the flesh. The spirit that Paul refers to in Rom 8 is always implied as the spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, not the spirit of man. The HS, as well as unclean spirits, communicate through the spirit of man. We must have our senses trained to discern between good and evil, the interaction of the spirit, holy or evil, and our soul. We respond to temptations (evil) and trials (godly) in our soul (intellect and will) where death through sin or life from God are conceived and manifest outwardly in the body. Is this just an issue of semantics or am I completely off on this?

   Reply

   • I talk more about this in episode 17, but I think I would agree for the most part with what you’re saying here. I would say that a believer has, in a manner of speaking, two potential souls (spiritual principle of existence in a body) available— first, the old man which is the soulish inheritance of sin from Adam and second, the new man which is the soulish reconciliation of ourselves with the Spirit of life in Christ. In this sense, we already have an innate “wicked spirit” within us, which is the soul in sin. And we have also the “living spirit” of our new creation in Christ. To resist sin then is to walk in the Spirit of God, by living out our reconciled spiritual identity (the new man) in the body in union with the Spirit of God in Christ, which gives life also to all flesh.

     You are correct that other wicked spirits from outside of a human being could also play some part, from possession of the body in extreme cases to mere influence or oppression. The Christian would not be able to be possessed, being in union with the Holy Spirit within, but could still be influenced by either the wicked human spirits in the world, wicked fallen angelic spirits, or the wicked spirit within (the old man). Those without a living soul in Christ would be far more susceptible to exterior influence, being unable within themselves to repel other spiritual influences. I would also say that the soul of any human would include the intellect, will, and affections. And I would make a distinction between evil and wicked impulses, but that’s not all that important of a distinction in the discussion of spirits as such. An evil spirit, being by its own nature unable to swerve from harm, would also be, on its own terms, wicked. I’ll discuss that distinction in greater detail in episode 19, which will be on the good/evil, righteous/wicked distinction from the Scriptures. Thank you for the question. These are good thoughts.

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