I’m not talking about whether you can get down to Aretha Franklin or not. Rather I am asking: should we think of human beings as beings in two parts, or two aspects? Are we merely physical and bodily, or is there something else to us in addition to this? When you die and your body decays, where will ‘you’ go? And in what form? Is there something in us which is intrinsically immortal?
Christian theologians have traditionally thought of the human person dualistically – that is as a being composed of both a body and soul. This was reflected in the Council of Chalcedon of 454 AD which is famous for defining the two natures of Jesus Christ. In trying to describe the full humanity of Jesus it spoke about him dualistically:
…our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable [rational] soul and body.
What the Council was trying to affirm was that the soul wasn’t some divine ‘bit’ in Jesus’ otherwise human nature. He was wholly man – thus constituted of a reasonable soul and a body.
But how are we to think of this ‘soul’? And what does the Bible commit us to in this regard? Must we understand ourselves to have an identifiable ‘self’ which is distinguishable but usually inseparable from our bodies?
The question is sharpened by the advance of modern neurology, which claims to be able to identify the physical manifestations of all of our thoughts and feelings. The notion of a ‘soul’ seems surplus to requirements. Must theologians insist upon it?
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