Theopedia

Soul

“Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”

— Genesis 2:7 (ESV)

Definition

The soul is the immaterial, substantial principle of a human being’s life, distinct from the physical body but united to it, constituting one person. Genesis 2:7 describes God forming Adam’s body “of dust from the ground” and breathing into it “the breath of life,” so that “the man became a living creature” (Hebrew nephesh chayah, a living soul).1 Man therefore consists of two distinct substances, one material and one immaterial, not merely one substance with different aspects or three separate substances.1

Confessional Witness

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession grounds this two-substance view in what it confesses about death: “The Bodies of Men after Death return to dust, and see corruption; but their Souls (which neither die nor sleep) having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them.”2 The body’s dissolution and the soul’s continued, personal existence apart from it only make sense if the two are genuinely distinct substances rather than one substance under two names or aspects of a single material whole.

Biblical Basis

Scripture consistently distinguishes soul from body without ever adding a third, separate substance to the pair. Genesis 3:19 pronounces judgment on the body alone, “dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return,” while Ecclesiastes 12:7 sets the body’s return to dust against the immaterial principle’s own return to God: “the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.”3 Isaiah speaks of judgment reaching “both soul and body” (Isa. 10:18), and Christ tells his disciples to “fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul,” setting soul and body against each other as the whole of what makes up a person.4 Daniel likewise says he “was grieved in my spirit in the midst of my body” (Dan. 7:15), using “spirit” for the same immaterial principle Genesis and Ecclesiastes call “soul.”3

Opposing Views

Trichotomy: body, soul, and spirit as three distinct substances. Some, within the church and outside it, have held that man consists of three substances rather than two: a material body, an animal soul (psyche) shared with the brute creation, and a rational, immortal spirit (pneuma) unique to man.5 Charles Hodge answers that Scripture gives this view no support: the Hebrew nephesh and Greek psyche, and the Hebrew ruach and Greek pneuma, are used interchangeably throughout Scripture for one and the same immaterial principle, not for two distinct substances.6 Genesis 2:7’s own account of man’s creation mentions only the body formed from dust and the single “breath of life” breathed into it, “no intimation of anything more.”7 On the dichotomist reading, “soul” and “spirit” name the same immaterial reality from different angles (soul as the seat of personal life, spirit as that same life considered in its rational and immortal character) rather than two separate substances that could, even in principle, be pulled apart from one another.

Historical Development

Where the soul itself comes from at each new human life has been debated since the early church, chiefly between two positions: that God specially creates each soul at conception (creationism) and that the soul, like the body, is generated through ordinary human procreation (traducianism). Herman Bavinck judges neither view finally adequate to the questions it was meant to answer: “traducianism and creationism advance weighty arguments for their respective positions,” yet “both are incapable of solving the difficulties,” since traducianism struggles to explain how an immaterial soul could be generated the way a material body is, while creationism struggles to explain how a soul directly created by God comes to share in Adam’s corruption.8 A third, largely abandoned view holds that souls preexist their bodies and are only joined to them at conception.

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Charles Hodge, “Chapter II. Nature of Man,” in Systematic Theology, Volume II (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), 41. ↩ ↩2

  2. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 31, “Of the State of Man after Death, and of the Resurrection of the Dead,” para. 1, text as reproduced by CCEL, ccel.org/creeds/bcf/bcfc31.htm. ↩

  3. Hodge, “Chapter II. Nature of Man,” 42. ↩ ↩2

  4. Hodge, “Chapter II. Nature of Man,” 42-43. ↩

  5. Hodge, “Chapter II. Nature of Man,” 46. ↩

  6. Hodge, “Chapter II. Nature of Man,” 46-47. ↩

  7. Hodge, “Chapter II. Nature of Man,” 47. ↩

  8. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 11, “Image of God.” ↩