Soil-Body, Blood-Life, the Human Spirit, and the Divine Atmosphere It Breathes: Sellers on the Soul—Part IV

Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992), his one-time New York rep Gabriel Monheim (1936-2015), and long-time friend (of them and me), fellow Christian Individualist Michael Walko, Los Angeles, December 21 or 22, 1973. Photo courtesy of “Jersey Mike.”—A.G.F.

Let’s recap the first three posts in this series on Otis Q. Sellers’s 1939 What Is the Soul?

Part I documents Sellers’s understanding of Scripture’s plenary inspiration based on its character as theopneustos (θεόπνευστος, 2 Timothy 3:16), which determines the approach to particular words.

Part II begins to survey the data of words traditionally rendered “soul”: the Hebrew נֶ֫פֶשׁ‎ (nephesh) and its Greek equivalent ψυχή (psyche).

In Part III we show that in Genesis נֶ֫פֶשׁ‎ (nephesh) applies to creatures that “move from place to place … [and] have sensation and consciousness” (for not all creatures do) and how the translators of the King James Version inexcusably obscured this truth.

We will now introduce the biblical figures God condescended to use to communicate truth about the soul. “Let us consider,” Sellers writes, “these two parts of living man which constitute him a living soul.”

First, there is the body: it was created out of something already in existence [but also created], that is, the dust or soil of the earth. A man may love his body, care for it, protect it and nurture it, yet it is just so much soil, and at death it must return to the soil from whence it was taken.

(In a note, Sellers explains that “I use the word dust … although the word soil is preferred. To us dust means soil without moisture, powdered fine. This does not fit the Hebrew word here, but our word soil seems to fit it perfectly.”)

“It may be humiliating to accept it,” he continues, “and that which humiliates is often rejected, but God has the material for making myriads of bodies, for these bodies are just so much soil.”

God could fashion stones into human beings with the DNA that would mark them as children of Abraham (Matthew 3:9). “God, if He so desired, could duplicate every one of us a thousand-fold.”

Second, there is the breath of life. In the Hebrew this is neshamah chaiyim. The word “of” is usually the sign of the genitive [case], … [T]his is the genitive of apposition. [I]n this case the “of” means “that is” or “which is.” So, God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath, that is, life.

That is, the breath that is life, not “life’s breath.”

Understanding Biblical anthropology (teaching about the nature of man) partly depends on a grasp of three repeatedly occurring Hebrew words:

- - - נשמה, neshamah, breath
    - חיים, chaiyim, life
    - רוּחַ, ruach, spirit.

Although they’re not synonyms,

[W]e are not dealing with three things, but with three aspects of the same thing. Man’s spirit is his life, and this is the thing God breathed into him. And this spirit (or life) upon man’s death must return to God who gave it.

Those who compare Genesis 2:7 with Ecclesiastes 12:7 will be convinced that the “breath of life” which God breathed into the nostrils of man is one and the same with the spirit God gave spoken of in Ecclesiastes. This spirit is sometimes spoken of as belonging to man, that is, God’s spirit.

Ecclesiastes 12:7 affirms two returns at death: the human body to the soil (הֶעָפָ֛ר, heapar), the human spirit or breath (רוּחַ, ruach) to God. The latter is human life’s principle, not the dead person’s self.

In the book of Job, Sellers finds help the identification of neshamah with ruach, breath with spirit. The key lies in the nature of Hebrew poetry wherein “rhythm” is carried by a repetition, not of words of similar sound, but rather of ideas. By this we find verses of two clauses in which the second repeats the first’s meaning, but differently.

All the while my breath (neshamah) is in me, and the spirit (ruach) of God is in my nostrils. Job 27:3.

The spirit (ruach) of God hath made me, and the breath (neshamah) of the almighty has given me life. Job 33:4

But there is a spirit (ruach) in man, and the inspiration (neshamah) of the almighty giveth them understanding. Job 32:8

“An examination of all passages in which these three words occur,” Sellers claims, “would demonstrate that spirit (ruach) refers to life in principle and breath (neshamah) refers to life in its manifestations…. But why is life called by two names if these are not synonymous terms?”

There is another figure we have to consider in conjunction with the soul, namely, life’s negation: death.

The divine figure or illustration of death is sleep…. God has chosen the figure of sleep to picture death to us. Death is not sleep, no more than sleep is death. But sleep is the figure of death, and the reality is often called by the name of the figure.

Then, there is the soul. The divine figure of the soul is the blood. See Genesis 9:4-5. It is not that the soul is the blood, but blood is the divinely chosen illustration to make the soul plain to us.

Similarly, with respect to man’s spirit or life,

… God has seen fit to use the breath as a divine figure or illustration. It is a divinely chosen illustration selected for the purpose of making man’s spirit plain…. But why should the breath be chosen to picture the spirit (or life) of man to us, and what are we to learn from this?

Sellers makes analogy with a goldfish bowl, which

… is the world in which those fish live. Each fish is drawing in the water and expelling it, even as man inhales and exhales the air he breathes. When the water is drawn into the gills of the fish, it is at no time cut off from the water in the bowl, for it remains a part of it. So as the water in each fish is still vitally connected with the water in the bowl, the fish are vitally united and linked together.

The water in the bowl is the goldfish’s atmosphere:

We live at the bottom of a great invisible ocean, only the ocean is air and not water. The atmosphere that covers the globe is a unit, and if any part of it is separated from the air as a whole, it becomes poisonous and will destroy instead of sustaining the creatures who live in it. The air is constantly entering into or going out of every creature, so it is evident at once that the air not only sustains, but it also unites every living soul on the earth. God has given one air to all beings, and all man can personally have of it is just what his needs require.

No man can draw in his breath, say it is his own, and that he is going to keep it. When a man draws in breath from the air, it is not cut off from the atmosphere as a whole. Let a man try to do this, and in a few seconds his whole system will rebel and expel his breath in spite of him.

Which yields that key figure, atmosphere:

The breath is God’s figure of the spirit (or life) of man. The source of every man’s spirit is God, just as the source of each creature’s breath is the atmosphere.

The spirit is a direct emanation from God Himself, and is a divine power flowing from God to every living soul. Each living soul has that portion of spirit (or life) from God which is needful for its designed purpose.

All things that live, live only in and by His life. Life has no other source than God. God originates and sustains life in all by giving it out of Himself. This was the testimony of Paul to the men of Athens.

In Him we live, and move, and have our being. (Acts 17:28.) (My emphasis.—A.G.F.)

To Be Continued