Tag: Death

Man’s “true self”: my reply to critics

Last December, I asked Bill Vallicella, my philosophical interlocuter of almost two decades, why in a Substack essay he referred to the soul as one’s “true self.” I noticed only recently, however, that I hadn’t commented on his reply (or the comments it received), and the window for that combox closed some time ago; thus this belated post.

Bill had written on the atheist Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011):

Those of us who champion free speech [Bill writes] miss him 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.

On Bill’s blog, I asked:

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 [i.e., in 2022]. 

Bill replied:

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.

I invite my reader to consider Bill’s 634-word post. Here I can only reply to points of contention, not work out a biblical anthropology.

Continue reading “Man’s “true self”: my reply to critics”

The Departing and Returning Whole Man: Sellers on the Soul—Part V

[Previous installments of this series on Otis Q. Sellers on the soul: I, II, III, and IV.]

Sellers continues to mine Genesis for what it teaches about nephesh, traditionally translated “soul” and, not surprisingly, finds confirmation in the Greek Scriptures: “The lessons to be learned in Genesis 2:7 are reaffirmed in the New Testament,” specifically 1 Corinthians 15:45:

And so it is written, the first man Adam became a living soul.

Sellers also finds in Genesis an implicit equation: A + B = C

      1. The Lord God formed man of the dust of the earth.
      2. [The Lord God] Breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.
      3. Man became a living soul.

From these statements Sellers infers that it “is the whole man that is the soul, and not some part of man.” Here is biblical anthropology in a nutshell, rarely if ever represented in popular theology.

… [I]t was the original man made of the soil that became a living soul. The spirit is possessed by man, but it is no part of man—it is a part of God. By it the original man became something he was not before. What he became depends for its continuance upon God. Man has not been changed into divine spirit. He only has this dwelling in him at the pleasure of God. It may be withdrawn, and if it is, man sinks back to the soil from whence he came. If this happens, man is no longer a living soul, he becomes a dead soul. In view of this, how glorious is the fact of resurrection. [My emphasis—AGF] Continue reading “The Departing and Returning Whole Man: Sellers on the Soul—Part V”