Linkage: This is part of the study "Scriptural View of the Body, Soul and Spirit". You should read that Introduction first.
Quick Answer: No.
Key Scriptures:
Mt 10:28 – there are some who can "destroy the
body but not the soul", so the soul must be distinct from the body. In this verse, Jesus uses the term
<soma> for "body" and seems to be referring to the physical
body. However, Jesus also talks about
God being able to destroy the <soma> in hell. In that instance, it seems that the word
<soma> has more of the “total person” meaning (see Question #6 for more
on this).
I Thes 5:23 This verse indicates that humans have
a <pneuma>, <psuche>, and <soma>. We have already established that the
<pneuma> and <psuche> are different (though hard to separate). It would seem odd that this list would
include two things that are different and one that is the same. Given that, the plain interpretation of this
statement by Paul is that he is intending to describe three different things.
I Cor 5:3 absent in <soma>, but present in
<pnuema>. Clearly our <soma>
and <pneuma> are not the same.
Rom 7:25 with the mind <nous> I myself serve the law of
God; but with the <sarx> the law of sin. The mind is part of the <psuche-pneuma>
- a non-material thing. The brain is
<sarx>. This verse makes it
clear: the "brain" and the
"mind" are not the same things.
Caveat:
The quick
answer I gave above refers to the common use of the English word
"body". Specifically, when we
use the word "body" in everyday English to refer to a human being, we
are thinking of that person's physical
body. In fact, if someone dies, we would
still refer to their corpse as their body.
When taken this way, the answer to the question is clearly
"no".
However,
the Greek New Testament uses two words that might be translated body: <soma> and <sarx>. I discuss this in more detail in Question #6
[here], but the word <sarx> is probably closer in definition to the way
we use the English term "body".
The word <soma> is, it seems, closer in definition to the way we
use the English term "person" or even "you",
"them", "me", etc.
When we use those terms, we aren't generally thinking any deep
metaphysical thoughts, but if we were asked, we would generally say that those
words mean both the person's body, and
their soul (if we think people have souls), and
their spirit (if we think people have spirits), and anything else that might make up what is, uniquely, one single,
separate human being. Sometimes we will
clarify the term "person" and say the "whole person". By that we are generally clarifying that we
are not just talking about the person's body.
Even a materialist would attach some different nuance to that term and
probably thinks of the "whole person" as including not just their
flesh, but also more nebulous things such as their mind, emotions, will,
etc.
So, by way
of a caveat here, with further discussion [here], the question would not be so
simple to answer if it was phrased "Is the <soma> the same as the
<psuche>?" There are certainly
differences in the meanings of those Greek words, but as they are used in the
New Testament it appears that the usage sometimes blurs any distinction.
Related Scriptures
and Thoughts:
Rom 7 The body
can wage war against the mind, so they are clearly not the same. Elsewhere, I suggest that it is reasonable to
consider words like the mind and heart and understanding to be part of the soul
[See here]. Passages like Romans 7 seem
to be very clear that there is a difference between the brain and the
mind. However, this passage also
strongly supports the idea that a lot of what we do is driven by the body, not
the mind. I take that to mean that we
make a lot of decisions that are just simply the brain responding to
inputs. The materialist would probably
say that every decision we make fits
that category. From my reading of
scripture, my observation of my fellow human beings, and from being a human
myself for a few decades, I've come to this conclusion: the materialists are close to being right. But,
of course, the difference here between saying that our decisions are 100%
material versus 99.999999% material is the difference between night and
day. True materialists would not allow
for any non-material influence on our
brain. They would say "mind =
brain" or, at the very least, that the mind is the outcropping or
end-result or emergence phenomena of physical processes in the brain. Based on my reading of scripture, there is
plenty of room to accept that some (maybe nearly all) activities we call the
"mind" are - or will be - explainable by a materialistic
understanding. However, to claim that
there is no real "mind" is plainly against scripture. But that does not mean that we humans are
mostly controlled by our spiritual (i.e. non-physical) component. In fact, and this is just my personal view,
we are mostly "on
autopilot" and "creatures of habit." To me, those terms describe us as we go
through our day and live in the fleshly, material world. It doesn't mean we are doing anything wrong
or stupid - it just means that we aren't
making deep moral decisions all the time - in fact it is very rare that we
make such decisions. Our daily lives are
not generally composed of one deep moral decision after another. And, even when we are faced with moral
decisions throughout a day, most of those decisions are things we've already
decided on so we are really responding by habit, not by deep thinking. And, really, deep thinking is hard to do, so
if we can fall into a habit, it makes living life a lot easier. I would venture to guess that this is similar
to the System 1/System 2 idea of Kahneman, although I doubt he would include a
moral "soul" into the mix!
The idea
that we rarely have to make real moral decisions that involve our soul, our
spirit, our non-physical mind, is an important one with respect to evaluating
science. When neuroscientists record
brain activity, I wouldn't expect them to find widespread evidence for the
influence of some non-material force. In
fact, I would expect that to be extremely difficult to find. Maybe one in a million - or one in a trillion
(who knows?) - of our neuronal signals is under the influence of our soul, and even
then under unusual conditions. I just
don't think it is something that we scientists will be able to measure. I think it will just be a slightly random
"background noise" that is just known to be present. I tried to express this concept in some
earlier blogs [here], but I don't know if any of those blogs make sense to
anyone. Science is not looking for a
soul, but even if it was, and even if a really good honest experiment was
designed to find it, I just don't know if it is findable. I know that will seem like kind of a cop-out
to anyone who is academically and materialistically minded, but that's how I
see it.
I would
also say that scripture allows for really fuzzy edges between body and soul or
brain and mind. I don’t believe any of
these terms are meant to be totally exclusive with sharp edges to their
definition. It does not seem that the point of scripture is to carefully define
these boundaries because, on a practical basis, it doesn't matter.
Discussion:
Why is
this question important? The answer to
it defines an important distinction between the materialist view and the
Christian view. If the materialist ever
uses the term "soul" (personally I don't think they should be
allowed, just like determinists shouldn't be allowed to use the term
"choice" or "will", but that's for a separate discussion),
they would not distinguish the soul from the body and thus they would answer the
question "yes."
Also,
going a bit further, science has to
assume the material-only condition and the soul is not material. Thus science would have to say "the
existence of a soul is outside of my realm of study." By contrast, living the Christian life is all
about the "soul-spirit" of each person.
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