[TruthTalk] Soul searching.

[Wm. Taylor]

I was rebuked a while back because I was "dichotomizing" the idea of personhood, when I should have been "trichotomizing" like the Bible does. Well, actually I was doing neither; rather I was arguing toward the idea of integration and away from all forms of spirit/body dualisms, as if we can so dissect a person as to separate the spirit from the body, and the body from the spirit.   And so the question I would like to address is about personal continuity, personal ontology, dualism, etc. There is no end to thorny problems we can get into when discussing this. And so I won't say a lot about it. But to me, it seems we need to be very careful about reifying the words that we use from our tradition, making them so concrete in our thinking that we impose back on Scripture meaning that simply doesn't exist; for instance, when we read "soul," what are we to make of this language? Is "soul" a third part of a tripartite structure, spirit-body-soul, called a human being? I think not.   I regard the Scriptural use of the word "soul" heuristically, as simply a way of saying, me being me in the presence of God, without implying that there is a thing inside of me called the soul, which if I could do enough surgery inside myself and dissect myself and identify all my parts, I might actually be able to discover that soul part of me.   I'm perfectly happy to use "soul" as a word -- don't get me wrong. But let's use it like the Bible does. It's a way of describing personhood in the presence of God. But as to whether we are trichotomous beings, with spirit, body, and soul, I would have to disagree. We are spirit and body integrated in such a way that to speak of one to the exclusion of the other, is to dehumanize and depersonalize, and to dichotomize who we are as living persons. Soul speaks to the whole of me, spirit and body, integrated before our Lord.   Let's get to the crux of the issue: if we insist on making "soul" an actual substantive thing, as some of you are insisting, then it seems to me we need to go looking for the rest of Jesus. He's hanging there on a tree, you see, nails through his body, looks to heaven and says, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." Well, what happened to his soul? Where did it go? Did he forget who he was, a human being? Come on people [:>) Jesus was a living soul, an integrated whole, a complete person. The body part dies on the cross. That leaves a disembodied spirit, which he commits to his Father -- No soul searching. No parts missing!   Bill Taylor