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
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