Kurt and Kate MorningsGreg Koukl from Stand to Reason writes this, “You are invisible. No one has ever seen you. You have never seen yourself, nor have you seen anyone else in the world. Strictly speaking, you are not even in this world. When you die, the body you see will eventually disappear, but you will remain forever—invisible and unseen by human eyes, even after you receive your resurrection body. The 'you' I’m speaking of here, of course, is your soul—your invisible self, the locus of your core identity, the real 'you.' When the apostle Paul wrote that he would prefer to be 'absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord,' his soul was what he was referring to (2 Cor. 5:8). When Jesus told the thief on the cross that 'today' the thief would be with him in Paradise, his soul is what he meant (Luke 23:43). The existence of the soul is controversial nowadays, though.” Greg joined us for this thought-provoking conversation.
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Greg from Stand to Reason writes this you are invisible. No one has ever seen you. You, in fact, have never even seen yourself, nor have you seen anyone else in the world. Strictly speaking, you were not even in this world. Okay, so I read those words in his article and I'm thinking, oh, Greg, he's a good friend of the show. We have to have him back to talk about this.
He's good. Yeah. And, you know, he's talking about the soul, and we haven't seen that. We need to see that. We need to, um, try to understand the difference between what we see and feel and touch and taste and the soul.
When we talk about being invisible. Explain exactly what you mean it has to do with the soul.
Yes it does. I mean, I start this piece that I've written recently about nobody has ever seen you. Actually, no one's ever, um, seen themselves. I got this little twist from my one of my mentors, J.P. Moreland, who's a philosopher and greatly influenced my life. And his daughter told his, uh, told JP when she was young. Uh, I don't know if I could believe in God because I've never seen him. And he said, well, honey, you've never even seen your mom. Now, of course he's seen her. She's seen her body, but she's that's the outward shell. That's not her. The her that, uh, is the real her is the is is the person like that? Jesus said to the thief on the cross, today you will be with me in Paradise. Obviously that's the thief on the cross, but it's not that body that was hanging there after he died. Uh, this is where Paul said to be absent from the body is to be present from the Lord. There's an essential self that is not the body. There's a union with the body that's very, very intimate and complete and powerful. But when we die, that there's that separation, that tearing away, which is unnatural in terms of God's purpose. That's why the resurrection is meant to restore that union. But the the, our essential selves, the people we actually are, all of our memories, all of our thoughts, all of our acts of will, all of those things that we think are associated with me, our ego, if you will, not in the negative sense, but in the sense of self that is located in the soul. And when the soul goes away from the body like it does at death, the body just lays there. There's no life there. There's no you're not there anymore. And in fact, when you see a dead body, You go to a wake or a funeral or something like that. Um. It's just so obvious. Well, he looks good. Or at least the body looks pretty good because he has good cosmetics, but he's not there. And this is what we're talking about when we talk about the soul, which is an essential part of Christianity, though people don't always think about it. Uh, it's one way to disprove Christianity. If there is no soul, then there is nothing to survive the death of your body. If we're just meat all the way down, so to speak. A wet computer, uh. Then when the computer stops working, that's the end of us. There is nothing to go on to heaven or hell, and therefore there is not a reward for the righteous. There's no punishment for the wicked, and consequently, no justice actually gets done. And so, um, if there is no soul, like a lot of people think, then that just simply eviscerates Christianity. So this is one of the reasons, Kurt and Kate that this issue is so important. But the other issue I'll touch on, so it has a relation to the truthfulness of Christianity. But the other issue is, is the soul is what we are to be nurturing and building up and feeding in this life, not just for the benefits here, but for preparation for the next. Paul says that no physical exercise or that profits a little. Go out and pump iron. Okay. Jog around. Great. But godliness is a means of great, um, benefit, for it holds a promise not just for this life that would be physical exercise, but also for the life to come. So those are two reasons that it's really important for us to have a grasp on this notion of the soul that the, the, the entire corpus of New Testament writings and Old Testament for that matter, take for granted.
This is good stuff. What's the difference between the spirit and the soul?
Well, biblically, those words are used pretty interchangeably. Uh, the the sometimes the words. So we have a physical self and we have a non-physical self. Strictly speaking, we're dualistic. That's the best way to think of it. And when the Bible talks about the soul, it's making reference to the non-physical self. When it talks about the spirit, it's making reference to the non-physical self. They're synonymous in almost every case. Now, once in a while, you see a distinction. Uh, body, soul and spirit, you know, kind of thing. But the spirit turns out to be, it looks like, with biblical analysis, not a separate thing. We're not three things, because then you'd have to ask yourself, where is the the location of your identity? Because you can't be the the same person in these different places. The locus of your identity is going to be your soul. But your soul has different capacities. In other words, it's capable of doing different things. And one of those capacities is a spiritual capacity that has the capability of being connected with God. And this is why we talk about the new birth. And the new birth is so important. You know, at the fall, um, when Genesis chapter three, um, all kinds of things happen. We broke our relationship with God. We broke our relationship with each other. We broke our relationship with the community and and also with the, uh, the environment. And, um, and what effectively happened is we got unplugged. I mean, think of it just like a plug with a source of power. We got unplugged from the only source of real life that's available to us. Okay. Our spirits died, our souls were Are intact, but the spiritual connection with God ended. And this is precisely why. Jesus said in John three to Nicodemus, we must be born again. In other words, in a spiritual sense, we have to be reconnected to God. And, um, that's why it says when if anybody is in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things have passed away. New things have come. So I see the distinction between the soul and the spirit. Not so much a distinction in separate things, but the soul is the you, and the spirit is a capacity that you have to have close relationship with God and all the other things that, um, go along with that. And that's the capacity that's broken in the fall and is not restored until the new birth.
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Greg. Is it accurate if I say it's that immaterial part of us?
Oh yeah, absolutely. We have a material self and an immaterial self. We have a physical body and we have a non-physical soul, and the soul is the like I was explaining before, is the locus of our core identity. It's, um, it's it's it's what it's funny trying to describe terms that of a non-physical thing, but it's it's what we follow when wherever we go. And if we go somewhere in our physical body, our soul is following that, because that's us. If you think of the eyes and the mind, um, that's that's the real us. That's. And if we die, then the real loss, the place where we're receiving impressions and knowledge that moves on somewhere else, you know, and that takes us then, um, into the afterlife kind of thing. And so the body stays there when the soul comes out of the body. I, uh, it just lays there. I had a call once from a seven year old on my own radio show a number of years ago, and he asked me the question, what is a soul? So now I got to try to think of a a way of stating it that would make sense to him. And first thing I said is the soul is your invisible self. Okay. It's tempting to think of ourselves just as our physical body, even though it turns out that our souls are the thing that we're more in touch with than anything else in our life. All right.
Yes.
And, uh, but we think physically because that's the way our culture is. And I said, uh, it's it's, uh, it's our invisible selves. And think of it like a a hand inside of a glove. When you go to the snow, does your mom put gloves on you? Oh, yeah. We I wear gloves. Okay. So your soul is like the hand that goes into the glove. All right, now, two things to keep in mind. Your soul isn't actually in your body in the same way your hand is in a glove. Okay, um, it isn't like a pea and a pod kind of thing. It's not sitting somewhere in the top of your head or the soles of your feet, but it's united with your body in a very special way. But like I said, with the glove, if you take your hand out of the glove, what does the glove do? He said it doesn't do anything. It just lays there. Exactly. Which is the same thing that happens when the soul comes out of the body. The body just lays there, and we know we have a soul in part. And we'll get into some more of these reasons. Because the soul, soul of a body with a soul is able to do things that the body all by itself is not capable of doing. Think of when somebody dies. Well, what has changed? The whole body, with all the cells and all the functional characteristics are all still there. But something vital is missing that vivifies and gives life to that body. And, uh, and that's the soul. One other thing I mentioned to him, though, with the glove illustration, I said, could you imagine if everybody always wore gloves all the time and they never, ever saw their hands? Do you think maybe some people might start thinking, maybe there's no hands at all and there are just gloves? And he said, yeah, I could see that. But that's kind of the way people often deal with the soul. They don't know how to think about it, and they just think physically. They've never seen their soul, so they only think that what they're made up of is just a physical thing. And and no so at all, soul at all. And this is why we have to jog them into some, some little thought experiments to help them to see that they actually know their souls very well. And, um, they're real parts of, of their total makeup and they're the most important parts. Which is why Scripture tells us to care for our soul. Remember, it was Jesus who said, what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but he loses his soul? And what would a man give in exchange for his soul? So that one statement by Jesus shows how critically important the soul is compared to anything else.
Physical man. This could really fuel our evangelism, our witnessing. We need to be more urgent. I don't mean to put undue pressure on us because that's not helpful, but we need to realize, you know, everybody that we interact with today will live forever, somewhere, either in heaven because they received Jesus as Lord and Savior or in a very real place called hell, separated from God forever because they're going to die in their sins. Only two ways to die in Jesus or in your sin. And so when we think about that, that whole idea that we are rubbing elbows with those other folks who, you know, they have a soul. And this idea of the soul, I think, really does energize us. And it gives us, at least me, a way of viewing things that is helpful, makes me want to run out and share Jesus right now.
Yeah, well, it's helpful in that regard. It's also helpful just in the way we we treat people if this sinks in. You know, uh, C.S. Lewis wrote a magnificent essay called The Weight of Glory. And, um, I think everybody ought to read it. It's not a completely easy essay to follow, but the way he ends and he's trading off this passage in Second Corinthians four where he says, you know, momentary, light affliction is producing for us at exceeding weight of glory beyond all comparison. And the hardships of this life are going to have a payoff in the next life, is what he's saying. But he explores this at the end of the essay. He says, you have never met an ordinary person. You have never met an ordinary person. And he's thinking about reflecting on the physical. And if you were to actually see this person the way they really are, their souls, that is, you would be tempted to to fall down and worship because of the glorious nature of that element of our ourselves. And, um, and that's what endures, and that's what's being built up in that first Thessalonians, or rather, first Corinthians four passage. It's it's verses 16 through through 18 when Paul talks about the weight of glory. He said, for the things we, we, we, we don't look at the things that are physical or visible because the things that are visible are perishing. That body is going to be gone. You can pump fire all your life, you know, look great until you hit the grave, and then you rot like everybody else. You know that's going to be gone. But the things that are non-physical are eternal. And this is where we need to be investing ourselves. Nothing wrong with, you know, pumping iron. And I'll go to the gym later in the week myself. But nevertheless, that's not the that's later in the week, right? When we're done, I'm sitting down here in the word and with the Lord because I want to build my soul, you know, on a consistent basis, because that's the thing that I will be taking with me, uh, into eternity. And the and the work that I do here on it is, is, um, as I mentioned from that first Timothy passage, you know, prophet for this time, for physical exercise, but godliness for also the world to come. That is the thing that's going what we do here now, in terms of developing our own souls, is going to make a powerful difference in, uh, in in our eternal life, we all have eternal life, but it's not going to be the same for everybody. And this is clear in the text. It's all going to be good for everybody. But for some it's going to be so much better as God decides that. And um, and that relates a lot to our soul development in this life. I remember J.P. Moreland once saying, um, this life is for us to get fit, to spend eternity with God. I thought that was a great way to put it.
Wow. That's wonderful. And you know, science is also studying this. How do we define consciousness? What is that? Where does it come from? They don't have an answer. And we actually do, don't we?
Yes we do. And there's a reason that we they don't have an answer because they're working with a very limited arena. Everything has got to be physical. Everything has got to be physical. You've got to reduce everything to physical because that's their commitment from a worldview perspective They don't have room in their worldview for immaterial things. Um, and that's why they talk about the soul disparagingly as the ghost in the machine. We're just a machine. There is no ghost kind of thing, but it's just obviously false, because all you have to do is think about yourself, um, and all kinds of things that are in your mind. I did a talk once at a university in the South, and I got pressed on this issue during the Q&A, and I asked the fella, I said, do you know what you're thinking right now? He said, of course I do. I said, are you using your any of your five senses to accomplish that? Taste? Smell what? Touch? Hearing? Whatever. No. Well, how do you know what you're thinking? You know what you're thinking through direct access. You are directly aware of it. And by the way, how much do the thoughts that you have right now weigh? Do they extend in space? Where exactly precisely are they located now? Of course we want to point to our head, but if we cracked our brains open, we'd never see any thoughts sitting around in there. They're not physical. They are a function of our nonphysical, conscious life. And you mentioned just a moment ago, Kurt, nobody has been able to reduce US consciousness to something physical. And it's been such a problem that some Daniel Dennett, who just passed away, one of the so-called new atheists, um, some said, well, consciousness must be an illusion then, which is crazy. Consciousness is an illusion because I think what what is an illusion? An illusion is when your consciousness is being appeared to falsely. Right? So if consciousness is an illusion, then what is having the illusion? It is an illusion. Having the illusion. You know, the illusion of your consciousness is having the illusion of your consciousness. I mean, this is flat out silly. Why don't we just. Yeah. Why don't we just admit the obvious that consciousness is real? It's profound and it's not physical. You can't squeeze it into that physical thing. And all of those things that I mentioned, your thoughts, your beliefs, your acts of will, your sensations, all of these things are not physical enterprises, but they are things that you are in control of. And it is the you that is in control of them, that is the soul that manages the soul's functions. It's a very simple way. If you want to think of Occam's Razor. Let's go with the simplest explanation that does the job. This does the job. And the idea that the soul doesn't exist. This is a very new historical phenomenon, maybe 100 years old. Before that, everybody knew it because they're in touch with it all the time, and it makes sense of a whole bunch of different things. For example, how you can be yourself over time when your physical body changes. I had a student once pressed me on this in another Q&A at another school, and he he he was just dismissive of the soul. And I said, how old are you? No, I said, when were you born? That's what I said. He gave me his birth date and I said, so you were born on this particular birthday? Yeah. He didn't know where I was going. And I said, so the body you have now, is that the same body you had when you were born? Well, no. Okay. So if the body you have is not the same body you had when you were born, then you are not your body, are you?
That's. That's brilliant, I love it.
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