The nature of ‘soul’, even limiting oneself to how that word is used in the New Testament, is an enormous topic to which I could not hope to do justice in many lifetimes. But with your indulgence I have some thoughts for your consideration.
First of all, the Greek word for ‘soul’ is PsUChĒ (more loosely and conventionally transliterated into English as ‘psyche’). As the New Testament and the Septuagint (a translation of the Hebrew “Old Testament” into Greek done in the 3rd century BCE) use this word, apparently animals have psyches, and humans definitely do, but not plants. Thus we have:
And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living PsUChĒ’s according to their kinds — livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. (Gen. 1:24, Septuagint)
And I could cite many other examples. My only point is that the Greek ancients understood the word PsUChĒ to be something animals could have.
As I consider the question, something that animals and humans have in common is ‘consciousness’ — with an enormous range of intensity/depth ranging from the consciousness of a housefly to that of a human being. (Mind you, the New Testament Greek notion of ‘consciousness’ is not identical with what ‘consciousness’ means to a modern American. But I think we’re in the same semantic ballpark!)
There is another key set of Texts in the New Testament that use the word PsUChĒ — if we hope to have even a glimmer of a grasp of what the word PsUChĒ means we need to embrace them as well. A key example would be:
Whoever would save their PsUChĒ/ψυχή will lose it, but whoever loses their PsUChĒ/ψυχή for me will find it. (Matt 16:25)
(PsUChĒ/ψυχή here is generally translated ‘life’. But is the modern English concept of ‘life’ really what Jesus has in mind?) And there are other verses like this. What can this mean?
Here’s my personal hypothesis: in passages like this Jesus is referring not to ‘consciousness’ per se, but ‘SELF-consciousness’ out of control. Self self self! So when Jesus says “Whoever would save their PsUChĒ will lose it”, I wonder if He doesn’t mean something like “whoever clings to their obsession with their own SELF will lose it, but if you give up your obsession with your SELF you will find your (true) self.” PsUChĒ can range from conscious to self-conscious to self-centered/obsessed, the last being a Very Bad Idea. That is entirely consistent with His teaching generally. (In much the same way that food is necessary for life, but out-of-control too-much food gets us into trouble.)
So my personal thinking is that the word ‘soul’ as the New Testament uses it, generally means ‘consciousness’, and in some contexts ‘SELF-consciousness, self-importance out of control’. As I survey the uses of PsUChĒ in the Septuagint and the New Testament in particular, this hypothesis works better than others I have found.
But for the purposes of this article you needn’t agree with me, just be acquainted with my proposal that PsUChĒ = “consciousness” and sometimes “EXCESSIVE-SELF-consciousness”.
With that in mind, let’s consider one of the acknowledged milestones in Western philosophy, namely Descartes’ statement “I think, therefore I am.” (“Cogito, ergo sum!”)
The motivation of this famous dictum “I think, therefore I am” is that Descartes (1596–1650) was looking for a foundational, irrefutable ‘fact’ (or ‘axiom’) upon which he could base his philosophy. My problem with this is that Descartes limits the ‘proof’ of his own ‘existence’ to just ‘thinking‘.
As I consider my own ‘consciousness’, even though I am more interested in ‘logical’ and ‘mathematical’ subjects than the average bear, ‘logical thinking’ per se occupies only a tiny part of my conscious day. So, as counter-examples might I propose the following:
- I experience the beauty of a sunset, therefore “I am”.
- I experience the exultation of holding my infant daughter in my arms for the first time, therefore “I am”.
- I experience the personal fulfillment of day-to-day life with my wife and grand-daughter, therefore “I am”.
- I experience the anguish of the death of a loved one, therefore “I am”.
- I experience the physical pain of kidney stones, broken bones, cracked molars, the ravages of age, and the other ills to which my physical body is prey, therefore “I am”.
- I experience the exultation of playing Bach fugues on a pipe organ, and grand music on a marvelous grand piano, therefore “I am”.
- I grasp the extraordinary insight of Pythagoras’ invention of the ‘mathematical proof’, therefore “I am”.
Each of us has their own unique “therefore I am poem”. (You might try writing yours!)
My point is: why limit oneself to merely ‘thinking’ as a proof of one’s existence? Consciousness/’soul’/PsUChĒ doesn’t have just the one feature of ‘thinking’, it has an uncountable number of dimensions of experience, incorporating every dimension of each of our unique lives. Each of us is immersed in a flood of Sensory Soup every moment of every day. Every triumph and defeat, every success and failure, every joy and sorrow, every insight and blunder, ALL of that is present in my ‘consciousness’, my ‘soul’.
So in defiance of Descartes’ profoundly limited and impoverished assertion “I think, therefore I am”, limiting himself to such an infinitesimal range of human consciousness, I proclaim:
“I exult, I suffer;
I understand, I blunder;
I achieve, I fail;
I’m righteous, I sin;
I love, I hate;
I think, I have ‘senior-moments’;
— therefore I am”.
To me this matters because since Descartes, Western philosophy in general has turned towards an exaltation of ‘thinking’ and ‘logic’ and a deprecation of all else.
So, I personally wonder how Western philosophy would have progressed if Descartes had included ALL of his human experience, ALL of his human consciousness as his philosophical foundation instead of limiting himself just to ‘thinking’. Instead of “I think, therefore I am”, I propose instead:
“I am overwhelmed with an ongoing tsunami of physical, sensory, emotional, psychological, intellectual and spiritual experiences, grand and paltry, joyful and grievous, pleasurable and painful, honorable and ignominious, thrilling and boring, every moment of every day
— therefore I am!”
To me, that’s what it means to be human. Base human philosophy on THAT. To me, to philosophize about what it means to be Human needs to embrace ALL of what it means to be Human, and not cherry-pick one feature excluding all others.