Origin of the Soul

The Creation of Self: A Case for the Soul by Joshua Farris 

Kymberli Cook: 

Welcome to the Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Kymberli Cook and I'm the assistant director here at the Hendricks Center at DTS. And today we are going to be talking about the origin of the soul. Are you ready? Here we go. For the record, it sounds a little bit mystical and maybe it is, but we'll see about that. To help us out and to make sure that we don't go too far off the path, we are joined by a very distinguished guest. His name is Joshua Ferris. He's with the Missional University and author of a brand new book called Creation of Self, and he's currently a Humboldt experienced research fellow at the University of Bochum, Germany. For the record, you don't hear Humboldt fellow very often. That's how distinguished he is. So Joshua, thank you so much for being here today. 

Joshua Ferris: 

Hey, thank you, Kymberli. It's good to be with you. Nice to meet you virtually at least. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Yes, I know, right? 

Joshua Ferris: 

Yes. 

Kymberli Cook: 

I think to start off with, your specialty is at least partially in what's called theological anthropology, and let's just introduce people to what that even is and how did you end up thinking about those things and thinking about the theology of humanity and yeah, let's start there and then we'll talk about the soul in a second. 

Joshua Ferris: 

Great. Yeah. So theological anthropology is broadly the study of the anthropos, what it means to be a human being in a theological context. And so a variety of questions come up, A broad set of questions that frame several biblical and theological issues come up regarding the anthropos or the human being and what it means to be human, namely the Imago Dei, what it means to be created, the image of God or what it means to be constituted what it is that we are, what it means to have a heart or a soul or a body, and these sorts of things. And how it is that we relate to both God and creation. And so you could construe this as a discipline or a set of subjects that fall under creation, a specific subset of creation and how God relates to his creation, particularly human creation, his highest creation, depending on how you construe that. 

And so kind of my story, I got into it really when I was in seminary at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Systematic Theology II class. I remember where we picked up on various topics within theological anthropology, like the issue of gender and gender roles and offices within the church and how we understand the relationship between husband and wife and these sorts of issues, but also more fundamentally what it means to be image bearers of God, what it means to be an Imago Dei bearer, the image of God, and how that relates to the covenants and these sorts of issues. And so I became really fascinated with that subject in that particular course. And simultaneously I was really interested in the soul, what we'll talk about and human constitution, which is one facet of the discussion in theological anthropology and how that impacts other issues within theological anthropology. 

And so I was simultaneously studying philosophy, consciousness, and philosophy of mind subjects in their own right that are vast and complicated and detailed, but also have some overlap with theological anthropology more broadly. Because at the end of the day, I think somebody like Steven Priest said something like, ultimately we are theological beings, and so there's something even that the philosophical world cannot answer about what it means to be a human being. And so that sent me on my journey and simultaneously as I was thinking about the human being and theology and in biblical studies and how the biblical covenants work out and understanding of the human, I was also studying philosophy and fascinated with that. And so I wanted to bridge those worlds. And I ended up studying at the University of Bristol in England under my supervisor, my doctoral supervisor, Oliver Crisp, who was very influential on me. 

I read his book actually in seminary, one of his books on divinity and humanity. And I said, I love the philosophers and I love the Bible guys, but I want to do what he's doing and I want to write like him, so I want to study under him. So that's where I went and I continued the study and I became fascinated with the sort of exchange between philosophy of mind and theological anthropology and how they interact, and I think how they inform one another. And so that's where the journey kind of began. And people often have asked over the years, are you a philosopher? Are you a theologian? And most of the time I don't have an answer for them and I don't really care to answer, but I guess it would be theologian would be the proper answer because everything that I think about when I'm thinking about or reading through detailed philosophical works, I always have these broader theological questions in mind that I want to try to answer or touch or scratch on at least. 

And so even when I'm doing more technical philosophy, it's always aimed at broader theological questions, which I think philosophy can aid in the process, but it is in itself insufficient for answering completely. And so that's a bit about my journey and why I got into the study and some of the influences therein. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Fascinating. So you said the soul was a part of what even initially sparked your interest to go down that path. What was it about the conversations about the soul that stood out to you? 

Joshua Ferris: 

Yeah. Well, there were several things. So one was the question of human constitution. When I started reading some of the more historical theological sources, it seemed to me that they were always working within some kind of philosophical framework for one thing, even if it wasn't overt or explicit, they had philosophical assumptions that were impinging upon or informing their hermeneutic or how they were reading the Bible, how they were systematically putting together doctrinal issues related to the human. And even more so they had some sort of philosophical anthropology that was informing how it is that they were thinking about other theological issues concerning the human being. And so it seemed to me they always had some kind of philosophical anthropology framework that was in the background in shaping or forming in some way how they were thinking about the human and even how they were thinking about the Imago Dei. 

So this became pretty clear reading a lot of the reformed scholastics, and then reading some of the later modern theologians and philosophical theologians, of course, René Descartes and Leibniz and others. But even prior to that, in the medieval period, they were working with explicit philosophical frameworks, but also they were working with some kind of view, some sort of view about the constitution of the human being. And that seemed to impact in varying ways, subtle and some ways more deep and detailed other doctrinal issues that they had in mind when they were considering what it means to be human. And so I started picking up on that and I became fascinated with that. And it seemed to me that at some level, the constitution question touched upon every other doctrinal issue in terms of what it means to be human from a theological perspective. 

So of course when you look at some of the older sort of theological statements, the cradle statements, some of the confessional statements, they too are using explicit language that is framing how they're thinking about the human being from a, I guess kind of a constitution perspective or a philosophical anthropology. 

And so in almost every case, they're using language of body and soul, and I don't think that's unintentional or accidental, and nor can it be if there is anything that we call the tradition, if there is such a thing, which is a question, if there is such a thing, I don't think we can so quickly be done with the language that they used or be so open to dismissing the language that they were using in how they were framing these carefully constructed theological statements. And so the soul language is present and arguably at the center of how the theological world is thinking about the human early on and even into the reformed period and into especially some of the modern debates about theology. And so that became important to me, and I still believe that now that the soul is central. So there are many today who are biblical scholars, who are theologians, who have become much more open to the possibility that we can excise any sort of soul language. 

Kymberli Cook: 

That's what I was just about to bring up. The idea that this isn't… We're talking about philosophy and mentioning all of these different things about the constitution of the human being and all of these kind of amorphous concepts, but really, that's in no way, I mean, I live in amorphous concepts too, so that's not against you, but it really has very tangible on the ground implications for especially when we start talking about science and neuroscience and some of the technology and everything that's coming out. So can you speak to that, especially you're talking about the fact that soul language and reference to an immaterial part of our being human beings has been a part of the Christian tradition for so long, and to dismiss it in light of current trends is worth a conversation and worth thinking through. So can you speak to how does that actually on the ground impact how we interact with each other and think about ourselves and think about technology and science? 

Joshua Ferris: 

Yeah, that's a big question. So there's a lot of angles to maths in terms of trying to answer that or get some kind of- 

Kymberli Cook: 

You don't have to hit all the points. 

Joshua Ferris: 

So I think there's obviously a danger that has been driving or a couple of dangers, one's more philosophical, one's more theological, that's been driving a lot of theological discussions as of late and has shaped the theological discussions around the human being that have moved people away from an actual commitment to the soul and the embrace, or at least the possibility that within orthodoxy, broadly speaking, or Christian belief, that's somehow consistent with biblical teaching and a high degree of authority, biblical authority. There's a much more openness to the fact that maybe we are just physical beings and not in soul beings. 

And I think the impulse there that's standing behind that isn't necessarily wrong, and that's the impulse of some sort of holistic integrity between the soul and body or the mind and body or the human being as an integrated being that's not divided. And so there's a lot of literature on that obviously, and over many years. 

There's obviously the theological side to this, and that is the emphasis on… There's a famous article by Oscar Cullmann some time ago that raised the question about either the immortality of the soul or the resurrection of the body, which anyone familiar with. The literature knows that it's bringing up a whole host of issues in terms of how Greek philosophy integrates with theology and all sorts of other questions about philosophy, and its information in terms of how it integrates or informs how we do theology and the like. And then later theological literature has really developed in a way that, some of it has developed in a way that the primary sort of impulse and telos of the human being is the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul or the soul itself is really quite incidental, or at least not all that important, maybe not even necessary. 

So that's a whole lot of context there of the impulse, which I think the impulse all of it is not wrong, but I think to go so far as to say, Oh, we can get rid of the soul. It's perfectly respectable within Orthodox Christian teaching to be a physicalist or something, a physicalist being that the view that we are just well physical beings through and through that we do not have this sort of immaterial substance or the soulish substance that's strongly distinct from our bodies and even could be independent of our bodies. I think that's probably mistaken. I'm not so sympathetic to the physicalist, and I think this stands behind the discussion we're going to have about the origin of the soul. When we look at the cradle statements and confessional statements, maybe you would claim it's not a dogmatic teaching that we have to hold to some sort of philosophical principle like the soul, the Greek language is incidental to the cradle language and the confessional statements and confessional symbols of the reformed tradition, et cetera, et cetera. 

You might take that sort of line. I think that would be mistaken because it seems to me a couple of things need to be kept in mind when thinking about broader orthodoxy and cradle and confessional standards. One is that not only is the language so prominent throughout these statements so as to be, at least it should raise the question, why is it so prominent? But the language of the imago dei is centered or couched in the soul language or the spirit and how the ancients, the medievals and the reformed scholastics understood the soul as that substantial part of human beings that connects them to God, that transcendent part that makes them or connects them to God. So I would see that as important. Of course, the response is going to be, well, there's a whole philosophical psychology that we've now rejected and the like, but I think that we would be throwing the baby out with the bath water by throwing out the soul in the process. 

The other thing is that we need to keep in mind is it's not just that there's this profound language that's used and permeates the whole tradition. You might argue that… Well, the biblical line is maybe, here's a second line, is that there is a doctrine of the intermediate state, and without the intermediate state or if there is an intermediate state, then we have to have something like a soul that makes sense of the intermediate state. And so that stands in the background, the background belief of all these theologians who definitively seem to affirm or assume some kind of soul as part and parcel of the constitution of the human and- 

Kymberli Cook: 

Sorry, just to interrupt. For those of you who are listening in light of passages like to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. That kind of idea, that's largely what's in mind when we're talking about the intermediate state, the between the time. 

Joshua Ferris: 

Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. And like Charles Hodge says, Hodge would say, it's not a question of belief in the intermediate state. It's what you believe about the intermediate state. That is the question everybody believes in the intermediate state, at least he's referencing the broader reformed tradition. So if we are going to make sense of that to be apart from the body, the body has different properties than the soul, the body actually goes into the grave, it becomes a corpse, it's a different kind of thing at that point. If the person literally goes on without the body, well, then something has to make sense of the fact that the thing goes on without the body, and that seems to be the soul, and that's the assumption of the tradition, the wider tradition. Some will say, well, we need a soul, at least for resurrection as well, to make sense of personal identity continuity. 

I think that's right. The further idea is that if it's not a dogmatic teaching, it's really, really, really close because it's an entailment from other doctrines like the intermediate state, but also, at least this is questionable in the Protestant tradition, but certainly in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, Christ's descent into hell is I think pretty clearly a dogmatic teaching within those circles, which presumes him being our sort of example of what it means to be human and the like. It at least minimally presumes this intermediate state doctrine that there is a soul that exists on and persists, and we have to make sense of that in some way without the body as the body is a corpse. And so I think for all those reasons, and I think there's other reasons as well, I think those are in the background that say, hold on. I wouldn't say that a physi… Well, it depends on when you're asking. I'm not going to answer that question. Yeah, I would be- 

Kymberli Cook: 

I didn't ask it. Don't worry. 

Joshua Ferris: 

I was asking myself. 

Kymberli Cook: 

I know 

Joshua Ferris: 

I would be very reticent to be so open to the physicists as being respectable orthodox or even biblical approaches or appropriate approaches to understanding the human for some of those reasons. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Especially in light of, there's been a large, like you already referenced, but there's been a large embodiment conversation going on in theology, trying to again, make sense of some of the science that we see coming out, but at the same time trying to be thoughtful, truly thoughtful about a lot of the passages and the points that you've been bringing up. And so let's say we are thoroughly convinced by you that there is a soul where the question and a long-standing question and kind of the topic for the podcast is the origin of it. So where does it come from? How does the soul come about? And that has been a conversation in Christian theology for quite a while. So would you mind giving us kind of an idea of the spectrum or is it even a spectrum or are there just a bunch of different camps? What are some of the general thoughts? And I'm talking big generalities. What are some of the big camps on approaches to where the soul comes from at all? 

Joshua Ferris: 

Yeah, yeah, good question. Yeah, so all of these views, this whole discussion seems to presume that there is a soul and well, because of its kind of radically different nature from the body in some respects, we have to make some sense out of the question, Well, where does it come from? It doesn't seem to be the kind of thing that is certainly identical or reducible to its body or its brain, the neurology. So some sort of biological explanation would certainly seem to be out of bounds or at least insufficient for explaining the origins of the soul, biological evolution, whatever you think about that or wherever you stand on that issue, it doesn't seem like that's a sufficient kind of means of generating a soul- 

Kymberli Cook: 

It has significant problems with it. Yeah. 

Joshua Ferris: 

Right, right. And so that's why you have some contemporary believers of the soul today saying something like, they affirm something like, Well, God has to put it there or something. He has to just kind of create it. Some call it kind of the zap view or some call it God has to create the soul in the body or create the soul and then attach it to the body. And so that brings us into some of the assumptions or intuitions that the historical discussion is having about the soul. Crudely that many would refer to that as kind of the creationist position. And that's one view on the origin of the soul. It would be historically called the creationist position. Not to be confused with these other discussions about how God creates the world or the origins of the universe, and whether or not you affirm theistic evolution, evolutionary creationism, old earth, progressive creationism, or even younger earth creationism. 

It's not to be confused with that. In fact, I think arguably a sort of simple creationist view could be compatible with all those views. It's simply the view that God is the kind of the end or the terminus, the end of the causal chain of the soul's existence of coming into being. God brings about the soul directly and immediately in the causal chain of the human story. And so God either creates it in the body or creates the soul and then attaches it to a body in some form or fashion. But the soul itself needs… In order to have a sufficient explanation, God has needed to be invoked in order to make sense of the causal story that's told about the soul. So that would be broadly speaking, a kind of creationist view of the soul. 

Kymberli Cook: 

And just so we're clear, is that kind of comparable, like you were saying to the zap view, which I've never heard, but I love that term. Is that comparable to that or are those two different things? 

Joshua Ferris: 

Yeah, I would say- 

Kymberli Cook: 

Okay. Just making sure. 

Joshua Ferris: 

… some creationist views as a zap view. I mean, some creationists hold to more complicated views that wouldn't, I guess, fit so well with a zap, but I don't mind that. I don't mind that God zapped me. It means we must be pretty special beings for him to create us, right? That's one of the intuitions obviously, that somebody like Calvin has in his institutes. He's a creationist. And so there's another view that's related that's common in the wider tradition, and it's called the traducian view. And so if you read standard systematic theologies, at least historically, many of them I imagine will start getting away from this because well, they don't even believe in the soul anymore. So it's kind of irrelevant to even talk about this discussion really to some extent. But historic systematics have this broad categorization of at least these two views and probably three different views. 

And then there's a complex set of different ways of working out each one. But there's the traducian view which says something like, there are generative mechanisms that God creates, that brings about the emergence of the soul from its progenitors. And so there's different ways of thinking about this. You could think of souls as being the kinds of things that have parts like bodies. That sounds a little physicalistic. I mean, Augustine sometimes talks like this when he talks about traducianism. Augustine himself goes back and forth between creationism and traducianism, and then he finally says something like some kind of hybrid view may make the best sense, and he's unsatisfied with all of the views that he can clearly parse out. But he talks about souls sometimes as kind of having parts, like bodies have parts, that when you have a sufficient number of the right kinds of parts, soulish parts that come together from your parental progenitors, then you have this new thing that pops up or comes into being. 

And so you might think of it that way. You might think of it as more like atoms splitting off. If you have these atoms that can split off the soul might be something like this when the gametes meet and the progenitors bring or give some sort of physical genetic material that coinciding with that, there is this soulish material or soulish stuff that splits off from the parents or from the father depending on who you're reading. And that brings about a holy new soul that's attached to that body that the progenitors give off from the procreative process. And so you can see already that on that picture, at least on the surface, it begins to look already a bit more integrated in terms of how the body and the soul might be together. And so certainly in contemporary times, for those who still believe in a soul, traducianism has really become quite popular and a lot of contemporary theologians have been taking and picking up traducianism and developing it in interesting ways. 

Creationism has become less popular, but it's still around. Interestingly, historically, creationism has been the dominant view throughout church history, especially in the medieval times in Roman Catholicism. It is dominant. In fact, if you read the catechism, it basically expounds creationist view, although you could have a more complicated creationist view. And then in the reformed tradition, creationism has been dominant. Maybe in the Lutheran tradition, traducianism has been dominant. 

There's a third kind of view as well that's much more platonic and Origen held to something like this view, you could call it the pre-existence view of the soul. And the pre-existence view of the soul says something like this that our souls at some point in time they were created prior to the body. So even prior to sort of our biological origins, the soul exists maybe in some sort of heavenly state or in some sort of platonic heaven as an abstract that somehow maybe after the fall kind of descends. And some of the stories are told that the soul then descends to be in the body in a kind of this denigrated state. That's one way of thinking about it. But that's another view that the pre-existence view, that the soul preexist the body or biological history and biological origins and exists in some other state. 

And maybe it existed eternally in heaven with God, or it existed in some sort of abstract way in God's mind or something like that. And certainly Origen and Plato held something like this view, and some early Christians held this view. Some more mystical Christians held this view. And this becomes a kind of third view that isn't really very popular today. In fact, I put together a collection on the origin of the soul. We just submitted the book. It's a discussion of various views. Five years ago, we were looking for somebody who would defend some sort of pre-existence view. I was trying to find somebody. I thought, surely somebody believes this, or at least could offer up some kind of defense of it. But I had a really hard time finding anyone. But- 

Kymberli Cook: 

Have you seen the movie Soul? 

Joshua Ferris: 

The animated movie? 

Kymberli Cook: 

Yes. 

Joshua Ferris: 

Yeah, it's great. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So again, you used the word crudely earlier, and that would be very applicable to this, but crudely, that's kind of this idea that there's all these souls in this different dimension or something that then get affixed to a body for whatever reason. I mean, there's a variety of views. Again, crude, but it's that kind of idea, right? 

Joshua Ferris: 

Yeah, actually, that's right. That would be a good- I like that. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So there you go, Pixar, they could have been the ones for your book. 

Joshua Ferris: 

Great. That would sell a lot more. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So how did these different interpretations, I mean, you've talked actually a lot about the history of it, and if we're talking about a biblical approach as well as theological, what are the passages that are making people think differently? Or is it really just very linked to one's philosophy? And I don't even necessarily want proof text passages, but concepts and scripture, or is it really just more a philosophical approach to the world? 

Joshua Ferris: 

Yeah, that's a good question. I was just trying to think back to the different passages of scripture, but there have been a lot of biblical exegetical cases made for both views throughout church history, and I'm not sure that they're decisive in favor of either creationism or traducianism. Certainly, I find pre-existence kind of implausible. I mean, maybe we could make sense of it, but I find either creationism or traducianism to be more plausible as frameworks for reading the Bible. So on the creationist side, there are several lines of reasoning that you might invoke to make sense of creationism. 

And I'm not sure even from a theological sort of interpretation perspective, that we could make a definitive case either way. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, maybe some exegetical argument will come up that we'll suggest otherwise. But creationism certainly, there's the story of God making dead bones live, and there's this animating picture that's often used in readings of church history that would use that as a picture to make sense of, yeah, this is basically how God makes sense of the human person. He basically makes the bones alive with the soul, and so he informs the bones and brings them to life. And so you have that clear picture in scripture, and it's a common, I think, kind of picture that we see in the Old Testament where God brings to life something that's dead. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Well, I mean would they also use Genesis one? I mean God breathing into the dust and creating Adam? 

Joshua Ferris: 

Yeah. Yeah, actually I think so, yeah. Yes, particularly Genesis 2:4-7, that whole picture where God breathes into the dust and makes it alive. I think ruach there – Richard Steiner actually suggests this is really actually quite unpopular in biblical interpretation, it seems. I mean, actually, I'm not sure that there's any definitive. Some will say that, like Alistair Mcgrath says, "This kind of reading is ancient reading. The early Christians, Eastern Christians would read this way. They would read into it kind of this dichotomy or even this trichotomy position, and it's a common way of reading that passage. But Richard Steiner, the Old Testament scholar, he's actually picking up on nephesh and he's doing a pretty detailed sort of word study and theological assessment of nephesh in Ezekiel, but he also picks up on nephesh in other contexts as well as Ruach, which is used in the Genesis 2 passage. 

And he says, "Actually, this makes a lot of sense of the ancient world and how it is that many interpreters of the Bible throughout history have interpreted Genesis 2. It's not that foreign. And in fact, it does lend credence to a kind of dichotomist or even dualistic picture of the human person wherein God is literally fashioning the body and then bringing life to it by breathing into it, this new type of thing, this soul, this substance, he says, "So this isn't really all that foreign." He doesn't lay all his weight on that particular passage, but it's consistent, he says, with kind of the Ecclesiastes 12:7 reading that's very dualistic, where we have this body that goes into the ground as a corpse, and then the soul goes up to be with God in heaven. And so you have this common interpretation of Genesis 2:7 reading with other passages in scripture as a clear picture of the soul has its own origins, and the body has a distinct set of origins. 

They closely overlap in that God is fashioning both of them in a sense, but there's something distinct about the activity of the soul coming into being. And so that picture is quite a profound picture, I think that many early interpreters and later interpreters pick up on and read the scriptures in that light. And I think that becomes an interesting picture, especially with bringing dead bones to life of redemption where divine action becomes a picture of redemption. So this whole creationist picture. So I think that's one line of reasoning that one could take in reading the Bible in favor of creationism. 

Kymberli Cook: 

What about for traducianism? 

Joshua Ferris: 

Yeah, traducianism. So there are several lines, certainly there are several passage in scripture, especially in the Old Testament that speak of us being in the loins of our fathers almost in a sense preexisting, not preexisting in the sort of originating or sort of platonic sense, but preexisting as kind of- 

Kymberli Cook: 

Part of the procreative process, like you said earlier. Yeah. 

Joshua Ferris: 

Yeah. But there's a real sense in which we exist as a communal whole or as part of the family. And so you have this strong covenantal language in the Old Testament that's suggestive of the fact that we preexist in our parents already, and that creates a strong continuity link between the whole of the human race as a product of our parents. And so you might take that line and say, well, this makes sense of the fact that our parents really are true causes of the soul, that they have a real causal part in bringing about new souls into the world. And certainly that would make sense of other passages of scripture where there is this continuous line between parents progenitors and their offspring as well as the generation of the Imago Dei in the Old Testament, which seems to be suggestive in lots of places, like in Genesis 5, where it talks about the Imago Dei or being in the image of the Father as a kind of generative link between parents and offspring. 

So I think conceptually that's there, you have that in other places also, especially when we get into discussions about Adamic humanity, Adam's relationship to the rest of humanity, and then Christ's relationship to the rest of humanity in Romans. When we start thinking about the original sin discussion, however you make sense of original sin as being something that is somehow transmitted through some sort of generative process. Well, if you actually affirm that, well, the traducian view actually seems to make a lot more sense on the surface. It seems to be more intuitive of the fact that if we are parts of our parents, that the whole generative process that brings us about also is the mechanism that transmits original sin that connects us to the guilt of our fathers. So that would be a couple of different lines in favor of traducianism. Certainly from a theological perspective, it seems to make more natural sense of original sins transmission. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So we've got traducianism and creationism, as you said, are two of the key approaches. You also have the pre-existence of the soul, which you introduced and kind of shared that you don't feel like it's quite as biblically defensible. 

Joshua Ferris: 

And I think most people would agree with me on that. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Yeah, well, fair enough. Except for maybe the Pixar people, I don't know. 

Joshua Ferris: 

Yeah, yeah. 

Kymberli Cook: 

But no, so for anybody who's listening and thinking, okay, well, I'm hearing especially if Augustine, who it seems like lots of people really respect was kind of vacillating between the two of them, then is there a way that I can go wrong in thinking about the origin of the soul? Oftentimes a lot of the people that we teach at our church, they're always like, I don't want to be a heretic. Just tell me how to not be a heretic. And so, I mean, we can not get into all of the things that are involved in actually being labeled a heretic, but is there anything that you would say as we're thinking through and as people are thinking through different opinions and different interpretations of these passages on the origin of the soul where you'd say, yeah, this is out of bounds. I mean, I think we've kind of touched on a couple, right? Which is just that everything is material. There's nothing else perhaps even pre-existence, but can you just speak to that a little bit as we kind of round out our conversation? 

Joshua Ferris: 

Sure. Yeah. I think there are some unorthodox positions or positions at least that are out of bounds in the origin soul discussion. There are a variety of… Well, there's a couple of things. There are a variety of new positions right now that are working within a broader materialist framework that the soul emerges from the body, I think for some of the reasons we've mentioned already, that would be at least on the fringe of acceptable at a minimum. I think there's other things we could say about why they're problematic, but I think they at least be on the fringe because there's no sort of clear link back to God in the way that the tradition has been reflecting on the nature of the soul and its generation or its originative generation. But the pre-existence view I think is potentially problematic as well and would be outside the bounds. 

There's a lot of new discussions right now within consciousness that are kind of hearkening back to sort of pagan views of persons as well as maybe you would call them more occultic views of persons. And I think, gosh, this is opening up a whole big discussion that we don't have time to get into, but there's a reason I think the pre-existence view has been so closely aligned with some of the mystical theologians who have always been considered on the fringe within tradition. And there's a kind of tendency with… I'm summing up a lot, and this may be uncharitable to some extent, but there's a tendency to read some of these mystical theologians as blurring the lines between the creator and creature. And I think that's a clear sort of demarcation that we want to maintain in our theological anthropology. 

We want to maintain a clear creator creature distinction, even if we have a robust view of the human as being the kind of thing that experiences God and becomes something like God, that's different from even the way we think about humans being like God presently, there's a kind of tendency to blur the distinctions to such an extent, to askew the identity of individual persons for one thing, but also to askew the identity of creatures in light of their creator as kind of existing in this mass. 

And this analogy is not uncommonly used amongst those who sit on the fringe of Christian orthodoxy. They will often describe the pre-existence soul as something that's trying to find its way back to this sort of massive body of water referring to God and become as a droplet kind of become part of the water once again. As pantheism and panentheism are becoming even more attractive today in wider science and religion discussions, even on the fringe of Christian theological discussions, there is this tendency to askew the identity of the soul as kind of already part of God in some way, in a real chronological sense that skews the creator creature distinction. 

And so I think the pre-existence view of the soul or various views of the soul often come really close to that. And sometimes they just jump in full on in that sort of view. They have more of panentheistic, even some have more of a pantheistic conception of the human person where there is no real distinction between the creator and creature. And I think that's dangerous. So for those reasons at least, that's one reason I would say I'm pretty hesitant about the pre-existence view amongst other reasons. But I think that's one good reason that we should consider. Yeah. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So we are out of time, but just to kind of round out everything that we're talking about that we have touched on, the soul is something that there are a lot of people talking about whether or not they even believe that it's a thing anymore. And so we've talked about the reasons that it does seem that there are… The scripture is very clear that there is at least some immaterial dimension to our being and to creation. And so we have to recognize that as believers. And then even further, it does seem like the Christian tradition has been very clear that there is an immaterial dimension of the human being themselves, and that the soul is often ascribed to that idea. 

But where the soul itself comes from is kind of up for debate there, especially with creationism. And Joshua has distinguished it apart from the evolutionary conversation, the creationist perspective and the traducian perspective. Both of them seem to have legitimate biblical grounds. And like we said, even Augustine was kind of going back and forth between them. And so both of them seem very much within bounds, but we wouldn't want to go too far to a reductive physicalism that says there's absolutely nothing that's immaterial and we didn't want to go to the panentheism that he was talking about. And yeah, those are probably the big spectrums we want to stay away from. 

But Joshua, thank you. I just wanted to round out everything we were all over, but I really want to thank you for your time. We really appreciate your observations and just the time in your own life and your own study that you've taken to serve the church in this way and to learn these things and to think about these things. So thank you, but also for the time with us today. 

Joshua Ferris: 

Appreciate it. Thank you, Kymberli. Appreciate it. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Appreciate it. Absolutely. And we just want to thank you who are listening, and we want to ask you to be sure next time to join us when we discuss issues of God and culture.