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It is alleged by some that only black men have Soul (doubted by others that white men can even Sing The Blues), while this may well be true, I am inclined to believe that it is not the case that only black men have souls. In a similar vein I intend to discuss, among other things, the contention that, while it is almost certainly the case that The Animals have Soul (those not convinced need only listen to House of the Rising Sun, We Gotta Get Out of This Place etc.), it may even be the case that animals have souls.
The issue of the nature and extent of soul in creation is one which as I write seems fairly topical. At the Heslington Lecture on the 1st of February we were reminded of the Daily Mail headline which appeared after the Archbishop of York commented on the possibility of animal souls “‘Apes Have Souls Too’ Says Primate”. Reading issue 31 of Christis also served to remind me of the relevance of the issue to our abuse of creation. One implication of some Christian ‘worldviews’ is that body and soul, so to speak, are in some sense separate entities, made of fundamentally different materials. The proposed relationship between these is usually not specified, indeed the two are not usually defined save some notion that the body is observable and ‘material’ while the soul is not. This may owe something to the fact that some of us are uncomfortable with the notion that our thoughts and ideas are the result of physical processes in the brain. There is maybe something intuitively reductionist about the notion that we are in essence carnal creatures. Perhaps it is because of this that there is often an implicit belief that, to some extent at least, the soul is responsible for behaviour, indeed if it is not, there seems little for it to ‘do’ and it is reduced to the role of a metaphysical ‘scorecard’ analogous almost to karma.
This idea could appeal to the materialists among us, who might well assert that the brain (and by brain I mean the 100 billion or so neurons and associated paraphernalia, not any concept of ‘mind’) is entirely responsible for behaviour. Indeed as a psychologist I am constantly bombarded with evidence that the brain is indeed a machine and as far as researchers can tell it does follow the same physical and chemical principles as any other machine. There is no evidence of any other force that acts on the brain from outside and yet as Descartes points out it is not possible to doubt one’s own consciousness. Either we must accept that consciousness is solely a product of our material body or we must throw in our lot with Descates interactionist dualism.
This seems close to our common sense concept of the soul or ‘mind’ being composed of something other than the usual ‘body stuff’ and interacting in some way with our physical bodies. There is, however, a problem here for those of us who believe, (as I do) that the universe in which we find ourselves is composed only of energy and matter (by ‘universe’ I mean the entirety of God’s creation, but I do not mean God himself. I am quite prepared to accept that He is composed of a stuff different to that of His creation). If creation as far as we can tell functions using only matter and energy then what is the soul? The field is not entirely clear for dualists either, for instance it is not at all clear how, if is not matter or energy it can interact with the activities of the brain. It is certainly the case that electrical stimulation of the brain can evoke physical responses on a complex scale, and if there is a supernatural element to this then a convincing account of exactly what it may do has yet to be put forward. This is no disproof, I accept, but it is the case that virtually daily different processes are being ascribed to the physical brain and that at present there seems no reason to suspect that this most remarkable and exquisitely engineered of organs is not solely responsible for the whole broad spectrum of human behaviour. I feel that the problem of animal souls also has a bearing on this. Accepting the fact that humans have a soul and that they are evolved from other animals either means that non-human animals have souls too, or that souls co-evolved in some sense, with some types of animal have ‘more soul’ than others. I have to say that I am not entirely happy with either of these propositions.
I shall refrain from discussing any of the other major philosophical positions on the body/soul problem, save to say that I find few of them acceptable. I am particularly uneasy with the notion of soul that is caricatured in cartoons where the protagonist is killed and a ghostly copy (usually winged) floats upwards to heaven. I shall instead, with a hand, dismiss some of the greatest thinkers of humanity who have tried time and again to lever some truth from this particular logical crevice and proceed with my arrogant suggestion that, to switch metaphors for the moment, they are barking up the wrong tree.
Before I express my humble opinion I feel I must start from the premises that:
The following is a framework within which I believe it is possible to gain some understand the concept of soul, I do not believe it is in conflict with any of my premises, nor the central tenets of Christianity. What if souls are not aspects of humans made from some sort of spiritual material and having a bizarre relationship to our physical bodies, what if the word soul refers to our relationship to God? What, indeed, happens if we replace the dualistic concept of soul with that notion? I think we end up with God, fully spiritual, creating a universe, fully material. Humans are as much a part of this creation as anything else, and just as material. Everything has a soul in this sense (a relationship to God), stars and planets, rocks and plants, sheep and fish — even humans have a relationship to God. What is the difference? Well my opinion is that what makes humans particularly unique among God’s creation is their free will — only they can decide what their relationship to their creator will be — everything else has no choice but to worship God in everything it does, while human souls are shaped by their own choices.
This places us in a very special position in terms of creation, but it does not separate us or set us apart from it. It does not invoke any metaphysical part of us, indeed I really cannot understand why we need to suppose that an omnipotent God would need to make use of any ‘tacked on bits’ to make us what we are, I believe that it is entirely plausible that matter and energy are the materials He used to make us.
I also think that in no Biblical reference to soul does this interpretation give incongruous meaning — there may be grammatical problems with literal replacement, but this may be as much to do with translation as anything. This does not in any way belittle the relationships that we have with God, indeed it places them of paramount importance. In whatever form resurrection takes place, and in whatever sense we are given new existence after death, our souls, our relationship with God, will certainly endure all eternity.
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Last modified: 25th November 2005