On the Soul

The order we set ourselves now requires that, having finished the subjects before this, we take up a general inquiry into the soul, beginning with the smaller matters and working up to the greater. That there are souls in every living thing, even in the creatures that live in the water, I suppose no one doubts. The common opinion of everyone holds it, and the authority of holy Scripture is added to it where it says, “God made the great sea creatures, and every soul of living things that moves, which the waters brought forth according to their kinds.” The ordinary judgment of reason confirms it too, in those who set down a definition of the soul in so many words. The soul is defined this way: a substance that is phantastikē and hormētikē — which Latin renders, though not very aptly, as “able to feel and able to move.” That can properly be said of every living being, even of those that stay in the water, and the same definition of soul can be shown to hold for winged creatures as well. [a]

Scripture has lent its authority to a second opinion as well, when it says, “You shall not eat the blood, because the soul of all flesh is its blood; and you shall not eat the soul along with the flesh.” By this it shows very plainly that the blood of every animal is its soul. And if someone now asks how it can be said of bees and wasps and ants, and of the things in the water — oysters and cockles — and of all the others that have no blood and are still plainly living things, that “the soul of all flesh is the blood,” our answer is this: in living things of that kind, the work done in other animals by the power of red blood is done by the fluid inside them, even though it is a different color. Color is of no importance, provided the substance carries life.

That pack animals and the smaller livestock have souls, everyone agrees; there is no doubt about it at all. And the judgment of holy Scripture is plain, where God says, “Let the earth bring forth the living soul according to its kind — four-footed beasts, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” As for man, no one has any doubt and no one needs to ask, yet holy Scripture states that “God breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.”

It remains for us to ask about the order of angels, whether they too have souls, or are souls; and to ask the same about the other divine and heavenly powers, and about the powers of the opposite kind. Nowhere in holy Scripture do we find any authority for saying that the angels, or any of the other divine spirits who serve God, either possess souls or are called souls — and yet a great many people are convinced that they are alive. But about God we find this written: “And I will set my soul against the soul that has eaten blood, and I will root him out from among his people”; and in another passage, “Your new moons and sabbaths and great days I will not accept; your fasts and holidays and festivals my soul hates.” And in the twenty-second Psalm, about Christ — for it is certain, as the Gospel testifies, that this psalm is spoken of him — these words occur: “Lord, do not stand far off from helping me; look to my defense. God, deliver my soul from the sword, and my only one from the hand of the dog.” There are many other testimonies besides about the soul of Christ during his time in the flesh.

But the nature of the incarnation makes any inquiry into the soul of Christ unnecessary. Just as he truly had flesh, so he truly had a soul. It is hard both to grasp and to state how what Scripture calls the soul of God is to be understood, since we hold that nature to be simple, with nothing mixed into it and nothing added. However it is to be understood, it does at least seem to be named the soul of God; and about Christ there is no doubt whatever. [h]

So it seems to me no absurdity either to understand or to assert something of the same kind about the holy angels and the other heavenly powers, since that definition of soul appears to fit them too. Who can reasonably deny that they are “able to feel and able to move”? And if that definition is sound — that a soul is a substance rationally able to feel and to move — then the same definition would seem to apply to angels as well. What is in them but rational feeling and motion? And beings covered by the same definition undoubtedly have the same substance.

Paul, though, hints that there is a kind of soulish man, who, he says, cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God, but declares that the teaching of the Holy Spirit looks like foolishness to him, and cannot understand what has to be discerned spiritually. In another place he says that it is sown a soulish body and rises a spiritual body, showing that in the resurrection of the righteous there will be nothing of a soulish nature. So we ask whether there may be some substance which, precisely in being soul, is imperfect. Whether it is imperfect because it fell away from perfection, or because God made it that way, will be the subject of inquiry when each topic comes up in its turn.

For if the soulish man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, and, being soulish, cannot take in the understanding of something better — that is, of a divine nature — this is perhaps why Paul, wanting to teach us more plainly what it is by which we are able to take in the things of the Spirit, that is, spiritual things, joins and associates with the Holy Spirit a mind rather than a soul. That, I think, is what he indicates when he says, “I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the mind also; I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the mind also.” He does not say “I will pray with the soul,” but with the spirit and the mind; nor does he say “I will sing with the soul,” but with the spirit and the mind.

But perhaps this question is asked: if it is the mind that prays and sings with the spirit, and the mind that receives both perfection and salvation, then how is it that Peter says, “receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls”? If the soul neither prays nor sings with the spirit, how will it hope for salvation? Or when it reaches blessedness, will it no longer be called a soul? [j]

Let us see whether an answer may be given along these lines. The Savior came to save what was lost, and what was once said to be lost is not lost once it is saved; so perhaps this thing that is saved is called a soul, and once it has been set in a state of salvation it will receive from the Word a name that marks its more perfect condition. Some think this may be added as well: that as the thing which was lost certainly existed before it was lost, at which time it was something other than ruined, so it will be again when it is no longer in ruin. In the same way, the soul that is said to have perished will be seen to have been something at one time, when it had not yet perished, and to have been called a soul on that account; and, freed from ruin again, it may become a second time what it was before it perished, and be called a soul.

But from the very meaning the Greek word for soul carries, it has seemed to a few curious inquirers that a point of no small importance can be suggested. In sacred language God is called a fire, as when Scripture says, “Our God is a consuming fire.” About the substance of the angels it speaks this way: “He makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a burning fire”; and in another place, “The angel of the Lord appeared in a flame of fire in the bush.” We have also been given a command to be “boiling hot in spirit,” an expression that undoubtedly shows the Word of God to be hot and fiery. The prophet Jeremiah too hears from the one who was answering him, “Look, I have put my words into your mouth as fire.”

So God is a fire, the angels are a flame of fire, and all the holy ones are boiling hot in spirit; and on the other side, those who have fallen away from the love of God are certainly said to have cooled in their love for him and to have gone cold. The Lord himself says that “because lawlessness has multiplied, the love of many will grow cold.” Indeed, in everything whatever it may be that holy Scripture compares with the hostile power, the devil is said to be found perpetually cold; and what is found colder than he is? The dragon is said to reign in the sea as well, for the prophet indicates that the serpent and the dragon — which certainly refers to one of the wicked spirits — is in the sea too. And in another place the prophet says, “I will draw my holy sword against the dragon, the fleeing serpent, against the dragon, the twisting serpent, and I will kill him.” And again he says, “Even if they hide from my eyes and go down into the depths of the sea, there I will command the serpent, and it will bite them.” In the book of Job too he is called the king of all the things in the waters. And the prophet warns that evils will be kindled by the north wind upon everyone who lives on the earth; and in holy Scripture the north wind is described as cold, as the book of Wisdom puts it, “that cold north wind” — which likewise must certainly be understood of the devil.

If, then, the things that are holy are named fire and light and boiling hot, while the things of the opposite nature are called cold, and if the love of many is said to grow cold, we have to ask whether the name soul — psychē in Greek — is so called from growing cold out of a better and more divine condition, and takes its name from that, because it seems to have cooled from that natural and divine warmth, and for that reason has been placed where it now is and called by the name it now has. Finally, see whether you can readily find a place in holy Scripture where the soul is properly spoken of in terms of praise. On the contrary, it turns up often with expressions of blame, as in the passage “An evil soul ruins the one who has it,” and “The soul that sins, it shall die.” For after it has been said, “All souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine,” it seemed to follow that he would say, “The soul that does what is right, it shall be saved,” and “The soul that sins, it shall die.” But as it is, we see that he has attached to the soul what deserves blame, and has been silent about what deserves praise.

So we have to see whether — as we said the name itself declares — it was called psychē, in Latin anima, because it has cooled from the heat of righteous things and from a share in the divine fire, and yet has not lost the power of restoring itself to the heat it had at the beginning. This is why the prophet too seems to point to some such state of things in the words, “Return, my soul, to your rest.” From all of which this appears to be established: that the mind, falling away from its standing and its dignity, was made, or named, a soul; and that if it is repaired and put right, it returns to being a mind.

Now if this is the case, it seems to me that this very decay and falling away of the mind is not the same in all, but that the conversion into a soul goes further in some cases and less far in others, and that certain minds keep something even of their former vigor, while others keep either nothing or very little. This is why some are found, from the very beginning of their lives, to have a quicker intellect, others a slower cast of mind, and some are born wholly dull and altogether incapable of being taught. [r]

Our statement that the mind is converted into a soul, however — or whatever else may seem to carry that meaning — the reader must weigh carefully and settle for himself. These views are not to be taken as put forward by us as settled teaching, but simply as opinions, handled in the manner of inquiry and discussion.

Let the reader take this into consideration as well. It is observed about the soul of the Savior that, of the things written in the Gospel, some are ascribed to it under the name of soul and others under the name of spirit. When Scripture wants to indicate any suffering or disturbance affecting him, it indicates it under the name of soul, as when it says, “Now my soul is troubled,” and “My soul is sorrowful, even to death,” and “No one takes my soul from me, but I lay it down of myself.” Into his Father’s hands he commends not his soul but his spirit; and when he says that the flesh is weak, he does not say the soul is willing, but the spirit. From which it appears that the soul is something in between the weak flesh and the willing spirit.

But perhaps someone will meet us with one of the objections we ourselves warned you of in what we have said, and ask, “How, then, is a soul of God spoken of too?” Our answer is this. With everything bodily that is said of God — fingers, or hands, or arms, or eyes, or feet, or mouth — we say that these are not to be understood as human limbs, but that certain of his powers are indicated by these names of parts of the body. In the same way, we are to suppose that it is something else that is being pointed at by this title, the soul of God. [s]

And if we may venture to say anything further on such a subject, the soul of God may perhaps be understood to mean the only Son of God. For as the soul, once set within the body, moves everything in it and exerts its force on everything it works upon, so also the only Son of God, who is his Word and his Wisdom, reaches out and extends to every power of God, being set within it; and perhaps it is to indicate this mystery that God is either called or described in Scripture as a body. We must indeed consider whether it may not be for this reason that the soul of God can be understood to mean his only Son: because he himself came into this world of affliction, and went down into this valley of tears, into this place of our humiliation, as he says in the Psalm, “Because you have humbled us in the place of affliction.”

Finally, I am aware that certain critics, in explaining the words the Savior uses in the Gospel, “My soul is sorrowful, even to death,” have taken them of the apostles, whom he called his soul, as being better than the rest of his body. For since the multitude of believers is called his body, they say that the apostles, as better than the rest of the body, ought to be understood to mean his soul.

We have brought forward these points about the rational soul as well as we could, as subjects for our readers to discuss rather than as settled and well-defined propositions. And as for the souls of animals and the other creatures without speech, let what we have said above in general terms be enough.