Rarely Asked Questions (RAQ)

Is the soul an immortal spirit that is part of us, or is it merely our consciousness? What does the LCA officially believe?

This is the kind of question that philosophers and theologians have debated for centuries. Lutherans have always been particularly interested in it.

Response by ALC student Thomas Pietsch. He is currently vicar at St Stephen’s Adelaide and will be ordained in December.

RAQ

Let’s have a brief look at the Scriptures to see what they can tell us. In the New Testament, ‘soul’ (the Greek: psyche) usually means the whole person and not just one aspect. In John, Jesus says, ‘No-one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life [psyche: soul] for one’s friends’ (John 15:13). ‘Soul’ here doesn’t mean just one part of us but our whole self. This too is behind the meaning of soul (in Hebrew: nephesh) in the Old Testament.

Occasionally the New Testament also speaks of the soul as that part of us which is of the most value. This comes through clearly in Jesus’ words in Matthew: ‘Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell’ (Matt 10:28). The soul here is the part of us that is of the most consequence, that God alone is able to save or destroy in a time after our death.

What can we conclude from this? We can say that just as our whole self, body and soul, is in the image of God, so too our whole self, body and soul, is afflicted by sin. So our whole self is in need of redemption and life. We can also say that the soul, in a particular way, is of utmost value and is associated with our existence after death, whether in Christ or in hell.

Does this mean that the soul is, by nature, immortal? Lutherans have typically answered no. Rather than seeing immortality as part of our nature, Lutherans have understood it as a gift given by God who ‘alone has immortality’ (1 Tim 6:16). The LCA has given further direction on this matter in the document Summary Pastoral Statement Concerning the Body-Soul Issue, which the General Synod adopted at the 1984 convention. It states: ‘Only God is immortal (1 Tim 6:16). Man is immortal only because God chooses to give immortality to him.’ However, this same document also acknowledges: ‘The Scripture clearly speaks of the body returning to the dust and of the person, the soul, continuing before its Creator (Ps 139:8)’. So while both body and soul are in need of redemption and the gift of immortality, the soul possesses a certain quality of endurance beyond death.

As for the soul being ‘consciousness’, this is more a matter of speculation. One philosopher sympathetic with Christianity recently defined the soul as the ‘principle of life, of consciousness and of rationality’. But perhaps it is better to take the advice of the LCA statement mentioned earlier: ‘Instead of trying to explain the exact nature of such words as “soul” ... in our own terms, we should accept them in faith as used in the Bible for our comfort and hope’.

So we end with a mystery. While our soul endures after death, our eternal life — indeed our immortality — is from Christ who ‘abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel’ (2 Tim 1:9,10).

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