[CHAPTER 5] — THE SOUL OF A MAN
The music of Willie Johnson
Well won't somebody tell me, answer if you can
Won't somebody to tell me, just what is The Soul Of A Man
The Soul of a Man was the first Willie Johnson song I heard. I encountered this through the 2016 compilation tribute album of Johnson’s music. This version was sung by Tom Waits, an artist I had been familiar with since my teenage years. Of all the artists I have heard sing Johnson’s songs, Waits uniquely captures the deep, gravelly tones of the iconic street-preacher bluesman.
The song poses a simple question: what is the soul of a man?
As best I can understand, I think Johnson is confronting materialistic views of the world, that all there is is all that we can see, all that we can measure or observe. Possibly another idea being confronted was that the human soul is simply another way of speaking about the mind.
I saw a crowd stand talking, I just came up in time
Was teachin' the doctor and the lawyer,
Say a man ain't nothing but his mind
Truth be told, I am someone who has become very uncomfortable with soul language. That might sound strange for a person of Christian faith to say, both to those inside and outside the faith.
If I recall my own story correctly, I believe my discomfort developed as I became a more serious student of the Bible. I learnt that when we read the English word, soul, in Israel’s scriptures, it is a translation of the Hebrew word “Nephesh”, which, although it means “throat”, is used to speak of a whole person. As I gather, the idea is that the throat is the most important part of your body. I also heard New Testament scholars speak of how the Christian faith was not about saving souls for some disembodied existence in heaven. According to them, the influence of Greek philosophy and the likes of Plato have warped the biblical message.
For the Greeks, “psykhe”, the word we translate as soul, was the immaterial part of you. For Plato and his followers, souls are immortal and can be considered the essence of the person. Although soul language is present in the Bible, it turns out that the word does not really appear all that much.
The relative absence of soul talk is particularly noticeable in the New Testament, where the Greek context for understanding the word's meaning may be relevant. Christians may be shocked to hear that in all the writings of Paul, it only comes up once, 1 Thessalonians 5:23, where the apostle speaks of body, soul and spirit. It seems to me a good case can be made for taking the Hebrew sense of the word as primary whenever we encounter it in Scripture.
I read the bible often, I tries to read it right
And far as I could understand, nothin' but a burnin' light
Back to Johnson’s song, Willie was asking a question about human anthropology. The common questions relate to whether humans are purely a physical body, or are humans made up of two parts, body and soul, or three parts, body, soul and spirit. I personally remain highly sceptical when I hear people speak overconfidently about such matters.
I have heard people say things quite matter-of-factly, like: your soul is your mind, will and emotions. What’s the difference between your mind, will and emotions? Is speaking this way no different than the doctors and the lawyers who say a man is nothing but his mind? What if someone loses their mind or their memory? Surely, we must not mean that they have lost their soul.
Alternatively, it is common for people in some circles to say: you have a soul, and you live in a body, but you are a spirit. When I hear this, it seems to me that your body is not actually you. Perhaps also, your soul is not actually you, just something you possess. I am not sure this constitutes reading the Bible “right”, as Johnson put it. This approach seems to open the door to a denigration of the physical world and a disembodied spirituality. Both are matters that the best of the Christian tradition has fought hard against.
Whilst I get uncomfortable with the ambiguous use of the word soul that I hear from people today, it is important for me to acknowledge that the Church doesn’t always talk this way. Although I cannot affirm all the Roman Catholic teachings on the soul, it is good to acknowledge that they at least have a reasonable definition of what a soul is. The Catholic Catechism is clear that, according to Scripture, the soul often refers to the entire human person, but it can also refer to the “innermost aspect” of a person, in much the same way I think we would speak of the “heart”.1 In reality, I am quite comfortable using soul terminology to speak of a whole person or the core of someone’s inner being. However, I am left wondering if there is more to be said about the metaphysical reality of the soul.
When Christ sat in the temple, the people all stood amazed
Was teaching the lawyers and the Doctors how to raise a man from the grave
Raising a man, in fact, all men (& women), is the answer to my fretting about the soul.
When thinking about the metaphysical dimension of the soul, I favour a humble, if not minimal, approach to what can be asserted. To this end, I have found the writing of physicist-turned-theologian John Polkinghorne particularly helpful. According to Polkinghorne, the soul must be the “real me” which is the continuity between our childhood and adult selves, which in a material sense, no longer share the same atoms. In this way, the soul is an “immensely complex information-bearing pattern”. This pattern goes beyond merely our DNA and changes over the course of our lives.2
Rather than thinking of our soul as some inherently immortal aspect of being, I suggest it is better for us to recognise that our ongoing existence is contingent. As Polkinghorne observes, there must be some aspect of our personhood that is beyond mere materiality. Christian hope is distinctly tied to the belief in a historical resurrection of a first-century Jewish man, not a mere resuscitation but the first fruits of a new creation. As a matter of faith, I trust that the complex information-bearing pattern of every human will be held in the mind of God, ready for the last day and will enable the continuity of being from this age to the age to come. My hope for a future resurrection is a hope that in the Bye and Bye, I’m Goin’ to See the King.
Catholic Church. 2000. Catechism of the Catholic Church. 2nd ed. Huntingdon, PA: Our Sunday Visitor. Page 93, section 363
John Polkinghorne, The God of Hope and the End of the World, 105-106