Seven Souls Online
Eda Chatagnier
Four times the author identifies himself as John (1:1,4,9; 22:8). From as early as Justin Martyr in the second century a.d. it has been held that this John was the apostle, the son of Zebedee (see Mt 10:2). The book itself reveals that the author was a Jew, well versed in Scripture, a church leader who was well known to the seven churches of Asia Minor, and a deeply religious person fully convinced that the Christian faith would soon triumph over the demonic forces at work in the world.
In the later decades of the nineteenth century a German scientist, Emil du Bois-Reymond, delivered a notable lecture on the Seven World Riddles. The seven world riddles were the nature of matter and force, the origin of motion, the origin of life, the purposiveness of Nature, the freedom of the will, the nature of consciousness, and the connection of mind and body. Concerning the last of these problems he thought that the difficulties were so great that we must confess not merely our ignoramus but even our ignorabimus.
Of these seven world riddles, no doubt the one about the mind and its relation to the body is the hardest of all. Does matter think, and if so how can it think? Or is it a soul that thinks; and if so, what is this soul that thinks? What is its relation to the brain and to those newly discovered endocrine glands?
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