Soul 61
Lorin Mandaloniz
In many religious and philosophical traditions, the soul is the non-material essence of a person, which includes one's identity, personality, and memories, an immaterial aspect or essence of a living being that is believed to be able to survive physical death. The concept of the soul is generally applied to humans, although it can also be applied to other living or even non-living entities, as in animism.[1]
In Judaism and in some Christian denominations, only human beings have immortal souls. Immortality is disputed within Judaism and the concept of immortality was most likely influenced by Plato.[3] For example, Thomas Aquinas, borrowing directly from Aristotle's On the Soul, attributed "soul" (anima) to all organisms but argued that only human souls are immortal.[4] Other religions (most notably Hinduism and Jainism) believe that all living things from the smallest bacterium to the largest of mammals are the souls themselves (Atman and jiva) and have their physical representative (the body) in the world. The actual self is the soul, while the body is only a mechanism to experience the karma of that life. Thus, if one sees a tiger then there is a self-conscious identity residing in it (the soul), and a physical representative (the whole body of the tiger, which is observable) in the world. Many people believe that non-biological things, such as rivers and mountains, also possess souls. This belief is called animism.[5]
In the ancient Egyptian religion, an individual was believed to be made up of various elements, some physical and some spiritual. Similar ideas are found in ancient Assyrian and Babylonian religion. The Kuttamuwa stele, a funeral stele for an 8th-century BCE royal official from Sam'al, describes Kuttamuwa requesting that his mourners commemorate his life and his afterlife with feasts "for my soul that is in this stele". It is one of the earliest references to a soul as a separate entity from the body. The 800-pound (360 kg) basalt stele is 3 ft (0.91 m) tall and 2 ft (0.61 m) wide. It was uncovered in the third season of excavations by the Neubauer Expedition of the Oriental Institute in Chicago, Illinois.[6]
The Bahʼ Faith affirms that "the soul is a sign of God, a heavenly gem whose reality the most learned of men hath failed to grasp, and whose mystery no mind, however acute, can ever hope to unravel".[7] Bah'u'llh stated that the soul not only continues to live after the physical death of the human body but is in fact immortal.[8] Heaven can be seen partly as the soul's state of nearness to God, and hell as a state of remoteness from God. Each state follows as a natural consequence of individual efforts, or the lack thereof, to develop spiritually.[9] Bah'u'llh taught that individuals have no existence prior to their life here on earth and the soul's evolution is always towards God and away from the material world.[9]
The traditional doctrine in Buddhism regarding the soul, self, or ego is that it is non-existent as a separate, permanent entity. The non-existence of self (anatman), the impermanence of all things (anitya), and the suffering (dukkha) experienced by living beings due to attachment to ideas of self and permanence are central concepts in almost all Buddhist schools. The doctrine of Buddha-nature, while sometimes misinterpreted as referring to a "true self" or "soul" of some kind, actually depends upon acceptance of the concept of anatman to be properly understood.[10]
According to some Christian eschatology, when people die, their souls will be judged by God and determined to go to Heaven or to Hades awaiting a resurrection. The oldest existing branches of Christianity, the Catholic Church and the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches, adhere to this view, as well as many Protestant denominations. Some Protestant Christians understand the soul as life, and believe that the dead have no conscious existence until after the resurrection (this is known as Christian conditionalism). Some Protestant Christians believe that the souls and bodies of the unrighteous will be destroyed in Hell rather than suffering eternally (annihilationism). Believers will inherit eternal life either in Heaven, or in a Kingdom of God on earth, and enjoy eternal fellowship with God. Other Christians reject the punishment of the soul.[11]
The "origin of the soul" has provided a vexing question in Christianity. The major theories put forward include soul creationism, traducianism, and pre-existence. According to soul creationism, God creates each individual soul directly, either at the moment of conception or at some later time. According to traducianism, the soul comes from the parents by natural generation. According to the preexistence theory, the soul exists before the moment of conception. There have been differing thoughts regarding whether human embryos have souls from conception, or whether there is a point between conception and birth where the fetus acquires a soul, consciousness, and/or personhood. Stances in this question play a role in judgments on the morality of abortion.[14][15][16]
Some Christians espouse a trichotomic view of humans, which characterizes humans as consisting of a body (soma), soul (psyche), and spirit (pneuma);[17] however, the majority of modern Bible scholars point out how the concepts of "spirit" and of "soul" are used interchangeably in many biblical passages, and so hold to dichotomy: the view that each human comprises a body and a soul. Paul said that the "body wars against" the soul, "For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit" (Heb 4:12 NASB), and that "I buffet my body", to keep it under control.
According to Thomas Aquinas, the soul is tota in toto corpore.[18][19][20] This means that the soul is entirely contained in every single part of the human body, and therefore ubiquitous and cannot be placed in a single organ, such as heart or brain, nor it is separable from the body (except after the body's death). In the fourth book of De Trinitate, Augustine of Hippo states that the soul is all in the whole body and all in any part of it.[21]
The present Catechism of the Catholic Church states that "[The term 'soul'] refers to the innermost aspect of [persons], that which is of greatest value in [them], that by which [they are] most especially in God's image: 'soul' signifies the spiritual principle in [humanity]."[22] All souls living and dead will be judged by Jesus Christ when he comes back to earth. The Catholic Church teaches that the existence of each individual soul is dependent wholly upon God, stating: "The doctrine of the faith affirms that the spiritual and immortal soul is created immediately by God."[23]
Protestants generally believe in the soul's existence and immortality, but fall into two major camps about what this means in terms of an afterlife. Some, following John Calvin, believe that the soul persists as consciousness after death.[24] Others, following Martin Luther, believe that the soul dies with the body, and is unconscious ("sleeps") until the resurrection of the dead.[25][26]
Various new religious movements deriving from Adventism including Christadelphians,[27] Seventh-day Adventists,[28][29] and Jehovah's Witnesses,[30][31] similarly believe that the dead do not possess a soul separate from the body and are unconscious until the resurrection.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that the spirit and body together constitute the Soul of Man (Mankind), stating: "The spirit and the body are the soul of man."[32] Latter-day Saints believe that the soul is the union of a pre-existing, God-made spirit,[33][34][35] and a temporal body, which is formed by physical conception on earth. After death, the spirit continues to live and progress in the spirit world until the resurrection, when it is reunited with the body that once housed it. This reuniting of body and spirit results in a perfect soul that is immortal, and eternal, and capable of receiving a fulness of joy.[36][37] Latter-day Saint cosmology also describes "intelligences" as the essence of consciousness or agency. These are co-eternal with God, and animate the spirits.[38] The union of a newly-created spirit body with an eternally-existing intelligence constitutes a "spirit birth",[citation needed] and justifies God's title "Father of our spirits".[39][40][41]
The Quran, the holy book of Islam, uses two words to refer to the soul: rūḥ (translated as spirit, consciousness, pneuma, or soul) and nafs (translated as self, ego, psyche, or soul),[53][54] cognates of the Hebrew ruach and nefesh. The two terms are frequently used interchangeably, although rūḥ is more often used to denote the divine spirit or "the breath of life", while nafs designates one's disposition or characteristics.[55] In Islamic philosophy, the immortal rūḥ "drives" the mortal nafs, which comprises temporal desires and perceptions necessary for living.[3]
Allah takes the souls at the time of their death, and those that do not die [He takes] during their sleep. Then He keeps those for which He has decreed death and releases the others for a specified term. Indeed in that are signs for a people who give thought..
In Jainism, every living being, from plant or bacterium to human, has a soul and the concept forms the very basis of Jainism. According to Jainism, there is no beginning or end to the existence of soul. It is eternal in nature and changes its form until it attains liberation. In Jainism, jiva is the immortal essence or soul of a living organism, such as human, animal, fish, or plant, which survives physical death.[56] The concept of Ajiva in Jainism means "not soul", and represents matter (including body), time, space, non-motion and motion.[56] In Jainism, a Jiva is either samsari (mundane, caught in cycle of rebirths) or mukta (liberated).[57][58]
c80f0f1006