On What the Soul is
1. The Soul (`Psyche')
"The word `soul' is one of the most difficult words in the Bible and in Christian literature" (1). `Soul' has many meanings in Holy Scripture and in patristic literature. Professor Christos Yannaras says: "The Septuagint translators of the Old Testament carried over into Greek with the word `psyche' (`soul') the Hebrew `nephesh', a term with many meanings. Anything which has life is called a soul, every animal, but more commonly within the Scripture it pertains to man. It signifies the way in which life is manifested in man. It does not refer just to one department of human existence - the spiritual in opposition to the material - but signifies the whole man, as a single living hypostasis. The soul does not merely dwell in the body, but is expressed by the body, which itself, like the flesh or heart, corresponds to our ego, to the way in which we realise life. A man is a soul, he is a human being, he is someone..." (2). The soul is not the cause of life. It is, rather, the bearer of life (3).
Soul is the life which exists in every creature, as in plants and animals. Soul is the life that exists in man, and it is also every man who has life. Soul is also the life which is expressed within the spiritual element in our existence, it is that spiritual element in our existence. Since the term `soul' has many meanings, there are many places where things have not been clarified.
In what follows we shall try to look at some uses of the term `psyche' in texts from the New Testament and the texts from the Fathers of the Church.
The term is used by the Lord and the Apostles to mean life. The angel of the Lord said to Joseph, who was betrothed to the Mother of God: "Arise, take the young child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the young child's life are dead" (Matt.2,20). The Lord, describing Himself, said: "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep" (Jn.10,11). Likewise the Apostle Paul, writing about Priscilla and Aquila, says they "risked their own necks for my life" (Rom.16,4). In these three cases the term used for `life' is `psyche'.
`Psyche' is used further, as we said, to indicate the spiritual element in our existence. We shall cite a few scriptural passages to confirm this. The Lord said to his disciples: "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matt.10,28). Men cannot murder the soul, whereas the devil can, which means that if the soul is without the Holy Spirit, it is dead. The devil is a dead spirit, for he has no part in God and he transmits death to those who join with him. He is a living entity, but he does not exist in relation to God. In the parable of the rich young man the Lord says to him: "You fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided" (Luk.12,20)?
The difference between soul (psyche) on the one hand, as the spiritual element in human existence, which is mortal by nature but immortal by grace, and life (psyche) on the other hand appears also in another of Christ's teachings: "Whoever cares for his own safety (psyche) is lost; but if a man will let himself (psyche) be lost for my sake, he will find his true self (psyche)" (Matt.16,25,NEB). In one case the Lord uses the term `psyche' to mean the spiritual element in our existence and in the other case it means life. In a letter to the Thessalonians the Apostle Paul prays: "May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1Thess.5,23). Here it is not a question of the so-called tripartite composition of man, but the term `spirit' is used to mean the grace of God, the charisma, which the soul receives. What we wish to point out here is that there is a distinction between soul and body. John the Evangelist writes in his Revelation: "I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held" (Rev.6,9). The body was slain, but the soul is close to God and is certainly in converse with God, as the Evangelist says in what follows.
The word `soul' is also used to refer to the whole man. The Apostle Paul recommends: "Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities" (Rom.13,1).
I believe that this little analysis demonstrates that the term `psyche' has many meanings in Scripture. The term is used to mean the whole man and the spiritual element in his existence, as well as the life which exists in man, plants and animals, in all things that participate in the life-giving energy of God. St. Gregory Palamas, speaking of the uncreated light which comes to be in the God-bearing soul "through the indwelling God", says that this is God's energy and not His essence, and as the essence is called light, so also the energy is called light. The same is true of the soul. The spiritual life and the biological life are both called `soul', but we are well aware that the spiritual and the biological are different: "Just as the soul communicates life to the animated body - and we call this life `soul', while realising that the soul which is in us and which communicates life to the body is distinct from that life - so God, Who dwells in the God-bearing soul, communicates the light to it" (4).
We have cited this passage in order to show that the Fathers are well aware that the term `soul' refers both to the spiritual element in our existence and to life itself, and that there is a great difference between the two meanings. We shall see this better later on, when we examine the difference between the souls of animals and of men.
To attempt a definition of `soul' in the sense of the spiritual element in our existence we turn to St. John of Damascus, who says: "Now a soul is a living substance, simple and incorporeal, of its own nature invisible to bodily eyes, using the body as an organ and giving it life endowed with will and he body, so is the mind to the soul. It is free, endowed with will and the power to act, and subject to change, that is, subject to change of will because it is also created. "And this it has received according to nature, through that grace of the Creator by which it has also received both its existence and its being naturally as it is" (5).
The soul is simple and good "because created thus by its Master" (6).
Almost the same definition as that of John of Damascus had in fact been given before him by St. Gregory of Nyssa: "The soul is an essence created, living, and noetic, transmitting from itself to an organised and sentient body the power of living and of grasping objects of sense, as long as a natural constitution capable of this holds together" (7).
St. Gregory Palamas, interpreting the Apostle Paul's: "The first man Adam became a living soul" (1Cor.15,45), says that `living soul' means "ever-living, immortal, which is to say intelligent, for the immortal is intelligent; and not only that, but also divinely blessed with grace. Such is the living soul" (8).
He says that the soul is immortal. We are well aware that this idea of the immortality of the soul is not of Christian origin, but the Christians accepted it with several conditions and several necessary presuppositions. Prof. John Zizioulas writes: "The idea of the immortality of the soul, even though it is not of Christian origin, passed into the tradition of our Church, permeating even this hymnography of ours. No one can deny it without finding himself outside the climate of the very worship of the Church...The Church did not accept this Platonic idea without conditions and presuppositions. These presuppositions include, among other things, three basic points. One is that souls are not eternal but created. Another is that the soul should by no means be identified with man. (Man's soul is not man. The soul is one thing and man, who is a psychosomatic being, is another.) And the third and most important is that the immortality of man is not based on the immortality of the soul, but on the Resurrection of Christ and on the coming resurrection of bodies" (9).
We have emphasised that man's soul is immortal by grace and not by nature, and yet it must be stressed that in the Orthodox patristic tradition man's immortality is not the soul's life after death, but a passing over death by the grace of Christ. Life in Christ is what makes man immortal, for without life in Christ there is dying, since it is the grace of God that gives life to the soul.
Having presented several elements that make up the definition of the soul, we must proceed a little further to the topic of the creation of the soul. The soul is created, since it was made by God. Our basic source is the revelation which was given to Moses: "The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being" (Gen.2,7). This passage describes the creation of man's soul. In his interpretation of it, St. John Chrysostom says that it is essential to look at what is said with the eyes of faith and that these things are said "with much condescension and because of our weakness". The phrase "God made man and breathed into him" is "unworthy of God, but Holy Scripture explains it in this way for our sake because of our weakness, condescending to us so that, being made worthy of this condescension, we may have strength to rise to that height" (10). The way in which God formed man's body and made him a living soul as described in Holy Scripture is condescending. It is described thus because of our own weakness.
St. John of Damascus writes that whatever is said about God in human terms is "said symbolically" but has a higher sense, since "the divine is simple and formless". And since Scripture says that God breathed into man's face, we may look at the interpretation by St. John of Damascus concerning the mouth of God: "By His mouth and speech let us understand the expression of His will, by analogy with our own expression of our innermost thoughts by mouth and speech" (11). Certainly mouth and breath are two different things, but I mention this as indicative, since there is a relationship and a connection. Generally, as St. John of Damascus says, everything that has been affirmed of God in bodily terms, apart from what was said about the presence of the Word of God in the flesh, "contains some hidden meaning which teaches us things that exceed our nature" (12).
Therefore the soul, like the body, is created by God (13).
St. John Chrysostom interprets this breath of God by saying that it is "not only senseless but also out of place" to say that what was breathed into Adam was the soul and that the soul was transmitted to the body from the substance of God. If this were true, then the soul would not be wise in one place and foolish and senseless in another, or just in one place and unjust in another. The "substance of God is not divided or changed but is unchangeable." So the divine breath was the "energy of the Holy Spirit". As Christ said "Receive the Holy Spirit", so also the divine breath "humanly heard is the venerated and holy Spirit". According to the saint, the soul is not a piece of God, but the energy of the Holy Spirit, which created the soul without becoming soul itself. "This Spirit proceeded, it did not become soul, but created a soul; it did not change into a soul, but it created a soul; for the Holy Spirit is a creator, it has a share in the creation of the body and in the creation of the soul. For Father and Son and Holy Spirit by divine power create the creature" (14).
Another important point emphasised by the holy Fathers is that we have no existence of the body without a soul nor existence of a soul without the body. The moment God creates the body He creates the soul too. St. Anastasios of Sinai writes: "Neither does the body exist before the soul nor the soul exist before the body" (15). St. John of Damascus emphasises in opposition to Origen's view: "Body and soul were formed at the same time, not one before and the other afterwards" (16). St. John of the Ladder says this as well (17).
Man is made in the image of God. This image certainly does not refer to the body, but mainly and primarily to the soul. The image in man is stronger than that in the angels, for as we shall see, man's soul gives life to the attached body. In general we can say that the soul is in the image of God. And as God is threefold -Nous, Word and Spirit - so also man's soul has three powers: nous, soul and spirit (18). In all nature there are "iconic examples" of the Holy Trinity (19), but this appears mainly in man. The image in man is stronger than the image in the angels. St. Gregory Palamas, speaking of the baptism of Christ in the Jordan River and explaining why "the mystery of the created and recreated (man) reveals the mystery of the Holy Trinity", writes that this came about not only because man alone is an initiate and earthly worshipper of the Holy Trinity, but also because "he alone is in its image". The sentient and irrational animals have only a vital spirit and this cannot exist of itself; they have no nous and word. The angels and archangels have nous and word, since they are noetic and intelligent, but they have no life-giving spirit, since they have no body which receives life from the spirit. So since man has nous, word and life-giving spirit that gives life to the body joined to it, "he alone is in the image of the three-personal nature" (20).
St. Gregory Palamas develops the same teaching in his natural and theological chapters. As the Trinitarian God is Nous, Word and Spirit, so is man. Man's spirit, the life-giving power in his body, is "man's noetic love", "it is from the nous and the word, and it exists in the word and the nous and possesses both the word and the nous within itself" (21). While the noetic and rational nature of the angels has nous, word and spirit, yet "it does not have this spirit as life-giving" (22). As we have indicated, the image refers primarily to the soul, but since the body is given life by the spirit, therefore the image in man is stronger than that in the angels.
St. Gregory also sees the difference between the image of man and the image of the angels from another point of view. His teaching is well known that in God there is essence and energy, and these are connected separately and separated connectedly. This is the mystery of the indivisible joining of essence and energy. The essence of God is not shared by man, while the energies are shared. And since man is in the image of God, this teaching about essence and energy applies to the soul as well. So the soul is inseparably divided into essence and energy.
In comparing the soul of man with that of animals, St. Gregory says that animals possess a soul not as essence, but as an energy. "The soul of each of the irrational animals is the life for the body it animates, and so animals possess life not essentially but as an energy, since this life is dependent on something else and is not self-subsistent." Therefore since the soul of animals has only energy, it dies with the body. By contrast, the soul of man has not only energy but also essence: "The soul possesses life not only as an activity but also essentially, since it lives in its own right...For that reason, when the body passes away, the soul does not perish with it." It remains immortal. The intelligent and noetic soul is composite, but "since its activity is directed towards something else it does not naturally produce synthesis" (23).
In his teaching St. Maximus the Confessor states that the soul has three powers: a) that of nourishment and growth, b) that of imagination and instinct, and c) that of intelligence and intellection. Plants share only in the first of these powers. Animals share in that of imagination and instinct as well, while men share all three powers (24). This shows the great value of man relative to irrational animals. Likewise what was said previously shows clearly also how angels differ from men. Therefore when Christ became man he received a human body and not the form of an angel, he became God-man, and not God-angel.
What has been said makes it possible for us to see the dividedness of the soul. We do not intend to enlarge on this topic but we shall present those things which have an essential bearing on the general topic of this study.
St. John of Damascus says that the soul is intelligent and noetic. God gave man "an intelligent and noetic soul for proper breathing" (25). It is a basic teaching of the Fathers that nous and intelligence are two parallel energies of the soul. St. Gregory Palamas, referring to the fact that the soul is in the image of the Holy Trinity, and writing that the Holy Trinity is Nous, Word and Spirit, says that the soul, created by God in His image "is endowed with nous, word and spirit." Therefore she must guard her order, relate entirely to God. She must look at God alone, adorn herself with constant memory and contemplation and with the warmest and ardent love for Him (26).
The soul is broken up by passions and sins. Therefore it must be unified, offered to God. Unification takes place in many ways, mainly by putting Christ's word into practice. Theoleptos, Metropolitan of Philadelphia, emphasises particularly the value of prayer. "Pure prayer, after uniting in itself nous, word and spirit, invokes the name of God in words, looks up at God Whom it is invoking, with a nous free from wandering, and shows contrition, humility and love. Thus it inclines towards itself the eternal Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit -One God" (27). With the word we constantly remember the name of Christ, with a nous free from wandering we gaze at God, and with the spirit we are possessed of contrition, humility and love.
In this way the three powers of the soul are united and offered to the Holy Trinity. This is how the healing of the soul takes place, and we shall deal with it at greater length elsewhere. The scattering of the powers of the soul is sickness and their unification is healing.
Nicetas Stethatos divides the soul into three parts but speaks mainly of two, the intelligent and passible parts. The intelligent part is invisible and unrelated to the senses, "as if existing both within and outside them". I think that he is referring to the nous here. Later we shall distinguish between intelligence and nous, but now we must emphasise that the nous has a relationship with God, it receives the energies of God; God reveals Himself to the nous, while intelligence, as an energy, is that which formulates and expresses the experiences of the nous. The passible part of the soul is divided into the sensations and the passions. The passible part is so called because it is "subject to the passions" (28).
St. Gregory of Sinai, analysing the powers of the soul and describing precisely what takes hold in each power, says that evil thoughts work in the intelligent power; bestial passions in the excitable part; recollection of animal lusts in the appetitive part; fantasies in the noetic part; and notions in the reasoning part (29).
The same saint says that when by His life-giving breath God created the intelligent and noetic soul, "He did not make it have rage and animal lust; He endowed the soul only with the appetitive power and with the courage to be lovingly attracted" (30). With the creation of the soul "neither lust nor anger was included in its being" (31). These came as a result of sin.
Here we shall not develop further the subject of the divided soul because the relevant material is described in the fourth chapter, which deals with the passions. We had to include a little about the soul's dividedness at this point because we are on the particular subject of the soul.
Yet there does exist a relationship and a connection between the soul and the body. But what is this relationship and to what extent does it exist? It is a topic which we shall look at here.
Man is made up of body and soul. Each element alone does not constitute a man. St. Justin, the philosopher and martyr, says that the soul by itself is not a man, but is called `a man's soul'. In the same way the body is not called a man but is called `a man's body'. "Though in himself man is neither of these, the combination of the two is called man; God called man into life and resurrection, and he did not call a part, but the whole, which is the soul and the body" (32).
The soul, as we have pointed out, was created with the body at conception. "The embryo is endowed with a soul at conception." The soul is created at conception and "the soul at that time is just as active as the flesh. As the body grows so the soul increasingly manifests its energies" (33).
There is a clear distinction between soul and body, since "the soul is not body but bodiless" (34). Besides, it is altogether impossible for the body and soul to exist or be called body or soul unrelated to and independent of each other. "For the relationship is fixed" (35).
The ancient philosophers believed that the soul is at a specific place in the body, that the body is the prison of the soul and that the salvation of the soul is its release from the body. The Fathers teach that the soul is everywhere in the body. St. Gregory Palamas says that the angels and the soul, as incorporeal beings, "are not located in place, but neither are they everywhere". The soul, as it sustains the body together with which it was created "is everywhere in the body, not as in a place, nor as if it were encompassed, but as sustaining, encompassing and giving life to it because it possesses this too in the image of God" (36).
The same saint, seeing that there are some people (the Hellenisers) who locate the soul in the brain as in an acropolis and that others place it at the very centre of the heart "and in that element therein which is purified of the breath of animal soul" as the most genuine vehicle (Judaisers), says that we know precisely that the intelligent part is in the heart, not as in a container, for it is incorporeal, nor is it outside the heart, since it is conjoined. The heart of man is the controlling organ, the throne of grace, according to Palamas. The nous and all the thoughts of the soul are to be found there. The saint affirms that we received this teaching from Christ Himself, Who is man's Maker. He reminds us of Christ's sayings: "It is not what goes into a man's mouth that defiles him, but what comes out of it" (Matt.15,11), and: "For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts" (Matt.15,19). The saint adds further that St. Makarios said: "The heart directs the entire organism, and when grace gains possession of the heart, it reigns over all the thoughts and all the members, for it is there in the heart that the nous and the soul have their seat." Therefore the basic aim of therapy, he says, is to bring back the nous, "which has been dissipated abroad by the senses from outside the heart", which is "the seat of thoughts" and "the first intelligent organ of the body" (37).
We shall return to this subject, but what we mainly wish to underline is that according to the teaching of the Fathers, the soul uses the heart as its organ and directs the body. The soul is in union with the body; it is no stranger to it. Nemesius of Emesa teaches that "the soul is incorporeal, and not circumscribed to a particular portion of space, but spreading entire throughout: like a sun that spreads wherever its light reaches as well as throughout the body of the sun, not being just a part of the whole that it illuminates, as would be the case if it were not omnipresent in it." Furthermore, "the soul is united to the body and yet remains distinct from it" (38).
The soul activates and directs the whole body and all the members of the body. It is a teaching of the Orthodox Church that God directs the world personally without created intermediaries, by His uncreated energy. Thus, just as God activates the whole of nature, in the same way "the soul too activates the members of the body and moves each member in conformance with the operation of that member" (39). Therefore just as it is God's task to administer the world, so also it is "the soul's task to guide the body" (40).
St. Gregory Palamas, who dwelt much upon the theme of the relationship between soul and body, says that what takes place through God takes place through the soul. The soul has within it in simple form "all the providential powers of the body". And even if some members of the body are injured, if the eyes are removed and the ears deafened, the soul is no less possessed of the providential powers of the body. The soul is not the providential powers but it has providential powers. In spite of the presence in it of the providential powers, it is "single and simple and not composite", not "compound or synthetic" (41).
It is very characteristic that in this passage St. Gregory links what takes place through the soul in relation to the body, with God's relation to the whole of creation. God directs the world with His providential powers. God had the providential powers even before the world was created. Yet God, who not only possesses many powers but is all-powerful, is not deprived of His unicity and simplicity because of the powers that are in Him (42). This shows clearly that the soul is "in the image of God". What takes place in God takes place analogously in the soul of man.
St. Gregory of Nyssa says that the soul is immaterial and bodiless "working and moving in a way corresponding to its peculiar nature, and evincing these peculiar emotions through the organs of the body" (43). The same saint epigrammatically teaches that the soul is not held by the body but holds the body. It is not within the body as in a vessel or bag, but rather the body is within the soul. The soul is throughout the body, "and there is no part illuminated by it in which it is not wholly present" (44).
The general conclusion with reference to the relationship between soul and body is that the soul is in the whole body, there is no sector of a man's body in which the soul is not present, that the heart is the first intelligent seat of the soul, that the centre of the soul is there, not as in a vessel but as in an organ which guides the whole body and that the soul, while distinct from the body, is nevertheless most intimately linked with it.
All these things have been said because they are very closely connected with the subject of this study. For we cannot understand the fall and sickness of the soul if we do not know just what the soul is and how it is linked with the body.
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