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<\/a><\/p>\nThat idea of the \u201csoul\u201d \u2014 going all the way back to Plato and haunting us ever since \u2014 remains inescapable and unavoidable, even if we now avoid it in our headlines about shipwrecks and other disasters. For all the many challenges to the idea from philosophers and theologians and scientists, this dualism of body and soul persists and pervades our thinking like a kind of background noise.<\/p>\n
To be clear, I do not believe in that idea of the \u201csoul.\u201d I think it is profoundly, dangerously misleading to think of our selves as souls inhabiting physical bodies. But I still believe that talk of souls matters<\/em> \u2014 that it attempts to articulate something important and vital and essential.<\/p>\n\u201cDo you believe you have a soul?\u201d someone asked me recently. And what I wanted to say was, \u201cNo. I don\u2019t believe I have<\/em> a soul, I believe I am<\/em> a soul.\u201d \u00a0But the ghost of Plato makes it almost impossible to say that without suggesting that if I am<\/em> a soul, then I must merely have<\/em> a body. And I don\u2019t believe that either.<\/p>\nThis is what fascinates me about those old newspaper headlines. They employ the word \u201csouls,\u201d and we bring to that word all of our Platonic, dualistic baggage and assumptions about what that word means. But their use of the word suggests something wholly incompatible with those dualistic ideas. Their use of the word \u2014 their appeal to the concept \u2014 is quite the opposite<\/em> of what we expect when we approach that word with all of the connotations we\u2019ve absorbed from Plato and Augustine and revivalist altar-call soteriology. Plato and Augustine and Billy Graham have all trained us to think of immortal souls dwelling, temporarily, within mortal bodies.<\/p>\nBut those old headlines didn\u2019t say \u201c1,800 Bodies<\/em> Lost at Sea.\u201d They spoke of souls dying<\/em> \u2014 of souls perishing<\/em>.<\/p>\nWhatever it was those headlines meant by \u201csouls,\u201d it wasn\u2019t the same as the Platonic\/Augustinian dualism that colors so much of our speaking and thinking about souls. The word here was used interchangeably with simpler, less fraught, words like \u201cpeople\u201d or \u201clives.\u201d It was chosen, in part, because those words can seem inadequate to the reporting of tragedy. These weren\u2019t just any lives \u2014 they were humans. They weren\u2019t just faceless, nameless people, but unique individuals. And reaching for some way to convey all of that, these old-timey headline writers sometimes latched onto the word we\u2019ve long used to attempt to articulate this ineffable aspect of our humanity. Souls<\/em>.<\/p>\nDespite the long shadows of Plato and Augustine, this too is something \u2014 something else<\/em> \u2014 that we humans have long meant or tried to communicate with our talk of souls or of the soul.<\/p>\nI think this half-grasped, inadequately articulated idea is important because I think it is true. And I think it\u2019s worth the hard work it requires to separate this from the old dualisms and to preserve the language here \u2014 to save our \u201csouls.\u201d This is likely a case where the connotations of the word bear more meaning than any attempted denotation \u2014 a word more useful for what it suggests than what it defines, for what it points toward more than what it pins down.<\/p>\n
All of which is to say, in response to that question I was asked, \u201cYes, I believe in souls.\u201d<\/p>\n
What do I mean by that, exactly? Well, that\u2019s a bit more complicated. It\u2019s probably easier to say what I do not<\/em> mean by that than what I do. But here\u2019s part of it: I believe that being soulful is good and being soulless is bad. I believe in whatever it is that the music of Al Green or Aretha Franklin comes from, and whatever it is that receives it. I believe that The Powers That Be will sometimes make you an offer at a crossroads, asking, in return, for something that is both seemingly unsubstantial and essential.<\/p>\nI believe that souls \u2014 whatever that means \u2014 can be saved, and shaped, and starved, and stunted, lost and found and born again.<\/p>\n
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Old newspaper headlines employ the word “souls,” and we bring to that word all of our Platonic, dualistic baggage and assumptions about what that word means. But their use of the word suggests something wholly incompatible with those dualistic ideas. Their use of the word — their appeal to the concept — is quite the opposite of what we expect when we approach that word with all of the connotations we’ve absorbed from Plato and Augustine and revivalist altar-call soteriology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
A deeper shade of soul<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Old newspaper headlines employ the word "souls," and we bring to that word all of our Platonic, dualistic baggage and assumptions about what that word means. But their use of the word suggests something wholly incompatible with those dualistic ideas. Their use of the word -- their appeal to the concept -- is quite the opposite of what we expect when we approach that word with all of the connotations we've absorbed from Plato and Augustine and revivalist altar-call soteriology.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2015\/07\/11\/a-deeper-shade-of-soul\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A deeper shade of soul\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Old newspaper headlines employ the word "souls," and we bring to that word all of our Platonic, dualistic baggage and assumptions about what that word means. But their use of the word suggests something wholly incompatible with those dualistic ideas. 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