Body and Soul

Tough Questions for Christians #23—The Soul
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AZ’s question is a good one and one I’ve thought about a lot. We know that drugs effect the mind. We also know that brain trauma effects the mind, as well as mental illness. Christians claim that the mind is located in the soul. But how can physical causes effect something located in the soul?

This is another case where Greek philosophy and ideals have effected Hebrew and Christian theology. The mind-body divide is not clear in Scripture as it is in, say, Plato. It is the adaption of Plato’s basic philosophical conclusion of the divide between the body and the spirit that we have this issue between a body-mind disconnect.

But in the Scripture, the mind is located in the heart, thus, in the body. This is one of the reasons that Scripturally, heaven is not about discorporal spirits floating in the air, but the resurrection of the body. This does not mean that un-embodied life doesn’t exist, but this is existence that is dream-like, not actually life. Our hope is the resurrection and renewal of the body, because only there does the full person reside.

Thus, it should be no surprise to Scriptural Christians that what effects the body also effects the mind, because they are deeply connected. For this reason Christians have always been concerned with the health of the body, for it is in health that one can best and most fully serve God.