Man is neither a body with a soul, nor a soul with a body. To be human is to be both body & soul. No person is either just a bunch of chemicals fizzing, nor simply a soul awaiting escape from the physical. As we have seen in our studies, God made man from the dust. But he didn’t stop there.
Q: What did God give Adam and Eve besides bodies?
A: He gave them souls that could never die.
(1 Corinthians 15:45: Ecclesiastes 12:7; Zechariah 12:1)
When God made Adam, he made him a living soul. He made him not merely physical, but soulish as well. In 1 Corinthians 15:35-49, Paul briefly explains the nature of the resurrection body. While Paul’s teaching on the resurrection is beyond the scope of this study, there is something important for us to glean. Paul assumes the spiritual nature of man. He doesn’t argue for it, he simply assumes it as true. He points to Genesis 2:7 as the basis of his argument about what resurrection existence will be like. That God made man a living soul is foundational for the rest of what he says.
Another place we see the presumption of this physical – spiritual dichotomy in man is Ecclesiastes 12:7. Here the Preacher says that in death, “dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” He identifies, just as Paul would later, that when God gave the breath of life to Adam, he was joining soul & body. It isn’t simply that soul is an illusion, nor that it comes from somewhere other than God, nor simply as a consequence of being alive. The soul is given by God. More than that, God, through the prophet Zechariah, describes himself as the one who, “formed the spirit of man within him.” He doesn’t just grab a soul laying around and jam it into man, rather he formed it within man. (This is in contrast with the errant teaching that we exist as souls in heaven before being placed into bodies.)
Furthermore, these souls that God gave to Adam and Eve were not temporary. They “return to God who gave it.” As the Catechism puts it, they are souls that could never die.” This is not an affirmation of universalism (the errant teaching that ultimately all people will be saved). But rather that physical death is not an ultimate end. Simply being physically dead does not guarantee freedom from the judgement of God. Death does not provide deliverance from God’s wrath, nor exclusion from his beneficent reward. This is how God constituted our first parents. He did not make them with an expiration date on them. As we will see tomorrow, this has implications far beyond Adam and Eve.
Yours in Christ,