The Nature of the Soul and Evangelism

Prepared for Christ

Louise Perry, the author of the recent book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, announced on a podcast in September 2025 that she is now a Christian.^[1] For a number of years she has served as one of the most eloquent secular critics of the sexual revolution. At only 33 years of age, she represents a resistance to the sexual revolution rapidly growing within some youth subcultures. Some young people are rethinking not only the transgender movement, but also the sexual revolution which birthed it. As Ryan T. Anderson recently said on R. Albert Mohler’s “In the Library” podcast, anthropology is the central spiritual battleground in America today.^[2] People in the broader world are not debating Christology, trinitarian theology, or even the doctrine of Scripture. It is the nature of man, especially the sexuality-related components, around which controversy swirls. Anderson noted that writing a book about the Trinity will not get your book banned from Amazon.com, but writing a book against the transgender movement might (Anderson’s book When Harry Became Sally was banned from Amazon.com for several years).

This cultural maelstrom over anthropology is a distinct opportunity for the church to evangelize the lost and foster cultural renewal conducive to evangelization. Those who are shattered by divorce, same-sex marriage, and now transgenderism have been broken by God in many ways and are now ready for the healing balm of the gospel. At the same time, the Christian view of nature and reality is being proved to be the true and genuine account of reality. And, this proclamation of the goodness and order inherent in God’s world is a way of fostering cultural circumstances favorable to gospel ministry. Louise Perry is an example of that. On the podcast where she announced her conversion she said this about Christianity: “I realized that if it were supernaturally true, you would expect it to be sociologically true. And observing quite how sociologically true it is was very persuasive to me and I know it has been to others as well.” Studying these issues led to her being mugged by reality. The Christian teachings about life are better for human wellbeing than any other option. The best explanation for that is that the whole teachings of Jesus are true. Louise Perry was prepared for Jesus by Christian ethical teachings about sex. As James R. Wood recently posted on X, the “reality-respecter to Christian pipeline is real.”^[3]

The existence of the soul

Which brings me to the topic of this piece: the soul. Discussion of the soul is out of vogue in mainstream academia, since Christianity has been replaced by the new paganism of progressive ideology. Academia is comfortable talking about the mind, since on their account the mind can be considered part of the natural world. But the soul makes people uncomfortable. “Minds” feel sanitized and respectable, but the soul hearkens back to a different time. If souls were to exist, then perhaps angels and dragons and all sorts of wild things might also. More stringent naturalists seek to reduce even the mind to something non-material on these same grounds.^[4]

This, of course, is precisely one of the cultural reasons we must talk about the soul. For, every man knows he has a soul, an immortal soul created by God and accountable to God for what it does. Our souls long for eternity and recognize a future state of either bliss or suffering. John Calvin identified this yearning for transcendence as one of the chief markers of the human soul. He writes, “In short, the many pre-eminent gifts with which the human mind is endowed proclaim that something divine is engraved upon it; all these are testimonies of an immortal essence” (Institutes I.XV.2). As we seek to renew culture and transform it in a more Christian direction, foregrounding the soul should take a central place.

Scripture speaks often about the soul, though it does not give us a packaged theory about its nature and powers. From the moment of man’s creation it is clear we have both bodily and body-transcending aspects to our being. Genesis 2:7 describes the creation of the man in this way: “Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” Here we learn that man possesses a dual nature: we are at once both dust and God-breathed life. We are a single thing, a man who is a living creature, with two aspects, the bodily and the living.

Traditional Christian theology articulates this idea by saying that man is a combination of soul and body.^[5] Calvin writes, “Furthermore, that man consists of a soul and a body ought to be beyond controversy. Now I understand by the term ‘soul’ an immortal yet created essence, which is his nobler part” (Institutes I.XV.2). We are not merely a soul temporarily attached to a body (like a piece of luggage on an airplane), nor are we merely a body without a more ephemeral and higher aspect (like a battery-powered machine). We are both body and soul — dirt and breath. The soul is our nobler part, for it more directly images God in his holiness and wisdom.^[6] But, the body is likewise part of the goodness of creation, not to be denigrated. Though the Apostle Paul yearns to be free from the body (Rom 7:24), he is speaking of the body in its fallen and corrupted condition, not the state of embodiment as a whole. While the soul can survive without the body, it is created in order to be in a body. For this reason our future state is not one of disembodied union with God, but rather a comprehensive union that will take place in the body. The church confesses that we await “the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.”^[7]

A more complete biblical theory of the soul is a challenging endeavor. Scripture utilizes a range of different terms to talk about the non-physical aspect of our being: spirit, heart, mind, etc., in both Hebrew and Greek.

The soul-body relationship

Traditional Christian thought sees two distinct ways of talking about the relationship of soul and body, ways that today go under the headings of Substance Dualism and Hylomorphism. Substance Dualism argues that the soul and body are distinct substances, or distinct things, each capable of existing on its own and possessing a distinct essential nature. The great strength of this view is that it can explain the significant differences between the soul and body. Being different things, they naturally have different powers. The challenge for this view is to explain how the person is unified as one being rather than existing as two distinct beings (the body and the soul) which interact with one another in an orderly fashion. How is a human any more a unity than two books side-by-side on a shelf: two different things which happen to be in close proximity to one another? Explaining how the human is a single entity, not just with a duality of nature or aspect, but a duality of things, is the challenge of this position.

The French philosopher Rene Descartes is perhaps the most well-known substance dualist in the tradition. In his revolutionary philosophical works he argued that matter is merely extension, and therefore that body in its essential nature is merely extended being. The soul, in contrast, is non-extended, and therefore exists as a non-material being with its distinct powers of knowing and acting. In Meditation 6 of his Meditations on First Philosophy he argued that these two distinct substances are very closely united and, “as it were, commingled with one another” so that the two form a single thing. An extended thing can obviously “commingle” with a non-extended thing only in a merely metaphorical way, or at most through psycho-somatic causal laws that interrelate the two. But, it shows that even the most stringent substance dualists seek to do justice to the unity of the human person.^[8]

The hylomorphic view of the soul argues that the soul is not a separate substance from the body, but rather is itself the form of the body. This view is strongly couched in Aristotelian metaphysics (the dominant metaphysics of the medieval and reformation eras), utilizing Aristotle’s distinction between form and matter. For Aristotle, every substance that exists has both material stuff out of which it is composed and a formal structure that makes that stuff be the kind of thing that it is. A statue is composed out of a certain material (e.g., bronze, marble) shaped into a particular organization (a statue). The statue is not merely the marble or the bronze — that very same matter could be organized into a different form (a platter or a table) and would be a different kind of thing. A human body is composed out of flesh, blood, bone, etc., as its matter, but that matter is organized into a human life. The same biological material could be arranged as other kinds of living things, say dogs, cats, and other animals, since they have the same kind of material components. But their matter is organized not as human, but with the form of a dog or a cat. According to the hylomorphic view, the form of a living thing is its soul. The soul makes that particular thing to be the kind of thing that it is by making it alive and having the distinctive powers of that kind of life.

Traditionally, this has meant that all living things possess souls, not merely human beings, though only human beings have souls that are rational. Dogs have doggy souls, oak trees have oak tree souls. Why? Because they are all alive. Every living thing has nutritive and procreative powers. Animals also have perceptual powers. But, only humans have rational souls capable of thinking, knowing, or acting with free choice. But, all plants and animals are alive. Their essential form — what it is to be them — is to be a living being and so they possess the principle of life within them: soul. Human beings possess a unique kind of life, of course, because we are rational.^[9]

In their historical form, both the Substance Dualist and the Hylomorphist acknowledge that rational activities go beyond the physical. The Hylomorphist, like the substance dualist, argues that when we grasp concepts, understand essences, perform mathematical calculations, and make free choices, we are engaging in an activity that is in an important sense disembodied. While digestion and perception happen in the body and are mediated by bodily organs like stomachs, intestines, eyes, and ears, the rational activities of thinking and choosing happen without a corresponding physical part. While the brain is obviously very important for human consciousness and the activities of the mind, still it makes sense to talk about how our minds might be able to think even if our brain were destroyed. It is very difficult to talk about how we might digest without a stomach or intestines, or how we might perceive objects without having an organ of perception. Reason, unlike the other powers of the human soul, is truly incorporeal. The Substance Dualist takes this to be powerful evidence in his favor, though the Hylomorphist thinks his own view can accommodate it.

Without resolving this issue, we might note how each view offers potential strengths in thinking about our cultural moment. The substance dualism view emphasizes the uniqueness of man in nature. We have a unique differentiator, a soul, that makes us totally different from the natural substances around us. This soul makes us in God’s image, bearing God’s creative mark, and points us toward a higher calling and destiny. We are not merely dust, we are sons of God being called back to God himself.

The hylomorphic view still makes humanity unique in our rationality, but emphasizes how we are part of a unified and orderly creation. Man is not mere will or free choice, but is part of God’s created order, subject to the same laws of nature and part of the same network of forces as the rest of creation. Though unique in our rational powers, we still came from dust and from dust we will return (Gen 3:19).

The origin of the soul

Christians have also debated the question of the origin of the soul, with two well-known camps emerging over time. One camp, the Creationists, argue that each individual soul is created directly by God. While the body is produced by the union of the parents, through the mingling of their seed, the soul is created immediately by God. Each individual soul thus involves a supernatural creative act in bringing it into being. The alternative camp, the Traducians, argue that just as the body is generated by the union of the parents, so also the soul. Each of our souls, then, is something that we receive through a process of natural generation from our parents in the ordinary course of nature and is not separately created by God and infused into the body.

One strength of the Traducian view is how it explains the heritability of original sin. If the soul of the parents produces the soul of the children, it is easy to see how the original sin of the parents is inherited by the children. We receive our corrupt human nature from our corrupted parents. On the Creationist view, God seems to have to create the individual soul as a corrupted thing. In addition to the theological worry of making God the author of evil, the view also has to explain how we can inherit our original sin.

Nevertheless, the majority Christian view has been that of Creationism. Reformed theologian Francis Turretin offers a three-fold argument in favor of the Creationist view: from creation, from Scripture, and from natural reason.^[10] In the creation of Adam, we see God directly creating Adam’s soul as he breathes life into the body.  He writes, “the origin of our souls ought to be the same as Adam’s.” Second, scripturally, there are a wide range of passages that teach the unique creation of the soul. Zechariah 12:1 speaks of the Lord “forming the spirit of man within him.” Hebrews 12:9 contrasts our earthy fathers with God who is the “Father of spirits.” Turretin arranges more than a dozen scriptural references which strongly drive toward the Creationist view. Rationally, Turretin argues that the immortality of the soul points to the necessity of immediate creation. If the soul was generated by human parents, coming into being from the union of the matter contained in the parents’ seed, then likewise when the body is dissolved in death the soul would be destroyed. But, the testimony of Scripture and reason is that the rational soul is immortal, being in itself simple and not composed of parts. Hence, Creationism.

Preparing the way

Like the Substance Dualist view, the Creationist view emphasizes the unique nature of man’s soul as well as its source in God. Man is not a mere part of nature, but the object of God’s special love, care, and even creative act. While other things may be produced by secondary causes through God’s ordinary providence and conservation, human souls are special, individual products of God’s direct creative activity. Mankind truly is beloved of God. On the other hand, the Traducian view emphasizes the organic unity of man across time and place. We are part of the fabric of the created world, unique to be sure, but still enmeshed in the forces within the story.

The best of both views seeks to recognize certain fundamental scriptural truths: we are a duality of dust and spirit. We are both part of a finite, historical created order and yet we are a truly unique part of it. We are subject to corruption in our bodies, but we also somehow transcend our finitude with our minds, grasping things beyond the material. We are meant to live well in this world and the next, but we can only do that if we unite with our transcendent, loving, Creator and Redeemer God.

Can philosophy help in this endeavor, and can a rehabilitation of the natural help prepare for the supernatural? I will let Herman Bavinck have the final word. He writes:

The idea and existence of God, the spiritual independence and eternal destiny of the world, the moral world order and its ultimate triumph — all these are problems that never cease to engage the human mind. Metaphysical need cannot be suppressed. Philosophy perennially seeks to satisfy that need. It is general revelation that keeps that need alive. It keeps human beings from degrading themselves into animals. It binds them to a supersensible world. It maintains in the awareness that they have been created in God’s image and can only find rest in God. General revelation preserves humankind in order that it can be found and healed by Christ and until it is. To that extent natural theology used to be correctly denominated a “preamble of faith,” a divine preparation and education for Christianity. General revelation is the foundation on which special revelation builds itself up.^[11]

[1] Macdonald-Laurer Institute Podcast, September 11, 2025. https://macdonaldlaurier.ca/its-time-to-complicate-the-wests-account-of-progressivism-louise-perry-and-peter-copeland-for-inside-policy-talks/

[2] R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “In the Library: Ryan T. Anderson,” September 24, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7igTQjRIPkQ

[3] James R. Wood, X Post, September 26, 2025, 4:09 p.m., https://x.com/jamesrwoodtheo/status/1971608091398754379. Wood invented the phrase in his article “Evangelicals Must Stop Their Preferential Treatment of the Left,” First Things, July 18, 2024.

[4] See, for example, Paul M. Churchland, Matter and Consciousness, 3^rd ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013).

[5] Theologians refer to this as “dichotomy.” See the essay by Drew Sparks, REFERENCE ARTICLE IN THIS ISSUE

[6] See Calvin’s Discussion in Institutes I.XV.3–4.

[7] This is the final statement in The Apostles’ Creed.

[8] For a recent defense of substance dualism see chapter 11 of J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2003).

[9]  For a recent defense of the hylomorphic view, see Ed Feser, Immortal Souls (Neunkirchen-Seelscheid: Editiones Scholasticae, 2024). Some “Scotistic” hylomorphists argue we also need a personal individuator in addition to our matter and our human form. See, for example, Tom Ward, Ordered By Love: An Introduction to John Duns Scotus (Brookly, NY: Angelico Press, 2002), Ch. 6.

[10] Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, vol. 1, First through Tenth Topics, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., trans. George Musgrave Giger (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1992), V.13.

[11] Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), Vol 1, p. 322.