Do We Have a Soul?

Episode Outline:
0:00 Is the immortal soul really a biblical idea, or a later development?
1:16 Bart and Megan on weather, AC, heat tolerance, and British discomfort with humidity
4:52 What Bart believed about the soul when he was still a Christian
5:34 Which Bible passages Christians commonly use to support belief in an immortal soul
6:42 Why Bart now reads those passages and ancient views very differently
7:38 How modern Christian ideas about body and soul differ from Jesus and early Judaism
10:50 How Greek thought, especially Plato, helped shape the idea of the soul as immortal
13:11 What the wider Greco-Roman world thought about the soul and life after death
15:38 When early Christians began adopting immortal-soul language and why
18:14 Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians against a purely spiritualized view of resurrection
22:34 How the Gospels insist on Jesus’ bodily resurrection rather than a ghostly afterlife
24:24 Did ancient Christians think the soul existed before birth or conception?
27:43 How far the New Testament actually supports modern Christian beliefs about the soul
30:46 When the “mainstream” Christian view of the soul seems to take hold
32:36 How later Christians tried to reconcile an immortal soul with bodily resurrection
34:59 Course promo: The Bible and the Quran: Comparing Their Historical Problems
40:43 Weekly Update: Bart explains the Bible-and-Quran course and why it matters
45:54 Listener Q&A: elite authorship of the Gospels, Mark and Gnosticism, John’s chronology, and pneuma
53:53 Final summary: the most common modern Christian view of the soul came more from Greek thought than from Jesus or the Old Testament

Episode Description
Most people think that everyone has a soul that is resident in the body. The vast majority of Christians believe the soul lives on after the body dies. But ironically the vast majority of people -- even devoted readers of the Bible -- have never noticed what the biblical writers actually say about it. In this episode we look at views of the soul found in the Hebrew Bible, the teachings of Jesus, and the rest of the New Testament. Is it the standard Christian view? Do the biblical writers think the soul can live on without the body? If not, what would salvation and eternal life be? Tune in to find out!

Also watch these episodes:
The Omnipresent Fear of Death
The Omnipresent Fear of Death

Can There Be Meaning in a World without God?
Can There Be Meaning in a World without God?

If There Is a God, Why Do We Suffer?
If There Is a God, Why Do We Suffer?

Megan asks about:

Getting AC fixed today, what’s your ideal climate?

When you were a Christian, what were your beliefs about a person’s soul?

What passages from the bible did you use to support your beliefs?

As an agnostic biblical scholar, how do you understand these passages now?

How do modern Christian beliefs compare to those of Jesus and early Christians?

How did the differentiation between the soul and body come into play?

How about the wider Greco-Roman world? Did they have similar beliefs on souls to ancient Israelites, or were they more in line with Plato’s thinking?

When do we start to see early Christians buying into this idea of an eternal soul, and the fate of that soul depending on your activities during life?

Do we see any variety in beliefs about souls among different early Christian sects?

If that’s Paul’s view, what do the Gospels say about this kind of thing, if they say anything?

We’ve talked about resurrection before, but how about souls before they get born into bodies? Does the bible speak to that at all?

So, how far does the bible actually support modern Christian views about the soul, its immortality, and its fate after death?

When do you think this modern Christian view became mainstream in Christian history?

Do we see any kind of attempted resolution in early Christian writings, or do they just leave it alone?