destruction. It is created with capacities to know God and to love Him; these capacities are God's dwelling-places in the human race; and therefore it is plain that the soul to which they belong cannot perish. This explains to us the Divine declaration, "Because I live, ye shall live also."[1]
But although the soul is a spiritual body, endowed with immortality, we must always remember that it does not live of itself; it is simply an imperishable organism created for the reception and manifestation of life from the Lord. It is "in Him we live and move and have our being:"[2] "there is a spirit in man; and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding:" "the Spirit of God hath made him, and the breath of the Almighty hath given him life."[3] It is easy to see this difference between the soul of man and the life by which he lives; moreover, it is beautifully distinguished in the original Greek by two different words, namely, psyche and zoe, both of which are sometimes rendered "soul:" but by psyche is properly meant the spiritual organism of the soul, and by zoe the life from God by which it lives.[4]
- ↑ John xiv. 19.
- ↑ Acts xvii. 28.
- ↑ Job xxxii. 8.; xxxiii. 4.
- ↑ The term soul is made use of, in the literal sense of the Scriptures, with at least seven different significations. It is this variety which led Cruden to say that the word is very equivocal (Concordance, Soul); nevertheless he has enumerated five different meanings of it. Hence, with only one idea attached to the word, it is easy to get confused when speaking of the soul of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Scriptures assign to Him a soul different from that soul which is signified by 'the life' which He is. For instance, He said, 'My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death.' 'Now is my soul troubled.' But in these passages the original term is ψυχη (psyche) which is well known to denote the anima of the body; yet the same word is sometimes rendered 'life;' as 'I lay down my (ψυχη) life for the sheep;' and thus the translators of, our English version, in departing from a uniform rendering of the
