The doctrine of the soul

1. In category mankind the real person in located in the soul. The real person is not what is observed by others around you, or even by yourself when you look in the mirror, the real person is located in the soul — Genesis 2:7. The human body is only a temporary residence for you.

2. The soul has essence, invisible and immaterial. This is why the Bible says that man was created in the image of God. God has essence which is invisible and immaterial. The invisible and immaterial essence of God is similar to the fact that man’s real being is immaterial and invisible. The soul is located somewhere in the cranium and this is the most protected part of the human body. The first characteristic of the soul is self-consciousness, which means you are aware of your own existence. Secondly, there is mentality. The mentality of the soul is divided up into two parts. The first part is called in the Greek the nouj, which is generally translated “mind.” The other part of the mentality of the soul is called kardia in the Greek, and is translated in the King James version “heart.” Heart and mind make up the mentality of the soul. The left lobe is where information is first received, and there it becomes objective knowledge. This is the only place where things start. This is, however, not the place where knowledge is useable. That place is the heart or the right lobe. Everyone has as the mentality of the soul the final objective for all information which is the heart. The heart has a frame of reference. All information in life to be useable must enter the frame of reference. Then it has a memory centre which does many things with information in the frame of reference. It starts to form a vocabulary, and the greater your vocabulary the greater your thought pattern. Then it develops from vocabulary into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, paragraphs into categories. Categories are the concepts which reside inside of your right lobe. And then you have your conscience, your norms and standards whereby you determine what is right, what is wrong, whereby you evaluate everything any everyone in life. This is also the area of the soul whereby God seeks to instill through doctrine His concepts. And then, of course, there is a launching pad. This is where you make the application, this is where the unbeliever has common sense, this is where the believer has great discernment. And on this launching pad, when it is doctrine, there is the divine viewpoint and this determines a great deal about your activities in life. So the soul possesses self-consciousness and mentality. In addition to that the third factor is volition or free will. Free will was created in man in order to extend the angelic conflict. The creation of man is for the purpose of demonstrating that Satan’s objection to the lake of fire is not valid, and to invalidate Satan’s objections man was created and given the same free will that all the angels possess. Next we have the emotion, the responder to what you have in the right lobe. If you would say, that in the human body you have male and female hormones — everyone does — then you would also have to say the same thing about the soul. The male hormone is equivalent to the heart or the right lobe, and the female is the emotion. The heart is the right man and the emotion is the right woman. The right woman responds to the right man. So the emotion is designed so that you can have a responder to what goes on in your heart or your right lobe, and that is the normal function of your emotion. As long as the emotion is responding to what you have, regardless of the area of life, it is a bona fide function. It may be in the field of music, it may be in drama, art or literature. It may be in the field of athletics or in the field of relationships with human beings, but whatever it happens to be the emotion is the responder and therefore becomes the enjoyer of the soul. However, when the emotion dominates the soul everything is out of kilter and the soul of the person who is in that status quo is destroyed.

3. The soul also has something equivalent to lungs for breathing, for inhale and exhale. The left bank of the soul is designed for taking in things in relationship with God, the right bank is for relationship with the human race.

4. The Bible distinguishes between two inner parts of man. The first inner part is the soul and the second inner part is the spirit. The original man was trichotomous — body, soul, and spirit — according to Genesis 2:7. But the unbeliever is said to be dichotomous. he is called “the soulish man” in the Greek of 1 Corinthians 2:14 and also in Jude 19. So that when Adam sinned he lost his human spirit, and one of those 36 things we receive at the point of salvation is the acquisition of the human spirit once again so that the believer is said to be trichotomous — body, soul, and spirit — in 1 Thessalonians 5:23.

5. Only the soul, not the body, was made in the image of God — Genesis 1:26,27; 2:7. Again, the image of God means not the same essence that God possesses but the same type of essence, immaterial and invisible.

6. Only the soul, not the body, is saved in regeneration — Psalm 19:7; 34:22; Mark 8:36, 37; Hebrews 10:39; 1 Peter 1:9 tell us that only the soul is saved. The body is not saved, we receive in resurrection a new body.

7. Since the soul contains knowledge — Proverbs 19:2 — it is subject to Satanic attack, according to Matthew 10:28; Ephesians 4:17-19. This is important to understand about the soul, that the soul is the source of attack, and therefore Bible doctrine’s objective is to so enter the soul as to protect the individual believer from that attack.

8. The soul, therefore, becomes a battleground during phase two — Psalm 100:33.

9. The soul is also the area of the worst type of sinning - the mental attitude sin. This is taught in Job 21:25; Zechariah 11:8.

10. Since the soul is the worst area of sinning it causes the accumulation of scar tissue. The soul, therefore, with accumulated scar tissue becomes the seat of human misery. The greatest unhappiness you will ever know will be that which resides inside your soul and is of your own making.

11. The soul is also the area for the capacities of life — capacity for love, fore example — 1 Samuel 18:1; 1 Peter 1:22. It is also the area for capacity for freedom and all of the other capacities that contribute to your happiness.

12. Physical death is the departure of the soul from the physical body — Job 27:8; Psalm 16:10; 2 Corinthians 5:8.

The Bible distinguishes between what you are in the soul and the human spirit. The human spirit is distinguished from the soul in our passage, Hebrews 4:12. In the original creation of mankind the human spirit was the basis of fellowship with God. It was the basis of having relationship with God, and when man sinned the human spirit was destroyed immediately and man was spiritually dead with no possibility of having fellowship with God. So the unbeliever is declared even today to be minus the human spirit — Jude 19; 1 Corinthians 2:14. Since the unbeliever does not possess a human spirit it is the ministry of God the Holy Spirit at the point of hearing the Gospel to take Gospel information which enters the left lobe and make that Gospel a reality. Then positive volition toward the Gospel causes the person to believe in Jesus Christ, so that even the very basis for our salvation is not even discernible or understandable until God the Holy Spirit has made it a reality in the left lobe. So the Holy Spirit, therefore, must act as a human spirit in the area of the unbeliever understanding spiritual phenomena. The human spirit is the target for storage in the function of GAP. When a believer hears Bible doctrine and it goes into his left lobe God the Holy Spirit makes that doctrine objective reality, but non-meritorious positive volition, transfers it to the human spirit where that knowledge becomes e)pignwsij. It is e)pignwsij that is useable. E)pignwsij is sucked into the right lobe. E)pignwsij is the basis for the ECS, and e)pignwsij is the basis for entering the supergrace life. So the human soul, then, becomes very important as far as the function of the believer is concerned. The spiritual IQ of the believer is determined by the amount of doctrine in his human spirit. GAP only functions when the believer is filled with the Spirit and it is the Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that gives us reality in the Christian life.