Spirit, by contrast, is powerful, imperishable, and properly spiritual. Spirit is what will make our bodies suitable for life in the heavenly realm. Souls, being biological and natural, are too corruptible and weak to provide bodies for post-resurrection existence.
Having made a contrast between psyche and pneuma, I want to now bring in the Greek word soma (body).
We've already observed how body, soul, and spirit are contrasted in 1 Thessalonians 5.23. But there are other texts where we find a psyche/soma contrast. For example:
And do not fear those who kill the body (soma) but cannot kill the soul (psyche). Rather fear him who can destroy both soul (psyche) and body (soma) in hell. (Mt 10.28)
We also see psyche show up in Revelation, where the souls of the martyrs are seen in heaven, presumably as disembodied souls:
When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls (psyches) of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. (Rev 6.9)Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed. Also I saw the souls (psyches) of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God... (Rev 20.4)
Let's pause here to note that what we find in these texts is a countervailing vision of souls, in light of what we observed in 1 Corinthians 15. What we see in texts like these is a more Platonic vision, that souls can become "disembodied" and persist, as souls, into the afterlife. This Platonic view of souls is the one that would eventually come to dominate the Western Christian imagination, down to the present day.
And so, to be clear here in the midst of this series, I don't want to suggest that the hard contrasts we've explored over the last few posts between psyche and pneuma represent the New Testament view. What we find in the New Testament are a lot of scraps and pieces that theologians have struggled to cohesively and comprehensively reconcile. In my estimation, no single theological picture I've encountered does justice to the whole of the Biblical data, and few deal directly with the psyche/pneuma contrast.
One of the curiosities about soma that has been hard to deal with, in light of Platonic visions of disembodied souls, is Paul's instance that heavenly existence is embodied. Paul's vision of embodiment is peculiar. Specifically, as we noted in the last post, Paul posits two different kinds of soma, a natural (soulish, psychical) soma and a spiritual (pneumatical) soma:
It is sown a natural (psychical) body (soma); it is raised a spiritual (pneumatical) body (soma). If there is a natural (psychical) body (soma), there is also a spiritual (pneumatical) body (soma). (1 Cor 15.44)
We know what a psychical soma is: Our natural bodies alive right now. What, then, is a pneumatical soma? Biblically, the best answer I think we get is Jesus' resurrected body. This spiritually-infused pneumatical body is also what comes into view at Jesus' transfiguration. Crucially, for the New Testament imagination, the resurrected Jesus isn't a ghost. He's not a disembodied soul. Jesus has a soma. The change is that his psychical body has been resurrected as a pneumatical body.
(Complicating this view, however, is a verse from Luke 24.39, which describes Jesus' resurrected body as "flesh (sarx) and bone." Luke and Paul both agree that the resurrected Jesus was not a ghost and had a soma. However, Luke has Jesus' resurrected body as being composed of sarx/flesh where Paul flatly says in 1 Cor. 15.50 that "flesh (sarx) and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." It's difficult to reconcile the difference here, and it's a puzzle that has vexed scholars. More about sarx and pneuma in the next post.)
Stepping back, how do these visions of embodiment fit with the Platonic vision of disembodied souls in Revelation? And what does embodiment imply for our Platonic visions about what happens to the faithful upon and after our death? These are theological puzzles the New Testament texts place before us.
What does seem clear, from Paul and the gospel accounts, is that resurrection involves embodiment. For Paul this will involve, at some point, a translation from psyche to pneuma, from a natural, soulish existence to a spiritual, pneumatical existence.
