Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 05045. Are soul and spirit two words for one thing, or two distinct parts of you? That is the heart of the long debate between dichotomy, the view that a human being consists of body plus one immaterial element, and trichotomy, the view that we are body, soul, and spirit as three genuinely distinct…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 05044. The relationship between brain and soul becomes intensely practical the day someone you love starts to disappear behind dementia, a stroke, or a brain injury. The face is familiar, the body is present, and yet memory, personality, and recognition seem to be draining away. What is actually happening to the person? Is the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 05043. Human consciousness has become an urgent theological topic, because machines now imitate so much of what we do that many people are asking whether anything distinguishes us at all. Artificial intelligence writes essays, composes music, holds conversations, and passes examinations. The question I am asked with increasing frequency, sometimes anxiously, is whether Scripture…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 5030. The human soul is spoken of everywhere and defined almost nowhere. We say a singer has soul, that a ship sank with all souls aboard, that someone sold his soul for success. Behind the loose talk sits one of the deepest questions a person can ask: is there something to me beyond my…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 5025. The breath of life is what turned a beautifully shaped pile of dust into a living man. “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” (Genesis 2:7). One verse, two movements: forming, then…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 5001. The mind and brain question sits at one of the most interesting crossroads of science and Scripture. Neuroscience has mapped the brain in astonishing detail, tracing the neural correlates of memory, emotion, and decision, and treating disorders of thought with increasing skill. Every Christian should be thankful for that work. But none of…