A Primitive Concept

A Primitive Concept

You’re right, you won’t generally see me using the word “soul.” It is a hazy and archaic religious notion which supposes that “spirit” comes into the material body at some point in time, and exits at a subsequent time. The spirit or soul, of course, is claimed to be the “divine” part of a human being.

A Professor of Religious Studies has pointed out: “Roman Catholicism contends that the soul is created at conception; some Protestant groups have said it starts fourteen days after conception; a Jewish tradition says forty days after conception for boys and ninety days after for girls; and Islam maintains that an angel breathes the life force into the fetus 120 days into pregnancy. Though they disagree on the exact moment of ‘ensoulment’, the Western traditions are united in saying the soul comes into being at a particular moment in time.”

Where, apart, is this soul lingering until an embryo begins to form? If, in time, it comes from somewhere and later goes somewhere, it is time-bound, temporal. It would be (at best) an object in movement within that which is eternal and unmoving—no different than the human body, which is transitory. Therefore, the soul itself is not the essence of being, which the divine ever-present is considered to be: it is of no more importance, compared to the ultimate reality, than is the impermanent body itself. St. Denis, Bishop of Paris circa 250 A.D.: “The ultimate Reality is not soul…nor is it a spirit….”