Soul is the lubricant between the spirit and the mind body. The body exists as substance for the soul to possess. It does this through mind. The soul exists as substance for spirit to possess. The soul is the utility of the spirit.. How would a spirit know what walking is, if he never had legs. How could he have legs, if he had no body, how could he control his body if he had no mind, how could his mind be accountable for his body if he had no soul? How can we know the true purpose of the soul? The utility of the soul is different then its purpose.
The first purpose of the soul is to be loved by God. We were made in Love, by Love, and for Love. God is Love. God made us to enjoy us. This is the purpose of the soul- to find what made us and return to Him. (And then He will return to us, though He never truly left us…) To worship him is our soul's purpose. To pray is our soul's purpose.
The secondary purpose of the soul is to be the utility of the spirit. The mind is the utility of the body. Soul is different then mind. Mind is more result of body then result of soul. The body is controlled by two forces; The mind and the spirit The soul sits between them.
The first human form is our body, along with the brain, its members, its mental states, its electromagnetic pulses of the brain, etc… ) A human born with brain damage that survives childbirth and infanthood grows into a deformed shadow of the proper human form. His arms and legs are atrophied severely. He must be changed twice a day, fed with a tube, and given multiple medications. His conscious mind (awareness) consists of sensitivity to light, hot and cold, hungers, pains, pleasures, no matter how minute. He also lacks the ability of reason, and rationality. Yet I still suggest the brain damaged human has a mind. He does not have a soul. [Whether God took the soul away by his Omni-power, or whether it is a result of the nature of the soul to abandon an unfit host is not important for our discussion at this point] The soul is not the mind of man.
Contrary to Aristotle, I give much more honor to the definition of a soul then to say a plant and an animal has a soul. We are talking about two extremely different forms of soul, so much that I wouldn't call them both "soul" I don't find there a scientific justification of why we should assume this brain damaged man has a soul. It is not a human ethics topic. It is just a refusal to accept that a soul so far separated from its potentiality could still be called a soul. The potentiality of the body is a Human Being; which is not equivalent to a Human Soul. 'Human being' is the awareness of "being human." Human soul is the awareness of being. Awareness of being is Soul. Animals, though they have being, are not aware that they have being. They just are minds controlling and being controlled by instincts.. Humans have these instincts as well. But when God gave us the Word, Himself, for God is the Word, (In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1) and He breathed (spoke) life unto us, we as a species received the ability to be rational. Without the Word human is mere animal. With the Word, we become superior to all first forms of life. (What is meant here by the Word is not specifically Christ and/or the bible.. I simply mean the ability to use language, the very thing which makes us what we are.)
Our human instincts (of which has been corrupted) can be influenced by the mind or the spirit. Animals are unaccountable to morality. Human, because they have been given language, developed reason, logos, and became accountable to morality. Its one thing for a lion to kill its prey for food, and another for a man to murder in an act of blind rage. Animals do not have passion per se.. Minds without reason do not have passion. But minds can be ruled by passions because God gave us reason. The master of these passions and potentials is the soul. When the soul attempts to do this by its own internal power, the mind gives in to the body's carnal instincts and selfish desires, and it can no longer master them. God gives us more then the Word when “The Word became flesh and walked among us.” Satan is anti-Christ. He is a deceiver. He tries to corrupt not the Word (because it is incorruptible) but he tries and corrupt our bodies, hence our minds, and finally our souls. This invasion of the mind by an external force is to influence the soul away from the Life and to lead it unto death.
Our soul may follow one of two forces. Holy Spirit, and Anti-Christ. If we live merely in the body, and are captive to its desires and temptations we cannot hear from God. If we live in “the Spirit” our soul is empowered to overcome the flesh. We feed either the carnal man or the spiritual man. They are at war with each other. The bible speaks of how we are aliens here on this earth. We are foreigners in a strange land. We don't feel at home in the corrupted body. Most people can identify with this deep spiritual feeling.
The battle begins in the Body because of sickness and satanic corruption. It continues in the mind as we struggle against our corrupted desires, It rages on in the soul and this is where our self battles the mind for dominance. It continues in the spirit and was finished when Christ was resurrected and once and for all defeated Satan for us. It is through the spirit we overcome the corruption, by receiving the Spirit of God, It is by our faith, through our souls, not of mind (reason).
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