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The Soul is Imparted at Birth

(Borrowing most of this from Robert Thieme’s The Origin of Human Life)

The Bible teaches plainly, and Christians believe that the soul and body are separate entities making-up human beings (along with the optional spirit, upon faith in Christ). The Bible is clear that soul life coincides with breath and birth. The Bible passages used to support the common Christian presumption that soul life originates in the womb are misapplied or misunderstood.

One popular mistaken support is a misunderstanding of the narrative by Luke of an interchange between Mary and Elizabeth. Elizabeth is pregnant with the fetus (baby, if you prefer) that would be John (the Baptist, or baptizer). Mary, after hearing from an angel that she would become pregnant and give birth to the Messiah and that her relative Elizabeth was already six months pregnant in her old age, rushed to Elizabeth’s town, and upon entering her home greeted her. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, her fetus “leaped [moved about] in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit” (Luke 1:41). Elizabeth then exclaims how blessed is Mary and she excitedly mentions, “as soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.” An interpretation that assigns the joy to the fetus is natural because of our English expression, “jump for joy,” but “leaped for joy,” can be translated, “moved by means of joy, i.e., her own joy. The Greek ‘en’ for ‘for’ is an extremely versatile preposition most accurately interpreted by its context; ‘in the sphere of ‘and ‘because of,’ are other common usages for ‘en’. If the writer intended to establish a doctrine of pre-birth soul life, the Greek personal pronoun for ‘his’ could have been inserted to ascribe the joy to the fetus, i.e., “moved because of his joy,” rather than require the reader to infer the absurd notion that the baby understood the significance of Mary. But rather than specify that something so peculiar was occurring, Luke (a doctor, by the way), in his description of the event, merely states, “When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in the womb.” (Thieme).

In Elizabeth’s response, she compliments Mary for believing the message of her own special future pregnancy, which suggests that she also received this angelic news, so clearly she became suddenly excited upon hearing from Mary in this surprise appearance. The excitement would cause a quickened pulse rate now pumping adrenaline into the placenta, which can cause reflexive movement of the fetus—common in pregnancies. (Thieme).

It was Elizabeth who heard Mary and was filled with the Spirit, with no mention of the baby doing either! Certainly this is a wonderful and meaningful Biblical event. But, to perceive this as an account of the conscious soul of John responding in happiness at the presence of Mary is more mystical than miraculous.

Another Biblical reference presumed to support soul life in the womb is a statute in the Law of Moses (Ex. 21:24) that calls for retaliation in the case of a pregnant innocent bystander who is struck causing a premature birth, resulting in serious injury to mother or child. In this scenario, the baby is born alive, With no penalty mentioned in the case of a stillbirth or miscarriage, this law seems to rather support the case for soul life beginning at birth.

There’s the popular pro-life bumper sticker quote: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jer. 1:5). This merely demonstrates God’s foreknowledge and his creative design in biological reproduction. ‘Formed,’ in this verse is ‘yastar,’ meaning to form from existing material. A human soul, created in the image of the invisible God, hardly fits this description. The word identifies biological formation. (Theme)

Christians commonly assume that conception is the profound event when human life begins. But a study of the biological reproductive process might bring that into question. The zygote, the fertilized egg, does not contain the entire genetic information required to become a human being, and so cannot by itself determine that a person will develop. As the zygote receives more genetic information from the mother its cells divide becoming a cell mass, or morula, from which is formed the placenta, other fetal membranes, and the embryo. Only the embryo is capable of becoming a human being. Also, if the soul (as described by the Bible) is basically the mind of the individual, then shouldn’t there be a brain first? Such things as mentality, self-consciousness, volition, emotion, and conscience occur my means of the nervous system. (Thieme, 19).

Though many argue for conception, or some other moment within the term of pregnancy, as the time the soul might be created or joined with the fetus, the Bible is clear that this occurs only at birth.

The Book of Genesis includes an account of the creation of the first man. First biological life is formed, and then a soul is joined to biological life, creating human life:

Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being (Gen. 2:7, italics added).

The reasonable inference from Scripture is that God imparts a soul (the breath of life) into the infant’s nostrils at birth before his first exhale. There are many Scripture verses that speak of this ‘breath of life’:

Stop regarding man whose breath of life [neshamah hayyah] is in his nostrils (Isaiah 2:22a).

For I will not contend forever [with Israel], neither will I always be angry; for the spirit [ruach, human life] would grow faint before Me, and the breath [neshamah, spark of life, soul life] of those whom I have made (Job 1:21).

Then the dust [biological life] will return to the earth as it was, and the breath [soul life] will return to God who gave it (Eccl. 12:7).

The Spirit of God has made me [a human being], and the breath [neshamah, soul life] of [from] the Almighty gives me [chayyah, human] life (Job 33:4).

Thus says God the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and its offspring, who gives breath [neshamah, spark of life, soul life] to the people on it, and spirit [ruach, human life] to those who walk on it (Isa. 42:5). [Notice the joining of God’s past creation with on ongoing action, His ongoing creation of the soul].

Besides these myriad of associations of breath with life and soul, there are so many passages that set the boundary for human life at birth.

A time to be born, and a time to die (Eccl. 3:2).

For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us (Isa. 9:6).

Truly I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist (Matt. 11:11).

And the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which shall be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord (Luke 2:10-11).” [It was the birth of Christ that was celebrated, not His conception].

You know, for you were born then, and the number of your days is great (Job 38:21).

Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return there (Job 1:21a) [Returning to the womb, as a metaphor for death, implies an absence of soul in the womb (because of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul)].

The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life (Job 33:4).

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3) [Jesus didn’t use ‘conceived again,’ in this analogy to spiritual life].

According to the Bible, without the soul, destruction of a fetus (as offensive as that may be) is not murder. In His establishment of capital punishment, God decreed,

Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God [related to the soul] He made man (Gen. 9:6).

Murder, then, depends upon the possession of a soul. And the Bible makes clear that the soul is created at birth. 


Works Cited

Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1977.

Thieme, R.B. The Origin of Human Life. Houston, Texas: R.B. Thieme, Jr., Bible Ministries, 1992.

Wuest, Kenneth. Word Studies in the Greek New Testament. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1942.

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Feelings . . . nothing more than feelings . . .

Contrary to current psycho-babble, your feelings don't need to be validated. Feelings, by nature are neither valid nor invalid, because feelings are by their nature not facts that can be determined to be true or false. The existence of your feelings can be recognized and accepted, but your feelings themselves are just emotions. You feel how you feel. Emotions are a free gift from God and a natural component of your humanity. To our relief, our feelings don’t have to be right or wrong, and they can’t be. You have a right to your feelings or non-feelings on any matter. If your mind is working as designed, your emotions are responders to thoughts. Thoughts can be validated. You THINK that this ball is round. You THOUGHT I was being generous. These thoughts can be checked for alignment against some framework of reality. Feelings are experiential responders which may or may not be responding to truth. Sometimes we don’t know the thought that is the source of our feelings. Perhaps we are very intuitive. Our subconscious is forming an opinion (a thought) to which feelings are responding. We are experiencing a feeling before fully expressing the thought behind it. We might use that feeling as an indicator in making a decision. Fine. Hopefully we will later identify the thought behind the feeling in order to improve our decision-making process. Be careful, though, to not create a thought based on a feeling. Then you are turning your feelings into thought-generators. At best, your feelings are indicators. Anyway, your feelings are meant to be physically and psychically experienced as responses to your thoughts about what is happening. Negative emotions such as jealousy are based on bad thoughts. Some emotions are unpleasant but not necessarily negative, such as sorrow—not to be avoided at all costs. We sometimes abuse ourselves and others with our feelings by demanding that they be validated and by making them the cause of our thoughts. Sometimes we generate and express an emotion in order to manipulate the actions of others. We abuse emotion as a problem-solving device. We can become emotion bullies and emotion addicts. We protect our emotion addiction, this intangible-substance addiction that allows us to deny the reality too painful for us to contemplate. We adopt an emotional mode of operation. Our emotion becomes an excuse to disconnect from others who want to share thoughts too challenging to our worldview or personal preferences. If we begin to adopt a worldview that is contrary to the perceivable reality, emotion will substitute for thoughts in forming judgments and in defending our view. Emotion when abused and misused is a defense mechanism, not a problem-solver---and even at its most appropriate expression is no problem-solver at all.

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Context is everything.

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Let’s conduct a little exercise to see if thinking through an issue versus emotionally reacting to an issue helps reach a more truthful conclusion. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/428492/antonin-scalia-affirmative-action-comments-horrify-liberals

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Social critic Neil Postman contrasted the worlds of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World in the foreword of his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death. He writes: What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World

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A little bit of a concern