Let’s Take “Soul” Out of Salvation

My lips will shout for joy when I sing praises to You; and my soul, which You have redeemed.  Psalm 71:23  NASB

Redeemed – By now you know that “soul” is an entirely Greek (and mistaken) representation of a “part” of Man.  It’s based on Plato’s view that the rational is the real.  The psyche (“soul”) is that part of Man that is his reason connected to the divine, pure, rational world from which he descended.  The body is the corrupt, evil, passion part of Man holding him back from purity.  From this, Christianity accepted the eternal existence of the soul as opposed to the material body that (thankfully!) deteriorates and doesn’t keep us locked in its fleshly prison.  In heaven, accordingly, we will put on a new, immortal body not subject to all those terrible temptations like sex, food, drinking, power, etc.  Frankly, the only Scriptural reason Christianity went along with Plato is that Paul wrote in Greek, and since there is no exact Greek equivalent for the Hebrew term nepeš, Paul used what was available, that is, soma (body), nous (mind), and psyche(soul/spirit).  We’ve suffered ever since.

Hebrew, of course, does not have a bi-partite or tri-partite view of Man.  Man is nepeš, the homogenized mixture of all that makes a man human.  Volition, emotion, physical and spiritual, thought, relationship—it’s all in the same word, without distinction.  Of course, translating this means adopting our worldview, so even if we’re particularly careful, we still end up speaking as if we were made up of parts (see that list in the previous sentence).  Like some other Hebrew terms, there really just isn’t any way to move between Hebrew and Greco-Roman Indo-European languages accurately.  If you’re not a native, ancient world, speaker, you just won’t get it.  Sorry.

But at least we can be aware that we don’t quite get it.  And that means we won’t be confused by the term pādâ.  This Hebrew verb means, “to achieve the transfer of ownership from one to another through payment of a price or an equivalent substitute.”^[1]  It’s not about salvation, that is, going to Heaven because my sins have been forgiven.  It’s about getting out of a tight jam, getting reinforcements, discovering a hidden supply of ammunition, “lighting up” the enemy. How?  By moving under the banner of another sovereign.  It’s anything but heavenly escape.

The word was given special religious significance by the Exodus. When God delivered Israel from servitude to Egypt, he did so at the price of the slaughter of all the firstborn in Egypt, man and beast (Ex 4:23; 12:29). Consequently, the event was to be perpetually commemorated in Israel by the consecration of all the firstborn of man and beast to the Lord (Ex 13:12).^[2] (my italics)

I guess we forgot about that when Christianity contended that it replaced Israel.  Instead, Christianity found other fodder in this word.

The semantic development of pādâ is one of great significance to Christian theology. Originally, it had to do with the payment of a required sum for the transfer of ownership, a commercial term. Exodus and Lev 19:20 speak of the redemption of a slave girl for the purpose of marriage. It is also used to speak of the redemption of a man’s life who is under the sentence of death, as in I Sam 14:45, when Jonathan was redeemed by the people of Israel.^[3]

Paradigms!  Oh, they are so powerful.  All those people thinking the same way, convincing themselves that they have the real truth.  Jesus paid the price.  Heaven is on the horizon.  My days of grief are over.  Too bad the poet never met Luther, then he would have understood his own words so much better.

Topical Index:  ransom, pādâ, rescue, Psalm 71:23

^[1] Coker, W. B. (1999). 1734 פָּדָה. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 716). Chicago: Moody Press.

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] Coker, W. B. (1999). 1734 פָּדָה. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 716). Chicago: Moody Press.