BarneyFife
Well-Known Member
Biblical truth is not commentary, which is what I was addressing. Clearly, we're having trouble staying away from word games. I was also trying to avoid direct insults. However, your commentary is arrogant, dismissive, and exaggerated. And your use of boldface within biblical text is prejudiced and draws away attention from other words and phrases that have equal import (e.g., 2 Corinthians 5:3). It is one thing to draw attention to something that isn't obvious; it is another to try to fashion a doctrine from undue emphasis.
Seeing the “Souls”
The tacit depiction of human beings sandwiched between John’s two references that he “saw the souls” is multifaceted. It touches both inner immaterial and corporeal realities of human nature and experience. Implications for understanding the book’s anthropology are considerable.
Since the word soul occurs for the first time here in Revelation’s running narrative (6:9), what does it mean? Is it something spiritual, figurative, or immaterial? Are these souls alive, which would indicate that the soul is immortal? What does the phrase regarding the souls under the altar mean? Is the altar described here the brazen altar of sacrifice or the golden altar of incense? Is this altar in heaven or on earth? What does this scene portray if taken literally? A simple reading of the text states that these souls are slain, which means they are dead, not alive.
The word translated as “soul” occurs seven times in Revelation. John is not speaking of disembodied souls that have left their bodies at death and “gone to heaven.” Twice the word refers to life itself: in Revelation 8:9, “a third of the living creatures in the sea died”; in 12:11, overcomers in Christ’s blood “‘did not love their life even when faced with death’” (NASB). Here the soul or life is juxtaposed with death, implying opposites, in which death fundamentally terminates the soul. The soul as life can be either human or non-human. But it can refer as well to a “being” as a creature or person. “Every living creature in the sea died” (Rev. 16:3); “slaves, that is, human souls” (18:13, ESV). The former, as with Revelation 12:11, suggests that a “living soul” can die.
Revelation 18:13 places souls alongside its only use of the word translated as “bodies” in the entire book. Many translations gloss over this evocative connection altogether when either interpreting bodies as “slaves” or implying that bodies are separate and distinct from the human soul. The NKJV reads: “bodies and souls of men.” The NLT reads: “bodies—that is, human slaves.” Interestingly, Revelation uses the word translated as “corpse” three times when referring to dead bodies (11:8, 9), suggesting that in 18:13 a living body is in view and that the concepts of “bodies” and “human souls” are synonymous. In other words, as the text refers to the exploitation of “bodies,” John envisions the entire person (human soul). Revelation 18:13 would better be translated “bodies—that is, human souls” (i.e., “human beings”).
Though the notion of “slaves” is evident from the context (or perhaps, “prostitutes”), the anthropological implications of the phrase’s construction moves the attentive reader beyond the moral dysfunction of exploitation itself to nuancing the reality of human beings in their essence—as embodied beings. Furthermore, the fallen culture depicted by materialistic and consumer-oriented Babylon views human beings as a mere commodity on a par with jewelry, clothing, furniture, perfume, food, cattle, and chariots (Rev. 18:11–13).
In Babylon’s worldview, human beings are mere objects. They are bodies to be exploited, marketed, and discarded—regardless of the fact that they are persons. This phrase is not only insightful in terms of its critique of the exploitation of human beings, but also rich with corresponding anthropological implications. It focuses on the reality of the organic unity of body and human soul as well. When you sell the body, you sell the human soul—the person. This human soul/person includes who she or he is in her or his desires, emotions, feelings, thinking, inner self. Thus, when one speaks of the human soul, body is assumed and vice versa.
Finally, soul refers to the seat of one’s desires: “The fruit for which your soul longed has gone from you’” (Rev. 18:14, ESV). Here the inner self is clearly in focus, albeit with a body assumed to experience whatever is desired.
That Revelation would (1) twice portray sea creatures as having (8:9) or being(16:3) souls; (2) equate the human soul with the body (18:13); and (3) place the soul in juxtaposition with death as opposites (12:11; 16:3) reveals how it echoes anthropological realities found in the Genesis narrative. Genesis 2:7 records that “the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being [i.e., a living soul].”
One does not have a soul; one is a soul—a living being, a living person. The breath of life unites with the inanimate body, transforming it into a living being. Revelation echoes this chronicle of Adam’s creation in its narrative of the two witnesses who are killed and whose dead bodies lay lifeless in the street for three and a half days: “After the three-and-a-half days the breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and great fear fell on those who saw them” (Rev. 11:11). Though some scholars suggest that Revelation 11 echoes Ezekiel 37:10 with its vision of the dry bones standing up with life when God breathes His Spirit upon them, it is the Genesis narrative that is foundational for both books’ prophetic imagery of spiritual revival and empowerment for mission. That both human and nonhuman life in Revelation is a soul likewise echoes Genesis anthropology, in which the breath of life is given to both humankind and other animate creatures.
Revelation, then, does not support the Platonic view of the immortality of the soul. It does not describe the soul as a separable and intangible entity of a person. Rather, the word soul means the person or the whole being itself. As referred to above in the context of human beings, i.e., the souls under the altar, the word soul provides the broadest anthropological referent in an otherwise apocalyptic visionary context.
This anthropological referent suggests that the cosmic conflict is concerned with the whole person, not just the physical body or the inner life. The implications for anthropology touch the human phenomenon in its entirety—the inner, physical, personal, social, spiritual, moral, psychological, emotional, cultural, and life-framing worldview. This nuances to the fullest the imagery of human angst with regard to theodicy and the scope of divine redemption envisioned in Revelation’s re-creation.
