Practicing Theological Interpretation (Theological Explorations for the Church Catholic): Engaging Biblical Texts for Faith and Formation by Joel B. Green

Author:Joel B. Green [Green, Joel B.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Bible—Hermeneutics, REL006400, Wesley, Bible—Theology, 1703–1791, John Wesley, REL006080, John
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

The “Rational Soul” of the Creeds

The Chalcedonian Definition of the Faith begins,

We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach people to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in humanity; truly God and truly human, of a rational soul and body [ἐκ ψυχῆς λογικῆς καὶ σώματος, ek psychēs logikēs kai sōmatos], coessential with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the humanity.[110]

Similarly, the Athanasian Creed affirms that the Lord Jesus Christ “is God and human,” developing this affirmation, in part, by the phrase “Perfect God: and perfect human, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting [ex anima rationali et humana carne subsistens].”[111] This claim is later repeated: “For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one person [nam sicut rationalis et caro unus est homo]: so God and human is one Christ.”[112] The question that I want to pursue involves the significance of the expression “reasonable soul” or “rational soul.”

The phrase λογικὴ ψυχή (logikē psychē), “rational soul,” is used at the turn of the era as a shorthand for referring to an aspect of the soul expounded in Plato. By the end of the fourth century AD, however, what once was a terminological gloss had become thoroughly standardized and Neoplatonized.

Neither Plato nor Aristotle uses the phrase in any of his surviving works, but it was used later among writers discussing Platonic and Aristotelian ideas and attributed to Greek philosophers in a handful of fragments. Plato had spoken of a complex inner person, however, a soul composed of either two or three species or powers,[113] the most important in either version being reason or rationality (λόγος [logos, “reason”] or λογιστικός [logistikos, “endued with reason, rational”]). In many cases in ancient sources, “soul” simply denotes a human person. This usage is found in, for example, Acts 27:37, where Luke writes, “In all, there were two hundred and seventy-six of us [αἱ πᾶσαι ψυχαί, hai pasai psychai] on the ship” (CEB). But “soul” could also be used of nonhuman creatures. Modifying a “soul” as “rational” would immediately signal that the author was talking about humans rather than plants or animals.

The earliest reliable instances of the phrase “rational soul” come from the first-century Alexandrian Jew Philo, who worked with Platonic categories by distinguishing between irrational souls (created with the bodies of humans and animals) and rational souls (created earlier, prior to their taking up lodging in human bodies). Following Stoic and medical theories of the soul,[114] he identified the irrational soul with the blood, and the superior or rational soul with the mind. Sketching the creation of the world by God, Philo observes in On the Creation of the World 66 that, as the crowning glory of creation, “He made man, and bestowed on him mind par excellence,”[115] which he then labels “the soul of the soul” (ψυχῆς τινα ψυχήν, psychēs tina psychēn) (my translation).[116]

More interesting for our purposes, though, is Philo’s specialized use

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