The Life and Times of the Human Soul Biblical Witness, Personal Experience, and the Hope of Resurrection

A Living Soul

Genesis does not describe God constructing a body and then inserting a completed spiritual person into it as a mechanic might fit a motor into a chassis.

God forms the man from the dust, breathes into him the breath of life, and the man becomes a living nephesh.

The Hebrew word nephesh—נפש—may be translated as “soul”, “life”, “person”, or “living being”, depending upon the context. It can refer to the whole person, personal life, desire, appetite, or the inward self. Animals are also called living nephesh in Genesis 1.¹

The word nephesh by itself does not establish a doctrine of conscious survival after death. That conclusion arises from the wider biblical witness.

The biblical starting point is therefore not that the body is a prison and the soul is the real person trapped within it. The human being is created as an embodied living creature.

Other biblical words overlap with this language. The Hebrew ruach—רוח—can mean wind, breath, spirit, or the Spirit of God. The Greek psychē—ψυχή—can mean soul, life, self, or person. The Greek pneuma—πνεῦμα—can mean breath or spirit.²

These terms are not laid out in Scripture like separate parts on a workshop bench. They describe different dimensions of one human creature.

This protects us from two errors.

The first is reductive materialism, which treats the person as nothing more than biological machinery.

The second is a crude dualism that treats the body as a disposable shell and the soul as the only part that matters.

Neither position does justice to the biblical corpus.

Death as Departure and Rupture

Although the Bible presents the person as an embodied unity, it also speaks of death as involving a departure.

As Rachel died, Genesis says that her nephesh was departing (Genesis 35:18). When Elijah prayed for the widow’s son, he asked that the child’s nephesh return to him, and the child revived (1 Kings 17:21–22).

Ecclesiastes says that the dust returns to the ground while the spirit returns to God who gave it (Ecclesiastes 12:7). Jesus committed his spirit into the Father’s hands at death, while Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (Luke 23:46; Acts 7:59).

Jesus also distinguished between those who can kill the body and the One who has authority over both body and soul (Matthew 10:28). Paul spoke of departing and being with Christ, and of being absent from the body and present with the Lord (Philippians 1:23; 2 Corinthians 5:8). Hebrews refers to “the spirits of just men made perfect”, while Revelation presents the martyrs as retaining identity and consciousness before the bodily resurrection (Hebrews 12:23; Revelation 6:9–11).

These passages do not offer a detailed anatomical description of the soul. They do, however, resist the claim that the death of the brain necessarily amounts to the extinction of the person.

Death is a rupture. It is not the good completion of human life. Scripture calls death an enemy.

The person survives, but the separated soul is not the final form of humanity. Paul did not ultimately long to remain “unclothed”. He looked towards being clothed with resurrection life (2 Corinthians 5:1–4).

Christian hope is not merely that the soul escapes. It is that God raises the dead.

A Healing I Cannot Deny

In 1989, I was working with my father at Tamworth Alignment Centre. We were doing car, truck, and bus wheel alignments. It was the first time in about ten years that I had enough space to sit back and think clearly.

The preceding years had not been kind to me physically or emotionally. A staphylococcal infection was running through my body. The boils would ordinarily take four or five weeks to come to a head, break, and finally heal, while new infections continued to appear.

My mother, a Christian woman with a deep faith in God, encouraged me to attend a healing service conducted by the Order of St Luke at the Uniting Church in Tamworth.

For about six months I resisted. I was embarrassed by the thought of walking to the front and asking for prayer in front of other people.

On the night of the service, I sat at the back and told myself that if they asked people to come forward, I would not go. Yet when the time came, I found myself standing at the front among those seeking prayer.

As the pastor approached, I wondered what I should ask for. When he placed his hand on the top of my head, I asked for forgiveness and for a relationship with God.

I then felt a washing sensation begin at the top of my head, travel through my whole body, and pass out through my toes.

I experienced that touch and that washing. It was not an opinion I developed afterwards because I needed an experience. It happened.

The infections then began to heal. Within three weeks, the existing boils and infection had cleared, and no new infections appeared.

I knew that God had healed me. The experience was so profound and personal that it took time before I could speak about it. I came to understand that God had taken away not only the physical infection but also the barrier I had placed between him and myself through my stubborn refusal to surrender.

I do not present this account as medical advice, nor do I claim that every person who prays will be healed in the same manner. Many faithful people remain ill, and some die despite fervent prayer.

Nevertheless, humility does not require me to deny what happened. In my honest judgement, God healed me.³

Apparitions and the Presence of the Departed

I have also seen apparitions of deceased people.

These experiences have occurred in pastoral and relational settings, including conversations concerning deceased loved ones. On one occasion, while speaking with the spouse of my closest friend, who had died, I saw an apparition of my friend’s deceased father. My friend’s spouse was unaware of what I could see.

I did not merely think that I might have seen something. I experienced the apparition.

There is a difference between stating the experience truthfully and claiming to understand everything about it. I do not use these events to construct a doctrine of communication with the dead, nor do I encourage attempts to summon deceased people. Scripture expressly warns against necromancy and efforts to seek guidance from the dead.

Yet the Bible does not teach that the continued appearance of a deceased person is absolutely impossible. The narrative of Saul and the medium at Endor identifies the figure who appeared as Samuel, although Saul’s attempt to consult the dead was forbidden and judged. Moses and Elijah appeared with Christ at the transfiguration, demonstrating that personal identity continued beyond ordinary earthly life. The martyrs in Revelation retained their identities before God.

An apparition may raise questions about spiritual perception, grief, memory, the mind, and the unseen world. Those questions deserve careful examination. Another person’s materialist assumptions should not erase the testimony before it has been heard.

I believe that the boundary between the physical and spiritual worlds is but a thin, gossamer veil.

I experienced other apparitions during my ministry. Others may dispute their cause or interpretation, but they should not rewrite my testimony as though the experiences did not occur.

The Departure of the Soul at Death

During hospital ministry, I have sat with people as they died.

On many occasions, I experienced the moment of death and the departure of the spirit or soul from the body.

I do not say that I merely “believed I sensed” it. That wording weakens and misrepresents what occurred. I experienced it.

There was a difference between the body moments before death and the body after the person had departed. The physical structure remained, but the person was no longer present in the same manner.

Clinical medicine can describe the cessation of circulation, breathing, and brain function. Those descriptions matter. They tell us what is happening within the body.

They do not necessarily exhaust the meaning of the event.

The Bible speaks of the spirit being received (Luke 23:46; Acts 7:59), the soul departing (Genesis 35:18), and the spirit returning to God who gave it (Ecclesiastes 12:7). This language accords with what I experienced at the bedside. That does not mean everyone will perceive the moment in the same way, nor does it make my experiences a universal doctrine. But I will not deny what I experienced in order to make the account more acceptable to those who have already decided that such a thing cannot happen.

Some people appear to be more attuned to the spiritual world than others.

My Father’s Out-of-Body Experience

My father’s experience is different for me because I know it through his testimony.

At ninety-seven years of age, while waiting to have a pacemaker fitted, he experienced himself rising out of his body. He found himself looking down upon the room in which he was sitting.

From above, he could see his own body and the other people in the room. He experienced himself floating over the scene and observing what was taking place beneath him.

The experience ended when the nurses tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Mr Forrester, it is time to go.”

He then returned to ordinary bodily awareness.

This was a direct experience for my father. For me, it is testimony because he told me what occurred.

Calling it anecdotal identifies the type of evidence. It does not mean that the experience was false, imagined, or unimportant. Courts, hospitals, historical research, pastoral ministry, and ordinary family life all depend upon testimony.

The proper questions concern the honesty of the witness, the clarity and consistency of the account, the surrounding circumstances, possible corroboration, and possible alternative explanations.

A neurological account may be proposed. A spiritual account may also be proposed. Neither explanation has the right to erase the event before it has been considered.

Craig Keener and the Value of Testimony

Craig Keener’s two-volume work, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, is important because it challenges a common circular argument.

The argument runs like this: miracles do not occur; therefore, reports of miracles cannot be true; and because every report is rejected, there is no evidence that miracles occur.

Keener’s primary claim is not that every reported miracle must be accepted. It is that eyewitnesses do report miracles and that supernatural explanations should not be excluded from consideration before the evidence is assessed. His work examines reports across cultures and historical periods while relating contemporary testimony to the miracle accounts in the Gospels and Acts.⁴

That approach gives testimony its rightful place without demanding gullibility.

Some miracle reports are poorly documented. Some may involve mistaken diagnoses, natural recovery, exaggeration, or unreliable memory. Others include multiple witnesses, medical records, an identifiable condition, prayer, and an unexpected recovery.

The reports should be assessed individually.

Keener’s work does not prove that my healing occurred. My account of healing must be considered on the basis of my testimony and the circumstances in which it occurred. What Keener demonstrates is that my account does not stand alone within human experience and cannot be dismissed merely because a materialist worldview has declared miracles impossible.

The Bible itself commands discernment. Not every sign comes from God, and an extraordinary event does not automatically authenticate a ministry, message, or theological claim.

The biblical response is neither credulity nor automatic disbelief. It is truthful examination.

Michael Egnor: The Mind Is Not the Brain

Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor brings another line of evidence to the discussion.

Egnor argues that the brain is necessary for many ordinary human functions but that it does not fully explain the mind or soul. He distinguishes bodily movement, sensation, emotion, memory, and imagination from abstract reason and free will.

His position draws upon the Aristotelian and Thomistic understanding of the soul as the form or life-principle of the living body.

This is not the picture of a ghost operating a biological machine. The soul is that by which the living body is one organised human being rather than a collection of chemical parts.

Egnor argues that neuroscience can identify brain regions involved in sensation, movement, emotion, and bodily processes, but has not found a physical location that is itself reason or free will. He draws upon decades of neurosurgical practice, awake brain surgery, brain injury, split-brain cases, covert consciousness, near-death experiences, and other neurological questions.⁵

The argument must be stated carefully. A failure to locate free will in one part of the brain does not, by itself, provide a laboratory demonstration of an immaterial soul. Complex functions may involve distributed neural systems.

Many neuroscientists interpret the same evidence differently, arguing that reasoning and decision-making depend upon distributed neural systems rather than a single identifiable location. Egnor contends that such neural dependence still does not amount to a complete explanation of rational thought or free agency.⁶

Nevertheless, correlation is not identity.

When a person chooses, the brain is active. But it does not necessarily follow that the choice is nothing more than chemistry.

Chemical reactions are not truthful or false. Electrical impulses are not morally guilty. Neurons do not repent, forgive, promise fidelity, or betray a friend.

The person does these things.

Brain injury, medication, fatigue, pain, trauma, addiction, or dementia may impair a person’s ability to reason, remember, communicate, or resist an impulse. Such impairment matters when considering responsibility.

But influence is not the same thing as complete causation. The mind’s dependence upon the brain under our present embodied conditions does not prove that the mind and brain are identical.

Egnor’s central insight is that there remains a thinking, choosing, personal subject who cannot be adequately reduced to the machinery through which that person ordinarily acts.

Free Will: Egnor, Edwards, and the Theological Divide

Egnor’s argument concerning free will is particularly significant.

The will is not something separate from the mind. It is a power of the rational soul. The intellect recognises possibilities and goods, while the will chooses.

The decision belongs to the person.

Jonathan Edwards also understood the will as the faculty by which the mind or soul chooses. He did not reduce willing to bodily chemistry. He described voluntary action in terms of the soul choosing, preferring, approving, rejecting, or inclining towards something.⁷

Yet Edwards differed sharply from libertarian accounts of freedom.

He argued that the will follows the strongest motive as it appears to the mind at the time of choosing. A person is free, on Edwards’ account, when acting voluntarily according to what the person most desires, even though that desire and choice arise with moral necessity.

Edwards therefore defended a form of compatibilism.

He could affirm that the soul, not merely the brain, chooses while denying that the person could genuinely choose otherwise under precisely the same conditions.

Molinism takes a different path.

It holds that God knows what every possible free creature would choose in every possible circumstance. This is traditionally called God’s middle knowledge. God’s knowledge does not cause the choice. The choice remains genuinely the person’s own.⁸

God knows what I would freely do in circumstances that never occur, as well as what I do in the circumstances that actually arise. He may govern providentially by choosing which circumstances to permit or bring about without turning human beings into puppets.

This fits Egnor’s account more naturally than Edwards’ compatibilism if Egnor’s view requires genuine alternative possibilities and agent causation.

Arminianism also strongly affirms meaningful human response, although classical Arminius insisted that fallen human beings cannot choose spiritual good without preceding and continuing divine grace. Grace enables and assists the will; it is not merely human self-effort.⁹

Molinism and Arminianism are therefore not necessarily rivals at every point. Arminianism chiefly addresses grace, election, and salvation, while Molinism offers an account of how divine foreknowledge and providence may coexist with libertarian freedom.

Calvinism generally affirms that people make voluntary choices, but understands those choices within God’s comprehensive decree. The person acts according to the person’s nature and desires, rather than being externally forced.

The real disagreement is not whether human beings possess wills. It concerns whether the choice is genuinely open to alternatives or is necessarily determined by the strongest desire and divine decree.

Egnor’s work does not settle that theological debate by itself. Showing that the will is not reducible to neural chemistry does not necessarily prove Molinism.

It does, however, challenge the assumption that physical determinism is the only serious explanation. If the person, rather than the chemistry alone, is the agent, then libertarian freedom becomes a serious possibility.

The Early Church Fathers

The early Christian writers did not agree on every philosophical detail concerning the soul. They did, however, broadly affirm that personal existence continues after bodily death and that resurrection remains necessary for the complete restoration of the human being.

Justin Martyr rejected the Platonic idea that the soul is uncreated and inherently immortal in the same manner as God. The soul has a beginning and continues because God wills to sustain it. God alone is unbegotten and incorruptible in himself.¹⁰

This is an important correction. The soul is not a piece of God and does not possess independent life. It survives because the Creator sustains it.

Irenaeus taught that souls continue after death, retain memory and personal identity, and await resurrection. Yet the soul alone is not the final complete human being. The dead await the restoration of their bodies, rising bodily as Christ rose.¹¹

Athenagoras reasoned that justice requires resurrection because the deeds of earthly life were performed by the embodied person, not by the soul or body acting alone. The person who acted must be the person who is finally judged and restored.¹²

Origen affirmed that the soul survives death and possesses free will and volition. He taught that the rational soul remains morally accountable and continues after departure from this world while awaiting resurrection.¹³

Augustine emphasised both the soul’s continuing life and the resurrection of the body. His hope was not that humanity would remain permanently disembodied but that God would raise and transform the body, removing corruption, weakness, and deformity.¹⁴

These writers differed in language and emphasis. Some spoke more readily of the soul as naturally immortal; others stressed that its continuance depends entirely upon God.

Yet the broad centre is clear:

The soul survives death. Personal identity continues. The body matters. Resurrection completes what death has torn apart.

Jonathan Edwards and the Intermediate State

Jonathan Edwards stood within this broad Christian tradition concerning the survival of the soul.

He preached that true believers, when absent from the body, are present with the Lord. He understood the intermediate state as conscious communion with Christ rather than unconscious extinction.¹⁵

Edwards’ view therefore supports the proposition that bodily death does not destroy the personal subject.

At the same time, Edwards did not regard disembodied existence as the final Christian hope. The resurrection remained necessary for the completion of human happiness.

Where Edwards differs from the position developed here is not primarily in the survival of the soul but in the nature of freedom.

Edwards believed that the soul chooses, but that the strongest motive determines its choice. Molinism and the language used by several early fathers place greater emphasis upon genuinely uncoerced human response than Edwards does, although the fathers did not formulate the later Molinist theory of middle knowledge.

Edwards helps us reject materialism, but he does not provide the strongest support for libertarian freedom.

What Molinism Adds

Molinism places the human soul within a deeply personal account of divine providence.

In his natural knowledge, God knows everything that is possible. In his middle knowledge, he knows what every possible free creature would do in any possible circumstance. In his free knowledge, he knows the actual history of the world he has chosen to create.

Molinism remains disputed, particularly over what makes statements about what a person would freely choose true before that choice is made. Philosophers call these statements counterfactuals of creaturely freedom.¹⁶

God does not merely know biological organisms from the outside. He knows persons exhaustively.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

Jeremiah 1:5 (NIV)

In its immediate context, this is a word about Jeremiah’s prophetic calling. It does not necessarily teach that Jeremiah existed consciously before conception. It does, however, show that God’s knowledge of Jeremiah and God’s purpose for his life preceded his embodied awareness of either.

Psalm 139 broadens the picture from prophetic calling to God’s intimate knowledge and formation of the person in the womb:

“For thou didst form my inward parts: Thou didst cover me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks unto thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: Wonderful are thy works; And that my soul knoweth right well. My frame was not hidden from thee, When I was made in secret, And curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see mine unformed substance; And in thy book they were all written, Even the days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was none of them.”

Psalm 139:13–16 (ASV)

Together, these passages show that a human life is never accidental or unknown to God. They do not require the conscious pre-existence of the soul, but they do affirm that God knows, forms, and purposes the person before that person can know or describe himself or herself.

He knows every actual choice, every possible choice, every circumstance in which the choice could occur, and every response the person would freely make.

The person known by God is not merely a collection of neural events.

God knows the “I” who understands, loves, refuses, consents, repents, forgives, and responds to grace.

This has a direct bearing upon death.

Molinism alone does not prove that the soul survives bodily death. When it is joined to the biblical witness concerning continued personal existence and to a non-reductive account of the rational soul, however, it offers a coherent account of God’s unbroken knowledge of, and relationship with, the same person through death and resurrection.

Death changes the person’s mode of existence, but it does not end God’s relationship with the person.

The same person is known by God:

• before birth as a possibility within divine knowledge
• during embodied earthly life
• at the moment of death
• in the intermediate state
• in the resurrection

The soul’s survival does not depend merely upon God retaining information about us, as though he had kept a perfect computer record from which he could later manufacture a replacement.

The person remains under God’s sustaining power.

The resurrection is therefore not the production of a copy. It is the restoration of the person who lived, chose, suffered, loved, died, and remained known to God.

How the Evidence Fits Together

Each strand in this discussion has its own place.

Scripture provides the theological foundation. It reveals God as Creator, humanity as embodied living creatures, death as rupture, continued personal existence, judgement, and resurrection.

The early fathers show how Christians in the early centuries of the church understood these teachings. They did not regard permanent disembodiment as the Christian hope, but they broadly affirmed that the soul survives death.

Jonathan Edwards affirms a real soul, conscious existence after death, and resurrection, while offering a compatibilist account of freedom.

Michael Egnor challenges the reduction of mind and will to the brain. He gives a philosophical argument for the rational soul, drawing heavily upon neuroscience and neurosurgical experience.

Craig Keener demonstrates that testimony to miracles and extraordinary experiences cannot be excluded before it is heard.

Molinism provides a framework in which God’s complete knowledge and providence coexist with genuine human freedom.

My experiences provide first-person testimony concerning healing, apparitions, and the departure of the soul at death.

My father’s out-of-body experience is testimonial evidence for me, although it was a direct first-person experience for him.

None of these strands carries the entire argument. Healing does not establish every doctrine of the soul; an apparition does not explain the intermediate state; an out-of-body experience does not disclose every detail of heaven; and neither Egnor, Keener, nor Molinism independently proves the whole Christian account. Their force is cumulative.

The biblical witness is coherent with the non-reductive account of the human person developed here. That account makes room for these experiences without requiring us to exaggerate what they prove. The experiences correspond with a wider body of human testimony, challenging the assumption that materialism is the only rational starting point.

The Limits of Materialism

The natural sciences are extraordinarily valuable. They help clinicians diagnose disease, understand brain injury, manage pain, implant pacemakers, restore circulation, and recognise the physical signs of death.

The proper strength of the natural sciences lies in examining measurable physical processes.

The problem begins when a method for examining matter becomes a philosophy declaring that only matter exists.

That conclusion is not itself a laboratory finding. It is a worldview assumption.

A brain scan can show activity associated with a moral decision. It cannot determine whether the decision is right or wrong.

Chemistry can help explain the bodily conditions surrounding grief. It cannot tell us whether love is merely a chemical event or whether the person who died remains alive before God.

Medicine can record the moment circulation ceases. It cannot, by its physical instruments alone, prove that no soul has departed.

Material explanations may describe part of an event without exhausting the event’s meaning.

The body and brain matter. We should never neglect medicine or use spiritual language to avoid proper clinical care.

But human beings cannot be reduced to flesh, chemistry, and machinery.

Pastoral Consequences

The doctrine of the soul has practical consequences in the hospital ward.

A person with dementia remains a person.

A person in a coma remains a person.

A person unable to speak, move, remember, or respond still bears the image of God.

We should speak respectfully in the room, explain what is happening, preserve dignity, attend carefully to pain and comfort, and resist the temptation to treat the unresponsive body as though nobody is present.

Egnor’s work reinforces this caution. Brain damage may prevent the person from communicating without proving the absence of personal awareness.

The doctrine also affects moral responsibility.

Addiction, brain injury, trauma, medication, mental illness, coercion, and developmental limitation may reduce freedom or impair judgement. God alone knows perfectly where impairment ends and consent begins.

A Molinist framework reminds us that God knows what the person understood, what alternatives were genuinely available, how strong the impairment was, and how that person would have acted under different circumstances.

God’s judgement is therefore neither mechanical nor careless. It is the judgement of the One who knows the whole person.

The soul also matters at the graveside.

Christian comfort is not that the body was unimportant. The body carried the child, held the spouse, worked the paddock, turned the spanner, embraced the family, endured illness, and knelt in prayer.

The body matters because the person was embodied.

Death tears apart the embodied unity God created.

That is why resurrection matters.

Conclusion: Known Through Death

The cumulative result is plain to me.

The human being is an embodied living soul, created in the image of God. The brain is essential to ordinary earthly life, but the person cannot be reduced to neural chemistry.

The rational soul understands, loves, wills, and chooses. Bodily conditions affect human freedom, and any saving response to God depends upon divine grace. Even so, human freedom is not adequately explained as a chemical process that merely happens inside the skull.

God knows the person exhaustively. He knows every actual and possible choice without reducing the person to a puppet.

At death, the body fails and the soul departs. The person does not pass beyond God’s knowledge, authority, love, or judgement.

My healing, the washing sensation that passed through my body, the apparitions I have seen, my experiences of the soul departing at deathbeds, and my father’s out-of-body experience are not the foundation of Christian doctrine.

Scripture is the foundation.

But these experiences are consistent with the biblical picture and add personal and testimonial weight to it. I will not pretend they did not happen simply because another person’s worldview has no room for them.

Nor will I turn them into more than they are.

They are signs along the road, not the destination.

The Christian hope is not merely that the soul survives. It is that the God who created the whole person will restore the whole person.

Christ stood before the tomb of Lazarus and said:

“I am the resurrection, and the life.”

John 11:25

Our hope does not finally rest upon a philosophical proof, a neurological anomaly, an apparition, or even a remarkable healing.

It rests upon Jesus Christ, crucified and risen.

Death does not have the final word. The soul remains in the hands of God, and the body awaits the day when Christ will call the dead from their graves.

The workshop will fall silent. The hospital monitor will stop. The hands that worked will become still.

But the person is not forgotten.

The God who knew us before we drew breath remains Lord when our breathing ends. He receives the soul, remembers the body, and promises resurrection.

That is the life and times of the human soul: created by God, embodied in the world, morally responsible, wounded by sin, reached by grace, preserved through death, and awaiting the restoration of all things in Christ.