Soul train

"When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause..." I honestly really hate Shakespeare. I had to memorize that monologue during my freshman lit class in high school. I honestly tried to like Shakespeare. I think the reason I don't is a combination of resentment because everyone else seems to love him so much, frustration because his writing is so difficult to understand, and tired-head from reading him a lot freshman year. But his ideas are definitely good. That line above puts forth the idea that we are somehow more than our physical bodies, that there is a part of us that will continue and persevere regardless of what happens to our bodies.

Orson Scott Card wrote a book called "Ender's Game" and quite a few after that. He has the idea that somehow there is this place, or maybe a "non-place" where a bunch of souls or "auias" exist and are waiting for a chance to come into being and be part of bodies.

One of the greatest theologians of the early church, and probably of the entire Christian history, Origen, had a similar idea. He believed that souls have existed forever and continue to exist forever. When a baby is conceived (or born, can't remember which) the soul is brought into the body.

The problem with those ideas, is that Origen was rejected as a heretic for his idea. The Christians of his day believed that is was edging onto dualism to believe something like that. They wanted to preserve the idea that God is the only being who has always existed, from eternity past to eternity future, the "uncaused cause."

So, what are we? Are we a soul with a body? I think biblically the idea is closer to that we are a soul/body. We are both in one, at the same time. When we die, we may "shuffle off this mortal coil" but more likely we will be transformed from a soul/body to a soul/perfect body.It seems more like a later western or Greek idea to think that we are somehow a divided self. The soul is over there, the body is there, the mind is there. And it is a very popular idea. But I think maybe the Hebrews were closer to the right idea. Maybe our finger is as much "us" as our head. Maybe our soul is all of us. Maybe we will just sleep after death, until all of reality is changed and we become a new self, a new body, with soul and mind intact. I don't know.