What Is The Soul?

Sorting Through Common Misunderstandings

Note: This article has been adapted from an academic paper I wrote in 2024 titled Reconciling Neoplatonic Monism and Thomist Teleology. For those interested in the full scholarly treatment, you can access the original version here:

Isaac Bisbee, Reconciling Neoplatonism with Thomsitic Hylomorphism.docx

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Introduction

Despite the diversity of world religions and philosophical systems, one idea remains remarkably widespread: the soul. Whether you’re religious, spiritual, or simply human, chances are you’ve used the word “soul” at some point—to refer to your essence, your consciousness, your truest self.

But what is the soul, really? Is it just a poetic way of saying "mind"? Is it some kind of ghost that floats out of the body when we die? And how exactly does it relate to our physical form—our body, brain, senses, and skin?

These questions aren’t just theological—they’re metaphysical. And while many people assume the soul is a simple concept, the truth is more complicated and more fascinating than most realize.

In this article, I’ll walk through the most common misunderstandings of the soul, introduce classical philosophical frameworks—including Aquinas’s—and then propose a model I developed during my undergraduate studies: one that blends Neoplatonic idealism with Aquinas' teleology to better explain what it means to be human.

You Are Not Just a Soul

In most modern thinking—Christian and secular alike—there’s an unspoken assumption: that the soul is the real person, and the body is just temporary. We are taught that what we truly are is invisible, spiritual, and internal. The body is passing; the soul endures.

This is what philosophers would call immaterialist monism—the view that human beings are, in essence, pure souls. And it’s everywhere. You hear it at funerals: “She’s gone home now.” You hear it in church: “This world is not our home.” You hear it in therapy rooms, on spiritual podcasts, even in secular self-help: the real you is deep inside. It doesn’t matter what happens to your body. What matters is the inner you—the “soul” that survives.

At first glance, this sounds spiritual. Even comforting. But it quietly denies something central to Christianity: that God made bodies on purpose. If the real goal of life is to escape the flesh, then this life becomes a waiting room. Once your soul is “saved,” the rest doesn’t matter. Your habits, your health, your wounds, your sexuality, your physical presence—all of it fades into irrelevance. The flesh becomes a shell. And earth becomes something to endure until Heaven.

Ironically, this isn’t just a modern confusion. It’s an ancient heresy—one of the first the Church ever faced. Early Gnosticism taught that spirit was pure and matter was evil. The soul needed to be freed from the body, and salvation meant escape. The Incarnation was scandalous to them. Nearly all the earliest Christian writings—Irenaeus, Ignatius, Justin Martyr—were written to refute this. And yet here it is again: back, and fashionable.

But the Christian Gospel was never about escape. It was about restoration. God forms man from dust and breath. Christ rises in flesh. He eats with His disciples. He shows His wounds. He redeems what He assumed. The Apostles do not preach the immortality of the soul—they preach the resurrection of the body. The body is not a shell to be cast off, but part of the person to be glorified. It is through the body that we act, speak, suffer, and love and live for Christ.

So if the body is an essential part of your identity, does that mean our identity is both body and soul? Is the soul essentially a spirit within our flesh?

The Soul is Not a Ghost

If the soul alone isn’t enough to explain what we are, many turn to the next option: that we are both body and soul—two distinct parts, joined together during life. The soul carries thought, will, and identity. The body allows action, experience, and interaction with the world. This model, known as substance dualism, was most famously articulated by René Descartes.

Dualism affirms that both body and soul are real, necessary parts of our human identity. Famously, it can be understood as a ghost in a machine—the soul “drives and operates” the body, and once the body dies, the ghost departs into the afterlife.

At first, this seems to solve the problem. It gives space for both our physical and spiritual dimensions. But it creates a deeper issue: Can you be one person if you’re made of two separate things? Think of it this way: Are you a unified self, or just a complex organization of parts—head, limbs, thoughts, will?

Here’s the problem: If you say your identity equals A + B + C, and then you lose C, you can’t keep calling it the same thing, because basic math tells us A+B-C is a different solution. The same logic applies to dualism. If you are two parts: body and soul—and you lose your body at death—then you are no longer fully you. Furthermore, Scripture tells us that we will be given a new body. That means a fundamental component of who you are is being swapped out. If dualism is true, that’s a contradiction.

So while we should affirm that both the body and soul are necessary, we have to recognize that dualism doesn’t preserve personal unity. It splits the person into parts and then tries to hold them together. It doesn’t work.

We’re left again with the same question: How can we be one person if human identity requires both the body and the soul?

The Solution

We looked at the two most widely accepted models of the body-soul relationship regarding human identity. Now we will examine the best solution, that solves the problems we encountered:

Let’s begin with something simple. Picture a ball. You can imagine its size, color, and shape. Perhaps it's a baseball, basketball, or something else entirely. Whatever you imagine, it exists in your mind—no matter how detailed your imagination, it isn't physically real. Now let's say that miraculously, the ball appears physically in your hands. Not only is the ball actually manifested, but it's better than the idea. This is because a ball has purpose: To be thrown, bounced, or kicked; and a physical ball can accomplish this.

Now let's try something a bit stranger: Imagine yourself. YOU. Like the ball, you have physical qualities, but unlike the ball, you also have invisible qualities—Your personality, emotions, and thoughts. However, similarly, like the ball, the idea of you is incomplete. It lacks true purpose fulfillment. The real you can live, breathe, eat, and sleep—things an idea cannot do.

These two examples give us a better way to understand what the soul actually is. Most people, when they hear the word "soul," picture a kind of ghost—a spiritual version of yourself that floats within your body. But as I explained, this only repeats the errors of dualism. It turns the soul into a thing. A more philosophically reasonable understanding of the soul is that of an idea—A complex thought of all the things that make you, you.

Aquinas asserted that all things first exist as ideas in the mind of God. This makes sense when you remember that God is outside of time, outside of the natural sequence of things. God's truest form is that of a perfect intellect—consciousness itself. Therefore, all things exist first as ideas or "spiritual thoughts."

But like the ball, an idea alone isn’t complete. God chose to manifest humanity in a 3-dimensionial space, or physical reality. So for us, we are bound by space and time. Therefore, the body is NOT a shell or prison housing your soul, it is the physical manifestation of the soul.

This is why the body matters. And it’s why resurrection matters. At death, the soul returns to God, not as a wandering spirit, but as the living idea of who you are, still waiting for fulfillment. The resurrection isn’t just a reward—it’s a restoration. A glorified body completes what you were always meant to be.

Conclusion

We often talk about “having a soul” as if it were something separate from us—an extra part, hidden beneath the surface. Or we imagine the soul as the real person, with the body just tagging along until death frees us. But neither view holds up. One treats the body as irrelevant. The other splits the human person in two. Both fail to explain who we really are.

What I’ve proposed in this article is something older and deeper: that your soul is not a ghost or a spark, but the divine idea of you—eternally known and lovingly willed by God. And your body is not a throwaway shell, but the realization of that idea in physical form. You are not a soul in a body. You are a soul–body unity. An idea made flesh.

This matters because it protects something too easily lost: the meaning of your physical life. Your actions, your wounds, your body itself—they are not incidental. They are the means by which your soul is made visible in the world. And it’s also why the resurrection is not just a hope—it’s a necessity. The final fulfillment of your identity can’t happen without your body. God completes what He begins.

This model offers something the common assumptions can’t: a coherent vision of the human person. It explains why both body and soul matter, why death feels unnatural, and why resurrection isn’t optional to the Christian story. We are not souls waiting to escape, nor bodies bound to decay. We are persons—intended by God, known by God, and destined to be made whole again.