God has a soul.

In the past I’ve stated God has a soul, and it makes various Christians balk at the idea.

For two reasons. The first and dumbest is they have some weird beliefs about what a soul is. Some Christians use “soulish” as a synonym for “fleshly,” so they have some really negative ideas about the soul—so they really don’t wanna think of God as having a soul. To them, a soul is like the id in Freudian psychology—it’s selfish and totally depraved, and God’s absolutely not depraved, and how dare I describe him in such a way. Except I’m not! They’re defining “soul” wrong.

The other, which makes a little more sense, is they believe humans have souls—which we do; God put it in us. Ge 2.7 But they also believe only humans have souls. They think animals don’t have souls—and never mind that the Latin word for soul is anima, which is where we get our word “animal”; and never mind where Genesis states animals have a נֶפֶשׁ/neféš, “soul.” I know; most bibles translate it “life,” like yea—

Genesis 9.4 NRSVue

“Only, you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.”

That’s because soul means a lifeforce. Humans have a lifeforce; that is, when we’re alive. Animals, which are also alive, also have a lifeforce. As do plants and fungi and bacteria. And God, who’s a living God, Dt 5.26, 1Sa 7.26, Ps 42.2, etc. quite obviously has a lifeforce; he lives forever, so it’s probably the most potent lifeforce in the universe. He has a soul.

Of course if reason doesn’t convince people, I can always quote more bible.

Leviticus 26.11-12 NRSVue

11“I will place my dwelling in your midst, and I shall not abhor you. 12I will be your God, and you shall be my people.”

Naturally there are gonna be those who claim God doesn’t literally have a soul, and even though this is a direct quote from the LORD himself, they’ll claim God’s just anthropomorphizing himself—he’s describing himself in human terms for our benefit. Since we have souls, and “my soul” is a common synonym the ancient Hebrews had for themselves, God’s just borrowing our language.

Except no he’s not. Again, a soul is a lifeforce. God interacts with humanity in a way an impersonal force does not; in a way which makes it blatantly obvious God’s a living being. Electricity can’t love us. Gravity can’t forgive us—and typically doesn’t. Magnetism can’t promise things to the people it has a relationship with. The universe doesn’t care whether we live or die, and has no plans whatsoever to resurrect us after we die. God does.

Instead of saying God has a soul, plenty of Christians prefer to put it this way: “God’s a person.” There’s a catch though: When we’re describing God, the word “person” means something extremely specific in Christian theology… and has to do with trinity. Historically, Christians have taught God is three persons in one being. Saying God’s a person kinda implies we’re claiming God’s one person, i.e. not a trinity. I’m not claiming any such thing, and don’t wanna give people the wrong idea. “God has a soul” makes my point way better.

Why’s it important to point out God has a soul? Because not everybody believes he does. There are an awful lot of pantheists out there, and pantheists believe “the universe” is God; they’re one and the same. They might use anthropomorphic language to talk about the universe and what it wants, and might even call it God and use “he” and “she” pronouns. But they’re not talking about a personal, living being. They’re talking about an impersonal, unconscious, non-sentient thing. Their idea of God contains souls, but he himself doesn’t individually have one.

And some of that idea has leaked into Christianity just a little. I’ve known Christians who talk about “what the universe wants,” as if the universe was sentient and was God. Challenge them on it, and they’ll backtrack a little—no they don’t think the universe is sentient, no they don’t think it’s God. But they’ve been listening to pagans talk about how to get what they want out of the universe, and they’re starting to get adopt some of those pagan ideas… and it’s messing up their picture of God. So we gotta clarify. The universe doesn’t have a soul. (It contains souls, but it itself doesn’t have one; it’s not alive, not sentient.) But God has a soul, and is very much alive.

A living God, with living relationships.

While two of the world’s largest religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, don’t think of God as a self-aware living being at all, most other religions do. And of course God defines himself that way in the scriptures.

Exodus 3.13-15 NRSVue

13But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

15God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’:

This is my name forever,

and this my title for all generations.”

By describing himself as “I,” God sentiently recognizes himself as a separate being from the rest of his creation. By describing himself as “I AM,” he declares his own existence—which he gets to define, not us. He sets limits on what’s God and what isn’t; what he’ll do and what he won’t. By telling us he has a name, and it’s יַהְוֶה/YHWH, “Yahweh, Jehovah, the LORD,” he shows all the above is so important, this is how we’re to identify him from now on. And by identifying himself as the God of Moses’s ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he demonstrates he’s interacted with other humans in a personal way—and wants to do the same with us.

A force can’t make any of these statements. Light can’t say, “I am who I am.” The strong nuclear force can’t claim to know Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God’s behavior kinda requires him to have a soul.

Now yeah, people will immediately point to “artificial intelligence,” and the relationships people might have with a chatbot or robot which uses AI. If I may digress, the current crop of “AI” isn’t actually artificially intelligent. They’re large lagnguage models, a type of software which uses a ton of sample data to mimic the appropriate human responses to input. The number of mistakes an LLM makes—and can’t avoid without human guidance!—makes it clear it’s not at all intelligent. LLMs are great mimics, and no more. They’re so great, they’re distracting computer scientists from making actual artificial intelligence—which, like a human baby, won’t first require massive sample data to make its choices, and sometimes errors… and sometimes sins. At that time humanity will debate whether we actually figured out how to create artificial life, and artificial souls. But we’re really not there yet.

Yes, I’ve seen people develop something of a relationship with their robots. I myself boss Google and Siri around a lot. People will have deep conversations with a chatbot. But they’re still just complex machines; they’re still impersonal forces. When I was a toddler I was very attached to my Raggedy Andy doll. It’s hardly a relationship, but I was a kid; I didn’t realize I was projecting all my ideas and wishes upon the doll. I cared about the doll, but it didn’t and couldn’t care back. I could imagine what Andy was thinking, but it didn’t and couldn’t think. Can we call this scenario a relationship? Well, a one-sided relationship… but once I stopped manipulating the object, as I did when I outgrew Andy, the relationship ends. Not by mutual decision, because it can’t be mutual. It’s not a relationship in any personal sense. Andy was a thing I used, no matter how much I imagined otherwise. Your favorite robot is the very same way.

Human relationships are meant to be more than that. But they can be just as impersonal. Business relationships are a good example: “It’s not personal, just business,” is an all-too-common saying. It’s not practical to have a personal relationship with every single customer, unless your business model deals with only a very few customers. I don’t need a personal relationship with my customers in order to serve them. I can care about customers as human beings, but for business purposes I don’t need to know, or care about, their personal lives—unless I need data from those personal lives in order to anticipate their wants and needs I essentially manipulate my customers into giving me business—and they manipulate me right back into giving ’em service. It’s mutual manipulation. Is that moral? Only if we’re honest, kind, helpful, and gracious. Only if we meet God’s expectations of us as human beings. Then no problem.

Apart from business, we humans are ordinarily meant to have personal relationships. These are connections between two souls who, because we’re living, are constantly changing. I’m not the same person from day to day. I have new experiences, which alter me. You too… unless you avoid new experiences, and many do. But interacting with other people creates new experiences—which change us both. God changes me, and I change him.

Yes, God changes. I know; plenty of Christians claim God never changes, and is the same yesterday today and forever, He 14.8 but the verse they’re thinking of is about God’s character, not his behavior. God’s character is consistent, but what he does can be quite unpredictable. He’s not a vending machine, where we insert prayers and a prize pops out. He’s a living God who—unlike a stone or bronze god—is constantly on the move, responding to our situations in the best way suited to them. One day my circumstances will be such that God expects me to behave in one particular way. Another day, another way. A third day, a third way—or back to the first again because I hadn’t learned my lesson, or because I need the practice, or whatever God needs of me.

I could try to reduce God to an impersonal relationship. Plenty of Christians do; we interact with God only in the hopes we might get stuff out of him. In my weaker moments I might try this. But Yahweh don’t play that. Our bargains with God either come to nothing, or God uses them to bring us into a deeper relationship with him. ’Cause he doesn’t want an impersonal relationship. He’s a personal God.

God, as Jewish theologian Martin Buber put it, “escapes all attempts at objectification and transcends all description.” When we try to stuff him in a little white box, he kicks it open. When we try to put him under a slide to observe him, or take him apart to dissect him, he moves out of our view; he turns around so we see something unexpected.

In the study of theology, we Christians usually attempt to list all the stuff we know about God. Foolishly, a lot of Christians believe once we have all these facts laid out, and arranged in some sort of order, we now know everything there is to know about God. In reality we’re not even remotely close. The bible has a finite amount of data; there’s so much more to know! Jn 21.25 And a lot of these blanks can only be filled in by personally interacting with God himself. Theology is like fertilizer, and our personal relationships with God are the tree: With the fertilizer, the tree grows quickly and bears fruit faster. Without fertilizer, the tree grows slowly and bears fruit slowly. And without the tree… well, we’re just playing in crap.

The challenge of a living God is that he, as a living being, wants a relationship with us. Are we up for that, and all it entails? Hope so.