Life, Soul and Self

The footnote to Matthew 16:25-26 in my ESV reads as follows:

“The same Greek word can mean either soul or life, depending on the context; twice in this verse and twice in verse 26.”

That’s probably as good an introduction to our subject as any. It’s certainly what got my attention.

A Little Greek

The Greek word psychē (pronounced “soo-kay”, not “si-kee”) is frequently translated “life”, and has a similar dual meaning in the original language to that of the word “life” in English usage: it can mean either the state of being alive as opposed to dead, on the one hand, or else the content of the experience of living, on the other. When we say, “Where there’s life, there’s hope”, we are discussing the former; when we ask, “How’s life?”, it’s the latter. In scriptural terms, when Paul told his shipmates, “There will be no loss of life among you”, he meant the former; when we read of him “strengthening the souls [psychē] of the disciples”, it is the latter. The second has to do with the quality of the disciples’ spiritual experience, not merely their continued existence.

Accordingly, as the ESV footnote suggests and as in our example above, the same word is sometimes translated “soul”. This too is a word with multiple senses. When Luke says, “We were in all 276 souls in the ship”, he simply means 276 living beings. When he speaks of the subversion of the soul, however, he is talking about disrupting the quality of a person’s spiritual experience. Thus, the ESV has “unsettling your minds”, which probably comes closer to conveying the sense.

The same word is used a third way, related more to the second sense than the first. When Paul writes to the Thessalonians, “Being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own psychē, because you had become very dear to us”, it is evident he is not speaking of a specific aspect of his earthly experience or the experience of his co-writers, but rather of their entire persons. Accordingly, the ESV has “our own selves”, which I think is precisely what Paul was getting at.

So then, sometimes psychē refers to the self.

Context Dependence That Isn’t

I find the traditional translation of Matthew 16:24-26 a little schizophrenic. This is the case whether we are reading the KJV, NKJV, ESV, NASB, NIV or almost any version of the Bible. The Greek phrase autos psychē actually appears four times in two verses. The first two times it is translated “life” and the latter two “soul”, which prompted the ESV translators to supply the explanation with which I introduced this post, indicating that the meaning of psychē is really context-dependent. Here’s the three verses in the ESV:

“Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life [autos psychē] will lose it, but whoever loses his life [autos psychē] for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul [autos psychē]? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul [autos psychē]?’ ”

The way I’ve almost always heard this explained (and perhaps you have too) is probably clearest in the Amplified Translation:

“For whoever wishes to save his life [in this world] will [eventually] lose it [through death], but whoever loses his life [in this world] for My sake will find it [that is, life with Me for all eternity]. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world [wealth, fame, success], but forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”

Private Interpretations

I’m not usually a fan of the guy who tells you, “I’ve figured out something about this verse nobody’s ever noticed before.” That’s generally a prelude to either heresy or an interpretation so exotic and unlikely that it could only be the product of a fevered imagination. So let me hedge my bets here. I’m not going far off the beaten track, and the little distance I’m wanting to go is out of a desire to be faithful to the thought flow of the passage rather than a craving for novelty. Looking around after the fact, I see that lots of people have come to similar conclusions about the passage.

I didn’t until fairly recently. I heard the Jim Elliot paraphrase as a youth (“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose”), and that’s how I understood it for years. How Jim understood or applied what he wrote, I can’t tell you, but the story of Elliot’s death at the hands of the murderous Ecuadorian Auca tribe ended up interpreting what he wrote for me: martyrdom, or really, I suppose, the daily willingness to be martyred. Not his fault, but there you are.

Six Problems with the Life/Soul Reading

Here are my problems with the “life/soul” interpretation of the passage:

First, the only compelling reason we might translate autos psychē two different ways is a change of context, as the ESV note indicates. These two different English translations of the same Greek phrase come right in the same context as each other, so that rationale doesn’t really hold water. Sure, it’s possible the Lord was deliberately making a play on words and using psychē in two different senses (he had certainly done that sort of thing with other words before), but that need not necessarily be the case.

Second, the passage starts with the self. (In the phrase “Let him deny himself”, the “self” part is a variant of autos.) I wonder if it might continue that on that subject as well.

Third, taking up the cross is not the same as being crucified. Rather, it is the long walk toward Calvary on the heels of the Savior. It is the Via Dolorosa, the way of suffering, the path of shame, sorrow and alienation that Jesus took under the condemnation of the Roman government and the rejection of his own people. It is less about death itself than it is about walking through this world entirely divorced from the pull of its spiritual gravity, rejected by it and in thrall to a higher purpose. This works against any interpretation that insists on giving your life as the highest expression of devotion, and works in favor of any interpretation about living your life to that end.

Fourth, in support of the interpretation that it is the long walk to Calvary that is in view rather than martyrdom, Luke’s version has the Lord saying, “Let him deny himself and take up his cross daily.” You can only be crucified once, but you can take up your cross repeatedly.

Fifth, the Lord’s expressed intent here is not merely that a very small subset of his followers over the course of history join him in death because they identify with him, though his words certainly allow for that possibility. Martyrdom is one possible ending for any follower of Christ, though we must confess that the number of Christian martyrs is orders of magnitude smaller than the total number of Christians. Rather, I believe the Lord’s intent is that ALL his followers (“If anyone would come after me”) go through life in a state of identification with him and rejection of the pull of self-interest, whether or not it ever costs them their lives. For the vast majority of us, it does not.

Sixth, both the traditional interpretation of the passage and the Elliot gloss on it are a little awkward theologically in that they may be read so as to make eternal life depend on giving one’s life for Christ, which is most definitely a work. Salvation, as we know, is not obtained through even the most extreme of human sacrifices. Alternatively, one is forced to argue that some will receive eternal life despite a lower level of both commitment and opportunity, in which case what advantage has the sold out servant of Christ over the half-hearted? Both problems disappear if the Lord was not talking about eternal salvation but about the joy of becoming all that he wants us to be in this life.

Dying is Easy

In short, I truly believe the Lord wants more out of his followers than that we be ready to die for him if that is our lot. In a way, dying is easy. You only have to do it once. Our exit from this world may be horrible, painful and gruesome, but it’s over in the tiniest flash compared to the rest of our lives. The Lord Jesus himself hinted at this when he said, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” As unpleasant as death can be, there are definitely worse things.

Just for fun, let’s try plugging in another legitimate translation of autos psychē just to see if we can come up with something that is (1) consistently translated from beginning to end, (2) accords with the “self” of verse 24, and (3) applies to everyone who is a follower of Christ, not just a few of us:

“Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny his own self and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his own self will lose it, but whoever loses his own self for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his own self? Or what shall a man give in return for his own self?’ ”

Such a reading does not deny the standard interpretation of the passage — that a follower of Christ ought to be willing to die for the faith if called upon to do so — but it is considerably more inclusive. Death is only one possible outcome of the Christian life, but all believers are to take up the cross. Such a reading calls for denial of self as a way of life rather than merely in the extremity of death, a 24/7/365 renouncing of the way I want to live my life in favor of the way the Lord wants me to live it.

But it brings up an interesting question: What does this “self” look like, and what does it mean to deny it, forfeit it, save or lose it? In tomorrow’s post we’ll consider a few examples, most of which do not end in crucifixion.