What is consciousness? Why and how are you aware of yourself? This is a question which philosophers and biologists hotly debate. It’s such a difficult question that some suggest consciousness doesn’t actually exist, it’s just an illusion.
As usual, the Bible provides a clear common-sense answer. The first chapters of the Bible’s first book contain the account of the creation of the world and life upon it.
The Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature (Genesis 2:7).
God is the Creator of everything, including life. It stands to reason that He is the source of consciousness. His name, which most English Bibles print as ‘Lord’, means something like “I Am That I Am” (see Exodus 3:14). He has given to each of us, and not just humans but all His creatures, a taste of that life which is His.
The reason we live is that we are energised by the breath of God. The Bible describes a direct link between the life of all animals and the breath of God: ‘When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. When you send forth your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground’ (Psalm 104:29–30).
Don’t be confused by that word ‘spirit’. In the original Hebrew text it’s the same as the word ‘breath’ in the previous sentence. It’s a word that carries the basic idea of ‘wind’.
The spirit of God is a constantly recurring theme in the Bible. It’s the power by which He created and maintains everything, and it’s often helpful to remember the idea that it is His ‘breath’.
God’s creative ‘spirit’ is evidenced in a marvellous way in the existence of animal life. Life begins when He gives His spirit, and ceases when he removes it: ‘and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it’ (Ecclesiastes 12:7). Consciousness begins when He gives the breath of life, and ends when He takes it away.
The Soul
We saw that when God created the first man he ‘became a living creature’ (Genesis 2:7). That word ‘creature’ is a Hebrew word, nephesh, which can be defined as ‘that which breathes’. The word is used in the Bible of all animals: for example, ‘And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds”’ (Genesis 1:24).
The word nephesh has a complex meaning in the Hebrew Bible. It’s used to describe every aspect of animal life, and is translated into English as (among other things) ‘life’, ‘mind’, ‘heart’, ‘body’, ‘appetite’—and also ‘soul’. For example, ‘Prepare for me delicious food, such as I love, and bring it to me so that I may eat, that my soul may bless you before I die’ (Genesis 27:4).
There appears to be no particular reason why the translators introduced the word ‘soul’, except that perhaps they had a certain idea they wanted to convey. There’s a popular notion, which goes back at least as far as the ancient Greeks, that there is an essence of life which is independent of the body, and which can go on living after the body dies. This life essence has long been called ‘soul’ in English.
It’s not a concept that’s found in the Bible. The Bible is clear: the ‘soul’ is the living being, it’s simply a ‘creature’: ‘Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die’ (Ezekiel 18:4).
Questions and Answers
We’ve established a simple and profound fact: the life of all creatures happens by the breath of God. We have no idea how this works, but it follows that this is the cause of consciousness. We can now turn to some popular questions people ask.
Will computers ever become conscious? The answer is that they may get phen-omenally intelligent and they may learn to perfectly mimic consciousness, but they will never become conscious.
Does every living thing have a soul? According to the Bible, souls are associated with breath—almost everything that lives processes oxygen in some way, although there are some simple organisms such as certain types of bacteria which don’t. Again, according to the Bible souls are associated with intelligence—this is not limited to animals, for example it’s now known that trees communicate with each other. However, the Bible only uses the word nephesh to describe people and animals, so there’s no point speculating any further.
And the most important question—Why am I here? The Bible provides the definitive answer. God is the essence and the source of life, and the highest purpose of all living things is to acknowledge this: ‘Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!’ (Psalm 150:6).
His purpose is that the earth one day will be filled with His glory (Numbers 14:21). This will happen in His Kingdom, after the return to earth of His Son Jesus Christ. He has invited us to be there. When Christ returns, those who have accepted his offer of salvation will be given immortality (1 Corinthians 15:23).
In the Bible we’re given a very few tantalising glimpses of what’s in store at the culmination of the Kingdom, when the earth and its population have been restored to perfection. This is one: ‘When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all’ (1 Corinthians 15:28). We cannot comprehend what is meant by God being ‘all in all’, but we know that it will include you and me, if we want it.
Chris Parkin