Book review

SIMON-SZÉKELY, A., ed. (2015), Lélekenciklopédia: A lélek szerepe az emberiség

szellemi fejlődésében, Vol. 1: Világvallások lélekképzetei (Budapest: Károli

Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary & L’Harmattan) 23 cm,

540 pp., ISBN 978 963 414 001 6, 5990 Ft

Erdei, Ildikó

European Journal of Mental Health

Ildikó Erdei

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Christian Scholars’ Understanding of the Soul and Spirit

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ILDIKÓ ERDEICHRISTIAN SCHOLARS’ UNDERSTANDING OF THE SOUL AND THE SPIRITSIMON-SZÉKELY, A., ed. (2015), Lélekenciklopédia: A lélek szerepe az emberiségszellemi fejlődésében, Vol. 1: Világvallások lélekképzetei (Budapest: KároliGáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary & L’Harmattan) 23 cm,540 pp., ISBN 978 963 414 001 6, 5990 Ft.The first volume of Lélekenciklopédia (‘Encyclopaedia of the Soul’) is the openingpiece of an ambitious enterprise. The project was supported by the Hungarian Acad-emy of Sciences (MTA) with the expectation that a decade of creative work wouldresult in a unique knowledge about the soul and the spirit. The subtitle, in Englishtranslation, is ‘The role of the soul in the intellectual evolution of humanity’, and theseries is designed to describe the most important notions of the soul in a multi-discip -linary manner. The undertaking enriches the encyclopaedic literature while allowinginsight into the great religions of the world, and exploring myths, philosophies andscholarship concerning concepts of the soul. The aim of the series is to explain notonly concepts of the soul but also closely related notions such as spirit, breath, psy-che, consciousness, self-awareness, unconsciousness, subconscious mind, body,heart, life, death, rebirth, immortality, ghost, demon, devil, afterlife, heavenly world,and underworld. These are described from the perspectives of ethnography, anthro-pology, psychiatry, psychology, theology and philosophy.Emőke Bagdy offers a laurel wreath to the editor-in-chief in her preface, andAttila Simon-Székely himself, not so modestly, considers the work an unparalleledand unique achievement. At the same time, although there are many studies in thevolume, its reading may be difficult because of some editing problems I will mentionin detail below. The first volume discusses ideas about the soul and the spirit in five worldreligions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism). Each study fol-lows the same editorial principles, namely, the first part explains the history andkey beliefs of the given religion, and then comes a discussion of the concept of thesoul. However, this uniform structure upsets the internal balance of the papers. Toomuch emphasis is put on the introduction of religious traditions, and althoughattention is later given to theories of the soul, their proportions do not correspondto the title of the volume and its stated goal. Moreover, the reader initially gets abalanced picture of the history and fundamental beliefs of each religion, yet theissues that arise concerning the soul are not always mainstream. Thus the studiesdo not so much represent the orthodox view of the given religion about the soul andthe spirit as they reflect the difficulty of the soul-spirit concept by incorporatingEuropean Journal of Mental Health 12 (2017) 119–123DOI: 10.5708/EJMH.12.2017.1.Rev.1ISSN 1788-4934 © 2017 Semmelweis University Institute of Mental Health, Budapest08_Book_Rev_Junius  2017.05.23.  9:50  Page 119marginal ideas. This is most clear in the section on Christianity, which is muchlarger in scope than the rest.The section on Christianity amounts to a third of the whole book and describesthe history and teachings of nine denominations, including Roman Catholicism,Orthodox Christianity, the World Communion of Reformed Churches, Lutheranism,Unitarian Church, Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Baptist Church, UnitedMethodist Church and the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement.1 With respect tothe scope of this book, it is too much, but considering the entire Christian world, itcovers too little. It is perfectly understandable that an interreligious encyclopaediadoes not undertake to present all denominations. However, the selection of ninedenominations would definitely require explanation, because there are many moreChristian denominations in Hungary, even under the recently introduced restrictivelegislation on religious communities. So I am very interested in what the criteria forthe selection were. As it stands, without editorial justification, the selection seemsarbitrary, and a similar arbitrariness characterises the whole book. Legitimate ques-tions may arise about Judaism, Islam and Hinduism, which also have several var -ieties: why were their branches not given an opportunity to express their character-istic vision, and why were Christianity and Buddhism, by contrast, treated moregenerously?Similarities between Christian interpretations inevitably arise because of thewell-established meanings of terms soul and spirit. Most authors introduce theirtopic by Hebrew (ruah, nephesh) and Greek (pneuma, psyche) equivalents of thewords spirit and soul. Despite the rich semantic fields of the terms, authors agreeand claim that ruah/pneuma means ‘wind’, ‘breath’ and, on this basis, ‘spirit’,while nephesh/psyche means ‘life’, ‘life force’, and hence, ‘soul’. Sometimes thereis an overlap between the soul and the spirit. Only the Unitarian author arguesstrongly that the Bible makes a clear distinction: the spirit is immaterial and inde-pendent of the body (substantia), and the soul is immaterial, but it is always linkedto the body. A Protestant author draws attention to the fact that serious conceptualconfusion reigns in Protestant literature about the religious use of the terms souland spirit, but the disorder is not worse than in other Christian traditions. Thedebate takes place around the translation of Szentlélek and Szent Szellem (roughly,Holy Spirit and Holy Ghost), due to the fact that the words soul and spirit are alsoused for other concepts in the Hungarian language. In this case, István Perczel’sexcellent study must be mentioned, who reviews the history of early Christianinterpretations of the soul. However, he writes not as a theologian but as a philoso-pher. His article, as the first substantial paper in the volume, constitutes a strongopening. In the light of his study, subsequent questions that arose during two mil-lennia of Christian thought become much more understandable.Fortunately, there is no great difference between the Christian authors’ basicconcepts of the soul. Differences appear when they locate their theories of the soulBOOK REVIEWS / REZENSIONEN120EJMH 12:1, June 20171 The authors use the terms pentecostal and charismatic interchangeably.08_Book_Rev_Junius  2017.05.23.  9:50  Page 120within their own systematic theology. For instance, some denominations do not treatthe doctrine of the soul within Christian pneumatology as could be expected. Onlythe Roman Catholic theologian, Liviu Jitianu says that ‘in Catholic theology the pri-mary place of dealing with the concept of the soul is Pneumatology’,2 and CalvinistTamás Juhász places the notions of the soul and spirit within the doctrine of theTrinity (p. 108). Surprisingly, Unitarian author Csilla Lakatos still deals more withthe Holy Spirit (of course, in order to be able to say that they consider the HolySpirit the power of God, not a person) (p. 156) than the Pentecostal authors,3 whodo not discuss the third person of the Trinity despite the fact that this topic is one ofthe most fundamental features of Pentecostal theology. Instead of Pneumatology,Mátyás Komesz and Lajos Simonfalvi place the topic within anthropology (p. 222).Further, these two authors do not represent the main line of their denomination withregard to anthropological trichotomy.4 They criticise the trichotomy theory of Greekphilosophy, even if many Christians have adopted this view. According to them, theBible does not fully support either trichotomy or dichotomy but talks about thehuman person holistically instead (p. 224). This viewpoint gains importance in thecontext of Pentecostal and Charismatic literature that typically has reference to tri-chotomy. Gergely András Nacsinák, an Orthodox priest, also discusses the concept of thesoul within the framework of anthropology, stressing that the analysis of human per-sonality plays an important role in most ascetic-mystic tracts, and monastic practicesfocus on the most creative elements of the soul such as purity of heart and mentaltemptation (p. 92). Most Christian denominations situate the discussion of spirit and soul withineschatology, and mainly deal with the survival of the soul through death. This seemsto be the point where the different dominations are able to deliver their spirit conceptin the most individual way, while from the perspective of pneumatology, Christology,and anthropology there are a lot of similarities. The Seventh-Day Adventist Churchstresses, for example, that the soul is not immortal after death, but is in an uncon-scious sleep, and will resurrect only at the resurrection (p. 176).In connection with the immortality of the soul, opinions are divided as well. TheCatholic Church had decided in favour of the immortality of the soul at the Fifth Lat-eran Council (1513), but on the Protestant side there is no full consensus on the sub-ject because some consider it to be the product of Aristotelian philosophy. TamásBéres only tangentially mentions the doctrine of soul sleep that is often attributed toLuther. However, Béres puts an emphasis on the denial of the immortality of the soul(p. 142), trying to avoid the arising contradictions in this case. Not looking for a his-BOOK REVIEWS / REZENSIONEN 121EJMH 12:1, June 20172 The original text: ‘A katolikus teológia lélekfogalmának elsődleges helye a pneumatológia’ (p. 61).3 There are two authors of the Pentecostal study, although only one of them appears on the contents page.Similar editorial errors occur in several places throughout the volume.4 I.e. the notion that humans possess a physical body, a soul, and a spirit. The model of trichotomy deals pri-marily with how the three aspects of humanity combine to form human nature. This model makes a distinc-tion between the human soul and the human spirit.08_Book_Rev_Junius  2017.05.23.  9:50  Page 121torical explanation for the anomalies, he prefers to interpret Luther’s opinion in thelight of Paul Tillich’s theology, which obscures the contradictions rather than resolvesthem (p. 143). So heaven and hell are just symbols for Lutheran theology, which islikely to be far from Luther’s intention but reflects modern trends in academic the -ology. In contrast to soul sleep, the soul remains in a conscious state after death,according to Baptists and Pentecostals, and instantly enjoys being in heaven. TheUnitarians’ position is based on science rather than the Bible, so they deny the bodilyresurrection. Eternal life has only a spiritual meaning for them.Authors typically rather articulate their criticism of their own dominations thanpresent the main lines of their churchs’ teaching on the topic. This approach keepsreturning in the studies. Although it is undoubtedly a great advantage of the volumethat the studies are written by expert religious practitioners, and thus every religiousmovement is described from within, it is inherent in academic thinking that not everyarticle of faith is slavishly repeated but they are sometimes questioned. While thereader would expect that the writers faithfully represent the vision of their church, inreality authors do not shy away from presenting alternative viewpoints in the light ofrecent research. In this sense the studies do not always reflect the mainstream view.By incorporating marginal ideas, the volume manages to present difficulties of thesoul-spirit concept. The authors sometimes question or challenge other religions inan honourable way, but their searching thoughts and reflections are mostly directedat their own denominations.It can thus happen that a Catholic professor finishes his study, after an expos -ition of the real spatial and temporal vision of afterlife, with the Protestant RudolfBultmann’s existential explanation (p. 76). As the author himself does not opt foreither of those statements, and they are not evaluated, his academic thinking ratherthan a Catholic apologist’s presentation prevails in the study. Tamás Juhász’s opinionis more apparent when he divides the Protestant theologians and believers into‘majority’ and ‘another group’ and attributes to the former the conviction that hell isnot a real place and the devil is not a real person, so they deny the reality of hell andthe devil (p. 105). To the latter group he attributes a literal interpretation of those con-cepts. In this case, many might disagree with Juhász’s view. As we can read in the editor-in-chief’s preface, the encyclopaedia is a collectionof studies, reference materials, textbooks and also an educational work not only forexperts but also for laymen. But this time, the sum of its parts is more than the total.The essays are easy to understand and accessible to lay people. They are very informa -tive and neat in their descriptions of the denominations, and the historical overviewsof individual religions are accurate. The work can also be used as an encyclopedia,but the reconstructions of religious traditions’ positions on the soul must be treatedwith more caution. They often reflect the individual views of the authors rather thanthe official teachings. This should not be a disadvantage except that the volume iscalled an encyclopaedia. It is true that the reader gets a clear picture about the evolu-tion of individual religions, but he or she does not get an accurate picture of their con-cept of the soul. One gets the impression from reading the volume that the conceptBOOK REVIEWS / REZENSIONEN122EJMH 12:1, June 201708_Book_Rev_Junius  2017.05.23.  9:50  Page 122of the soul is so huge a subject that it is impossible to make substantive statementsabout it. One should presuppose that religions have systematically developed doc-trines about the soul, but the emerging picture suggests that they have not. Ultimately,the idea of an encyclopaedia and its realisation work at cross-purposes. In this vol-ume, we can read excellent studies on the soul without an ultimate systematic pictureemerging from the work.BOOK REVIEWS / REZENSIONEN 123EJMH 12:1, June 201708_Book_Rev_Junius  2017.05.23.  9:50  Page 123

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