Not Supernatural Tracings

One thing (at least) needs to be settled at the beginning of consideration of the soul as a supernatural entity.  The soul is not some sci-fi "hyperspace" state of something, like a hyperspace vehicle or computer.  In the sci-fi instance, the entity in question is placed in some conceptualized state, but it does not cease to be recognizable or describable in its parts or manifestations. While it is true that an author might describe some contrivance placed in "hyperspace" as lacking thereby an essential atomic structure or indeed any notion of particular constitution, but that is merely artistic contrivance overlain upon artistic contrivance.

To say that some supposed "something" might no longer be describable in terms of constituent parts is possible as a matter of idealization or communication, but it is merely the conceptualization of the thing that is being proffered--the leap from "constituted of sub-atomic particles" to "consisting of perfectly seamless substance" is pure fancy, admitting of no logical progression.

But the soul, as a matter of consideration, has no necessary particular constitution.  There is nothing about the idea of the "soul" that requires it to be consigned to a state of recognizable mental or physical phenomena but merely called in the instance "supernatural" rather than "natural."  There is no warrant to conceptualize the "soul" as some sort of twinkling doppelganger of the individual to which the soul is ascribed.  Neither is it to be assumed that the soul is conterminous with the individual, or that it is bound by time or by space or by any of the space-time logics that rule our describable existences.

Indeed, in the most important sense it is the soul that describes our existences.  A soul that has consigned itself to be the offspring of the Devil is not thereby the supernatural aspect of a person born of woman and rhetorically assigned the Devil as a father.  A soul that has consigned itself to be the offspring of the Devil is the offspring of the Devil, and the flesh-and-blood person associated with that soul and associated with human parentage is the merest of ephemera.  Indeed, if the unpredictable sputterings of quantum mechanics are true, then the passage of time itself will render indecipherable even the echoes of any person's "concrete" existence.

The importance of this realization lies in the fact that only the inscrutable workings of the soul--the soul devoid of particular "material-like" constitution--can make sense in light of the teachings of Jesus.  To the timeless and spaceless phenomenon of the soul is directed the charge to have faith, and Jesus gives no quarter to the notion that "faith" describable as a possession of an earthly person is the matter in question.  If "real" people had faith--even the smallest describable quantum of faith--every mountain would be moved and every malady healed.

Jesus mocked the very idea that "faith" could be practiced by mere humans, and yet in his teachings both we (and, emotively at least, he) are surprised that faith does exist unaccountably.  This realm of supernatural wonder, in which so improbable a thing as faith might exist, is the proper realm of consideration.  This is the faith of the (to us) unencompassed soul, rather than the faith of the theologians--this latter faith being bound up in vapid conjectures about whether it is rational or not, logical or not, grace-bestowed or not.  "Vapid" these conjectures are, not because faith is irrational, illogical, or un-bestowed by a gracious God, but because these conjectures fascinate themselves with the flesh-and-blood individuals which our souls merely approximate.

Our souls are not supernatural tracings of our bodies, our minds, or even our flailing emotional lives.  Our souls are the ineffable candidates to be the offspring of God--understood in Jesus' teachings to be positioned in the opportunity by his divine ministrations--and our souls are only the imperfect and scrambling masters of the describable individuals who inhabit the material world.  Faith can be had by us in the material world, but we all know that it comes and goes.  As persons who waver, for example, between religion and atheism (and who understand such ideas as truth) it is as laudable to be a firm believer when feeling it as it is to be a firm atheist when feeling it.  To hold to a "faith" that one does not feel is dishonesty, and it is foolishness to think that such dishonesty is needed to keep the soul on course and up to date.  The soul that each of us possesses finds its course on timeless planes and in spaceless realms.

Faith is a gift without presupposition.  To think of faith as something to be held by the body, the mind, or the emotional identity leads to the sort of intellectual gibberish upon which C. S. Lewis wasted so much of his time.  Faith, which cannot be bidden, must be discovered, and only in consideration of the ineffable life of the soul can we come to understand what Jesus taught: that to seek is to find.  Where we get the impetus to seek, only God knows.