NOTES for Gen 2:4-9
We are used to seeing ourselves and one another as something more or less unchanging. No, of course, we all understand perfectly well that people change. But we usually perceive these changes as something secondary. There is I - Ivan Ivanych Ivanov. I was once a child, but now I am an adult. The way I am. With my more-or-less unchanging height, weight, facial features, habits, and character. With a soul that also appears to change and yet appears to remain unchanged. In general, a more-or-less stable system, within acceptable deviations. Comparatively static, again within acceptable deviations. With its own unchanging structure. But the Bible describes us human beings quite differently.
From the Bible's point of view, we are not a stable system at all. And not a structure. We are a process. More precisely, the intersection of two processes layered upon one another. One is what the Bible calls the "soul," the "living soul." This is not some stable and unchanging immortal entity within a person. According to the meaning of the corresponding Hebrew word, it is a process, a flow, a movement. A movement in which the whole person participates. A flow that includes both the highest spiritual movements of our heart and simple physiology, such as breathing and blood circulation. Animals also have such a "soul."
But we human beings have something else: the "breath of life," which God "breathes" into us at creation. This is what makes us human. An inner theophany. We are not divine beings, but God is present in each of us. And His presence makes us human. If, of course, it defines our life, its spiritual quality. In the fallen state, it may fail to define it. Then our "soul" is defined by nature, by "blood," as with all animals, whose "soul is in the blood." And in fallen humanity the "soul" can also turn out to be "in the blood."
God intended us differently. He wants Himself, through His presence, to define the quality of our life, of our "soul." And there, where the "breath of life" touches the "soul," at this intersection of two processes - the spiritual and the natural, since breath too is a process and is not limited to one inhalation and one exhalation - we acquire our human life. We become the image of God. And then we either preserve it or lose it. For life is a process. And God has left it to us to determine the measure of His presence in it. As free and responsible beings. Beings whom God loves and therefore does not want to force into anything, even gratitude. He only offers us life - and life in its fullness. The choice is ours.