The soul's identity

I have always believed that we stand individually before God.

Fundamentally, what it means to be a person is to have a discrete identity that is separable from all other persons.

This identity is entirely autonomous and unfettered in its decision making.

A soul is another term for independent discretion.

In turn, this discretion equates to freedom. The soul is free to exercise its own discretion.

Inescapably this leads to accountability. The soul - while being entirely free - is therefore entirely responsible for its exercises of discretion.

The soul cannot have its cake and eat it. It cannot lay claim to freedom and simultaneously renounce responsibility. Freedom and accountability are cut from the same cloth.

If no one makes my decisions for me then equally no one else can be imputed with the merit or demerit of my decision-making.

The freedom and the responsibility of decision-making is the Soul Principle.

This means that the world is the sum total of individuals who collectively stand privately before God freely, yet responsibly, for their own elections.

If this is right - and I propose that it is - then the best gift we can give another is the freedom they already have. That is to say, to recognise that the other's inherent freedom is exercisable only in relation to God.

Failure to appreciate that people stand autonomously before God - the Soul Principle - will result in errors anterior and posterior.

If - before a soul has made a decision - we insist on how the person is to decide 'for themselves' we commit errors anterior. We violate the Soul Principle. We have effectively required of them what they should decide. These errors anterior to their decision-making are thinly veiled attempts to change them. It is control of the other and a denial of their freedom to choose.

Should we allow people to make their own decisions but then - after they have exercised their discretion - heap contemptuous judgement upon them then we have committed a posterior violation of the Soul Principle. Judgement is also a means of control of the other. It is post the fact control. It does not recognise that the soul will have to give an account before God. Those who judge insist the soul gives account to them as judge and not to God as Judge.

Until we have tasted for ourselves that God gives us freedom commensurate with our responsibility before Him we will never be able to accord the same to others.

Grace allows us the freedom to exercise our volition. Yet Grace pays our account when we are held to account.

It is only when we discover the Grace in the freedom and the Grace in the accountability that we can extend such Grace to others.

The Grace we extend to others to be free; and the Grace we extend to others to be accountable to God alone is a precise mirror on how much of God's Grace we understand and enjoy. It is a mirror that does not lie.