The Soul of God the Father in Trinitarian Anthropology

The question is best phrased not as whether God the Father "has" a soul, but whether He "is" a soul within the triune nature of God. By analogy, I understand human beings to be body, soul, and spirit. There is a triune nature of man and a triune nature of God. The whole man is a unity of body, soul, and spirit; the whole Godhead is a unity of Father, Son, and Spirit.

My soul does not have a soul; it is a soul. My body does not have a body; it is a body. Yet my body and my soul can be separated (as in physical death), even though I am not complete when they are separate. They are made to be together, and the resurrection is the reuniting of what has been separated.

So in the Trinity I would say the one we typically call God the Father is the soul of the triune nature of God. There is the Spirit, whom we call the Holy Spirit. There is the body, the physical manifestation, the one who came in Bethlehem and is known as Jesus Christ. He is "the fullness of the Godhead bodily" Col 2:9. By parallel (though Scripture does not use these exact words) one could say: the Father is the fullness of the Godhead soulishly; the Spirit is the fullness of the Godhead spiritually; the Son is the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Thus, to answer the question directly: God the Father is soul, rather than having a soul as a part distinct from Himself.

Leviticus 26:11--12

Consider Lev 26:11--12:

"I will set my tabernacle among you: and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people.’’

The immediate context in Leviticus concerns the literal tabernacle in the wilderness. A tabernacle is a dwelling place. Israel is being instructed about the very tent the Levites will set up and move. I take "my tabernacle" here as the physical tent, the place where God promises to dwell in the midst of Israel.

In that sense, the tabernacle is like the "skin" that the soul inhabits. God says, "I will set my tabernacle among you." His soul is implied to be present there; He is dwelling in the Holy of Holies. "My soul shall not abhor you" expresses the inner disposition of God toward Israel. God, as soul, will be present, and His inner being will not reject them.

Verse 12 adds, "I will walk among you." One could insist that walking requires feet and therefore must be exclusively a bodily action, and in that case interpret the passage more Messianically, as the Son placing His tabernacle among them and bodily walking among them. There are certainly Messianic overtones one can see in retrospect. Yet I think one can also understand "walk" here as covenantal presence and activity without insisting on literal feet. In that case the invisible God, the soul, "walks" among them in the sense of active fellowship and oversight.

Nothing in the passage explicitly forbids understanding this as God the Father, as soul, dwelling in the midst of Israel by means of the tabernacle, the pillar of cloud and fire, and the Shekinah glory. The soul itself is invisible; it is not a pillar of fire or cloud, nor the brightness of glory, but those visible manifestations signify the presence of the soul of God.

One might also read the "I" in a more Christological way: the second person of the Trinity says, "I will set my tabernacle among you, and my soul shall not abhor you, and I will walk among you." Then "my soul" could be taken as a reference to the Father. Grammatically and theologically, both readings can be argued; neither is decisively excluded by Scripture. In either case, the language "my soul" for God is present and seems natural within the text.

Zechariah 11:7--10

The second passage is Zech 11:7--8:

"And I will feed the flock of slaughter, even you, O poor of the flock. And I took unto me two staves; the one I called Beauty, and the other I called Bands; and I fed the flock. Three shepherds also I cut off in one month; and my soul loathed them, and their soul also abhorred me.’’

Backing up to verse 4, the oracle begins:

"Thus saith the textscLord my God; Feed the flock of the slaughter.’’

The speaker is addressed as one who is to feed the flock. The pronoun "I" runs through the passage. There is a question of whether at some point the "I" shifts from the textscLord to Zechariah himself. One could attempt to make that shift at the second "and" in verse 7 ("And I took unto me two staves..."), reading that as Zechariah’s symbolic action. However, verse 10 says:

"And I took my staff, even Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might break my covenant which I had made with all the people.’’

Zechariah has no covenant with all the people; the covenant is God’s. So the safest reading is that the "I" throughout is the textscLord. Thus in verse 8 it is God who says, "my soul loathed them."

Is this God the Father or God the Son? The shepherding imagery fits easily with the Son, the good Shepherd. The strong covenant language also fits the God of Israel as the covenant-maker and covenant-enforcer, often associated with the Father. One can reasonably see the speaker as the textscLord in His unified triune identity, with particular emphasis on the shepherding role of the Son. Within that unity, "my soul loathed them" speaks of the inner revulsion of God’s being toward corrupt shepherds.

It is worth noticing the parallel: "my soul loathed them, and their soul also abhorred me." The same word "soul" is used of God and of the human shepherds. The singular "their soul" for a group appears in several English renderings elsewhere and seems to be an issue of English style rather than a deep theological point about a shared singular soul.

Human and Divine Triunity

Your follow-up formulation is: can we say that we are body, soul, and spirit like God the Father (a soul), Jesus (a body), and the Spirit (a spirit)? There is a meaningful analogy here as long as it is handled carefully.

In humanity, body, soul, and spirit are distinct yet belong to one person and are meant to function together. In God, Father, Son, and Spirit are distinct persons sharing one essence. The analogy is not perfect, because in our case we speak of one person with three aspects or components, whereas in God we speak of three persons in one essence. But the analogy does help to illustrate that the Father can be thought of as corresponding to the soul, the Son to the body, and the Spirit to the spirit, in terms of role and mode of manifestation.

Because of the unity in both man and God, there is a limit to how far we should press the distinctions. Just as my soul can say, "I walk," even though walking is done through my body, so God the Father may speak of things we might loosely associate with another person of the Trinity. We should not force a strict rule that whenever Scripture speaks of walking it must refer to the Son, or whenever it speaks of inner affection or abhorrence it must refer uniquely to the Father.

The language "my soul" in passages like Leviticus 26 and Zechariah 11 shows that Scripture is comfortable using soul-language for God. Given the triune nature of God and the analogy with the triune nature of man, it is coherent to say that God the Father is soul within the Godhead, rather than saying that He merely "has" a soul as a detachable part.

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