As a youth, I believed what I was taught: that I had a soul. Not metaphorically, but metaphysically. I was a soul—an eternal self temporarily housed in flesh, breathed into dust by God, destined to be judged, saved, or lost. This belief came bundled with another: that the Bible, and only the Bible, told us the truth about who we are. Sola scriptura was the key. Scripture alone. Not tradition, not philosophy, not science. The Word of God, unfiltered and sufficient.
But over the years, that framework has fractured. Slowly at first, then like a stone chipping glass. The questions began at the edges. What about psychology? What about evolution, trauma, consciousness, memory? What about all the things I felt and knew that didn’t fit neatly in a verse? My faith didn’t collapse. It changed. It expanded. And with it, my understanding of the soul began to unravel—not into nothing, but into something more intricate, more fragile, more human.
Miles Johnston’s Retrospection captures this unraveling with unsettling grace. A woman, cloaked in black, gazes outward as her face recedes into itself—a spiral of smaller, identical profiles, each tucked inside the next like Russian dolls. Her expression is solemn, almost serene. Not terrified. Not lost. Just layered. Just deep.
This, I think, is what I have become.
Scripture once told me that God formed man from dust and breathed into him the breath of life. And man became a living soul. Genesis 2:7. That was the formula: dust plus breath equals self. The Hebrew nephesh isn’t exactly soul in the Greek sense—it means life, personhood, living being. But over time, through Paul and Augustine and generations of theologians, the soul took on a different role. It became the essential self. Immortal. Immaterial. Holy.
Paul himself, writing under the influence of Middle Platonism, described the "natural body" and the "spiritual body" in 1 Corinthians 15. He longed to be "away from the body and at home with the Lord." These phrases always confused me. They seemed to suggest that the body was something to escape. But Paul also insisted on resurrection—not escape, but transformation. Not abandonment, but redemption. He never quite resolved the tension between his Jewish roots and the Greek air he breathed.
Neither have I.
The longer I’ve lived, the more I’ve come to see the body not as a shell, but as part of the self. My memories are not stored in heaven. They are etched in neurons. My personality is not a mist above my shoulders; it is formed in relation, in trauma, in language. In matter. In time. And when I turn inward—as Hume did—I do not find a core. I find a bundle.
"I never can catch myself at any time without a perception," Hume wrote. "I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions."
That quote has stayed with me. It doesn’t frighten me anymore. Once, it would have. Once, I needed to believe that beneath the layers there was a singular, shining thing—the true me. But now, I believe I am the layers. I am the faces in the spiral. I am the woman in Retrospection.
Johnston does not paint despair. He paints depth. His woman is not vanishing. She is composed. Each face is a memory. A former self. A version still present, though quieter now. As I grow older, I feel the same. The boy who memorized Bible verses is still with me. So is the man who doubts, and the one who studies, and the one who weeps in silence. I don’t need to resolve them. I only need to carry them.
Rejecting sola scriptura did not mean rejecting faith. I eventually found peace with religion in the Episcopal Church before letting go of Christianity completely. Now, it means allowing Scripture to take its place among other kinds of knowing. Philosophy. Science. Liturgy. Friendship. Art. The Bible is still precious to me. Not as a holy or inspired relic, but as literature, poetry, myth. The Bible and religion are tools I use to understand both the world around me and myself, but they are no longer the center of my toolbox. They are a lens I use sparingly to understand others. It is a chisel I use to shape stone, a brush I use to paint. It is a tool of art and beauty, not inquiry or knowledge.
And in that broader light, I see a more human gospel: not of disembodied souls, but of remembered dust. Of identity, not as essence, but as story.
The Ship of Theseus asks: if every plank is replaced, is it still the same ship? I ask: if every version of me is layered over, am I still the same self? Johnston’s painting answers without words. Yes. And no. And yes again. The spiral is not a loss of identity. It is its shape.