I cannot help but feel that this is something like the paradox of the ship of Theseus, except that in this case—in which the deepest emotional and personal elements that compose a soul have been stripped away—it is the living form, rather than its mere material instantiation, that has been obliterated. So why would we even speak about salvation at that point, rather than about the total replacement of one thing by another? Who is it, after all, who remains to be saved? A spark, a spiritual essence detached from all identity,
