In fact, we find in Season's 2 Spike a sort of equilibrium between the three components, his main interest is not feeding, but restoring his lover to health and protecting her.  He is able to act according to plans and not to rush into action, and controls enough resentment so as to suggest to leave town even without doing in Buffy.  Thus, we find that the pathos side may not rule unrestrained.  They can exercise free will if they reach an equilibrium among the three components of their pseudo-soul.   (which Angel doesn’t).

Then, where do we find an actual difference between an unsoulled vampire (animated by their demons) and a ensoulled vampire?

An ensoulled vampire in the practice do not goes around killing people, they have a conscience.    Therefore the real difference for demon soul vs. human soul is the compass of conscience.  

I am oh so Evil!: the conscience problem

Over and over the vampires in the series seem to draw pleasure in saying how evil they are.  This shows essentially a self-awareness and a knowledge of good vs. evil.  On a certain level that is conscience, isn’t it?  They know that killing is bad.  It’s part of their memories from their lives.

But the element missing in this rhetorical knowledge of conscience/morals is the emotional obligation to act on this synderesis (or ability to differentiate from bad and evil).  The force that compels people to pursue goodness and avoid evil, and especially to feel guilt upon acting evil.   

And this is the essence of human soul in the Buffyverse.      

Here is interesting to analyze that in fact, Vampires can feel compelled to pursue goodness and avoid evil, even without a soul.

Quote:

Buffy: Please! Spike, you’re a vampire.

Spike: Angel was a vampire.

Buffy: Angel was good!

Spike: And I can be too. I’ve changed, Buffy.

Buffy: What, that chip in your head? That’s not

change. Tha-that’s just. . . holding you back. You’re

like a serial killer in prison!

(…)

Spike: And if that means turning my back on the

whole evil thing-

Buffy: You don’t know what you mean!

You don’t know what feelings are!

Spike: ofended I damn well do! I lie awake every

night!   -Crush S5

As we see, Spike can voluntarily change from evil to goodness.  This change is motivated by love though, not for the sake of goodness itself.  And as we see by the end of Season 5, it has been not empty words, but the purpose is a reality, Spike sacrifices himself to endure physical torture and also fights for Buffy’s sake, changing his behavior in general.

Yet, Buffy denies Spike the dignity of human being until he actually gets his soul back.  Aparently, any act of goodness by itself is not enough to make Spike deserving or human for Buffy.  Why?

The Christian metaphor of the converted man in Spike.

If guided by the canon of the series, we learn very quickly that Spike goes and searches for the return of his soul but it’s not merely for Buffy’s sake. 

Quote

1) BUFFY: You got your soul back. How?

SPIKE: It’s what you wanted, right? (looks up to the altar) It’s what You wanted,

right?

(…..)

2)SPIKE: And now everybody’s in here, talking. Everything I did,

everyone I… and Him… and it… the other. The thing beneath…

beneath you. It’s here, too. Everybody. They all just tell me go.

Go… to hell..  Beneath you S7

It’s an evident part of the text that Spike thinks that it was also God who wanted him to have a soul back (first paragraph), and it is reinforced in the second paragraph.  

This scene in the church is from my point of view the most important of the series to decipher the meaning of soul and morality in the Spike arc.

We finally see that when all explanations are done, Spike walks slowly towards the cross and embraces it as it burns him, just like he says that his soul burns him.  That it’s all it does.

This physical embracing of the cross together with the reasons expressed for Spike to regain his soul as following Buffy’s and God’s desire show to me that in fact,soul and conscience, in the Buffyverse have a pure and obvious Christian connotation.  

This being the case, it’s understandable to see why Buffy rejects Spike despite his good actions. 

St Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologica, declared that good doing must come from the only source of goodness:  God.    The moral obligation to follow the reason comes from God too, and if goodness is done for the incorrect reasons, it loses  its positive moral connotation.    This concept was applied to Spike’s actions and his worth, from Buffy’s perspective.

Spike’s good actions, his love is only acceptable when he has a soul and after he has embraced the cross.    Buffy is Spike’s confessor (as we see in S7’s  Never Leave me when Spike confesses some of his worst crimes to Buffy with the hope of being punished with death).

The problem of Sin and its Punishment

The metaphor of converted Spike takes its climax by the end of Season 7, when he perishes saving the world, and apparently not for Buffy’s love, since he has given up on her being able to love him.    His death completes the cycle of conversion he had started in Season 5.

Again it takes a Christian color for Salvation, more specifically the Catholic dogma that salvation should be earned by Repentance and Atonement.  

Repentance is expressed in regret, guilt and the decision of not to sin again. Atonement is the sacrifice that should be done to repay for evil.   The first we see in Spike’s becoming demented due to guilt for his crimes when he didn’t have a soul, and the atonement as the torture, and finally the death he suffers soon after.   

Let us remember too, that classically the punishment for the apparent sin that moved him to get a soul, Lust, is being “smothered in Fire and Brimstone”.  (Note here that I say apparent because some psychological points should be taken into account, lust was not what really moved Spike to attempt to rape Buffy.)   

But it is possible to sin while you don’t have a soul?   If so, why is Angel so easily forgiven after he regains his soul while Spike has to go through a journey of expiation?  Laying aside all easy expiations of plot devise, it would have to be plain that Spike is different.  He is more accountable than Angel is.

But what is this basic difference that makes Spike guiltier of his crime, especially of the one he commits after he starts loving Buffy and decides to take the road to goodness?   How is he guiltier than Angelus’ murders when he didn’t have a soul?

The theological explanation I find here, if we continue the Christian analysis, is that Spike actually had been enlightened with a certain grace or virtue,  that other vampires had not. 

If indeed, as the canon indicates, Spike looked out for his soul because it was a calling from God and a desire he perceived in Buffy, then that desire may have arisen from  a “saving grace”, which is a especial favor that leads a person freely to participate in its own salvation.    By definition this something that only a few people chosen by God would receive (this is more a protestant view of it, though).   Therefore the last episode of the series’ name may have been just equally directed to Spike as it was to Buffy.

And even before this irresistible grace that Buffy brings about, Spike does retain certain virtues, one is aesthetics, and the most important , “prudence”.   Aquino, expresses that prudence is what through knowledge and reasoning, balances actions, and is the key to moral knowledge (yet not to conscience), can be present in the wicked and evil too, though no true or perfect, and is directed to a particular end. 

“Prudence implies a relation to a right appetite”, and in Spike this is his obsessive need for Buffy’s love and approbation, despite the fact she is his natural enemy, yet she represents the greatest virtues in self-sacrifice and the power to fight evil.   

Buffy’s character also has very grave moral faults, but Spike accepts them too, and love her for those as well, reaching a very mature level of love, even the one defined by Corinthians  and also by Jesus when he called the greatest love that of who dies for his friends.

Quote:

Spike: "When I say, 'I love you,' it's not because I want you or because I can't have you. It has nothing to do with me. I love what you are, what you do, how you try. I've seen your kindness and your strength. I've seen the best and the worst of you. And I understand with perfect clarity exactly what you are. You're a hell of a woman." ~Touched, S7