As for Soak being an action, we have a few things. Most valuable is
Wound Penalty does not apply to Soak because Soak is not an action
Even though this is explicit, some people want more than that for non-Combat Soak Total, claiming it represents dodging. Here are some problems with it represent dodging:
- There are spells like Parching Wind, Curse of the Desert, and Wizard's Icy Grip. You get to Soak these. What are you doing? You're dodging your innards?
- You get Soak if you're unconscious, naked, and tied up. How exactly are you dodging?
- When you can dodge the books give non-Soak rolls for this. There are aiming rolls with spells that go up against Defense Total for dodging. There are dragon breaths that use Qui+Athletics for dodging. So when dodging is available, there is a mechanic outside of Soak.
Pretty clearly Soak here does not represent any sort of dodging.
Some people separately claim realism for compiled wounds means Wound Penalty should be included in non-Combat Soak Total. But when we look at realistic scenarios we find much more realistic results when it is left out. I'm not going to repeat my whole analysis, but you can see it where I have showed how much more realistic it is, including references for real-world times: Wound penalties against fire etc - anyone house ruled like this?
So the rules tell us explicitly Soak is not an action so Wound Penalty doesn't apply. They show us that dodging actions against spells are not handled by Soak. And we get much more realistic behavior when Wound Penalty does not apply to Soak. The first of these should be sufficient as it's explicit, but the remaining two should convince doubters of the explicit statement.