Abstract: Soil health has been widely adopted in sustainable agriculture and environmental management in recent years, and has to some extent replaced soil quality as the dominant term. As two important concepts that have rapidly developed in modern soil science over the past three decades, soil quality and soil health have not yet reached a consensus regarding their conceptual boundaries, evaluation objectives, or quantification methods. Academic controversies over terminological definition, indicator-based characterization, and application paradigms persist, and have led to some misunderstanding and confusion in academic research, management practice and public understanding. Against this background, this paper systematically reviewed the major academic divergences in the evolution from soil quality to soil health, focusing on the terminological controversies between the two concepts, the criticisms of the concept and assessment of soil quality, and the disputed issues and methodological limitations in the concept of soil health, indicator system construction, index-based evaluation methods, and practical applications. Possible pathways for resolving these controversies were also discussed, in order to provide references for conceptual clarification, optimization of evaluation systems and better coordination between research and application.