As we continue in our study of the doctrine of humanity, rather than the question of “Who am I?,” the better way of phrasing the question for this post is “What am I?.” What are we made of? Are we just a physical body of flesh and bones or is there more to us? Is there a part of us that will live on beyond this life?
These are important questions for us to grapple with as we come to grips with the larger question of who we are. The answer changes everything. If we are just here today and gone tomorrow returning to the dust from which we came, what is the point of all this? Yet we don’t want a pie-in-the-sky answer of eternity in paradise to make this life bearable. We want the truth.
It doesn’t take much Bible study to find there is always some who will hold just about any position and claim to be orthodox. While very few hold to the view man is a single unit, its popularity does not validate or invalidate it. Monism is the view humans are only a physical body without a soul and/or spirit. This position is open to the idea that at some future time a body will be resurrected. In this view, the soul or spirit is seen as just a way of talking about a person’s life or the person himself. Even in this view, some will hold to the belief that there is an afterlife for humans, a resurrection of the body. Yet what happens to the person between death and the resurrection is not clear. Also, many who accept monism do not support any kind of afterlife.
So, we start our investigation with the question of the validity of monism: we are only a body—flesh and bones. The key to this issue is what the Bible has to say about it. The Bible clearly teaches that we are more than just a body, we have a soul. This is made evident from “being made a living soul” in Genesis 2:7 (KJV) to David’s psalms about Sheol and Jesus’s teaching of heaven and hell. We do have a life after our death; the nature of the afterlife will be discussed in the last posts of this series. At this point, the key is to understand the Bible clearly teaches there is a part of being humans beyond the physical, an element which outlasts the grave. Paul repeatedly talks of both the physical and immaterial nature of people. He cheers on singleness for women, for they can concentrate on being holy in “body and spirit” (1 Cor. 7:34). We are to “cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God” (2 Cor. 7:1).
Take Matt. 10:28, where Jesus tells us not to fear those who “kill the body but cannot kill the soul” but to “fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Here the word soul clearly refers to the part of a person which exists after death. It cannot mean “person” or “life,” for it would not make sense to speak of those who “kill the body but cannot kill the person” or who “kill the body but cannot kill the life” unless there is some aspect which lives on after the body is dead. Therefore, we will put monism aside as an invalid view of the nature of humans.
This places us squarely in the position of man being both physical beings and immaterial beings. Whether we are a soul, a spirit, or both (a soul and a spirit), is the next question to be addressed. There are two camps within the Christian community regarding the nature of this immaterial component of man. There are those who hold to trichotomy. Trichotomy embraces the position humans are body, soul, and spirit. Each of these elements is distinct. The soul is seen as the center of intellect, emotions, and will—his volition—while the spirit is seen as a higher endowment of humans which is enlivened when one becomes a Christian. The spirit is that part of man most directly involved with worship and praying to God; it’s the relational part with God. While this was once a popular viewpoint among evangelicals, its popularity has dwindled. Yet, it has not at all completely left the arena of accepted views within the doctrine of humanity.
The other view is dichotomy, which holds man consists of only two elements. We have a physical body and an immaterial soul. The word spirit is a synonym for soul. There is no difference between them. Even in the very few places both terms are used, it is seen as a case of parallelism—the repeated use of different but synonymous words. Parallelism is quite common in Hebrew writing and is used by Jewish writers even in Greek, such as Paul. From this point forward, we will limit our study to the analysis of dichotomy. The investigation of dichotomy will show it to be the correct position and trichotomy is an invalid approach. Note this will not be an exhaustive assessment, for there are more passages than we can study in this one article.
The greatest case for dichotomy is the continual use of soul and spirit interchangeably. The terms we are investigating are “soul” (Heb. nephesh; Gk. psychē) and “spirit” (Heb. rûach; Gk. pneuma). People, in the afterlife, are called either “spirits” (Heb. 12:23, “the spirits of the righteous made perfect”; also 1 Pt 3:19, “spirits in prison”) or “souls” (Rev. 6:9, “the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne”; 20:4, “the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus”). This interchangeability is seen in John 12:27, where Jesus says, “Now is my soul troubled,” yet in the next chapter, John says Jesus was “troubled in his spirit” (Jn 13:21). In the same manner, in Luke 1:46–47, Mary sings, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” It is quite evident these are examples of the use of synonyms and not of distinct elements of a person.
In Gen. 35:18, when Rachel died, it states “Her soul was departing (for she was dying).” Elijah prays the dead child’s “life” would come into him again (1 Kgs 17:21). The Hebrew word here is the word normally translated “soul.” Isaiah says the Servant of the Lord “poured out his soul to death” (Isa. 53:12). In the New Testament, God tells the rich fool, “This night your soul is required of you” (Lk 12:20). Yet at other times, death is viewed as the spirit going to God. So, David can pray, “Into your hand I commit my spirit” (Ps. 31:5; cf. Lk 23:46). At death, “the spirit returns to God who gave it” (Eccl. 12:7). In the New Testament, when Jesus was dying, “he bowed his head and gave up his spirit” (Jn 19:30); also, Stephen, before dying, prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (Acts 7:59).
It is worth noting that Scripture nowhere says a person’s “soul and spirit” go to the afterlife in any way. This seems odd. If the soul and the spirit were separate and distinct parts of man, shouldn’t it be confirmed that both are cared for in the afterlife. We have biblical teaching about the body’s resurrection in the end, but if the soul and the spirit are distinct, what happens to each? The biblical authors use the term interchangeably. They write of the soul’s or the spirit’s departure without concern for the other, for both seem to mean the same thing.
Nevertheless, there is at least one use of “soul” which we do not see with the use of “spirit.” “Soul” is used at times for the entire person, as in “All the persons (Heb. nephesh) belonging to Jacob who came into Egypt… were 66 persons (Heb. nephesh) in all” (Gen. 46:26) or “Let every person (Gk. psychē) be subject to the governing authorities” (Rom. 13:1). The words for spirit (Heb. ruach; Gk. pneuma) are never used in this way.
Let’s take a moment to look at some passages that seem on the surface to counter a dichotomy position. In 1 Thessalonians 5:23, “may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless” which seems to support a trichotomy position, but Paul most likely is using synonyms for emphasis as Jesus does in Matthew 22:37. Certainly Jesus is not adding to the elements of a person when He speaks of our heart, soul, and mind as if they were distinct parts. If this were the case, the list of the elements of a person would be quite long, and it would be exceedingly difficult to come up with the distinction between each.
The “piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joint and of marrow” of Hebrews 4:12 is best taken as not speaking of literal inward parts of our being we could not separate but rather as being metaphorically separated by the Word of God. It is more of a hyperbole—an exaggeration used to make a point. Think about the “joint and marrow;” it does not use the more expected “bone and marrow.” We don’t separate “joint and marrow.” To get overly literal with this passage is to miss the point of the penetrating power of Scripture.
We will have more to say about the soul in other articles (having settled on a dichotomic position, we will use “soul” in general while at times using “spirit,” but no distinction is implied). We will look at the soul and afterlife, the effect of sin on the soul, salvation’s impact on one’s soul, and other topics. In this post, I would like to touch on one more subject: the source of the soul in each person.
As usual, there is more than one position to wade through. The first is preexistentianism: (how’s that for a fun word?) souls exist in heaven before conception. Sometime during gestation, God joins the soul to the baby’s body in the womb. This view is not held by either Roman Catholic or Protestant theologians and is too close to eastern religions’ belief in reincarnation. The second, creationism, is similar. God, sometime during gestation, creates and joins the soul to the baby’s body in the womb, but in this case, God creates a new soul for each person. The final view is called traducianism, which holds soul and body are conceived together at the same time from the mother and father.
We must use caution in reaching a conclusion here. The Bible says little directly on this topic. Yet, there are some verses and biblical concepts which lend support to traducianism. Genesis 5:3 indicates Adam “fathered a son in his own likeness.” This may point to the procreative act of Adam and Eve as being responsible for their son, Seth. Other passages seem to support creationism, such as Psalms 127:3, which talks of children as a heritage from God, the fruit of the womb. But traducianism could explain how the sinful nature of the parents can be passed on to the children without making God directly responsible for the creation of a soul which is sinful or has a disposition that would tend toward sin. The best result is to see a mix of both creationism and traducianism. The producing of offspring is a procreative act of the mother and father, but God is directly involved in the creation of the whole person, body, and soul. Think of the words of the prophets. Isaiah 42:5 speaks of God, “who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it,” or Zechariah prophesying that God “formed the spirit of man within him” (Zech 12:1).
While we have centered our discussion on the soul of man, many of the passages we look at also emphasized our bodies. It needs to be clear; we are not more soul than body. We are not people in flesh suits or earth suits. We are body and soul. We don’t escape the entrapment of our souls by our bodies when we go to heaven. No, instead we long to be clothed again to “not be found naked” (2 Cor 5:3-4).
Until the next time we see you here at CultivatingFaith.org, God Bless! #CultivatingFaithOrg