III. Essential Elements of Human Nature.
1. The Dichotomous Theory.
Man has a two-fold nature,—on the one hand material, on the other hand immaterial. He consists of body, and of spirit, or soul. That there are two, and only two, elements in man's being, is a fact to which consciousness testifies. This testimony is confirmed by Scripture, in which the prevailing representation of man's constitution is that of dichotomy.
Dichotomous, from δίχα, “in two,” and τέμνω, “to cut,” = composed of two parts. Man is as conscious that his immaterial part is a unity, as that his body is a unity. He knows two, and only two, parts of his being—body and soul. So man is the true Janus (Martensen), Mr. Facing-both-ways (Bunyan). That the Scriptures favor dichotomy will appear by considering:
(a) The record of man's creation (Gen. 2:7), in which, as a result of the inbreathing of the divine Spirit, the body becomes possessed and vitalized by a single principle—the living soul.
Gen. 2:7—“And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul”—here it is not said that man was first a living soul, and that then God breathed into him a spirit; but that God inbreathed spirit, and man became a living soul = God's life took possession of clay, and as a result, man had a soul. Cf. Job 27:3—“for my life is yet whole in me, And the spirit of God is in my nostrils”; 32:8—“there is a spirit in man, And the breath of the Almighty giveth them understanding”; 33:4—“The Spirit of God hath made me, And the breath of the Almighty giveth me life.”
(b) Passages in which the human soul, or spirit, is distinguished, both from the divine Spirit from whom it proceeded, and from the body which it inhabits.
Num. 16:22—“O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh”; Zech. 12:1—“Jehovah, who ... formeth the spirit of man within him”; 1 Cor. 2:11—“the spirit of the man which is in him ... the Spirit of God”; Heb. 12:9—“the Father of spirits.” The passages just mentioned distinguish the spirit of man from the Spirit of God. The following distinguish the soul, or spirit, of man from the body which it inhabits: Gen, 35:18—“it came to pass, as her soul was departing (for she died)”; 1 K. 17:21—“O Jehovah my God, I pray thee, let this child's soul come into him again”; Eccl. 12:7—“the dust returneth to the earth as it was, and the spirit returneth unto God who gave it”; James 2:26—“the body apart from the spirit is dead.”The first class of passages refutes pantheism; the second refutes materialism.
(c) The interchangeable use of the terms “soul” and “spirit.”
Gen. 41:8—“his spirit was troubled”; cf. Ps. 42:6—“my soul is cast down within me.” John 12:27—“Now is my soul troubled”; cf. 13:21—“he was troubled in the spirit.” Mat. 20:28—“to give his life (ψυχήν) a ransom for many”; cf. 27:50—“yielded up his spirit (πνεῦμα).” Heb. 12:23—“spirits of just men made perfect”; cf. Rev. 6:9—“I saw underneath the altar the souls of them that had been slain for the word of God.” In these passages “spirit” and “soul” seem to be used interchangeably.
(d) The mention of body and soul (or spirit) as together constituting the whole man.
Mat 10:28—“able to destroy both soul and body in hell”; 1 Cor. 5:3—“absent in body but present in spirit”; 3 John 2—“I pray that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.” These texts imply that body and soul (or spirit) together constitute the whole man.
For advocacy of the dichotomous theory, see Goodwin, in Journ. Society Bib. Exegesis, 1881:73-86; Godet, Bib. Studies of the O. T., 32; Oehler, Theology of the O. T., 1:219; Hahn, Bib. Theol. N. T., 390 sq.; Schmid, Bib. Theology N. T., 503; Weiss, Bib. Theology N. T., 214; Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik, 112, 113; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, [pg 484]1:294-298; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 1:549; 3:249; Harless, Com. on Eph., 4:23, and Christian Ethics, 22; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk. 1:164-168; Hodge, in Princeton Review, 1865:116, and Systematic Theol., 2:47-51; Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:261-263; Wm. H. Hodge, in Presb. and Ref. Rev., Apl. 1897.
2. The Trichotomous Theory.
Side by side with this common representation of human nature as consisting of two parts, are found passages which at first sight appear to favor trichotomy. It must be acknowledged that πνεῦμα (spirit) and ψυχή (soul), although often used interchangeably, and always designating the same indivisible substance, are sometimes employed as contrasted terms.
In this more accurate use, ψυχή denotes man's immaterial part in its inferior powers and activities;—as ψυχή, man is a conscious individual, and, in common with the brute creation, has an animal life, together with appetite, imagination, memory, understanding. Πνεῦμα, on the other hand, denotes man's immaterial part in its higher capacities and faculties;—as πνεῦμα, man is a being related to God, and possessing powers of reason, conscience, and free will, which difference him from the brute creation and constitute him responsible and immortal.
In the following texts, spirit and soul are distinguished from each other: 1 Thess. 5:23—“And the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”; Heb. 4:12—“For the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Compare 1 Cor. 2:14—“Now the natural [Gr. “psychical”] man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God”; 15:44—“It is sown a natural [Gr. “psychical”] body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural [Gr. “psychical”] body, there is also a spiritual body”; Eph. 4:23—“that ye be renewed in the spirit of your mind”; Jude 19—“sensual [Gr. “psychical”], having not the Spirit.”
For the proper interpretation of these texts, see note on the next page. Among those who cite them as proofs of the trichotomous theory (trichotomous, from τρίχα, “in three parts,” and τέμνω, “to cut,” = composed of three parts, i. e., spirit, soul, and body) may be mentioned Olshausen, Opuscula, 134, and Com. on 1 Thess., 5:23; Beck, Biblische Seelenlehre, 81; Delitzsch, Biblical Psychology, 117, 118; Göschel, in Herzog, Realencyclopädie, art.: Seele; also, art. by Auberlen: Geist des Menschen; Cremer, N. T. Lexicon, on πνεῦμα and ψυχή; Usteri, Paulin. Lehrbegriff, 384 sq.; Neander, Planting and Training, 394; Van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics, 365, 366; Boardman, in Bap. Quarterly, 1:177, 325, 428; Heard, Tripartite Nature of Man, 62-114; Ellicott, Destiny of the Creature, 106-125.
The element of truth in trichotomy is simply this, that man has a triplicity of endowment, in virtue of which the single soul has relations to matter, to self, and to God. The trichotomous theory, however, as it is ordinarily defined, endangers the unity and immateriality of our higher nature, by holding that man consists of three substances, or three component parts—body, soul and spirit—and that soul and spirit are as distinct from each other as are soul and body.
The advocates of this view differ among themselves as to the nature of the ψυχή and its relation to the other elements of our being; some (as Delitzsch) holding that the ψυχή is an efflux of the πνεῦμα, distinct in substance, but not in essence, even as the divine Word is distinct from God, while yet he is God; others (as Göschel) regarding the ψυχή, not as a distinct substance, but as a resultant of the union of the πνεῦμα and the σῶμα. Still others (as Cremer) hold the ψυχή to be the subject of the personal life whose principle is the πνεῦμα. Heard, Tripartite Nature of Man, 103—“God is the Creator ex traduce of the animal and intellectual part of every man.... Not so with the spirit.... It proceeds from God, not by creation, but by emanation.”
We regard the trichotomous theory as untenable, not only for the reasons already urged in proof of the dichotomous theory, but from the following additional considerations:
(a) Πνεῦμα, as well as ψυχή, is used of the brute creation.
Eccl. 3:21—“Who knoweth the spirit of man, whether it goeth [marg. “that goeth”] upward, and the spirit of the beast, whether it goeth [marg. “that goeth”] downward to the earth?” Rev. 16:3—“And the second poured out his bowl into the sea; and it became blood, as of a dead man; and every living soul died, even the things that were in the sea” = the fish.
(b) ψυχή is ascribed to Jehovah.
Amos 6:8—“The Lord Jehovah hath sworn by himself” (lit. “by his soul”) lxx 42:1—“my chosen in whom my soul delighteth”; Jer. 9:9—“Shall I not visit them for these things? saith Jehovah; shall not my soul be avenged?” Heb. 10:38—“my righteous one shall live by faith: And if he shrink back, my soul hath no pleasure in him.”
(c) The disembodied dead are called ψυχαί.
Rev. 6:9—“I saw underneath the altar the souls of them that had been slain for the word of God”; cf. 20:4—“souls of them that had been beheaded.”
(d) The highest exercises of religion are attributed to the ψυχή.
Mark 12:30—“thou shalt love the Lord thy God ... with all thy soul”; Luke 1:46—“My soul doth magnify the Lord”; Heb. 6:18, 19—“the hope set before us: which we have as an anchor of the soul”; James 1:21—“the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.”
(e) To lose this ψυχή is to lose all.
Mark 8:36, 37—“For what doth it profit a man, to gain the whole world, and forfeit his life [or “soul,” ψυχή]? For what should a man give in exchange for his life [or ‘soul,’ ψυχή]?”
(f) The passages chiefly relied upon as supporting trichotomy may be better explained upon the view already indicated, that soul and spirit are not two distinct substances or parts, but that they designate the immaterial principle from different points of view.
1 Thess. 5:23—“may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire” = not a scientific enumeration of the constituent parts of human nature, but a comprehensive sketch of that nature in its chief relations; compare Mark 12:30—“thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength”—where none would think of finding proof of a fourfold division of human nature. On 1 Thess. 5:23, see Riggenbach (in Lange's Com.), and Commentary of Prof. W. A. Stevens. Heb. 4:12—“piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow” = not the dividing of soul from spirit, or of joints from marrow, but rather the piercing of the soul and of the spirit, even to their very joints and marrow; i. e., to the very depths of the spiritual nature. On Heb. 4:12, see Ebrard (in Olshausen's Com.), and Lünemann (in Meyer's Com.); also Tholuck, Com. in loco. Jude 19—“sensual, having not the Spirit” (ψυχικοί, πνεῦμα μὴ ἔχοντες)—even though πνεῦμα = the human spirit, need not mean that there is no spirit existing, but only that the spirit is torpid and inoperative—as we say of a weak man: “he has no mind,” or of an unprincipled man: “he has no conscience”; so Alford; see Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine, 202. But πνεῦμα here probably = the divine πνεῦμα. Meyer takes this view, and the Revised Version capitalizes the word “Spirit.” See Goodwin, Soc. Bib. Exegesis, 1881:85—“The distinction between ψυχή and πνεῦμα is a functional, and not a substantial, distinction.”Moule, Outlines of Christian Doctrine, 161, 162—“Soul = spirit organized, inseparably linked with the body; spirit = man's inner being considered as God's gift. Soul = man's inner being viewed as his own; spirit = man's inner being viewed as from God. They are not separate elements.” See Lightfoot, Essay on St. Paul and Seneca, appended to his Com. on Philippians, on the influence of the ethical language of Stoicism on the N. T. writers. Martineau, Seat of Authority, 39—“The difference between man and his companion creatures on this earth is not that his instinctive life is less than theirs, for in truth it goes far beyond them; but that in him it acts in the presence and under the eye of other powers which transform it, and by giving to it vision as well as light take its blindness away. He is let into his own secrets.”
We conclude that the immaterial part of man, viewed as an individual and conscious life, capable of possessing and animating a physical organism, is called ψυχή; viewed as a rational and moral agent, susceptible of divine influence and indwelling, this same immaterial part is called πνεῦμα. The πνεῦμα, then, is man's nature looking Godward, and capable of receiving and manifesting the Πνεῦμα ἅγιον; the ψυχή is man's nature looking earthward, and touching the world of sense. The πνεῦμα is man's higher part, as related to spiritual realities or as capable of such relation; the ψυχή is man's higher part, as related to the body, or as capable of such relation. Man's being is therefore not trichotomous but dichotomous, and his immaterial part, while possessing duality of powers, has unity of substance.
Man's nature is not a three-storied house, but a two-storied house, with windows in the upper story looking in two directions—toward earth and toward heaven. The lower story is the physical part of us—the body. But man's “upper story” has two aspects; there is an outlook toward things below, and a skylight through which to see the stars. “Soul” says Hovey, “is spirit as modified by union with the body.” Is man then the same in kind with the brute, but different in degree? No, man is different in kind, though possessed of certain powers which the brute has. The frog is not a magnified sensitive-plant, though his nerves automatically respond to irritation. The animal is different in kind from the vegetable, though he has some of the same powers which the vegetable has. God's powers include man's; but man is not of the same substance with God, nor could man be enlarged or developed into God. So man's powers include those of the brute, but the brute is not of the same substance with man, nor could he be enlarged or developed into man.
Porter, Human Intellect, 39—“The spirit of man, in addition to its higher endowments, may also possess the lower powers which vitalize dead matter into a human body.” It does not follow that the soul of the animal or plant is capable of man's higher functions or developments, or that the subjection of man's spirit to body, in the present life, disproves his immortality. Porter continues: “That the soul begins to exist as a vital force, does not require that it should always exist as such a force or in connection with a material body. Should it require another such body, it may have the power to create it for itself, as it has formed the one it first inhabited; or it may have already formed it, and may hold it ready for occupation and use as soon as it sloughs off the one which connects it with the earth.”
Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 547—“Brutes may have organic life and sensitivity, and yet remain submerged in nature. It is not life and sensitivity that lift man above nature, but it is the distinctive characteristic of personality.” Parkhurst, The Pattern in the Mount, 17-30, on Prov. 20:27—“The spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah”—not necessarily lighted, but capable of being lighted, and intended to be lighted, by the touch of the divine flame. Cf. Mat. 6:22, 23—“The lamp of the body.... If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is the darkness.”
Schleiermacher, Christliche Glaube, 2:487—“We think of the spirit as soul, only when in the body, so that we cannot speak of an immortality of the soul, in the proper sense, without bodily life.” The doctrine of the spiritual body is therefore the complement to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. A. A. Hodge, Pop. Lectures, 221—“By soul we mean only one thing, i. e., an incarnate spirit, a spirit with a body. Thus we never speak of the souls of angels. They are pure spirits, having no bodies.”Lisle, Evolution of Spiritual Man, 72—“The animal is the foundation of the spiritual; it is what the cellar is to the house; it is the base of supplies.” Ladd, Philosophy of Mind, 371-378—“Trichotomy is absolutely untenable on grounds of psychological science. Man's reason, or the spirit that is in man, is not to be regarded as a sort of Mansard roof, built on to one building in a block, all the dwellings in which are otherwise substantially alike.... On the contrary, in every set of characteristics, from those called lowest to those pronounced highest, the soul of man differences itself from the soul of any species of animals.... The highest has also the lowest. All must be assigned to one subject.”
This view of the soul and spirit as different aspects of the same spiritual principle furnishes a refutation of six important errors:
[pg 487](a) That of the Gnostics, who held that the πνεῦμα is part of the divine essence, and therefore incapable of sin.
(b) That of the Apollinarians, who taught that Christ's humanity embraced only σῶμα and ψυχή, while his divine nature furnished the πνεῦμα.
(c) That of the Semi-Pelagians, who excepted the human πνεῦμα from the dominion of original sin.
(d) That of Placeus, who held that only the πνεῦμα was directly created by God (see our section on Theories of Imputation).
(e) That of Julius Müller, who held that the ψυχή comes to us from Adam, but that our πνεῦμα was corrupted in a previous state of being (see page 490).
(f) That of the Annihilationists, who hold that man at his creation had a divine element breathed into him, which he lost by sin, and which he recovers only in regeneration; so that only when he has this πνεῦμα restored by virtue of his union with Christ does man become immortal, death being to the sinner a complete extinction of being.
Tacitus might almost be understood to be a trichotomist when he writes: “Si ut sapientibus placuit, non extinguuntur cum corpora magnæ animæ.” Trichotomy allies itself readily with materialism. Many trichotomists hold that man can exist without a πνεῦμα, but that the σῶμα and the ψυχή by themselves are mere matter, and are incapable of eternal existence. Trichotomy, however, when it speaks of the πνεῦμα as the divine principle in man, seems to savor of emanation or of pantheism. A modern English poet describes the glad and winsome child as “A silver stream, Breaking with laughter from the lake divine, Whence all things flow.” Another poet, Robert Browning, in his Death in the Desert, 107, describes body, soul, and spirit, as “What does, what knows, what is—three souls, one man.”
The Eastern church generally held to trichotomy, and is best represented by John of Damascus (11:12) who speaks of the soul as the sensuous life-principle which takes up the spirit—the spirit being an efflux from God. The Western church, on the other hand, generally held to dichotomy, and is best represented by Anselm: “Constat homo ex duabus naturis, ex natura animæ et ex natura carnis.”
Luther has been quoted upon both sides of the controversy: by Delitzsch, Bib. Psych., 460-462, as trichotomous, and as making the Mosaic tabernacle with its three divisions an image of the tripartite man. “The first division,” he says, “was called the holy of holies, since God dwelt there, and there was no light therein. The next was denominated the holy place, for within it stood a candlestick with seven branches and lamps. The third was called the atrium or court; this was under the broad heaven, and was open to the light of the sun. A regenerate man is depicted in this figure. His spirit is the holy of holies, God's dwelling-place, in the darkness of faith, without a light, for he believes what he neither sees, nor feels, nor comprehends. The psyche of that man is the holy place, whose seven lights represent the various powers of understanding, the perception and knowledge of material and visible things. His body is the atrium or court, which is open to everybody, so that all can see how he acts and lives.”
Thomasius, however, in his Christi Person und Werk, 1:164-168, quotes from Luther the following statement, which is clearly dichotomous: “The first part, the spirit, is the highest, deepest, noblest part of man. By it he is fitted to comprehend eternal things, and it is, in short, the house in which dwell faith and the word of God. The other, the soul, is this same spirit, according to nature, but yet in another sort of activity, namely, in this, that it animates the body and works through it; and it is its method not to grasp things incomprehensible, but only what reason can search out, know, and measure.” Thomasius himself says: “Trichotomy, I hold with Meyer, is not Scripturally sustained.” Neander, sometimes spoken of as a trichotomist, says that spirit is soul in its elevated and normal relation to God and divine things; ψυχή is that same soul in its relation to the sensuous and perhaps sinful things of this world. Godet, Bib. Studies of O. T., 32—“Spirit = the breath of God, considered as independent of the body; soul = that same breath, in so far as it gives life to the body.”
[pg 488]The doctrine we have advocated, moreover, in contrast with the heathen view, puts honor upon man's body, as proceeding from the hand of God and as therefore originally pure (Gen. 1:31—“And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good”); as intended to be the dwelling place of the divine Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19—“know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have from God?”); and as containing the germ of the heavenly body (1 Cor. 15:44—“it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body”; Rom. 8:11—“shall give life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwelleth in you”—here many ancient authorities read “because of his Spirit that dwelleth in you”—διά τὸ ἐνοικοῦν αὐτοῦ πνεῦμα). Birks, in his Difficulties of Belief, suggests that man, unlike angels, may have been provided with a fleshly body, (1) to objectify sin, and (2) to enable Christ to unite himself to the race, in order to save it.