4 July, 2007

Body, Soul and Spirit

Paul blessed the Thessalonian Christians saying, "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" (I Thess. 5:23). In this prayer, the apostle implored God to sanctify and consecrate every part of the entire being of each disciple. They had been set apart for God upon their initial obedience to the gospel and were thus sanctified (I Cor. 1:2; 6:11). This passage makes it evident, however, that sanctification is not a one-time completed action. It is a process. As the child of God grows to higher levels of maturity, he becomes more thoroughly dedicated and consecrated to God's service. Thus our goal should be that we might be sanctified wholly. There should be no nook or corner of our lives into which the Lord's influence does not reach.

To express his wish that their sanctification and preservation be complete, Paul prays for their body, soul and spirit. His words reveal to us truth about the nature of man. Three possibilities are before us:

(1). That of the materialist; who says that man is wholly mortal with no immortal spirit that can be distinguished from his body. There is a religious version of this, i.e., the Jehovah's Witness doctrine of man, and the secular version of atheistic humanists. In their book Let God Be True, the Witnesses write, "also we see that the claim of religionists that man has an immortal soul, and therefore differs from the beast, is not scriptural" (p. 68).

(2). Some teach that man is a dual being of body and spirit. They say the terms soul and spirit are used interchangeably and synonymously in scripture. Those who hold this view are styled dichotomists.

(3). Trichotomists teach that man is constituted of body, soul and spirit.

As Christians who view the Bible as our standard and authority, we flatly reject the view of the materialists. Scripture throughout speaks of the immaterial, spiritual nature of man. Solomon says, "...and the dust returneth to the earth as it was, and the spirit returneth unto God who gave it" (Eccle. 12:7). Paul writes, "...though our outward man is decaying yet our inward man is renewed day by day" (II Cor. 4:16). Again he says, "We are...willing to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord" (II Cor. 5:8). These and other scriptures easily refute the materialistic view.

The second and third categories are more difficult to decide between, with Bible-believing scholars in both camps. Those of the Calvinistic school are unanimous in defending the dichotomistic view, while the Anglican scholars generally hold the trichotomistic view of man. Our commitment to the authority of Scripture demands that we have more than the opinion of a given school. What saith the Scripture? This is the answer for which we seek.

While some verses speak only of "soul and body" such as Matthew 10:28, we must deal with those that suggest the threefold nature of man. In addition to our text, the writer of Hebrews speaks of the Word of God "dividing soul and spirit" (Heb. 4:12). If it is impossible to consider the two separately, then how could the Lord divide them?.

Genesis 2:7 seems to distinguish three aspects of man "...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 we see the clay, i.e., the physical frame of man; the breath of life, i.e., the spirit and him becoming a living being, i.e., a soul.


TERMS DEFINED

Body (soma). The body is referred to as a temple (I Cor. 6:19), a home (II Cor. 5:6-9), and the outward man (II Cor. 4:16). Scripture speaks of the body as being weak (Matt. 26:41). It comes from a human father and mother (Heb. 12:7; John 3:6). It decays (II Cor. 4:16), it dies (Jas. 2:26)) and returns to the earth (Eccle. 12:7). The body will be raised in the resurrection; incorruptible, glorious and in power, suited to live with God in eternally (I Cor. 15:42-54).

Spirit (pneuma). W. E. Vine gives 17 connotations for pneuma. Concerning the spirit's nature, Jesus said, "a spirit hath not flesh and bones" (Luke 24:39). The spirit is eternal (II Cor. 4:16) and invisible (John 3:8). It is that part of man which is made in God's image (Gen. 1:26-27). It resides within the body in this realm of life. Daniel's spirit was grieved in the midst of his body (7:15). God is the father of our spirit (Heb. 12:9). He forms the spirit within us (Zech. 12:1) and at death the spirit returns unto him (Eccle. 12:7). In death the spirit retains consciousness (Luke 16:23-24). It is immortal, being eternal in existence (II Cor. 4:16; 5:1; II Pet. 2:9).

Soul (psuche). This word is assigned 10 various meanings in the lexicons. It differs from the spirit and generally mean "life," "the natural life of the body."


SOUL AND SPIRIT DISTINGUISHED

P. J. Gloag in the Pulpit Commentary says, "Each of the two words is sometimes used for our whole invisible nature, but , when distinguished from the spirit, the soul is the lower part of our immaterial being, which belongs in common to the whole animal creation, the seat of the appetites, desires, affections" (Pulpit Commentary (Vol. 21, p. 119-120). He continues, "The spirit is the highest part of man, that which assimilates him to God; renders him capable of religion, and susceptible of being acted upon by the Spirit of God. The ‘soul' is the inferior part of his mental nature, the seat of his passions and desires, of the natural propensities. The ‘body' is the corporeal frame" (Ibid. p. 106).

Henry Alford writes, "The spirit is the highest and distinctive part of man, the immortal and responsible soul in our common parlance. The soul (here) is the lower or animal soul, containing the passions and desires which we have in common with the brutes, but which in us in ennobled and drawn up by the spirit." (Henry Alford, The New Testament for English Readers, p. 1335).

W. E. Vine observes, "The spirit may be recognized as the life principle bestowed on man by God, the soul as the resulting life constituted in the individual" (Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words p. 589).

According to James 2:26, "the body apart from the spirit is dead." Conversely, the spirit's presence in the body equals life. This is demonstrated in Genesis 2:7 when Jehovah breathed into the lifeless body of Adam the breath (spirit) of life, he became a living soul, or became alive. Thus the soul in the more technical sense is the biological life which we share in common with all other living creatures. The spirit is that which makes us distinctly God's offspring (Acts 17:29).

T. P. Brown illustrates this with an analogy of an electrical light. There is the bulb and the electricity. When the two are combined the result is light. The bulb represents our body, the electrical energy represents the human spirit. When the electricity enters the bulb and causes light it represents a living soul.

In death, the spirit leaves the body (Jas. 2:26) and returns to God (Eccle.12:7). It awaits the resurrection of the physical body in the Hadean realm called Paradise or Abraham's bosom (Luke. 16:22-26). The departure of the spirit results in death, the end of physical life (soul) and the disintegration of the physical body.

At the resurrection our inward man or spirit will be reunited with a glorified body suited for eternity. Those who died in Christ will live eternally with God in heaven (I Cor. 15:42-44) and those who did not obey the gospel will suffer eternal punishment (II Thess. 1:8-10).

Concerning the role of the soul, Vincent says, "The soul is the principle of individuality, the seat of personal impressions, having a side in contact with the material element of humanity and well as with the spiritual element. It is this the mediating organ between the spirit and the body, receiving impressions from within and without. Spirit is the highest, deepest, noblest part of our humanity, the point of contact between God and man" (M. R., Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament, Vol. 1, p. 262). This can be illustrated by the form of a pyramid with the body as the foundation, the spirit and the apex and the soul in an intermediary position.

Lenski comments, "The spirt of man ought to rule supreme, wholly controlled by God's Spirit, and ought to be pneumatikos. Sin enabled the psuche to control so that man became psuchikos (sensual), his bodily appetites having sway ( R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul's Epistles to the Colossians to the Thessalonians, p. 367). The Christian's soul is thus controlled by the spirit and is not like the soul of pagans which runs away with the spirit and given reign to the body" (Ibid, p. 368).


CONCLUSION

The fact that the terms soul and spirit are often used interchangeably and each with a wide variety of meanings make this topic surely one of the most difficult in Scripture. We conclude this section with a summary Bro. Bro. Guy Woods, "The Soul, as it relates to man, is a generic term; the spirit, a specific term. In such a frame of reference it is easy to define spirit, it is the immortal nature infused directly from God (Heb. 12:8-9). The soul being generic, relies on the context to indicate its meaning and is used in the following four ways in the scriptures; (1) The whole person (Acts 2:41; I Pet. 3:20). (2). The physical life which man possesses in common with the lower creation (Ps. 78:50). (3). The intellectual nature and higher spiritual nature (I Cor. 2:14), the natural man here is literally the soulish man, (see ASV margin) (4). Synonymously with spirit" (G. N. Woods Gospel Advocate, Vol 121, No. 24, June 14, 1979, p. 376).

Awareness of these facts and careful attention to the context are the keys to a proper exegesis of those texts that speak of soul and of spirit.
 

Sincerely,



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