Thursday, October 18, 2018

The Economy of Man: Body, Soul and Spirit

  The Economy of Man: 
Body, Soul and Spirit

In Genesis1:26-27 Moses pulls back the curtain and permits the readers of holy Scripture to get a glimpse of the creation of mankind. He is made higher than the animals of earth and a little lower than the angels of heaven. Yet, in this mid-state man has been fashioned in the image of his Creator. Just what that means has been debated certainly from the time Moses wrote the words. 
While God is God and man is man, there is much, even most, about Him we cannot know until our glorification. Then we shall know Him even as we are known by Him (1 Cor. 13:12). In Yahweh’s mercy and grace, He has permitted us to be aware of a small portion of His nature through His self revelation in His Son and His Holy Spirit. We know, for instance, that God is a trinity of … somethings: Terullian said, “persons”; Augustine said: “three somewhats”; Anselm, “three I know not what”; Barth, “three ways of being” or “three modes”; Professor Stuart and Sabellius (before them all) said “distinctions.” It was John Calvin that articulated it clearly: “A threefold distinction in the Godhead.” 
Just as the signature of all great painters is found in the technique of their brush strokes, even so has the Creator God left His signature in all things He has made. Anyone with a cursory awareness of their surroundings must give witness to the three-ness found in all of God’s creation. Creation is made up of time, space, and matter (substance, mass).  The building blocks of all matter are atoms. Atoms have three principle parts: protons, neutrons, and electrons. All living things in God’s universe are made up of one or more cells. As atoms, cells also have three principle parts: membrane, a nucleus, and cytoplasm. In time there is present, past, and future; space possesses length, width, and height, as does matter. In that creation is made up of time, space,  and  matter, and further, in that time, space, and matter all have three parts, it is an undeniable conclusion that the Creator has left His brush strokes upon the canvas of His universe; because, we know from holy Scripture that the economy of the Godhead is divided into three parts. These three parts of God’s economy we know as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Since this truth is undeniable, and since we know that man is made in the likeness of God, then we would expect the economy of man to also manifest three attributes. So then, just as God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit so is man: body, soul and spirit.

 The Debate:
The elements of the human person have been much in debate. By this I mean there is great discussion among Christian thinkers as to whether or not the human being is bipartite, such as only body and soul, or three parts - such as body, soul and spirit. Those who would argue for a binary human would say that there is no difference between the soul and the spirit of man. But for others the distinction between soul and spirit, although difficult to ascertain, is clearly presented in holy Scripture.  
We can concur with Charles Hodge (and others) that man is a dualism of body and soul (sōma and psychê) as to his particular human-ness; but must contend, against Hodge, that there is an additional  element in man we term “spirit.” The “spirit” we would say, is the god-spark, or divine life force, the God consciousness in man. This god-spark does not belong to man, per se, but to God, and returns to God upon the death of the body (Ecc 12:7).  Human beings have a spirit, but we are not spirits. However, in Scripture, only believers are said to be spiritually alive (1 Cor. 2:11; Heb. 4:12; James 2:26), while unbelievers are spiritually dead (Eph. 2:1-5; Col. 2:13). In Paul’s writing, the spiritual is pivotal to the life of the believer (1 Cor. 2;14; 3:1; Eph. 1:3; 5:19; Col. 1:9; 3:16). The spirit is the element in humanity that gives us the ability to have an intimate relationship with God. The spirit, then,  refers to that immaterial part of humanity that “connects” with God, who Himself is spirit (John 4:23.
So, then, the bipartite man (sōma and psychê) infused by the “spirit” (pneuma), the “breath of God,” or god-spark, produced a three-ness in man. The Bible, then, presents the human person as having three elements: sōma (body), psychê (soul/mind) and pneuma (spirit, or breath of God, i.e. the god-spark). We call this the trichotomy of man. What we mean to say here is that the human being is a trifold creature made up of three separate and distinct elements: namely, body, soul and spirit. The following two passages from the Word of God should establish this point beyond further debate: 
1 Thessalonians 5:23 ... the very God of peace sanctify you wholly: and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  


Hebrews 4:12 For the Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, ...   
As is seen, the apostle Paul when writing to the Christians at Thessalonica made a sharp distinction between the three elements of man. Here, in this passage he speaks of the Christians being preserved in their spirits, souls and bodies. Furthermore, when the writer of Hebrews speaks on the subject of the discerning power of the Word of God, he has no problem in admitting (even if many cannot) that the Word of God can indeed find the dividing line between the soul and the spirit of man. From these two texts it should be clear to the disciple that man is indeed a three part being. So that we may conclude that the trichotomy of the human-being is proven by holy Scripture. 
By beginning with the premise that God exists in three modes without His substance being altered or changed (and this being demonstrated throughout creation), it becomes, then, a matter of course to move to the conclusion that man’s three elements of body, and soul and spirit are a mirrored image of his creator.  
Having established that man exists in three separate and distinct parts which we call body, soul and spirit, it remains for these parts to be identified and in some way defined. With this in mind the following definitions are offered:
  1. Body: The Greek word is "sōma," the physical element of a person. The body (sōma) is the material part of a human being that gathers information from its surrounding world through the five senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste. Information enters these five "gates" and is transmited to the  "psychê" or mind, also termed "soul." 
  2. Soul: The Greek term is "psychê," the immaterial inner self, the mind; consisting of will, emotions, and intellect; i.e. the self consciousness. It is that element of the human being that was fashioned in the likeness and image of God in the act of creation and lives on after the body is dead. The soul assimilates information through the five soulish senses of  imagination, conscience,  memory, reason and affections. The soul who only acquires information through the five sense "gates" of the body (sōma) and only assimilates said information by the five soulish senses is said to be carnal, or fleshly.  
  3. Spirit: The Greek word is "pneuma," (many times translated as "breath" or "wind") the god-spark, or God nature that resides in all men; i.e. the God consciousness. This element of man governed his entire being pre-fall. The five sense faculties of the spirit are faith, hope, reverence, prayer and worship. The writer of Proverbs calls the spirit of man the "candle of the LORD" (KJV); Job identifies the spirit of man as the "breath of the Almighty" that gives man understanding. Man lost this divine light and understanding in the fall. This "breath of the Almighty" lies dormant in un-regenerated man, but is awakened to new life in one who has received the re-generating of the Holy Spirit. The person who is governed by the awakened spirit is said to be spiritual.

Sorting out the confusion:
There is some confusion over the difference between the terms “soul” and “spirit” because they are sometimes used interchangeably by the sacred writers. In the OT the Hebrew is nephesh (soul), and ruach (spirit). In the NT the Greek is psychê (soul, or mind), and pneuma (spirit). The confusion exists because “soul” is used by sacred writers to denote the inner man (consisting of the will, emotions, and intellect), and also to reference the complete human, material and immaterial combined. In like manner the term translated as “spirit” (that primarily means “life force,” is ruach in the Hebrew, found some 378 times in the OT, and literally meaning “breath,” “wind,” etc.; the corresponding Greek term is pneuma, occurring 379 times in the NT) is sometimes used interchangeably with the term translated as “soul” by sacred writers. “Spirit” can be used, by way of the figure of speech known as the synecdoche (part for the whole, or vice versa) for a person himself. John wrote: "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1; emphasis added). Note that the term “spirits” in this text has reference to the inner man of the “false prophets.”  In this manner “spirit” may reference the element of man (2 Cor. 4:16) that is fashioned in God’s image (Gen. 1:26-27), and thus be a synonym of “soul.” This is also true of Zechariah 12:1 “… saith the LORD, …  formeth the spirit of man within him.” This has lead some to suppose that there is no difference between the soul and spirit of man.  This is a mistake in our opinion, because of the weight of 1 Thessalonians 5:3 and Hebrews 4:12 (introduced above) that demonstrate a marked difference between the soul and the spirit.
“Soul” may signify merely an individual person: e.g. the prophet Ezekiel declared that the “soul” (i.e., the person) who sins will surely die (Ezek. 18:20), or, as Peter would write centuries later, “eight souls” were saved by water in the days of Noah (1 Pet. 3:20). See also Exodus 1:5. Conversely, “soul” can have to do with that aspect of man that is characterized by the intellectual and emotional dimension (Gen. 27:25; Job 30:16). It is the eternal component of man that is fashioned in the very image of God (Gen. 1:26), and that can exist apart from the physical body (Mt. 10:28; Rev. 6:9). The term “soul,” as with the word “spirit” may take on different senses, depending upon its contextual setting. Since “soul” and “spirit” are used interchangeably by scared writers, one must consider the context of the Hebrew and Greek words to determine the proper understanding.

Apostolically Speaking
☩☩ JLH


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