The Doe of the Dawn: A Christian World View . . .

THE NATURE OF MAN

May your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. - 1 Thess. 5:23

In a philosophical discussion of man there are two terms that are sometimes used that may strike you as funny words, dichotomy and trichotomy. The first refers to a division into two parts, the second to three parts. If one views man the way Paul does in the above passage, he would be a trichotomist, which may sound like some kind of a heretic. If one believes that man has but two parts, spirit and soul being the same thing, he would be a dichotomist, which sounds no better.

Soul and spirit may appear to be indistinguishable, even in Scripture, for Heb. 4:12 refers to the word of God as living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and as “piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” While this is often made to refer to the Bible, the context suggests that “the word of God” is God himself or Christ. The following passage goes on to say “There is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” It is therefore the Lord himself whose piercing insight separates soul and spirit and who knows every thought and motive.

The reference to “both joints and marrow” is figurative language that indicates that the Word penetrates the very innards of man’s inmost self --- it or he gets inside the genes of soul and spirit. All thoughts and purposes are fully analyzed and perfectly classified by the infallible Judge. It is something like saying “In him we live and move and have our very being” (Acts 17:28), however man’s nature might be described.

It is not certain that Paul or any of the New Testament is trichotomist, or dichotomist either, for in such passages as we have quoted the writers may be simply accommodating themselves to a view of man that had been common since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers, as far back as 500 B.C. The Greeks saw man as a trinity: he has a material body, which they called soma; he has an animal soul, pseuche; he has an immortal spirit, pneuma. The latter is the seat of the higher intellectual and moral faculties, while pseuche (soul) is the seat of animal life, which includes passions, instincts, and appetites. The soma (body) is simply the material house for the other two. These are the same Greek words used in Heb. 4:12 and I Thess. 5:23.

To the Greeks, therefore, it is pneuma that separates human kind from all other creatures. Animals, even plants and insects, have body and soul. As a thinking creature man is unique. But to the Greeks this trinitarian view of man was not necessarily religious --- the spirit did not necessarily come from God. Aristotle, for instance, saw all this as eternal and uncreated. What is has always been, and is always changing.

The old Greek version of man as body, soul, and spirit may, of course, be right. God may have bequeathed to their sages such wisdom, and it is understandable that biblical writers would refer to human nature in such terms, whether precisely correct or not. What 1 Thess. 5:23 and Heb. 4:12 really teach is that God blesses, knows, and indwells “the whole man,” describe him as you will.

I am persuaded that there is no way to dichotomize or trichotomize human nature. We are not so easily compartmentalized, for what is soul is also spirit, and what is body may be spiritual as well as physical. Usually the Bible makes soul and spirit the same, and even the body is not sheer matter, for it is referred to as “the temple of the Holy Spirit” and has a destiny beyond the grave, “the mortal putting on immortality.” Even in this life the body can be viewed as an extension of the human spirit. Just as we can properly say “I do not have a spirit, I am spirit,” we can also say “I do not have a body, I am body or somos. Your body is also you, not simply your housing. The interaction of soul (spirit) and body makes this evident. Bodily hurts often mean spiritual hurts and bodily joys mean spiritual joys, and conversely. Many noble souls, decimated by severe maladies, are continually buoyed up by an animate spirit.

The truth that is vital to us is not how our nature is to be analyzed, but that we have a Creator who is not far from any of us and who knows every nook and cranny of our inmost being, however complex it may be.

lt is also a crucial truth that we stand apart from all other creatures, being made in the image of God. We only need to study our free fingers and prehensile thumb, along with the rotation capacity of the arm, to see that we are different from the animals. Then there is our erect posture, a larger brain, a more highly organized and intricate nervous system. It is a very important fact about you that your brain is about three times larger than the largest anthropoid ape, and that the greatest development within the skull is the cerebrum, the seat of the higher mental powers.

But you are also unique among the creatures in that you have the capacity to communicate in propositional language, both spoken and written. You can repeatedly invent, make tools, build machines. You cannot only travel through the air but into outer space. You are also a social and political creature who forms cultures, nations, laws, institutions. You are conscious of yourself and of history, and you have aesthetic appreciation. You are an ethical creature, capable of religious refinement.

Henry Giles was referring to the likes of you when he wrote:

“Man is greater than a world --- than systems of worlds; there is more mystery in the union of soul with the body, than in the creation of a universe.”

It is also a vital truth that we are of divine origin, regardless of what science has to say about it. Whatever merits the theory of evolution may have, we must keep in mind that it does not explain either the origin of life, the nature of life, or the will to live. It is only fair to the theory of evolution to recognize that it does not teach that man descended from the ape. Even if man and the ape have a common ancestry, which the theory does hold, that does not preclude a divine origin for man in the dim, distant past.

In a day when secularism accounts for human nature only in terms of the laws of physics and chemistry, we as believers must hold forth the biblical view of man. It is true, as modern science teaches, that we are part of the physical order of nature, and, like other objects, are subject to its laws. It is also true that scientific disciplines, whether sociology, political science, anthropology, or psychology, have much to teach us about ourselves. A secularistic view of man is all right insofar as it goes, but it does not go far enough in that it does not consider “the complete person.” It dares to reduce the rich qualities of human personality to the functions of the biological organism. It neglects what is distinctively human about us.

Along with God’s revelation that tells us who we are, we have the crucial witness of our own self-consciousness. These two testimonies, the Bible and our intuition, sometimes unite in bearing witness to our divine origin, as in Ps. 8:

“When I look at the sky, which you have made, at the moon and the stars, which you set in their places, what is man, that you think of him; mere man, that you care for him? Yet you made him inferior only to your-self; you crowned him with glory and honor. You appointed him ruler over everything you made; you placed him over all creation.”

Here we have a poet of God contemplating his own nature as a man. This capacity within itself sets man apart. With the wonders of nature before him (general revelation) and the word of God in his mind (special revelation), he ponders his own consciousness of self with What is man? (subjective revelation), and concludes that God is the author of it all, a faith based on both reason and revelation.

We are alone in this universe only if we choose to be. Anyone can believe who is willing to take an authentic look up and out and in. --- the Editor