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:
(a) That of the Gnostics, who held that the πνεῦμα is part of the divine essence, and therefore incapable of sin.