(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.”
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.