Man: Dichotomy, Trichotomy, or Unity READ FIRST

[Josh]

7/30/06:

Hume has been emailing me some great stuff on this question, which I'm making some space for here.

I'm going to kick things off by defining some different perspectives on the nature of man. Hume, or others, feel free to post modifications and corrections, because I'm going off of prior knowledge here.

DICHOTOMISTS have seen man as a 'duality' composed of two distinct parts: body and soul (or spirit).

Body, to the dichotomist, is usually seen in a straightforward manner as our physical body- the tangible 'stuff' our souls are housed in. It may also include our emotions, and even our personality.

The soul (used interchangeably with spirit) is seen as the intangible part of us that is our true essence- the seat of our will and ultimate identity.

Some versions of this 'dualism' (mainly Greek philosophical constructs and Gnostic strains of Chrsitianity) have seen the soul as utterly superior to the body, trapped in earthly, inferior (or in some cases, evil) flesh.

Many would cite Paul's frequent use of the idea that there is a conflict in man between "spirit" and "flesh" as supporting this view of the nature of man (Jesus also uses these terms). I think this interpretation of Jesus and Paul can be easily misunderstood, but more on that later.

Variations on this view have probably been dominant for quite some time in Western society and Christian thought.

TRICHOTOMISTS break the human essence into 3 categories: body, soul, and spirit (separating soul from spirit, as opposed to dichotomists who maintain that the two terms are equivalent).

Body is seen here as only the basic physical components of our humanity.

Soul is seen as our emotions/ personality, etc..

and Spirit is usually seen as our ultimate identity (from what I can gather)- the place where the 'throne' of our life is. Our spirit is either dead or alive. If it is submitted to our soul, then it is dead. If it is submitted to God, it is alive and rules our soul.

There are striking parellels between this view and Freud's view of human nature (id, ego, and superego), but perhaps only general ones.

Some of us in the group are familiar with this view because it is held by teachers such as Graham Cooke.

PHYSICALISTS (or those who view man as UNITY) see man as indivisable. A strong version of this maintains that man is nothing apart from his body. Part of his body may or may not (depending on which variation you're talking about here) involve a soul and/or spirit, but it is seen as intrinsically linked to a body.

This stance finds various advocates from atheists to Christians. Christian identification with some version of this perspective relies heavily on stressing the Jewish/ Christian doctrine of physical resurrection.

I'm sure a woeful summary of a complex topic. If I've strayed signficantly, I'll edit the post. If not, I'll just post modifications based on other's input.

Next, I'd like to look at aspects of this topic in more detail.

[hume]

8/1/06:

"TRICHOTOMISTS break the human essence into 3 categories: body, soul, and spirit (separating soul from spirit, as opposed to dichotomists who maintain that the two terms are equivalent)."

Probably everyone agrees that the human being can be variously described as a unity, a dichotomy, or something more complex, depending on the point of view or the topic under discussion. Even a strict atheistic materialist could be comfortable talking about "the
strivings of the human spirit," and could recognize "the Dark Night of the Soul" as descriptive of a profound subjective experience. In the end, of course, he'd reduce these things to an amazing consequence of physical events; but he'd surely be quick to agree
that human experience, at least subjectively, is highly complex and varied, and can't be accurately described as "just one thing." (Indeed, even matter can't be very usefully described as "just one kind of thing" -- sure, it's a distinct category of substance, but to leave
it at that is to do a very weak job of telling us about it.)

Similarly, it would seem odd for a Dichotomist to say, "soul and spirit are the same thing." Better to have our Dichotomist say, "soul is a real substance, just as real as body (tho immaterial); whereas spirit isn't
a substance, it's a category describing various aspects of our higher-order cognition and behavior (our noblest aspirations, etc.)." This doesn't boil down to claiming that "there's no such thing as the human spirit, or human spiritual behavior." Rather, a certain set of human behaviors and potentials are seen as appropriately called "spiritual," and these behaviors and potentials are generated by the soul. Spirit remains a meaningful descriptive term, though it does not refer to one of the substances that makes up the human being.

All that just to say, fewer substances need not imply fewer behaviors, fewer potentials, or a weaker vocabulary.

[Josh]

8/1/06:

Spirit is a tricky word. I was picturing the definition of the word spirit that would come to mind if one were to say they saw the 'spirit' of their dead uncle appear in the room (in that sense the word may be, at least to the dichotomist, synonomous with 'soul')

Other phrases that I'm thinking of: "spirits of the dead", perhaps even "holy spirit"

You're quite right about 'spirit' in the sense you're describing.

You also do well to remind me (perhaps indirectly) that another way to avoid the semantics game when talking about this subject is to talk about 'substance'- breaking 'man' down to his/her basic and indivisible substance(s).

[hume]

8/6/06:

It's obvious enough, but maybe worth mentioning at the outset, that the Bible does not contain any direct exposition about anthropology ("people are made up of X number of substances, which interact in the following ways: bla bla bla.") In fact it's been said that the biblical writers did not much care about such details. Certain beliefs like the Gnostic contempt for matter can be shown to have implications (e.g., an evil or inept Creator) that are clearly unbiblical; but it does seem fair to say that a range of beliefs about human nature are acceptable within the Christian tradition.

Josh breaks out the major options as mono/di/trichotomist. Another way to look at them would be:

- Materialists: there's body, and that's all. Soul, spirit & so on are aspects of human nature, but they arise from the body.

- Soft dualists: body and soul are both real substances. Humans are in some important way a unity composed of both and can't be complete without both. The soul may be immortal (or may not), but it's certainly not eternal (it had a beginning). I'm calling this position "soft" because of its relatively modest estimation of the soul.

- Extreme dualists: there's body, and there's soul, but they are radically different: soul is immortal, and both superior to and largely independent of the body. When the body dies, the soul lives on, probably in some improved condition. In classic Greek formulation, this soul is eternal and uncreated.

As for trichotomists, I'd just place them as a variation of soft dualism.

[Josh]

8/6/06:

An interesting side-note: the Greek notion that the soul was eternally existent (or at least pre-existent to birth) was put forward by the early Church father Origen. It was ideas like this that got him on the black-list later in life (and reasonably so, since such ideas do smack of extreme dualism and are moving quite afield from the Hebrew Conception).

This same view resurfaced with Mormonism and obviously has ties with Eastern belief systems.

[hume]

8/6/06:

Ken Collins writes, "In the ancient world, pagans taught that the physical universe was evil and had been created as a prank by a minor god. Our bodies, according to this belief system, are prisons for our souls. They believed that death freed the soul of its prison, and if the soul had been properly prepared, it would enjoy an eternal bodiless existence. Many modern Christians mistakenly think this is the Christian view, but historically it is not only heretical, it isn't even Christian."

It might help to think of the Greek position as Extreme Dualism, to distinguish it from milder forms of dualism which don't involve contempt for the corporeal. This is a vital point of contention between "The Greeks" and "The Christians": were we, and our world, created and deemed "good" by our Creator? (Even given that things have gone in a bad direction, is there anything here that's worth redeeming?)

WARNING: the next 2 paragraphs are sleep-inducing & should be skipped except by those looking for an insomnia cure.

As Josh has pointed out, the early Greek view of the soul may not be a far cry from the ancient Hebrew view -- in the Homeric epics, the soul distinguishes a living from a dead person, but aside from that it's not a developed concept -- there's no discussion of the soul being responsible for thought, no speculation about what its function or nature is; it's never mentioned except in connection with death or extreme risk. At death it left the body for a shadowy underworld where no one wanted to be. However, one difference stands out: the O.T. uses "soul" to refer to "the whole person" (more on this in another post). It would seem the term is used less often in Homer and with a more narrow meaning. Certainly, to modern readers, Homer and the O.T. both have a strong "earthy" character (lots of, um, R-rated material), and tend to define character by actions, not thoughts. Both are very physical narratives.

Anyway, after Homer the Greek concept of soul developed into a more important aspect of the person: the source of thought, emotion, & moral sense -- one's essential character. There was still no strong notion of an afterlife (many thought the soul was made of very fine matter, like air, which would disperse and be lost at death). Plato accepted this general idea of the soul's capacities, and went further by arguing that the soul is immortal and immaterial. Note that by "immortal" is meant uncreated, presumably having always existed. Plato is far removed from the "earthiness" of Homer & the O.T.; for him, the highest and best things are intellectual, and life is more about right thinking than right acting (not that right acting is unimportant, but it's guided and made possible by thought). Plato's soul includes the capacities of reason, aspiration, and desire -- thoughts and emotions do not arise from the body. Plato didn't exactly openly despise the body, he simply removed from it most of the capacities that we think of as essential to our humanity.

The main relevance of all this to Christianity is summed up by Oscar Cullman: "it is precisely apart from the body that the Greek soul attains to full development of its life ... Wherever, as in Platonism, death is thought of in terms of liberation, there the visible world is not recognized directly as God's creation."

Platonism is the source of the extreme views of the Gnostic heretics. Ken Collins: "Gnosticism was a religious movement that predated Christianity and attempted to assimilate it ... [It] taught that matter was evil and that spiritual things were good. Therefore, when it was adapted to Christianity, it denied the incarnation on the grounds that a high spiritual being could never be polluted by association with matter. It taught that Jesus was a mortal man who had contact with a high-ranking spirit being called Christ ... Gnostic ideas are refuted in the New Testament (See 1 John 2:22-3)."

Ultimately, Gnostic teachings (and related heresies) impelled the early church to draft the Nicene Creed. Gnosticism is a quintessential heresy, in that it twists Christian doctrine in ways that are inherently attractive to believers; thus, despite the church's clear statements, it crops up again and again throughout Christian history. For instance, Menno Simons, namesake of the Mennonite Church, argued that Christ was not born of Mary, since, being God, he surely could not have been "corrupted" by "sinful" material flesh; instead, he must have passed through her "like water through a tunnel." (This is not the typical view of modern Mennonites -- I don't want to imply that -- the point is that ol' Menno was a sincere believer, and, with the best of intentions, he adopted a heretical view.)

To boil it down: the belief in an immortal, eternal human soul which is radically superior to the body (and to matter in general) is not a Christian, and certainly not a biblical, one. However, because most early believers lived in a Greek thought-world, this notion of the soul entered Christian thinking, and has never entirely left it.

www.kencollins.com/question-45.htm

plato.stanford.edu/entries/ancient-soul/

www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=1115&C=1216

www.kencollins.com/glossary/theology.htm#gnosticism

[hume]

8/6/06:

"The biblical view of human beings is that we are whole persons with no part detachable. We do not have bodies, we are bodies. We are flesh-in-unity-with-soul." -- The Abingdon Dictionary of Theology

It's true the O.T. uses the word "soul" quite a few times. But we have to be a little wary of inserting alien cultural assumptions into those passages. I've read (but have no background for arguing the point) that the Hebrew word (nephesh) often translated "soul" literally means "breath" and is even used to refer to animals (Genesis 1:20), where it signifies nothing more than "living being;" and that furthermore, there is no specific Hebrew word for "body," since the Jews did not see a need to distinguish "my physical self" from "my non-physical self."

In reference to humans, soul seems to be used to mean "one's entire being." So "Bless the Lord, oh my soul" is equivalent to, "Bless the Lord with everything that I am" (as opposed to the dualist rendering, "Bless the Lord, oh my immaterial essence"). For a clear example, see Ps. 35:9-10, which exactly parallels "my soul" with "all my bones" or Ezekiel 18:4, in which the term soul simply refers to the person (similar to an archaic English usage, along the lines of "the ship sank, taking 40 souls down with it").

Some believe that a dramatic, total sort of resurrection (a resurrection of the whole person, rather than the reuniting of a Greek-style psyche with body) is taught in passages like Is. 26:19, Daniel 12:13, Hosea 13:14, and perhaps Job 19:26.

Be all of that as it may, the critical point seems to be unity of the person. The Hebrew person may (or may not) include a soul-substance and certainly does include important spiritual aspects. What's clear is that the O.T. presents the body as intrinsic to the person (cf. the many passages that characterize death in anguished and final terms). We aren't like 2 or 3 things glued together, any one of which can be removed without diminishing the whole. Much less are we like 2 things glued together, one of which (the body) we'd be much better off without.