Body, Soul and Spirit
In the introductory chapter it has been mentioned that by Christian Psychology we do not mean the same thing as Biblical Psychology. Yet in Biblical Psychology a great deal of work has been done that is very relevant to our plan; and of this we must not fail to take advantage. Indeed, it will be worth our while to linger a little longer at this introductory stage; because from Biblical Psychology we can obtain a good preliminary glance at the whole subject, and express it in terms familiar to all readers of the Bible.
If any person of ordinary intelligence were asked to say of what elements a human being is composed, the likelihood is that he would reply. Body and soul; for such is the modern and popular view of human nature. The Bible, however, takes a different view: it speaks of man as
composed of body, soul and spirit. That is to say, while the modern division of human nature is twofold, the biblical is threefold; or, in learned language, the one is a dichotomy and the other a trichotomy.
A still more important point in the biblical view is that, in the individual man, any one of these three factors of which his nature is composed may be the predominant one, and that in dififerent human beings these different factors do predominate. Thus, in one man the body may be predominant, in another the soul, in a third the spirit; and the human race might be divided into different sections on this principle. For the different kinds of human beings so characterized the Greek language has adjectives. Thus, the man in whom the body is predominant would be called dvdpojiro (TaijuariAcd?, from croi/xa, the body; the man in whom the soul is predominant would be called avOpoiiro xffvxi’Kos, from xlyxv the soul; and the man in whom the spirit is predominant avdpcoTTO^ TTvevfxaTiKoSf from TTvevpa, the spirit. Unfortunately in the English language we do not possess three equivalent adjectives. For ai^Opajno; cro)fjbaTLK6<; we might, indeed, say a “bodily or sensual man,” and for avOpcono Trz/cf/xart/cds a ‘’ spiritual man,” but we have no corresponding adjective derived from the word “soul “; ad the
Latin equivalent, ‘’animal,” will not serve, because it has been degraded to designate the man in whom the body predominates. We must resort, therefore, to circumlocution and speak of “a man after the body,” “a man after the soul,” “a man after the spirit,” or “a man who minds the things of the body,” “a man who minds the things of the soul,” “a man who minds the things of the spirit “.^
Let us now take a very slight glance from this point of view at the elements into which the Scripture divides human nature.
The Body
The body is the lowest section of our nature. It not only connects us directly with the animals beneath us, but even with the brute earth on which we tread; for man was formed out of the dust of the ground, and he is destined
Another term similar to these three is avOpoi-rro? a-apKLKoj from adpi, flesh. The noun *’ flesh “and especially the adjective “fleshly” would suggest a base meaning; but it may be stated roughly that, in biblical language, flesh is equivalent to body phis soul; that is to say, it denotes the whole man except the spirit. That it does not necessarily suggest anything evil is most conclusively proven by the statement of Scripture: “The Word was made flesh “. Still, it is perhaps the most difficult of all the psychological terms occurring in the Bible. Wendt, in German, and Dickson, in English, have written copiously on “Flesh and Spirit “. 4 to return to the dust from which he has come.
Man’s body is, indeed, a noble piece of work. It is of the earth earthy, yet it is the beauty of the world. Man is an animal, but he is the paragon of animals. In the symmetrical outlines and graceful movements of an athletic youth, or in the rounded contours and delicate colouring of feminine loveliness, it charms and melts the beholder. The anatomist, acquainted with its every part, examines with awe the structure of its tissues; and the skill with which its hundreds of minute portions are built up into a perfect whole, adapted to the performance of its varied functions, such as the formation and circulation of the blood, fills with similar emotion the reverent physiologist.
The glory, however, of the body lies not in its beauty or strength, but in its connexion with the invisible part of man. It is as the servant of a higher nature that the body attains its true destiny. It is the medium through which communication is maintained between it and the outer world, transmitting to the mind through the senses the impressions of external things and carrying into effect in the outer world, through its organs of activity, the purposes of the mind.
In such service the body fulfils the intention of its creation and rises to its true honour. But the servant may become the master. This lowest part of the human constitution may become the ruling part. In this case the higher powers, over which it tyrannizes, are degraded; the soul, with its strong and noble powers, becoming a shorn Samson in the lap of Delilah, and the spirit — that pure dove, with wings of silver and feathers of yellow gold, which ought to be soaring in the sunshine, near the gate of heaven — being compelled to ‘’ lie among the pots” and steep her plumage in the muddy stream of sensuality. Even the body itself, displaced from its natural position and deprived of its proper work, becomes degraded and verges towards brutality.
There are many forms which the predominance of the body over the higher elements of human nature may assume, and they change from age to age; but there have been three masterforms in which it has historically manifested itself. These correspond to the three principal bodily ajDpetites; and they are gluttony, drunkenness and lust.
Gluttony is a sin which at certain epochs of history, such as the Decline of the Roman Empire, has assumed astounding dimensions; there being few passages in literature more nauseous than the pages of the ancient satirists who describe this form of debauchery. In our day the sin calls for less remark, yet it is not unknown. There are persons to whom the great hour of the day is not the hour of work or the hour devoted to mental cultivation or the hour of prayer, but the hour of dining.
Drunkenness has in the present age attained to a portentous difiPusion, and Great Britain has, in connexion with it, an unenviable notoriety. This vice has an astonishing capability of subduing to itself the whole being. Examples are known to all of persons whose entire powers of mind and body it has absorbed, drink being what they work for, what they are always thinking about, what they scheme for with inexhaustible ingenuity. This is a vice which soon stamps on manhood, and still more quickly on womanhood, its own vile mark; and it is constantly picking out its victims from every section of society.
But perhaps it is the third of this miserable trio — lust — which, both on account of its own native character and the part it has played in history, deserves the bad eminence of being looked upon as the representative of the despotism of the body over the rest of the human constitution. Its power of drenching the whole being with pollution is supreme. It can so people the imagination with its hideous pictures that the mind is unable to think of anything else; it can override every motive of prudence, as well as every feeling of virtue or benevolence; till at last, having wrecked body, mind and spirit together, it closes up its victim’s miserable career in terror and dishonour.
These sins of the body abound in every part of the globe, and the history of the world is, to a not inconsiderable extent, a history of them. They abound even in Protestant countries, and they form the problem of the city. Rare are the homes into which the foul wash of one or other of them has never penetrated. Merely because men are men, having bodies with the appetites on which these vices engraft themselves, all have need to be on their guard, lest the animal nature obtain the mastery. ‘’Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation.” “And let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.”
The Soul
The soul is the intermediate element in man’s nature, between the body at the bottom and the spirit at the top. Let it be repeated, that this is not modern but scriptural language. Even in the Scripture it is not used scientifically, but popularly; as is clearly proved by the fact that the Bible does not use it consistently, but sometimes speaks of the soul, as we do, as a name for the whole of the inner man, and only now and then speaks of soul and spirit as distinct from each other. Some eminent biblical scholars would, indeed, object to this as too definite a distinction, and would prefer to say that the soul is the whole inner man dealing with the world and time, and the spirit the same entity dealing with God and eternity. On the whole, however, the Bible splits the entity which we call the soul into two parts — soul and spirit — though it is the reverse of easy to say which of the powers recognised by modern psychology as constituting the soul are to be identified with the one division and which with the other. Evidently, however, those of the soul are lower and those of the spirit higher.
Take it either way — either that the soul consists of the powers of the inner man which deal with this world and with time or that it signifies the whole inner man in so far as it occupies itself with the world and time — and it is clear that the man in whom the soul is predominant must be the same whom we call a “man of the world “. And what he is like is known to all.
The man of the world is not completely the slave of the body, like the drunkard; but the reason why he does not yield to the bodily appetites is not because to do so would be a sin and a shame, but because it would be imprudent. He indulges in occasional excess and enjoys it, but he does not allow it to interfere with business or with his social standing. He has no tingling sense of self-abasement at the presence in his mind of sensual thoughts; for what he fears is not sin, but being found out. The man of the world goes to Church, because this is expected of him; and he gives an occasional subscription for the same reason; but he has no faith in very earnest religion or in extraordinary liberality. He never hears of an exceptionally noble or disinterested action without suspecting that, if only everything were known, it would be found, after all, that selfishness lay at the root of it. It is a keen pleasure to him when anyone who has made a great profession of religion comes to grief and is proved to have been no more a saint than his neighbours. By a sort of instinct the man of the world takes to money-making as the be-all and end-all of existence; and towards this aim he pursues his way by all sorts of underground and circuitous paths, not infrequently missing his object through the over-eagerness of his pursuit. Parallel to this pursuit of gain by the typical worldly man is the pursuit of social advancement by the thoroughly worldly woman. With tooth and claw she fights for her position. How servile she is to superiors, how jealous of equals, how contemptuous of inferiors!
I am, however, drawing this portrait too grossly; for, if it be painted so harshly, none will recognise themselves in it, though some may identify their neighbours. But it would be a mistake to suppose that the man in whom the soul is predominant cannot rise higher than this. A man may be suppressing his spirit and living wholly for this world, and yet he may be aiming at objects far above money or social ambition. Such objects as industry, family affection, mental culture and philanthropy belong to this world and to time; but the pursuit of such objects will form a character very different from the one just sketched; and it is only fair to sketch this character also.
Figure, then, a man who delights in his daily work, doing it not as a drudge or merely for the sake of the wages it brings, but for pure love of it and on account of the moral discipline it supplies, because industry keeps the mind clear of those birds of evil that are constantly alighting on the field of the indolent; a man who, when his day’s work is over, hurries home to his domestic circle, and is happier there than even at his work, finding a still better moral discipline in the streams of affection which pour over his heart fresh and limpid as the brooks on a hillside; a man who, as far as his leisure and opportunities permit, keeps up with the movements of the time in literature and art, in science and politics, and dearly enjoys a quiet hour spent over a poem in which there is the true pulse of song or a speech in which there is the true ring of eloquence, or one of those books full of thoughts that breathe and words that burn, which are the most precious intellectual heritage of the race; a man who takes an interest in his fellowmen, in the affairs of the Church and the affairs of the State, and is always willing to lend a helping hand to a brother pulling hard against the stream; and yet a man who never kneels in secret to pray to his Maker and is well aware that, though he may have lingered in the porch, he has never entered the temple of religion.
Such a man would feel it an infinite degradation to be enslaved to any lust of the body; yet his spirit, the godward side of his nature, has never been wakened into activity; and, in short, he is ‘’ a man after the soul “. His life is a beautiful one, and a wise Christian teacher would not lay a hand on any of its fine features. Yet there is a deeper secret. The Deity he worships is an unknown God. He requires to let Jesus Christ, with all the influence of His example and companionship and with all the virtue of His life and death, into his life. In short, his spirit, the noblest part of his manhood, needs to be awakened, and the centre of his life transferred into this section of his constitution.
The Spirit
The third element in the human constitution is the spirit. If the soul be the side of man which turns towards the earth, the spirit is the side which turns towards heaven. It is the throne of God in human nature.
In the spirit there are three master-powers, with each of which God can be apprehended in a peculiar way. These are reason, love and conscience. By means of the first we know Him, by means of the second we unite ourselves with
Him, and by means of the third we obey Him. Of course, these powers may also be exercised about other things and persons; but God is their supreme object. Humanity can have no higher honour than this — to possess powers on which, as on the outspread wings of the cherubim above the mercy-seat, the presence of God may rest. The spirit, being by nature the highest element in man, is intended by the Creator to rule in the human constitution. It is not, indeed, intended to abolish or overbear the inferior powers. It is not intended, for example, to interfere with such tendencies of the soul, though these are earthward, as industry, family affection, culture and philanthropy: on the contrary, it takes these and all similar tendencies under its protection. It does not even destroy the appetites of the body; for these have essential functions to perform in the human economy. But the spirit takes control of the inferior powers and regulates their action. It imparts dignity to human nature, and it introduces harmony into its activities.^
1 The body, when surrendered to the control of the spirit, rises into signal honour and has before it a glorious destiny. In this world it becomes a “temple of the Holy Ghost,” this dignity binding those who enjoy it to glorify God in their body. Its members, though in time past they may have served as instruments of unrighteousness, can be presented unto
It is an ancient notion that human nature ought to be like a chariot: the body is the ma-God as “instruments of righteousness “. But the most distinctive doctrine of Scripture regarding the body is that it will rise again. This is hinted even in the Old Testament, and it is everywhere clearly intimated in the New. This is to be the crowning act of the redemption of the whole man. It is involved in the work of Christ, and it is to be effected by the same power which raised Jesus from the dead: “If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal body by His Spirit that dwelleth in you “. At the same time, however, it is a victory of man’s own spirit over the rebellious flesh; and St. Paul describes his own pursuit of holiness, as well as his service to God and man, as a ceaseless effort to” attain unto the resurrection of the dead “. To such an extent will the victorious spirit ultimately penetrate the body with its own nature that the latter will itself become spiritual; for,” if there is a natural body, there is also .a spiritual body “. Compare Laidlaw,” The Bible Doctrine of Man,” pp. 250 ff. On the resurrection of the body this author says (p. 256):” Science at the present day stands in a very different and more friendly attitude towards this belief of man’s reappearance in the future world than did the science of one or two generations ago. We are now assured that our present bodies are the same, yet not the same, that we have had from our birth. That there is in the body some principle, law, or specific form, which remains ever the same amid the flux of particles, is now an axiom of knowledge. We may say, in an almost literal sense, that we pass through the process of resurrection constantly; that we are always dying.in the flesh, always rising anew by virtue of the law of organic identity. Behind terial framework; the powers of the soul are the steeds by which this is wheeled along; but the spirit is the charioteer by whose keen eye the course is determined and in whose hands the reins are held. Other thinkers have compared human nature, as it ought to be, with the Hebrew temple: the body is the outer court, the soul the holy place, the spirit the holy of holies. But it is the presence of God in the spirit, kept there by active faith and love, which lends dignity and meaning to the whole. Without God human nature is as meaningless as a temple out of which the Deity has departed and in which the altar-fire has been extinguished.
The supremacy of the spirit, then, in human nature is the destiny of man. Yet it is not the work of man. In actual men the spirit has been dethroned, and its place has been usurped by the soul or the body. To restore the spirit to its lawful position, there is necessary an agency stronger than itself, and this is the Spirit of God. It is a significant fact that the name in Scripture
this, again, lies the greater law of personal identity — that there is a being which thinks, feels, and wills, maintains a connected growth from infancy to age in knowledge and moral character. This does not cease at death. The bearing of such ideas on the identity of the future body with the present is obvious.”
for the highest element in human nature is the same as that for one of the divisions in the divine nature: the Third Person of the Trinity is the Spirit, and the highest part of man is the spirit. This is not a chance coincidence. These are akin to each other, and it is only when the Spirit of God enters into the spirit of man and abides in it, purifying, potentiating and sustaining, that the latter is able to recover its lost dignity and exercise over the other elements of human nature its legitimate and benignant authority.
Every human being, then, has these three elements — body, soul, spirit — in his own person, and the centre of his being may lie in any of the three, rendering him “a man after the body,” “a man after the soul,” or “a man after the spirit “. But there is a further truth, and perhaps a more solemn one — that this centre is never at rest, but is constantly moving upwards or downwards — upwards in the direction of spirit or downwards in the direction of body. The reason of this is because it is being constantly acted on by two attractions, the one below and the other above, the one being the attraction of temptation and the other that of the Spirit of God. The most solemn question which any man can ask about himself is, whether he is getting better or worse
—whether he is leaving behind him the innocence of childhood and the aspiration of youth, and hardening into worldliness or being besotted with indulgence, or whether, on the contrary, he is leaving behind him the errors of youth and the besetting sins of his disposition, and rising into communion with God and likeness to Christ; but the answer to this question is decided by the answer that must be given to the other question, whether he is obeying the attraction from beneath or the attraction from above. To break away from the attraction of temptation and yield to that of the Spirit of God may require a great decision and a prolonged effort; but there are few motives by which men can be induced to make this choice and maintain this exertion so potent as the consideration of the high destiny to which, by the very constitution of their manhood, they have been obviously called. When a man has read on the tleshy tablets of his own innermost being the prophecy, inscribed there by the divine finger, of what he is to become, it is not difficult to forget the things which are behind and to press towards the mark.
Dr. A. B. D. Alexander, in his work on the Ethics of St. Paul, gives an excellent summary of Pauline psychology under seven heads — Flesh, Body, Spirit, Soul, Heart, Mind, Conscience — and all of these terms, at least, would require to be examined in an exhaustive sketch of Biblical Psychology. The quotations in Dr. Alexander’s pages impress the reader with the uncertainty and looseness with which some of these terms are employed by St. Paul; and the same is doubtless true of the other Biblical writers, who observed no more rigour in the use of such words than would a popular preacher in our own time. Of all these terms the one which, in Dr. Alexander’s view, is employed most consistently, and with something like scientific strictness, is Conscience; this being accounted for, he suggests, by the use of this term by the Stoics, who had succeeded not only in impressing on it a definite meaning but in putting it into general circulation throughout the ancient world. More in need of attention are such of the terms as have changed their meaning. “Heart,” as now used among ourselves, would have tolerably the same connotation as “soul” in the foregoing sketch; but in the Bible it has a much more general signification, denoting the focus of the inner man, the centre from which the whole of conduct proceeds. “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts,” said our Lord; but out of the heart proceed all good things likewise; hence the supreme promise of both Old and New Testaments is a “new “heart. But it is not necessary in this place to expound all the terms belonging to Biblical Psychology. The outline given above is sufficient to show how impressive is the conception of man’s composition and destiny implied in the hints of the Bible. There are suggested abysses of degradation and condemnation to which he may sink and heights of inconceivable altitude to which he may rise, according as he succumbs to the” old man “in himself or develops the ^’ new,” and admits or excludes from his personality the Spirit and the grace of God. Thus is the destiny of everyone being determined daily on the arena of his own personality.