Quote:
Originally Posted by Aquila
Esaias,
Ontologically speaking a person is tripart, or a trichotomy (body, soul, spirit). The body (Gk. Soma) is the physical part of a person. The soul (psueche) is the seat of the thoughts and emotions (psyche). The spirit (pnuema) is one's "breath" or "living essence".
Essentially, the concept behind the theory I proposed is that one's body is buried in the grave. One's soul enters the afterlife. And one's spirit (in various situations) might linger.
Ancient Judaism believed that the immaterial part of a man could be divided up as follows:
1.Nephesh, related to natural instinct.
2.Ruach, related to emotion and morality.
3.Neshamah, related to intellect and the awareness of God.
4.Chaya, considered a part of God, as it were.
5.Yechidah, also termed the pintele Yid (the "essential [inner] Jew"). This aspect is essentially one with G‑d. The rabbis explained how various elements of the soul experience different realities upon death. |
Biblically speaking, a person IS A LIVING SOUL, produced by the union of body and spirit.
Biblically speaking, at death the body goes into the grave and the spirit goes back to God who gave it.
At death, your 'breath' (as opposed to 'spirit') goes into the atmosphere and dissipates.
Ancient Judaism also believed that demons clung to dishes, hence the need for 'special handwashing ceremonies' before eating.
The theory you proposed is an old one. It is the basic belief of Greek and other pre-Christian cultures. It was adopted (with some modifications) by the catholic churches. However, they would differ with you on the tripartite explanation, and would say man is a binary organism - composed of flesh and soul (or spirit, the two terms being in a certain sense interchangeable in their metaphysics). They believe the soul is the conscious, rational, 'living' part o fman, the 'noetic' part, and the body is the physical part of man.
Separating the soul from the spirit in this viewpoint wasn't really popularised until much later. Especially by Watchman Nee (see his 'The Spiritual Man' which is ALL about the 'tripartite nature of humanity').
I do not find the tripartite view (or binary view of classic catholic/orthodox Christendom) to be Biblical.
The Bible does not speak of the person in the way those views do. The bible declares that man is a living soul. Man IS a soul, not 'man has a soul'. What is a SOUL? Biblically, it is a living organism.
Does a man have a soul? Yes, just as a man 'has a life'. And thus we say 'he died' or 'he lost his life', and mean EXACTLY the same thing. And we can even say things like 'all lives on board were lost, they all lost their lives, they all died.'
Soul is the living being. A human soul is different from a dumb animal, of course, due to the differences in nature, but both are called by the Bible 'souls'.
The spirit (ruach, or pneuma) is the 'animating force' that makes flesh LIVE, as opposed to being an inert blob of carbon and h2o and other gooey stuff.
Spirit is 'breath' or 'wind' in that it is active, immaterial, invisible, moving, and capable of moving things. Not to mention, most 'souls' that have 'spirit' happen to also respirate (or 'breathe'), which rocks and bare elements do not, for example.
The spirit of a person who dies goes back to God, thus sayeth the Word of the Lord. Good enough for me, how bout you?
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