The Bible talks about our souls as well as our spirits. Oddly enough, however, it doesn’t always do a great job of distinguishing the two. While my last article showed how we try to make the soul and spirit do different jobs, the reality is that God’s word often uses “soul” and “spirit” as though they’re the same thing. Let’s look at whether this is true and proves that we have two distinct parts, physical and spiritual. This is also known as a “dichotomy.”
Anything you can do…
If God were to make our soul and spirit different, we’d expect them to be just as distinct and unique as our body is from our spiritual component. Yet let’s look at how God’s word uses soul and spirit interchangeably.
Both become troubled
“Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. (John 12:27)
After saying these things, Jesus was troubled in his spirit, and testified, “Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” (John 13:21)
Here we see the soul and spirit doing the same thing. For those wondering if the translators simply chose two different English words for the same Greek word, the word for soul is psuche and spirit is pneuma. This is a trend throughout Scripture – the biblical writers use two different words yet sometimes use them in the same way.
Both can sin
Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die. (Ezekiel 18:4)
Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. (Psalm 32:2)
Which aspect of us sins? Ezekiel suggests that our souls are guilty, while David says that it’s our spirits. If sin is a willful decision, it should come from our souls. Yet we also see sin coming from our spirits (1 Corinthians 7:34, 2 Corinthians 7:2).
Mary used them interchangeably
And Mary said,
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,” (Luke 1:46-47)
I’ve seen this used as support for soul and spirit being different, but what we see here is a unique style within Hebrew poetry (in this case, Mary creating a song or poem of praise). This is called parallelism, which repeats the same idea in two different ways to emphasize a single point.
Psalm 19 is basically one extended parallelism, and we can see something similar to what Mary is doing:
the precepts of the Lord are right,
rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is pure,
enlightening the eyes; (Psalm 19:8)
Here we see the same thing, God’s commands, spoken of in two different ways. David isn’t claiming that God has at least two different sets of rules to follow but instead refers to them differently for poetic purposes. Likewise, we see Mary doing the same thing, using soul and spirit as different words for the same immaterial part, with both doing the same thing in those verses: praising God.
(I also discussed this in my previous article regarding Mark 12:30 and how Christ isn’t saying that humans are composed of a heart, soul, mind, and strength, but instead He’s using a language device to talk about how we love God with all we are.)
The spirit isn’t just our connection to God
If we sit down and try to categorize the separate functions of soul and spirit, things get tricky. The trichotomy view popularly explains the difference like this:
- the soul is the seat of who we are and contains things like our thoughts and emotions
- the spirit is the part of us that relates to God and is dead until we become Christians
Yet consider that these examples of our spirits are described as though they are more than just how we relate to God but are more in line with how we’d describe a soul:
For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I mention you (Romans 1:9)
Paul is talking about serving wholeheartedly, rather than just serving without really meaning it. If the two were different, it would make more sense for Paul to serve with his soul because his spirit is alive.
For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” (Romans 8:15)
This would potentially add a whole new aspect to our spirits. We know what Paul is clearly saying here, but the idea of us choosing to fall back into a sinful lifestyle is more in line with who we are as people, which would speak more to our souls that are being informed by our spirits.
“God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day.” (Romans 8:11)
Again we see that a person’s spirit is the core of their beliefs.
For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. (1 Corinthians 2:11)
The spirit is described synonymously with our thought patterns. If we soul and spirit were separate, then both of them should know a person’s thoughts.
For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. (1 Corinthians 5:3)
Based on a trichotomy definition of the spirit, it makes no sense that the part of Paul that relates to God was present and judging a person in the church.
I won’t keep going, but the core argument is this: whenever we see spirit in the text, it should always talk about the part of us that relates to God. A writer should only use it in the context of things like prayer or any intimate interaction we have with God. Yet when we see spirit used in God’s word, it is also used to talk about things like our emotions, personality, desires, and our will.
Spiritual beings are called “spirits”
That evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick. (Matthew 8:16)
What is a spirit in this context? We often see Christ casting out these beings who seem capable of independent thought and desires, yet they aren’t evil souls but instead evil spirits. Whenever we see something like this, we understand that the biblical writers are talking about actual beings. Yet this doesn’t make sense unless a spirit and soul are just words for the immaterial side of a person.
What about the Holy Spirit?
This isn’t a common argument, but we must consider how we define a spirit. If we believe that God is one being and three persons, then it’s essential to ask why one of those persons is described as the Spirit. Is He a whole being, or is He just a connection to God? In trying to separate soul and spirit in humans, are we radically changing who God is? Perhaps not, but we must be consistent.
The Bible talks about two components
My article on whether we have a body, soul, and spirit dug deep into why the Bible doesn’t refer to us as three-part beings. Instead, the Bible seems to have two aspects of a person in mind – we are physical and spiritual beings. It may use different terms to describe that non-physical part of us (heart, soul, mind, spirit, strength…), but they all reference the same thing. Thus, the simplest and most faithful reading of the Bible may be that we are only two-part beings.
Why the different terms?
Make no mistake, the spirit seems to be most often used to refer to how we interact with God, while our souls most often refer to the core of who we are as people. Yet that’s not always true, and it’s worth considering why that’s the case.
A simple explanation I heard from Michael Patton goes like this: it’s similar to how we use the words “heart” and “mind” today. We use one to refer to our intellect and reason, while the other refers to our emotion or gut feeling. We inherently know that our minds and emotions don’t come from separate sources, yet many of us know what it’s like to accept something with our minds without feeling it’s true in our hearts.
The soul and spirit in the Bible seem to be the same things. They aren’t different aspects of man but instead refer to different functions of our immaterial part.
Problems with dichotomy
A dichotomy view of our physical and spiritual components becomes more common among Bible scholars and theologians. The more we understand how to study the Bible, the more this view might start making sense. Yet despite many sound arguments, we should consider some real problems before immediately accepting them as truth.
It’s not trichotomy
This may seem like a silly problem, but one of the best responses to dichotomy is pointing out that the soul is discussed differently throughout the Bible. Most people who reject the idea of humans only being a body and soul (or body and spirit, since they’re the same) will reject it because they already believe that souls and spirits are different.
Old Testament doesn’t see a distinct separation
While the Old Testament does talk about souls and spirits, it seems to have a more poetic view in mind. As I explained in my first article, souls can refer to any living creature. The writers describe a person’s spirit as their attitude or belief system, which doesn’t demand a spiritual component to exist. In fact, the Old Testament may not even acknowledge that we do have a spiritual side and that death is simply the end.
(An answer to this would be that God is progressively revealing things to His creation, meaning that people in the Old Testament didn’t need to understand the soul, which is why it’s discussed more often in the New Testament.)
We may misunderstand how the soul and spirit are distinct
In studying for this article, I noticed that many arguments for a soul and spirit being the same thing is that the definitions for separating them aren’t consistent. In other words, it’s easy to start from a human definition and try to disprove their distinction, assuming that doing so means a dichotomy view is the default winner.
The problem here is that just because our human understanding of the spiritual realm may be lacking or inconsistent doesn’t mean it’s not true. For example, the doctrine of the Trinity was always present in the Bible, yet it wasn’t until 325 AD that Christians defined it. Likewise, our understanding of the uniqueness of the soul and spirit may still be decades or centuries away from being fully understood.
We aren’t souls driving a body
Personally, this is the most glaring problem for me. I didn’t discuss it above, but a classic dichotomy (and even trichotomy) view of our material and immaterial parts often leads to an old heresy that the church has been fighting since the time of the apostles. It’s called “Gnosticism,” and it’s the idea that the physical and spiritual world aren’t just opposites but are opposed to one another as good and evil. Thus, the belief elevates the spiritual world and thought life while rejecting the physical world as evil and corrupt.
We may not realize it, but this often affects how we view our souls and our eternal destiny. Mainstream Christianity firmly believes that death will free us from this broken world and let our souls spend eternity in Heaven. We forget that Revelation 21:1 talks about a new Heaven and new Earth, where our resurrected bodies will live forever with our King.
Without giving too much of next week’s article away, one of the biggest problems created by our classic understandings of the soul and spirit is that they elevate our spiritual parts above the physical. They treat our souls like the Power Rangers sitting in the head of a giant robot and controlling what it does. They diminish our bodies’ value, importance, and necessity by making them little more than a vehicle that chauffeurs our souls.
Even if you’ve never heard of Gnosticism, you’ve likely been affected by the worldview it creates.
Honest final thoughts
Up to this point, we’ve discussed three typical views of our physical and spiritual components:
- Monism – We are purely natural creatures, which we see as the Old Testament uses soul to describe any living thing
- Dichotomy – We have physical and non-physical parts, with the Bible using soul and spirit to describe the same thing in different ways
- Trichotomy – We have a body, soul, and spirit, with each being unique and having its own functions as we see in the Bible
Of the three, I find dichotomy to be the most biblically accurate. Monism is too much of a reach and may be the Christian attempt to save face in front of a naturalistic world. Trichotomy requires too much isolated reading of the text and leads to many inconsistencies. However, my point about dichotomy necessarily leading to Gnosticism is a huge problem.
In my final article in this series, I want to share a fourth option that is rarely discussed but that I think comes the closest to giving us a biblical understanding of what human beings are. If you’d like to prepare, I’d recommend brushing up on my series discussing where our souls come from, especially the less-common view of our souls coming through reproduction (a.k.a. Traducianism). I have an article and podcast episode about the topic, so take your pick.
