Body & Spirit

Soul or Spirit?

As we continue our study this month on anthropology, I mentioned last week how a great starting point would be to address how we are like God Himself. And as we can tell from scripture, and more particularly from the beginning of scripture, God made us in His image. So if we are made like God, even though we aren’t exact replicas of our Lord, we should notice some communicable attributes between the creation and the creator. To further that study, we are going to look at how the human race is both body and spirit. It’s easy whenever we think of God to only think of Him in spiritual terms and never in a physical form, but that is exactly what Jesus was! The human being embodiment of God Himself. Not only is our Lord both physical and spiritual but so are we. Ecclesiastes 12:7 tells us, “7 the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.” Just as God created us from dust in the beginning, He also gave us our spirit. Genesis 2:7 says, “7 Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living person.” We as Christ followers believe that our lives are made up of two parts, our bodies and our spirits. This is what is referred to as a ‘dichotomy’. Some Christians actually believe in a ‘trichotomy’ meaning they believe that we are body, soul, and spirit, but I, just like Dr. Wayne Grudem, believe that many times throughout scripture, the words ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ are used interchangeably(which is how we use them in this post) and therefore mean the same thing. Whichever view you take, I hope you see that you are more than just your physical being, and with that in mind let’s look at how God’s Word exactly backs this up. 

What Makes Up Me?

Perhaps no area of scripture shows us how we are two parts than those that define us alive in heaven after we die. In the end, Revelation 20:4 says, “4 And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received the mark on their foreheads and on their hands; and they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.” Not only this, but we have multiple examples of disciples of Christ in scripture who claim they long for the day when they no longer roam the earth but get to spend eternity with Christ forever. Even when Christ is hanging on the cross, He gives assurance to the thief next to Him that he will be with Him in paradise, even though their physical bodies are both about to come to an end. Dr. Grudem says it best when he mentions, “Although we must agree that, in this life, Scripture views us as a unity in which body and spirit act together as one person, nonetheless, there will be a time when our spirits will exist apart from our physical bodies.” 

Dr. Grudem, like a majority of believers, can see that all throughout scripture, mankind is identified as at least two parts, and these two parts are what God intended when He created us. As a matter of fact, the word for ‘soul’ in the Greek language is ‘psuchē’ and it means ‘life, mind, and person’. So as we read about death in scripture, our Bibles would argue that while our physical bodies may come to an end, our life, mind, and personhood continue on. This is incredible and monumental to understanding how we were created but it is also very comforting to those followers of Christ that we have lost because we know that we will see them again one day in paradise. This ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ that God has given us is what separates us as children and images of God from the rest of the living things here on this earth. We can see here that our soul is part of our makeup and that we are at least two parts in one.

Creative Genius

The next question we address is how we receive this soul or spirit. Is this just something we are born with? Believe it or not, this is a debate among evangelicals as well. 3 popular views are debated on this topic. The first is preexistence. Preexistence argues that souls preexisted before conception. This means that before you were ever physically born, God had already created your spirit in heaven. The second view is creationism. Creationism says that each individual soul is created by God sometime between conception and birth rather than being transmitted by the biological parents. This view argues that while your physical body is created by your parents, your spirit is created and given to you by God. The last view is traducianism. Traducianism states that the soul is transmitted from parents to children by the natural procreation process, just as the physical body is. This doesn’t mean that God didn’t create you, this view just argues that just as God knit you together in your mother’s womb through procreation, He did the same for your spirit through this exact process. This is another intriguing debate, but I would argue traducianism is the more biblically defended approach. 

Dr. John MacArthur even says, “God is man’s creator, but God also ordained human procreation for the filling of the earth. God uses natural means for procreation, yet He is the ultimate cause of the process. As a complex unity of body and soul/spirit, our entire being, including the soul, is a result of the God-ordained procreation process.” This is why David can say in Psalm 139:13 “13 For You created my innermost parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb.” While David was created by procreation from his parents, God created procreation and therefore technically partook in creating David’s body and soul, just like every child that is born. While this may be a lot to take in, I hope that whether you take the view of dichotomy or trichotomy or even preexistence, creationism, or traducianism, we can all see that we are wonderfully made and we are more than just our physical bodies. God created us for not just life on this earth, but for mankind to have their souls spend eternity either with Him or apart from Him forever. This is the amazing and beautiful creativity and holiness of our God. While we are a physical and natural product of our parents, we are still a spiritual and soul-filled people that can only be explained by a theistic creator. I can’t think of any other being you or I should desire to be made in the image of.

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Sources

[1] “Access Your Bible from Anywhere.” BibleGateway.Com: A Searchable Online Bible in over 150 Versions and 50 Languages., www.biblegateway.com/. Accessed 2023.

[2] Grudem, W. (1994). Systematic Theology : An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA79455700

[3] MacArthur, John & Mayhue, Richard. A Systemic Summary of Bible Truth: Biblical Doctrine. Wheaton, Crossway, 2017

[4] The Strongest NASB Exhaustive Concordance. Zondervan, 2004.