ON THE "SPIRIT" OF THE HUMAN PERSON

(1) Is the “spirit” a part of humanity among other parts? To be sure, the Bible seems to present it as such, but nothing is said as to how it is connected with the other human constituents, or how the parts interplay in a whole functioning human being. The Apostle Paul seemed to have taught a strong opposition between flesh and spirit, but of course the continuing disagreement among scholars today as to the real meaning of these ambiguous terms is itself an evidence of the difficulty of the problem.

(2) Does or can the “spirit” operate on its own without the other human parts? This is just a follow-up question to the first, but it is inevitable nevertheless. The answer to this question has many staggering implications. Just for starters, in relation to salvation, if YES, then soteriology becomes a Christianized Gnostic version of salvation, where the physical body is not relevant (thus: RC penitence for the sake of the spiritual; and escapist theology, where salvation consists in the escape of the soul/spirit from its imprisoning body). This, then, contradicts with Paul’s important teaching of the resurrection of the body, grounded upon the vicarious resurrection of Jesus Christ himself, the prototokos of creation (Col 1:18).

Thus, the theological answer is most probably “NO.” This means, then, that even though the Bible teaches dichotomy/trichotomy (depending on where you are looking), it does not teach autonomous regionalization of the parts, where one part is more important than the others, or that one part can connect with the divine while the others can’t. The relation of the parts to the whole human can be termed as “distinction-in-unity.” This is my view of the matter. When the spirit is in touch with the divine, the soul and body are as well; and vice versa.

(3) But if the parts operate interrelatedly, then why are there partitions in the first place? It seems to me that the Bible writers did not really intend to teach that there are several human parts/aspects. It is our “individualistic” and analytic mind that has highlighted the difference. 

Instead, their enumeration of parts/aspects was actually meant to teach about the importance of the whole human person. For instance, the command “love the Lord with all your heart, soul, body, mind” enumerates several aspects not in order to show that humanity has several aspects, but to show that the whole human person should be a worshipper. In fact the enumeration could be inexhaustive: it can go like “love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, spirit, body, strength, will, freedom, etc” to make the point that the whole human being should love the Lord. OR Paul was teaching the difference between living in the flesh and the Spirit in order to tell his hearers that some aspects of their lives still need to become worshippers (Rom 12:1-2). In short, he was not vindicating the bifurcation, but was actually advocating unity and integrity of the whole.