Anthropology - Body and Soul of Man

The Origin, Nature, and Unity of Man

Well, we are here in week four of our study of anthropology, which you'll remember is the doctrine, or the teaching, on man. The study of man and his nature, and his origin, and his constitution. And that's what we're going to look at tonight.

The four parts have been, first, we looked at the origin of man, and we said, where did we come from? And the Bible tells us where we came from. The Bible says we did not evolve from a lower life form, but that man was created by God, by a miraculous act of God, where he formed man from the dust of the ground.

In the second week, we said, the nature of man, what are we, and why are we unique? And we said what we are is we're image bearers of God, and that is what is unique about man. Among all of the beings in the world, man is the only one who is made in the image of God.

Last week, we looked at the unity of man. We said, how different are we? And we came to the conclusion that even though there are great diversities in the way we look, and the way we behave, and the way we may eat, and do other kinds of cultural things, we are all one race, and that is the human race.

And even though we may have diverse appearances, we all are the same at the foot of the cross. And that was the unity of man that we looked at last week. We are all sinners in desperate need of salvation.

Anthropology and the Question of Human Composition

Well, tonight we're going to finish anthropology, but when I say we're going to finish, let me just add a caveat. The very next part that we're going to do, which is going to start in a few weeks, is hamartiology, which is the study of sin, which is really just an extension of the study of man, because man is the one who sins.

So if you think, well, we haven't dealt with the will of man, or we haven't dealt with the depravity of man, all that falls under the category of hamartiology. How has sin affected man's will? How has sin affected man's depravity and his state of being?

And so if you feel like we've left some things out, just know that this has been mainly focused on what man is, and hamartiology is focusing on how sin has affected what we are. And so it really is an extension or a second level of a study of anthropology when we study the subject of sin.

So again, tonight we're looking at the constitution of man. When we say the constitution of man, the question for tonight is this. How many parts do we possess? Now when I say how many parts do we possess, I don't mean like the old commercial with the soap, you know, the Lever 2000 soap.

It was for all your 2000 parts, you know, for washing. It's not about that. I'm not talking about your fingers and your toes and your knee bones and your thigh bones and your elbow bones and all those things.

When we talk tonight about the constitution of man, and we ask the question how many parts do we possess, what is being referred to there is the question of is man simply a physical being, or is there an immaterial part of man?

And that's the question on the constitution. What are we made of? Are we just physical? Are we just stardust, as some have so plainly stated? We're just chemicals. And matter, but we're not really anything else.

So that's the question that we deal with in the constitution of man. All right, so let me begin with our first section here, and I think, I'm not sure, do you have blanks tonight? No, I just gave you sentences, that's great.

I like that sometimes it's easier if I just give you guys the sentences to deal with, then you don't have to worry that you've missed anything. It's become very popular among scientists to attempt to define man purely as a physical being.

All of our emotions, all of our philosophies, all of our hopes and dreams are accounted as nothing more than the complex firing of synapses in the brain. I remember one time I was sitting with Kevin Metters and Brenda, and we were having lunch after church at a little Japanese restaurant right here in River City.

And Kevin is like me, he's loud. And as we were being loud together, we were talking about the subject of God. And a young man walked over to us and he said, I hear you guys talking about God, and I don't believe in God.

I want you to tell me why you believe in God. It ain't often the fish jump right in the boat, but sit down and we'll tell you why we believe in God. And we had a really great conversation. But one of the things I did mention to him, I said, do you really believe that all your hopes and all your desires and all your joys and all your pains are really just the product of chemical changes in your brain?

I said, do you love your girlfriend? She didn't come over, by the way. She was sitting many seats away, head hung low. She looked as if she didn't really want him to come over. And he was pretty bold.

I must give him a hand of boldness that he was willing to walk over to two large Christian men who were just yapping it up about God. And I said, do you love her? And he said, yes. I said, why does it matter if she's just a sack of stardust?

What is it that makes it more than just that? I want to read to you an article. This is a portion. I can read the whole article. But I'll read to you a portion. Neuroscience and psychology have rendered it basically unnecessary to have a soul.

This is from the professor of psychology and medical sciences at the University of New South Wales, named George Paxonis. This is what he says, quote, As a neuroscientist and psychologist, I have no use for the soul.

On the contrary, all functions attributed to this kind of soul can be explained by the workings of the brain. Psychologists study behavior to carry out their work of modifying behavior, such as in treating addiction, phobia, anxiety, depression.

Psychologists do not need to assume people have souls. For the psychologists, it is not so much that the souls do not exist, it's that we don't have a need for them. End quote. So his idea is, we don't need the soul, it's just the brain.

Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, says this, He said, You, your joys, your sorrows, your memories, your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.

That's all you are. Nothing more. In an article called, You Don't Have a Soul, The Real Science That Debunked Superstitious Charlatans, that was a pretty long title, quote, Reflecting on what he calls the scientific image of persons, the philosopher Owen Flanagan stressed that we need to demytholize, let me try that again, demythologize persons by rooting out certain unfounded ideas from the perennial philosophy.

Letting go of the belief in souls is a minimum requirement. In fact, desouling is the primary operation of the scientific image. Desouling is the primary operation of the scientific image. You ever wonder why kids act like animals?

Could it be that we've taught them that that's all they are? I mean, do you ever wonder why people have become so far away from what we are supposed to be? Maybe it's because we teach ourselves this kind of stuff.

And it's coming from, this is not from the, you know, two guys sitting at a bar rambling about their personal constitution. This is coming from the academy. This is being encouraged and taught. Lawrence Krauss, you ever heard that name?

Lawrence Krauss, one of the most famous atheists in the world, and he is a teacher, a university professor, and he wrote a book called A Universe from Nothing. Ha ha, that's a joke, but that's what it's called.

I say it's a joke because you can't have a universe from nothing, but that's a story for another time. But this is what he says, quote, Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded, and the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand.

It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics. You are all stardust, end quote. You're just a big old sack of stardust, and hey. Isn't it amazing what man will believe? Absolutely. And like I said, this guy, he wrote a book, best-selling.

So the question is, the question of today, is that all we are? Is man only the physical? Or does he have another dimension to his existence? Furthermore, how many parts do we have? That's a big theological question that we're going to address toward the end.

Genesis 2:7 and the Meaning of Soul

But the primary text today is in Genesis 2, so if you want to turn to Genesis 2, we're going to read Genesis 2, 7. And I'm so grateful that I'm preaching through Genesis because basically I'm going to be preaching these same things again on Sunday morning.

So those of you who are here, you're getting a preview of a longer sermon. Well, maybe not longer, but maybe a little different. Genesis 2, 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 creature.

Now, if you have a King James Bible, you'll notice that it's different. The King James Bible says man became what? A living soul. I don't want to get into why the translation differs with the ESV and some of the more modern translations.

However, I think it is good to understand that this word soul is packed with significance. And it is clear from the moment man is created that he is created as more than just a material being. There certainly was a physical dimension, and here's the thing about the physical dimension.

It's made from the same stuff that everything else is made from. So when somebody says you're a sack of stardust, you can say, well, my physical parts are of a similar composition chemically as everything else.

Because there is a similarity in the chemicals. You know, there's only a certain amount of elements on that periodic table. You know what I'm talking about? That big with all the different elements that there are?

And those elements exist within us, right? And there's only a certain one. So it makes sense that you would find some of the same elements in me that you might find in other animals. And it makes sense that you find some of the same elements in me that you might find in other artifacts or things.

Maybe even in stardust. Who knows? So the idea that we have a physical dimension and the physical dimension matches the rest of the physical world shouldn't surprise us because we were made from it. God took from that, formed it up.

So we have no problem there. You guys know who Carl Sagan is? Carl Sagan did a television show back before I was born, I think. Cosmos was the name of the show. And he was a scientist. And he did a show on the...

Do you remember him, Jack? Do you remember Carl Sagan? A lot of folks tend to remember him because he was sort of semi-famous in the scientific world. Sort of the last generation's Neil deGrasse Tyson.

You all know who that is? Wow, okay. Neil deGrasse Tyson is the modern-day Carl Sagan. Does that help? Not at all. Anyway, Carl Sagan did a show called Cosmos. And this is something he said. He said, The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars.

We are star stuff. So the other guy, Lawrence Cross, really just borrowed from Carl Sagan. Cos his book was in 2012 and Carl Sagan was back in the 70s. So really he's just repeating the same thing, the idea.

But yeah, I mean, I don't have an issue with that. Now, I do have an issue with the idea of stardust and we coming from stars because the order of creation wouldn't make sense there. But my point is, same stuff.

Elementally. I don't have an issue with that. Here's the issue. Even though we're made physically of the same elements, man is composed of both the material and an immaterial nature or portion of his being.

The material part of us, and I'm going to use a little bit of Greek, not to be fancy, but to help you because I do think this is helpful. In the Greek, the word is soma and that is where you get the word body.

Body. Your body is the soma. Now, you also have another word which is sarx. Sarx is the word for flesh. And flesh is normally given a negative connotation. Talk about being in the flesh or of the flesh or bound by the flesh.

That's normally negative. The body is not negative. We are called the body of Christ. That's soma. That's positive. That's good. So that's why I make a distinction here. Because if you see flesh, it's probably translating sarx.

If you see body, it's probably translating soma. And so we are made of that. Flesh and blood. We're made of that. Body. Now, our bodies do crave bad things because of the fall. And as I said earlier, when we get to Hamartiology and we study sin, we're going to talk about how sin has affected our mind and sin has affected our appetites or our cravings, right?

Gluttony and lust and all of those things are byproducts of sin, right? So that's affecting this. That's affecting the flesh, the body, okay? Now, there is an immaterial part of us which we call the soul.

In Greek, the soul is pesuke, is how you would say it. If you were to transliterate that into English, what do you think it would be? Psyche. Very good. Very good. The psyche. And you've heard of the psyche, right?

You remember who was that famous Freud, Sigmund Freud? He talked about the id, the ego, and the superego, the three parts of the psyche. The part that you allow people to see, the part that you don't allow people to see, and the part that's the real you.

That was his whole point about the human soul. But it wasn't soul. It was the psyche. It was the mind, essentially. It was what he was doing. But I want to introduce you to a Hebrew word. Because in my Genesis study, I'm actually going to spend some time with this, but I just want to introduce it to you tonight.

And this is the word nefesh. The word nefesh. This word is where we get the word soul in Hebrew. Remember, the Old Testament is written in Hebrew. The New Testament is written in Greek. So these Greek words would be in the New Testament.

But when you come to that word in Genesis 2 -7, man became a living nefesh, soul. That's the word there. And you say, well, what does that word mean? What does nefesh mean? It means to be given life. It means to be given the breath of life.

That's why you read it, and it says, and he breathed into him the breath of life, and he became a living life, essentially. He became a living soul. And I want you to think about this. One of the most interesting things about life and death with humans, and animals too, and we're going to talk about this in a minute with animals, but particularly with human beings.

When we die, that's it. There is no coming... If your heart goes bad while you're alive, you can go get a new heart, put it in, and maybe survive. But if the heart goes bad before you get a new heart and you die, they can't take your corpse and put in a new heart.

They can't take your lungs out. I mean, if your truck dies on the way home, you can go put a new engine, drop a new engine in, and it starts again, right? Because it's not alive. But when you die and life leaves you, when the nefesh is gone, well, you go with it because you are the nefesh.

You're the living soul. But when that leaves the body, the body is gone. And I've been there on several occasions when the soul departed. It's an amazing moment. I mean, it's heartbreaking. It's very...

It rends your soul. But it's also just an amazing... It's almost like you can feel. And I'm not... Please don't think I'm being weird. I'm just saying it's a moment like no other. It's a moment you can literally feel it happen.

It's done, and the life has left the body. And that's this. That's the immaterial part. It's the life. This word soul, this word nefesh, it's the vital force is another word that can be translated. It's the seat of life.

It's the real you. It's the part that's inside. The essence of life. Now, there are other words that the New Testament uses and the Old Testament that describe this part of us. Not only do we see the word soul, and in Hebrew, nefesh, in Greek, syke, not only do we see these words, but we see other words that describe this.

One of the other words we see is the word heart. Now, heart, kardia, is the Greek for heart, that can be the blood pumping muscle. But in general, it's not. When the Bible uses the word heart, it's almost never talking about this.

It's talking about the immaterial part of you. I'll give you an example. Genesis 6 -5. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and every intention and thought of his heart was only evil continuously.

The heart doesn't think. The brain thinks. But you notice, the heart is not talking about the blood pumping muscle. It's talking about the immaterial part. So the heart becomes an image of the immaterial part of you.

Right? Another example is Jesus speaking in Luke 6. He says the good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of the evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

Now you know you don't speak from your heart. If anything, you speak from your lungs and your mouth. So what is the word heart they're referring to? It's referring to the immaterial part of you. It's talking about, in that sense, I believe heart is synonymous with the soul.

Not exactly a one-to-one, but I think that they're both being used in the same way. And you still do that. You ever tell somebody you love them with all your heart? And do they say, Ew, that blood pumping muscle?

No, I don't love you with my blood pumping muscle. We don't even draw it right. We draw it like this. But a heart looks more like that. So I mean, you know, the heart is a picture of the real emotional part of you, the real living part of you.

And what do we say when our heart is in something? It means we're all in. I used to play sports when I was a kid. Put some heart into it. It means put everything, put yourself into this. So it's talking about that.

Now there's another word that's also used in Scripture. Not only do we have the word soul, not only do we have the word heart, but there's another word that refers to the inner man. Bowels. I promise I'm not making it up.

The bowels in the ancient world were often expressed in the same way we would express the heart today. So like if you tell a woman today, I love you with all my heart, 2 ,000 years ago, you might say, Hey, I love you with all my bowels.

You make my liver quiver. Let me give you an example just so you know I'm not making this up. In the ESV, it says, Put on, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.

But in the King James Bible, this is Colossians 3 .12. Notice he said compassionate hearts, right? In the King James Bible. Put on, therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved bowels of mercy. You say, well, why does the King James translate it bowels, but the ESV translates it as heart?

I can't tell you why the ESV translated it as heart, but I can tell you why the King James translated it as bowels because that's exactly what the splatna is the Greek. And it's bowels, but it refers to the real you, the inner man, and not the physical icky part, but the real.

You ever tell somebody you ain't got any guts? That's a modern way of saying there ain't nothing to you. You know what I mean? You don't have any intestinal fortitude. That's that. So not only was the heart, and I think the reason why the ESV translates splatna as heart because nobody wants to think of loving with all their bowels today.

It's a more modern expression. But the reality is, all I'm trying to say is all of these are expressions of the immaterial. This is not just the synapses firing in your brain. This is something else. This is more substantial.

James, go ahead. Colossians which? 312. 312. Yep, yep, 312. All three of these, the heart, the mind, and the bowels are all material parts, but they're used figuratively to describe the immaterial part of us.

We know there is physical activity in these parts, but there is an obviously deeper component that these physical parts are used as examples of. We don't think with our heart. We don't think with our bowels, but these are being used for that part of us that is immaterial, that part of us which is the soul.

So is man just one single part? No. The Bible clearly describes man as being both physical and immaterial, or what we might say is non-material. When you say immaterial, you think of, usually that has a different connotation, but non.

We have the material part and the non-material part. I've heard it said this way, angels are non-material and animals are material only. So the more you behave according to your non-material side, the more you are behaving like an angel, and the more you behave toward your physical, the more you are behaving like an animal.

Just an interesting thought. Now I want to add a thought. Some cult groups deny that man does have two parts. One in particular is the Jehovah Witnesses, and I know I probably mention them more than I should, but they just keep coming up on my radar.

I don't know. They just have real bad theology. I just can't help it. The Jehovah Witnesses believe that man is only one part. Body, soul, and spirit is all one thing. And that's why they believe when you die, everything dies and you go into the ground.

They do not believe that you survive death and that you're alive and in heaven with the Lord. They believe that everything, body, soul, and spirit is dead in the ground and everything will be raised at the last day.

For those who are part of the Jehovah Witnesses belief, they will be raised, body, soul, and spirit. So they do believe, and in an absolutely indivisible unity between the body, the soma, and the soul, the psuche.

They would say they're not able to be divided. We would say that when you die, your body dies, you go into the ground, but your soul survives. And that immaterial part of you continues on, and I base this, of course, partially upon Paul's own admonition when he said that he would prefer to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.

How could he be absent from the body if there isn't an immaterial part to be absent from? I mean, if the material and immaterial aren't distinct, he couldn't very rightly be absent from the body. And notice he said I would be absent from the body as if to say the body is not the essential part.

The I is in the immaterial part. And so, I think that's important. All right, now, last, and again, I'm thankful I'm getting through tonight, and we have extra time. Praise the Lord. Thank you. There is debate over whether or not man is composed of a third part.

Dichotomy, Trichotomy, and the Spirit

And I just put on your sheet, I think, an additional part, right? So what have we agreed so far? Man is at least two parts. Man is body. That's these words here. And man is soul, which are made up of these words here.

There is a question then. What about the pneuma? And I don't know if you remember this word, but when we were studying the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, what did we call it? Pneumatology, right? And so, what does the word spirit mean, or what, ah, give it to you.

What does the word pneuma mean? It means air. Who said that? Awesome, that's right. Pneuma means air or breath, but in the context that we were using it, we were saying it means spirit, right? So we have here a third word, and there are two different types of beliefs on this.

There is what is called dichotomy and trichotomy. Now that sounds like dinosaurs, but it's not. You guys are so, I know there's only a few of us, but I get a little laugh out of it. All right, so dichotomy would say man is material and immaterial, and it's body, and then the soul and spirit have an essential one, it's essentially one thing.

The soul and spirit are essentially one thing. And they would use, they would say there are scriptures which use soul and spirit as synonyms. For instance, Isaiah 26 .9, my soul yearns for you in the night, my spirit within me earnestly seeks you.

That's what we call Hebrew parallelism. The word spirit and soul are being used as synonyms in that parallelism. And so right there you'd say, okay, so it's the spirit and soul, the same thing. Well, if we only had Isaiah 26, I think we can make the argument, yes, that would be it.

But of course we don't have only Isaiah 26. We have other passages which distinguish between the soul and the spirit. And probably the most famous one is the one in Hebrews chapter 4. Hebrews chapter 4 says, For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Those who would take the trichotomy position would say right here, if the Word of God can separate soul from spirit, then there must be a distinction between soul and spirit. Whereas the dichotomy position would respond and say, no, what it's saying is that the Word of God is so powerful even it can divide the indivisible.

And so, again, there's a challenge back and forth. I want to tell you, in my opinion, I don't think either position is heretical. So if you leave here tonight and you're convinced as a dichotomist, we're good.

And if you leave here as a convinced trichotomist, we're just as good. I'm not going to try to convince you either way. But I will say this. In the past, I have previously taught on trichotomy. And I based it on the idea that the mind could become sick.

I used Alzheimer's as an example of the mind becoming sick. And having thought through my argument, I have come to a different conclusion. Even though I still think trichotomy is a potentially correct position, I don't think my argument was very good.

And I'm willing to say that if my argument was something that you were using in the past, I was wrong. Or at least I don't think that it was the right way to define the soul and the spirit. I think I was more so talking about the fleshly part of the mind.

Because even if you were to get Alzheimer's or you were to get some disease of the mind, it would not affect your soul. And so, if I have confused you in the past or if I have made you think something that was incorrect, I am still growing and learning myself.

And I am always challenging myself to go back and consider my position and make it more in line with what the Scripture says. So, you may not even remember me teaching that. It's been a while. But I remember it.

And anytime I say something that I think needs to be updated, I will. Because I think, as again, I'm always willing to be corrected. Sometimes I have to correct myself. Having said that, I still think that the trichotomy position can be defended because the Bible uses passages which divide the soul and spirit.

Not just the Hebrews 4 passage, but there are passages that refer to body, soul, and spirit. Love the Lord your God with all your soul, all your mind, all your spirit. You see these passages which divide the soul and the spirit.

And so, how would I make the distinction? Well, when a person is born, they are born a living soul. But the Bible says we are dead spiritually. So, I do think that the spirit is the part of us, mainly, that connects with God.

And therefore, has to be reborn or regenerated for us to have that ability to have that connection with God. We talk about people who are dead in their trespasses and sins. We know they are not physically dead, but they are spiritually dead.

But they have a soul, right? They are soulless creatures, but their spirit is dead. And so, again, I think an argument can be made for trichotomy. But like I said, if you think that the soul and the spirit are simply referring to one thing, and you leave tonight with that thought, and I have failed to convince you, well, God be with you as you go.

Don't worry about sending an email. I'm not going to fight about it. It's okay. I think that this is something that is certainly, it's not, you know, we talk about sometimes theologians like to argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pen.

I don't think it's irrelevant, but I think it's not going to affect how we understand God and ultimately our salvation. So, in that sense, I don't think it's a necessary thing to debate over. Let me read you a quick quote, and then I'll draw to a close.

Those who believe that human nature is a trichotomy typically believe the following. The physical body is what connects us to the physical world around us. The soul is the essence of our being, and the spirit is what connects us with God.

This is why the unsaved can be said to be spiritually dead, while they are very much physically and soullessly alive. Those who believe that human nature is a dichotomy would have the same understanding of the body, but would view the spirit as part of the soul that connects with God.

So the question of dichotomy versus trichotomy is essentially whether the soul and spirit are different aspects of the immaterial human nature, or if the spirit is simply a part of the soul, with the soul being the whole immaterial part of the human nature.

I know that this is not the most exciting stuff in the world, but to me, I want to know, and I want to go and search it out. And I hope this has been encouraging to you. For one thing, if nothing else, you are not just stardust.

And whether we debate soul and spirit until the cows come home, you know you have more than just the physical part. Ms. Rosanna? Jehovah's Witnesses believe the body, soul, and spirit are all one essential thing, and therefore when you die, you not only die physically, but your body and soul and spirit all stop functioning.

So essentially when you die, it lights out. And then the only time the light is going to come back on is if you are resurrected. And the only way you will be resurrected is if you are one of the Jehovah's Witnesses who has been faithful to Jehovah through the Watchtower and Bible and Tract Society.

You have to be faithful as a Jehovah's Witness to be resurrected. If you don't, it lights out forever because they do not believe in hell. They believe in annihilationism, which means they believe that when you die, if you're not resurrected, you just simply will cease to exist.

Yes, sir?

Is the Rose Books, Bible, Charts, Maps, and Timelines about as accurate as it would come? Because I turned that page right when you said it. On Jehovah's Witnesses? Yes. Yeah, did they mention it? I know you already put it all out, but it breaks it down very simply.

Yeah, so if you want to look at it, Ms. Rosanna, he's got a book here that mentions what they believe about it. Yes. And that's referring, though, to our salvation. And it's referring to the fact that we are not just saved in one aspect of us, but we are saved completely.

Our bodies are going to go in the ground, but they are going to be resurrected and made new. So there is a sense in which it is an essential unity, but there is a division between the soul and the body at death.

And I think that that's so clear. In fact, the Bible says the body without the soul is dead. James says that in Chapter 2 of his book. And if we can say the body without the soul is dead, that means the soul and the body is, in my mind, can be distinguished and divided.

All right, I'm going to finish with this sentence. So long as we affirm that we should offer our body a living sacrifice, thank God for saving our souls, and worship in spirit and truth, we are doing well.

The Body, the Soul, and Worship in Spirit and Truth

Let us pray. Father, I thank you for this opportunity to study your word. I pray that it has been fruitful, that this has been a time of true growth and learning, and, Lord, that most of all that we would understand that we are not just stardust, but that we, O God, are image bearers, that we have a material and immaterial nature.

One day this material nature will go into the ground. Our immaterial nature will be with you. And then one day, even past then, you will split the eastern sky. You will return. Lord, you'll give us new bodies, and we'll live forever worshiping you.

God, we look forward to that day. That's the great day of the Lord. In Christ's name, amen.