Simply Soul

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Similarly, James says that “the body apart from the spirit is dead” (James 2:26), but mentions nothing about a separate soul. And when Paul speaks of growth in personal holiness, he approves the woman who is concerned with “how to be holy in body and spirit” (1 Corinthians 7:34), and he suggests that this covers the whole of the person’s life. He’s even more explicit in 2 Corinthians 7:1: “let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, and make holiness perfect in the fear of God.” Cleansing ourselves from defilement of the “soul” or of the “spirit” covers the whole immaterial side of our existence (see also Romans 8:10, 1 Corinthians 5:3, and Colossians 2:5). 4. The “soul” can sin or the “spirit” can sin. Here the word “soul” clearly refers to the part of a person that exists after death. It cannot mean “person” or “life,” for it would not make sense to speak of those who “kill the body but cannot kill the person,” or who “kill the body but cannot kill the life,” unless there is some aspect of the person that lives on after the body is dead. Furthermore, when Jesus talks about “soul and body” he seems to be clearly talking about the entire person even though he does not mention “spirit” as a separate component. The word “soul” seems to stand for the entire nonphysical part of man. Thessalonians 5:23 appears to suggest there are three parts to every person: “May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Psalm 78 speaks of the rebellious people of Israel “whose spirit was not faithful to God” (Psalm 78:8). Or if we wish to think metaphorically of our inmost being as hidden in our joints and marrow, then we can think of Scripture being like a sword that divides our joints or that pierces deeply into our bones and even divides the marrow in the midst of the bones. In all of these cases the Word of God is so powerful that it searches out and exposes all disobedience to God. In any case, soul and spirit are not treated as separate parts here, they are simply additional terms for our inmost being. Paul suggests that there are “unspiritual” and “spiritual” people

Learn more in Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology online course. First: Can we be sure that humans have souls? They ask, “If I do not have a spirit that is distinct from my thoughts and my emotions, then what is it that I feel that is different from my thoughts and my emotions, something that I can only describe as worshiping God in my spirit and sensing his presence in my spirit? Isn’t there something in me that is more than just my intellect and my emotions and my will, and shouldn’t this be called my spirit?” When Paul says, “My spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful,” he means he does not understand the what he is praying. He implies that there is a nonphysical component to his being, a “spirit” within him that can pray to God. But nothing in this verse suggests that he regards his spirit as different from his soul. This misunderstanding only makes sense if we assume that “mind” is part of the soul—a trichotomist claim that, as we noted above, is very difficult to substantiate from Scripture. Paul probably could have just as easily said, “My soul prays but my mind is unfruitful.” There’s a nonphysical element to our existence that can function apart from our conscious awareness of it, but that doesn’t mean we can distinguish between soul and spirit. We can feel things that aren’t emotions or thoughts

Clearly, the Bible makes a distinction between our physical bodies and a soul or spirit. Now let’s look at why dichotomists believe the Bible considers the soul and spirit to be the same thing. 5 reasons the soul and spirit are synonymous

Since dichotomy and trichotomy are more common views in the evangelical church today, let’s look at each one in detail. When Paul encourages the Corinthians to cleanse themselves “from every defilement of body and spirit” (2 Corinthians 7:1), he clearly implies that there can be defilement (or sin) in our spirits.Finally, the fact that Scripture approves of one “who rules his spirit” (Proverbs 16:32) implies that our spirits are not simply the spiritually pure parts of our lives that are to be followed in all cases, but that they can have sinful desires or directions as well. When Paul says, “Your spirits are alive because of righteousness” (Romans 8:10), he apparently means “alive to God,” but he doesn’t imply that our spirits were completely “dead” before, only that they were living out of fellowship with God and were dead in that sense. In the same way, we as whole persons were “dead” in “trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1), but we were made alive to God, and we now must consider ourselves “dead to sin and alive to God” (Romans 6:11). As we mentioned in our discussion of monism, Scripture is very clear that we do have a soul that is distinct from our physical bodies, which not only can function somewhat independently of our ordinary thought processes (1 Corinthians 14:14 and Romans 8:16), but also, when we die, is able to go on consciously acting and relating to God apart from our physical bodies. Many non-Christian philosophers challenge the idea of a soul or spirit, arguing that humans have no immaterial existence. Perhaps partially in response to this, some evangelical theologians hesitate to affirm dichotomy in human existence, instead arguing for monism, affirming that the Bible views man as a single unified part. Verses such as 1 Peter 1:22 and Revelation 18:14 seem to imply that our souls can sin. Those who hold to trichotomy will usually agree that the “soul” can sin since they think that the soul includes the intellect, the emotions, and the will.