The body, soul, and spirit.

When I was a kid, my church taught me that God’s a trinity; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; three persons, yet one God.

And they taught me we humans are kind of a trinity. That is, humans have a body, a soul, and a spirit. God made us in his image; Ge 1.27 therefore just as he is a trinity, so we are trinities.

Except… well that’s entirely wrong, isn’t it? God is three persons, but we humans aren’t three persons. Even those of us with dissociative identity disorder aren’t three persons. I have a body; that’s not a different person than my soul nor my spirit. I’m one person, not three.

If anything, my body, soul, and spirit are three parts of me. For now, anyway; when I die, my body will be dead, and either decay, or (I hope) be immolated in an awesome Viking funeral. My spirit will go to paradise. And my soul, my lifeforce, will cease to exist until God resurrects me… in a new immortal body.

One can say, and many Christians have, that my spirit is the core of who I am. ’Cause unless Jesus returns before I die, at some point my body and soul will be gone. Dead. Will cease to be. But my spirit will continue to exist; there will still be a me in the universe.

I digress though; this article isn’t really about the afterlife. It’s about the three bodyparts I have—which all humans have—which lead Christians to claim we’re all mini-trinities, all inferior trinities (inferior because we’re not actually trinities), all trichotomies—or as my pastor likes to put it, “tripartite beings.” One being, one person, three parts.

Trichotomy is a really popular Christian view, largely because God is a trinity, and Christians love to imagine we have three parts because God has three parts. Even though God’s three parts are three whole persons… and since Jesus is human, that’d make him a trichotomy too, with his own body, soul, and spirit. (The other persons don’t have bodies. Mormons claim the Father does so have a body, but ignore them. But that’d mean the Father and Spirit are bipartite, with souls and spirits, right? Complicated.)

Now, if you’ve never been taught this trichotomy idea, you’ll likely fall into a view that’s more of bichotomy, to coin a word: We humans are both physical and spiritual. We have bodies and spirits. Yes we have souls, and depending on which Christian you’re speaking to, a soul is either part of our body (’cause it is our lifeforce), or part of our spirit. Various Christians claim “soul” and “spirit” are interchangeable, and don’t see any difference between them.

Me, I do recognize there’s a difference between soul and spirit… yet I lean towards bichotomy. The soul’s what makes us a living being, Ge 2.7 and without it we’re a dead being; a dead body. So it’s a part of my body. Same as my nose, my arm, my liver, my brain. It’s as mortal as my body, which decays to dust, or is burnt to ashes. Whereas the spirit returns to God who created it, Ec 12.7 who determines what’ll happen next to me. Jesus said resurrection, Jn 11.25-26 so I’m going with that.

Trichotomy and pop psychology.

Jesus used to contrast flesh and spirit—

Mark 14.38 NIV

“Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

John 6.63 NIV

“The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life.”

—and Paul contrasted them way more when he wrote about fruit of the Spirit versus works of the flesh; when he wrote about living according to the Spirit not the flesh; Ro 8.4-6 how he wanted to do the right thing but his sinful flesh did not. Ro 7.18-25

The concept you’ll find throughout the New Testament is our corrupt human nature is embedded in our bodies, whereas our new divine nature can be—if we let the Spirit do his thing—embedded in our spirits. We simply have to choose to let the Spirit do his thing: Put that new nature in us. Grow his good fruit. Help us become more like Jesus.

Sigmund Freud kinda swiped this idea when he developed his id/ego/superego model for how the human mind works. You’ve got the flesh, which Freud called the id, which wants to be selfish. You’ve got the spirit, which Freud called the superego; it knows the virtuous thing to do. And then there’s you—the ego—who has to decide which of the two you’re gonna follow. Are you gonna do the selfish thing or the virtuous thing?

Today’s psychiatrists often choose different models to describe how the mind works, but plenty of Christians have borrowed Freud’s model. They’ve Christianized the terms though. Instead of “id” and “superego,” they went back to using “flesh” and “spirit”… although a lot of Christians now use “body” instead of “flesh.” And instead of “ego,” they use “soul.” Your soul determines whether to follow your flesh or sprit; whether to be fleshly or Spiritual.

I don’t have any problem with Christians using those terms. Call ’em whatever you please. The only problem is whenever they try to claim the term “soul,” in the scriptures, doesn’t really refer to our lifeforce; that it actually refers to the human mind, namely our will which chooses between the selfish thing or the virtuous thing, and makes these choices based on intellect or emotion.

True, the scriptures regularly use “my soul” as a synonym for “me.” Even so, it’s still our lifeforce. Not our mind. We’ve gotta recognize that idea about the soul doesn’t come from scripture; it comes from Christians repurposing Sigmund Freud. Let’s not mix that up!

The idea of an ego, soul, mind, or “I,” which chooses between flesh and spirit, is definitely a useful one. But it can also give us the false idea that our bodies are something to hate; that we’re not supposed to just resist our fleshly nature, our sinful attitudes and habits, but we’re supposed to hate our physical bodies, and even mistreat ’em. Ancient and medieval Christians used to do awful things to their bodies, torturing themselves to demonstrate just how strongly they resisted their “flesh.” And no, don’t do that! Reject your selfishness, not your body. Take care of your body; you need it to do good works!