Body, Mind, Soul, Spirit

These four words are used in all kinds of esoteric conversations by Christians, pagans, Buddhists, New Agers, psychologists, and movie stars. We think we know what these words mean and how they should be understood within a context. But our 21st century Western view of these words is derived more from Greek philsophers as interpreted by the medieval Roman church strongly influenced by Aristotelian logic. Logic creates clash. Two things are set against each other. This is called dualism. Body is one thing; soul is another thing; logic rejects that they are the same. Philosophical dualism gives us the sacred-secular paradigm. Then along come contemporary rationalists and materialists to shrink the model to the single dimension of body, everything else being unprovable to science. So what does the New Testament mean by these words: body, mind, soul, and spirit.

Because we are Christians, let's start with what Jesus taught. In Matthew 22:37, Jesus affirms the greatest commandment to be "Thou shalt love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind" (quoting Deuteronomy 6:5). Mark's Gospel adds "and with all your strength." Neither Moses nor Jesus describe in what ways we love with our heart as opposed how we love with our soul which isn't differentiated from the way we are supposed to love with all our mind. These are not separate entities. The intent of the commandment is that we are to love God with our whole being. This is the simplest way of summarizing the Old Testament understanding of who we are. You don't have a body, you don't have a mind, you don't have a soul; rather you are a body-mind-soul unity.

Paul writes most about body, mind, soul, and spirit. In 1 Thessalonians 5:13 he writes:

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely (wholly) and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless..."

Each is a description of a whole human being as viewed from a specific perspective of life, not different substances arranged in some kind of hierarchy. Let's examine each of these in some detail.

Psuche (Soul)

Genesis 2:7 says God breathed into Adam the breath of life and he became a living soul. The Hebrew word for soul is nephesh. That same breath of life is given to the animals in Genesis 1:30. So, the Bible doesn't picture the soul as a carrier of our real selves into heaven (as did the medieval church). The soul referred to our human existence as living, breathing creatures.

When Paul writes about the psuche, he is clear that it does NOT get into heaven. After contrasting psuche and pneuma (spirit), he writes in 1 Corinthians 15:50,53:

Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable...For this perishable body must put on the imperishable and this mortal body must put on immortality.

Psuche is our creatureliness. It is not eternal It can be lost or destroyed (Matthew 10:28, 16:26). Jesus taught:

Don't worry about your psuche, what to eat and drink or about your body, what you will wear ...

The body is the outward being that needs clothing, what Paul can also refer to as the "flesh." Psuche is our entire humanity as seen from the perspective of our creaturely life that breathes, bleeds, and needs food and drink.

Pneuma (Spirit)

Let's introduce the meaning of spirit at this point because it is the logical opposite of psuche. Here's another passage that makes clear this contrast.

"The psuchikos person (one driven by their creaturely existence) does not receive the things that come from God's pneuma...We who are pneumatikos have the mind of Christ." 1 Corinthians 2:14, 16

The pneuma is a gift of God to believers. Biblically speaking, unbelievers don't have pneuma. Pneuma will be the life force of our resurrected bodies. One reason most Christians don't understand this idea is due to horrible translations of I Corinthians 15:44 that speak of the resurrection body as a "spiritual body." This gives license to all kinds of ridiculous speculation. But a better translation would be:

It (our mortal body) is sown a creaturely-animated body (psuchikos); it is raised a spirit-animated body (pneumatikos).

In the resurrection we will receive our glorified bodies; our salvation will be complete. We will be fully human from the perspective of God's redemption. But God gives us a down payment on eternity here and now. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 1:22 that we are given pneumatikos as a deposit on God's promise to resurrect us on the last day.

This helps clarify, I think, Paul's talk about the law versus in the Spirit in Romans 5-7. The law addresses only our psuche; but being in Christ means we have been given the foretaste of the pneuma.

Fronaima/Nous (Mind)

The ancients pictured their mind as residing in the physical heart whereas we are more likely to associate it with the brain. Psychology associates the mind with the self, but such a thought would be quite foreign to the people of the New Testament. In Romans 8:5ff. Paul says the mind is what we orient to, what we think and rationalize. Like the needle of a compass orients to true north, the mind orients to what is true or false. So, those who are oriented to psuche think about and rationalize the things of the flesh while those who are oriented to pneuma are focused on life and peace.

Romans 12:2 pulls together these aspects neatly. Believers present their psuche bodies as a living sacrifice as part of pneumatikos worship. Rather than being conformed to the world system, we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds; that is, re-orienting our lives away from the creaturly passions of the flesh/body that lead to death to re-orient to the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God. This is a picture of our sancitification: our spirit-driven life sacrifices our flesh-driven life as its act of worship and transforms life by the re-orienting of my desire and will toward Christ.

Summary

The New Testament does not see body, mind, soul, and spirit as separate parts of our existence, but as a differentiated unity as seen from a certain perspective.

Body/flesh is an entire human being, seen from the perspective of corruptibility, failure, rebellion, sin, and death.

Psuche is our entire human being, seen from the perspective of ordinary creaturliness, with breath and blood and sustained by food and drink.

Fronaima is our entire being from the perspective of thinking, feeling, willing, perceiving.

Pneuma is the gift of God that enables the elect to respond to God. That response is partial and fraught with struggle while in this body, but pneuma will be our entire humanity in the resurrection.

In Ephesians 4:17-24, we see it described this way. In verses 17-19 we see the psuche-driven life and mind characterized by:

futility...darkened in understanding...alienated from the life of God...hardness of heart...callous...given over to sensuality...greedy to practice every kind of impurity.

But in verses 20-24 reorienting to Jesus enables the elect to live a new way, the the beginnings of the pneuma-driven life putting off the old human existence:

to be renewed in the pneuma-driven mind, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.