The False and the True Trichotomy

THE FALSE AND THE TRUE TRICHOTOMY.
Sec. IV.

It is of no avail to say that either Dichotomy or Trichotomy ^
exclusively is the scriptural representation of the constitution
of human nature. There are such various kinds of views of
dichotomy and trichotomy, that, in general, neither conformity
with, nor opposition to, Scripture can be predicated of either.
Scripture speaks at one time in a definitely dichotomic strain,
as e.g. Matt. vi. 25, Jas. ii. 26, 1 Cor. vi. 20 (according to
the reading of the textus rec.); at another in a strain as abso-
lutely and undeniably trichotomic, as 1 Thess. v. 23, Heb. iv.
12. For there is a false trichotomy, and in opposition thereto
a scriptural dichotomy; and there is a false dichotomy, and in
opposition to it a scriptural trichotomy.

We proceed from the fact, that Scripture primarily requires of us to recognise the essential opposition, and thus the dualism, of spirit and matter. At the outset it is not to be denied that matter is not a word which occurs in Scripture. The word certainly does not occur, but doubtless the idea does. All life, according to Scripture, is efficiency and operation of the spirit, whether it be in the case of the Living One, who Himself is Spirit as God, who as the absolute Living One is called irvevfia (John iv. 24) , comp. Isa. xxxi. 3, and the super-terrene personal creatures which are called irvevfiara (Heb. i. 14); or that it is pervaded by the spirit as the whole of nature; or is endowed with soul by spirit as the individual personalities. There is thus a distinction between the spirit as the living and the lifegiving on the one hand, and the corporeal as that which in itself is lifeless on the other; and this corporeal nature, lifeless in itself, is precisely that which we call matter. Scripture distinguishes so sharply and stringently, that, in its estimation, even flesh and spirit are considered as contraries, although in the flesh there is inseparable the conception of that which belongs to soul; for flesh is that which is bodily endowed with soul, or that has been endowed with soul. None the less 1^a¹ and nn are opposed

¹ The fundamental conception of this word may clearly be gathered from the Arabic, where baschara means to smooth over, to rub, to rasp, to

to one another, inasmuch as flesh is not itself spirit (Gen. vi. 3; Isa. xxxi. 3); and the Lord says (John vi. 63), " It is the Spirit which quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing." In the introduction to the history of creation, moreover, actually appears a Ilyle, not eternal indeed, as that of the philosophers, but yet a Hyle still absolutely formless and lifeless, the thohu wa-bohu, which,—as an absolute negation, not so much of power, which indeed may also operate destructively, as of form and life,—may be called pure matter. The Spirit of God, which brooded over this Hyle constituted under the waters, for the purpose of creative formation—the aboriginal chaos—is the mediating cause of all endowment with form and life, co-operating through its whole course with the creative work now beginning. Thus, even on the first page of Seripture, matter and spirit are placed in essential opposition. And this opposition subsists not only between God's Spirit and chaos, but also between the Spirit that endues man with soul, and the body of man; between the Spirit that endues the brute with soul, and the body of the brute; between the Spirit that pervades entire nature, and the grossest as well as the most delicate material in which it comes to mani\ festation. The opposition, indeed, is no yawning gulf. The essentially different is united by the unity of its origin; for from God, as Scripture tells us, are all things (1 Cor. viii. 6), etc. "The unity of the source of all things," says a late natural philosopher¹ in harmony with this, "promises a homogeneity of the things among themselves."

But if, from this relation of the spiritual and .corporeal realities to a final cause, the conclusion be drawn that there subsists no essential distinction between soul and body, Scripture is diametrically opposed to this; for as it bids us from its first page to look upon the Kosmos dualistically, so also it bids us look on man. Another natural philosopher² acknowledges this; not, however, without observing by the way, that an abun

scratch something on the surface; then generally to handle, to take hold of—attrectare and tractare. Flesh, basar, is thus materies attrectabilis, the opposite of the spiritual, impalpable, incomprehensible.

¹ E. Harless, in his Rede iiber grenzen und Grenzgebiete der physiologischeu Forschung (Munich, at the expense of the Academy, 1860), 27.

² R. Wagner, Der Kampf um die Seele von Standpunkt der Wusenschaft (1857), 47.

dance of reasons might be borrowed from the Bible in defence of a more spiritualistic, monistic, and even in a certain aspect, conditioned, materialistic view. But the matter does not stand thus. Scripture teaches a final glorification of the material world, and still, for all that, does not mean it spiritualistically. It comprehends the spiritually embodied man as a substantial unity, and yet does not on this account mean it monistically. It subjects the entire man in the way of nature to death; and yet, for all that, it does not conceive of man in a materialistic way. But, that it calls spirit and soul by names which are borrowed from the most subtle forms of matter, arises from the fact that it speaks in human language, with which even the most abstract and the most exact philosophers must needs be satisfied. It is neither in favour of conditioned nor of unconditioned materialism; for the spirit, and indeed the derived spirit not less than the divine, is something essentially different in its nature from matter. According to its representation, man is the synthesis of two absolutely distinct elements.¹

The narrative of the creation of man in Gen. ii. is specially intended to give us the recognition of this composite character of man, and thence, on the one hand, to tell us of the importance of his position in the world; and, on the other hand, of the possibility of his dissolution by death. It could not in any way more sharply indicate the essential character of the opposition of spirit and matter, than by representing man as originating from the combination of an immediate breathing of God, with the body of earth. It is thus no contradiction against Scripture, to make man a Being, so to speak, out of one piece or at one casting. Neither is the body the precipitate

¹ We could not therefore adopt the opinion of Fabri, Sensus Communis, 1861, p. 62, in saying, "The dualistic division of spirit and matter, which, contradictory to Scripture as it is, has penetrated from philosophy even into theology, and even to this day is absolutely powerful therein, in numberless points stands in the way of a deeper acquaintance with biblical truths." For that " all matter is phenomenal, and only the revelation and embodiment of spiritual potencies," is absolutely a philosophic statement contrary to Scripture, according to which matter is certainly a sensible phenomenon, but, precisely as such, is the opposite of the purely spiritual. Moreover, Fabri appears not to reject dualism in itself, but only a dualistic division, which cuts asunder spirit and matter as opposites, without a higher unity and reciprocal relation capable of modification.

of the spirit, nor the spirit the sublimate of matter. Both views derange the limits of creation drawn by Scripture.

With the decision in favour of the dualism of spirit and nature, however, the question as to dichotomy or trichotomy is in nowise settled. Besides the apprehension that the essential distinction of spirit and nature might be obliterated, there are three errors, the fear of which has caused a prejudice against trichotomy: (1.) The pseudo-Gnostic view, that the spirit of man is a portion of Divinity incapable of sin, as Origen thought:¹ aveiriSeKToV Tssv %eip6vwv To irvevfia Tov avdpwnrov To iv aurw (torn, xxxii. in Joannem). (2.) The Apollinarian error, that Christ had body and soul in common with us, but that the eternal Logos had in Him usurped the place of the Spirit,—a narrowing of the true humanity of Christ, whereby the trichotomic view, after prevailing in the two first centuries of the church, came into discredit as a Platonic-Plotinian error among the orthodox teachers of the fourth and fifth centuries. (3.) The semi-Pelagian error, that the spirit was excepted from the original sin which affected the body and soul,—an extenuation of human corruption, which probably contributed most of all to make our old dogmatists averse from trichotomy. But, in the face of all these errors, its opponents must confess that man may be regarded trichotomically, without in the least degree implying the adoption of such erroneous views. And the reproach of Platonizing, which was cast upon trichotomy, contained nothing which could specially redound to its dishonour. Assuredly Plato teaches in a trichotomic form concerning the soul, when he distinguishes from the undying part of the soul (to XoyiariKov) two mortal parts (to dvfioeiSi<; and To eiridvfirjTiKov); and certainly the later academy taught in like manner a trichotomic view of man;⁵ and it may be that Apollinaris, as Nemesios declares, constructed his peculiar dogma from the anthropologic trichotomy borrowed from Plotinus—awfia, "<{rv^% and vow. But is what Plato or what Plotinus taught to be branded

¹ But not without contradicting himself, in that he teaches of the soul, h -^vxA in ore Ovk Ji» ipi/jcv (DePrinc, ed. Redepenning, p. 10), it has fallen from the position of the voDf; it is chilled divine fire.

² Thus, for example also, the little book of Hermes Trismegistus, An die mevnchliche Seek, translated from the Arabic by Fleischer (Zeitschr. fiir historische Theologie, 1840-1). The active intellect which man, in himself

absolutely, because Plato and Plotinus taught it? Certainly the anthropologic fundamental conceptions which underlie the substantial fact of the history of redemption, will not be discovered in Plato and Plotinus. We must needs turn to the Holy Scripture, and accept without prejudice what it answers to us, whether it be Platonic or anti-Platonic.

But if we consider dichotomy first of all in its coarsest modifications, it is not difficult to point out its opposition to Scripture. When our dogmatists say that njn t?W (Gen. ii. 7) does not denote a tertium proceeding from the combination of corpus terrenum and spiraculum vitos, but the compositum proceeding therefrom which is named after the pars potior; it is sufficient, by way of reply, to recall the distinction, sharply stamped on the language, between Q^n (nn) riDEO and njn t^S3, according to which the two are related to one another as cause and effect, and thus cannot be absolutely identical; as well as that and t?W are conceptions which in no way coincide (vid. 1 Sam. i. 26, Ps. lxvi. 9, Prov. iii. 22; comp. Job iii. 20, x. 1). Another dichotomic view on which Scripture knows nothing of a created spirit, but only of a created soul (in opposition to which is a whole array of texts, as Rom. viii. 16, 1 Cor. ii. 11, and others), continues to have an interest for us, because it is an actual proof of the strong impression made by the assumption that governs the wus hquendi of Scripture, that the created spirit of man is a spirit that proceeds from God. It is the view propounded by Hofmann in Prophecy and its Fulfilment. Man—thus runs the teaching—subsists dichotomically of body and soul: the soul is that which constitutes the personality in man, as the individual life willed into existence by the eternal Spirit and present in time ; the spirit, distinguished from the man himself, is that in man which rules over him,-—in respect of its actual occupation, the spirit of man,—but essentially, the Spirit of God. As this view—which stands in unmistakeable contradiction to unequivocal passages of Scripture, as Zech.

only potentially a reasonable nature, receives, is there considered as essentially distinct from the soul. To the original matter of the elements succeeds, in ascending gradation, the substance of the heaven of the spheres, and to this, the substance of the soul, and to this, the reason, which, of all created things, is necessarily the noblest, the subtlest, and possessing the highest rank.

xii. 1, 1 Cor. ii. 11, Rom. viii. 16, and Deut. ii. 30, 2 Cor. vii. 1—has been given up by Hofmann, it is sufficient to refer to my examination of it given elsewhere.¹ What this view has to present, which is in harmony with the dogmatic system of the Bible, the shrewd systematizer has known how to preserve in another way, by none the less maintaining an indwelling of God's Spirit in man, established by the creation. For in the Schriftbeiceis¹ it is indeed admitted that Scripture knows just as much of a created spirit as of a created soul: of both, not as two kinds of substances, but so that it names the breath of life as the condition of individual life, nri, and as the individual life itself in its conditional state, t?W: nn as power effecting movement, t?W as being existing in movement. But there is added the limitation, of immeasurably more consequence to the system, that it is the everlasting Spirit of God dwelling in man, by virtue of whom man has his breath of life, which is just as much his spirit as his soul. The immanence of God's Spirit in man, as the source and support of life in him, is therefore also maintained in this form of doctrine.³ I find nothing of it in Scripture. There is no indwelling of God's absolute Spirit in man taught there, that is distinguished from that general presence of the Godhead in the world which gives to every created thing its own special character; and, indeed, the scriptural proof adduced for it from some few passages, as

¹ In my Theology of Biblical Prophecy (1845), pp. 187-195, where, however, as is remarked above, on account of the endeavour to maintain the essential unity of the created spirit and the soul, the distinction between them is made of too little account.

² See the same, i. 292-300; comp. von. Zeschwitz, Profangracitiit und bibl. Sprachgeist, pp. 67-69, where the isolated texts brought forward in von Hofmann's Schriftbeweis are rightly declared to be insufficient to found on them a doctrine of a far-reaching character upon the facts of creation.

⁸ Thus also teaches Schoberlein: Man consists of body, soul, and the Spirit of God immanent in the soul; for he remarks (Jahrbb. 1861, p. 2-1), "The Spirit may be reckoned in man among the actual elements of his being; whereas of natural beings, because the Spirit forms a power which only rules in them, but is incomprehensible to them themselves, it would be said that they only consist of body and soul." Scripture does not say so, and that the Spirit of God could be an element of human nature is a contradiction in itself; for which Hofmann, in substantially a similar view, consistently reproaches trichotomy.

Gen. vi. 3, Job xxxiii. 4, xxxii. 8, is manifestly feeble and inadequate. And as for the essential condition of man, I certainly agree entirely with the view that the spirit and soul of man are distinguished as primary and secondary, but not with the view that spirit and soul are substantially one and the same. In the abstract, it is difficult to conceive how, in such a case, they could be distinguished as conditioning and conditioned; but, moreover, there occur to us two New Testament passages (viz. 1 Thess. v. 23 and Heb. iv. 12) which here claim special consideration, because they denominate, not only casually but designedly, the condition of man's being; and their logically rigid trichotomic mode of expression cannot be summarily set aside with the assertion, that in them is meant the condition of man's life, and especially of the Christian's life, not in relation to its three distinct elements, but assuming the existence of only two elements, and referring only to its three distinct relations.

We direct our attention first of all to 1 Thess. v. 23.¹ In this passage of the earliest written of his epistles, Paul names at the outset of his prayer for God's blessing, " the God of peace," because sin has brought discord into man's natural condition and community, and peace, which takes away this discord, is God's will and gift. And the very God of peace, says the apostle, sanctify you oXoreXet?,—Lat. vos totos; German, as Luther pithily translates, "through and through," so that nothing in you remains uninfluenced by the sanctification; —and o\oKjpov vfiwv To irvevfia Kai fj yfruxrj Kal rb a&fia, i.e. sound and entire (integer), may your spirit and your soul and your body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (or, "to this coming;" comp. Jas. v. 5)! The wish of the apostle, we gladly concede to Hofmann, is certainly not directed to their remaining entire men, but probably to their being so kept in the totality of their human condition of

¹ There was a time when this Pauline text could hardly be cited without incurring suspicion. Thus it happened to Freilinghausen, who referred to it in his admirable Grundkgung der Theologie (a popular dogmatic treatise), where he speaks of renewing and'sanctification. The editor of J. J. Rombach's Lectures on the Grundkgung remarks, "The auctores of the Unschuldigen Nachrichten had created an offence out of the quotation of this passage, as if the author were appearing to constitute (statuiren) three essential parts of man."

being, that when the Lord shall appear in judicial glory, no blame may reach them. And the apostle strikingly analyzes the human condition into -rrvevf>ia, yffu^, and aSifia. Nay, he regards even every one of these three elements as being in itself again many-sided or many-parted, inasmuch as he refers the expression 6\6K\?jpov^l to every one of them. It is the view that forces itself upon every unprejudiced person. Should any one prefer to express it, that the apostle by irvevfia and -^v^r j is distinguishing the internal condition of man's life, and especially of the Christian's life, in respect of two several relations, even this would not be false. For the three essential elements which he distinguishes are in nowise three essentially distinct elements. Either spirit and soul, or soul and body, belong to one another, as of a similar nature; and the apostle's view is thus in the final result certainly dichotomic. But supposing that he regards spirit and soul as the essentially similar inward nature of man, it seems to correspond very little with the regular ordination of the three anthropologic fundamental conceptions, if we attribute to the apostle the notion that irvevfia and ^uxv are only two several relations of that essentially similar inward nature, and not two distinct elements of it. It thus appears that Paul distinguishes three essential elements of man, to every one of which the work of sanctifying grace extends in its manner.

How else, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which, if not written by Paul himself, is still Pauline (iv. 12), could a dividing asunder of the soul and spirit, which God's word effects in us, be spoken of? This passage, which, together with 1 Thess. v. 23, is valuable as the special deposit of the Pauline view of the essential condition of man, is disregarded by Harless, when he confesses² that he can by no means find in 1 Thess. v. 23, a trichotomy, that cannot be proved from other passages of the apostle. Hofmann endeavours to avoid the concession, that in

¹ The fundamental idea of o'Ao'xAnpof, according to Schleussner, is cui totum inest quod sorte obligit. Doubtless xteipo; in this connection means "possession," " estate," " inheritance;" and oXoxXmpo» means what represents the whole undivided possession, what is not weakened by division, and thus subsists in perfect integrity. Hesychius explains it by euon, and ihoxhnptx by iW/?, "uniting," unity, in contrast with dissipation into parts.

¹ Ethics (1853-60), p. 30.

this case yfrv^y and 'rrvevpa, are two several elements of human nature, by saying that he regards the genitive yfrv^rj<; Koi irvevfiaro< ; as depending upon apfiwv re iiat fiveKoiv; thus making the writer say that the word is so penetrating as to divide asunder and dissolve, as well the joints as the marrow of the inner life, i.e. the secret links of its coherence, and the innermost marrow of its substance. But we cannot consent to surrender the trichotomic view of the writer so plainly outspoken, at the price of this unnaturally-inverted expression, wherein, over and above the objection that the "inner life" is substituted for the twofold conception yfrv^r}<; Koi irvevfitiTo<;, we can find, in the fact that in dpfiwv re Kui fiveKwv there is a figurative meaning associated with a literal meaning in ^i^j)? Koi irvevfiaTo^, no necessity for the adoption of a construction such as would require the writer to speak, by a daring figure indeed, of the joints and masses of marrow (fj,ve\&v, not merely five\ov) of the spirit and the soul. I maintain the view discussed in my Commentary, in loc, that the writer attributes to the word of God a dividing efficacy of a moral nature, which extends to the entire spiritual, psychical, and corporeal condition of man; and that he regards as well the invisible and supersensuous as the sensible and sensuous conditions of man as bipartite, dividing in the former the yfn/ffl and irvevfia, in the latter the ipfutl which serve for the life of motion, and the five\oi which serve for the life of sensation. Riehm,¹ indeed, considers that, in applying the dividing power of the word of God, which analyzes and lays bare all things, to the human corporeity also, I am "confused and contradictory;" but if in our body and its members the law of sin and of death has become dominant, it is precisely the word of God which can take to pieces this structure penetrated with sin, just as it can divide in our immaterial internal nature, soul and spirit, not merely in conception, but actually; and can exactly analyze all that has therein been creatively constituted, or has been inherited by birth, or in any other way has from any source been superinduced, or has been spontaneously cultivated. In the meantime, this is not the place to pursue this question further. As far as the matter concerns us here, Riehm agrees with us. It is pretty generally acknowledged, says ¹ Lehrbegriff des Hebriierbriefi (1858), p. 65.

he,¹ that the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in naming (ch. iv. 12) Tfrv^rf and vvevfia in juxtaposition, as composing the immaterial substance of human nature, announces a trichotomic view of the nature of man.

But although, in accordance with such classical texts of Scripture as the above, to which v. Rudloff rightly adds 1 Cor. xv. 45, soul and spirit are separable elements of the internal structure of man, still we must guard against establishing a gulf between them. In the actual natural position of man, the Psyche has certainly attained a dominion and an independence, which, as it proves on the one hand that it cannot be identical with the Pneuma, so, on the other hand, must not be abused to the proof that, in relation to the Pneuma, it is the primary element, or that it is an element essentially distinct from it.² No! spirit and soul are not distinct natures. The Giintherish school makes them so, when it rightly conceives of man as the synthesis of the spirit and nature-life, but wrongly appropriates the Psyche to the latter as the highest internalization of the natural substance as the capability of the formation of conception come to the knowledge of itself, contrasted with the formation of ideas by the spirit. The trichotomy of Plato and Aristotle is in substance just this. For the soul of passion and the soul of desire (dvfiiKrj and iiridvfirjTiKrj) are, according to Plato, mortal; and to the latter he adjudges sensibility (aXadrj«rK): so that it occurs at least as a consequence of his system, that to this mortal twofold portion of the soul are to be generally appropriated the forms of activity common to man with the brute.³ And Aristotle, who, in like manner, declares that the sustaining and sensitive soul (dperrTiKrj and atadryriKrj) is decaying, and only the reason (vow, and indeed the vov<; iroiijTui6<;) is immortal, attributes to this mortal soul expressly not merely appetite (o/aeft?), but, moreover, sensible perception, imagination (<f>avraaia), memory (fivrffirj), recollection (avdfivijcn.<;), and thus every activity of the soul that belongs to the brute also.⁴ That which is new in the fundamental view

¹ Lehrbegriff des Hebriierbriefs, p. 671.

* See the striking remarks in v. Zeschwitz, Profangriicitiit und biblischer Sprachgeist, pp. 48-50.

³ See Zeller, Die Philosophic der Griechen, ii. (1816), 272-274.

⁴ Ibid. ii. 486-489.

of Giinther, is only the distinction applied to the relation of spirit and soul of the formation of the idea and of the purpose, although, following the example of Paracelsus, J. B. van Helmont teaches, that to the soul, as distinguished from the intuitively and essentially perceiving spirit, belongs the ratio, formatruv syllogismi, discurrendi sermocinalis facultas. The distinction of the so-called higher and lower capacities of the soul has, as we shall be convinced further on, its substantial truth testified even by Scripture; but, for the rest, the false trichotomy consists actually in that distinction of spirit and soul which points to these two several spheres of being. There is no special need of a refutation of this trichotomy from the Scripture, since it is absolutely incapable of being established on scriptural authority. Since t?£H, "^v^, according to the usus loquendi of all the books of the Bible,¹ frequently denotes the entire inward nature of man, and in more frequent metonymy denotes the person in reference to its whole internal and external life; and since the Holy Scripture still more frequently says that man consists of body and soul, than that he consists of body and spirit, the soul cannot possibly, in the sense of Scripture, belong to the natural side of man, as essentially distinct from the spirit, as then moreover it is an unscriptural view, that the brute-soul is the "acme of the self-internalizing process of nature:" for all the life of the creature, even of the brutes, according to Scripture, is not a life which proceeds from the spontaneous activity of matter, but a life worked into matter by God (Ps. civ. 30; Job xxxiv. 14); and Josephus (Ant. i. 1, 2) rightly says, moreover, in reference to Gen. ii. 7, irvevfia einjKev avrw Kox tfrv^v, i.e. the divine inspiration was the endowing with spirit and with soul combined.

We maintain the dualism of nature and spirit as strenu

¹ Even according to that of Paul, in whom, according to Krumm, tie notionibus psychologies Paulinis (1858), -^vyx is nothing more than vis qua corpus viget el movetur (similar to the xfcDnrrtxri of Philo, and the ivtivfA.nrtx.it of Plato). Then the idea of the Psyche in Paul would be different from the one in the Epistle to the Hebrews and in Luke; and the apostle, moreover, would not be consistent with himself in such passages as Eph. vi. 6, Col. iii. 23, Phil. i. 27. Krumm accordingly makes him speak in such passages in an inconsequent manner, according to the vulgar usus loquendi. In such culs-de-sac, the desire of system is checked without possibility of return.

ously as we maintain the dualism of God and the world, and in the same degree we regard the body and the spirit of man as being of a distinct nature. But the soul belongs to the side of the spirit. The essential difference between a human nature-psyche and the human thinking spirit is an invention contrary to Scripture and to experience. The dualism of Psyche and Pneuma, under which man, considered ethically, is groaning, is a consequence of sin, which has disunited in itself his life-principle which he had received immediately from God. For it is one principle from which are derived both his bodily and his spiritual life. The body without the spirit is dead (Jas. ii. 26). There is no natural-psyche between spirit and body, but only a life of the soul that proceeds from the spirit itself. We thoroughly agree in this respect with Thomas Aquinas, the ingenious elaborator of the fundamental thoughts of Aristotle. "Impossibile est," he says (Pt. i. 2, Ixxvi. art. 3 of his Summa), "in uno homine esse plures animas per essentiam differentes, sed una tantum est anima intellectiva, quae vegetativae et sensitivse, et intellectivse officiis fungitur." Notice here the conception essentia. The understanding soul and the bodily soul are in their essence and nature one.

Moreover, the view of Goschel,¹ that the soul proceeds at once from body and spirit in order to unite the two, i.e. to elevate the body from the flesh to the spirit, and to appropriate the spirit to the body, and that, because otherwise there would be a dualism, it must be such a third nature as themselves, originating in like manner from the body as from the spirit,— this view, I say, is not to be received. For (1) it proceeds on the assumption that the body, prior to its endowment with spirit, was already a naturally living body of flesh, which not only contradicts the literal reading of Gen. ii. 7, but the scriptural view generally, according to which all fleshly life is the result of the spirit of life ("oBO and W1) dwelling in the bodily creation; (2) the soul is certainly the medium of the dominion of the soul over the body, but not the appointed mediator between

¹ In his work, Der Mensch nach Leib, Seele, und Geist diesseits und jenseits, 1856, p. 6, and throughout. On the other hand, according to Dante, by divine spiritual endowment the fruit of the body arises un' alma sola che vive e sente e se in se rigira,—an individual soul, which lives, and feels, and revolves within itself (Purg. 25, 70-75).

the two; and (3) a nature combined, and originating at once from the body and the spirit, is absolutely inconceivable. On the other hand, it may be represented that the spirit, entering into the earthly body, combines the natural powers met with there into a unity of the soul; so that the soul should be indeed a nature-psyche, but originated through the union of the spirit with the body. But scriptural passages such as Matt. x. 28, and a hundred others, would then be inexplicable. The conclusion, then, is, that the soul is of one nature with the spirit.

But if, according to Scripture, the soul do not belong to the side of man's nature, but to the side of his spirit, it must either be one and the same with his spirit, or it must be a substance proceeding from it. When the above-named Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa (Pt. i. 2, lxxvii. art. 6), says, "Cum accidens proprium et per se causetur a subjecto secundum quod est in actu, et recipiatur in eo in quantum est in potentia, constat omnes potentias anima e ab ipsius animae essentia emanare," the vegetative, sensitive, appetitive, motive, evidences of life which we attribute to the soul, like the intellectual, which we call spiritual, appear to him purely accidental emanations from the nature of the soul, which is potentially capacitated for them; or (to transpose his words into our manner of expression) the soul (Psyche) is to him only as an accident of the spirit (Pneuma), only as a sum-total of acts effected and determined by the body, that the spirit begets out of itself, and can take back into itself. If we, on the other hand, raise the question whether soul and spirit are not rather to be substantially distinguished, we are not apprehending substantia as one and the same with essentia; for that in this sense spirit and soul are of a like substance, we have already maintained against the Guntherish school. Moreover, we would not have understood by substantia that which has the foundation of its being in itself (quod nulla alia re indiget ad existendum); for, apart from the fact that in this sense generally no creature is substance in any other than a very limited manner, we award to the soul a priori no other being than one derived from and dependent on the spirit, and therefore no subsistence in the sense of independence. But whilst we distinguish nature as thus or thus limited, being and substance, as real and permanent, and especially as existing, we contrast substance with accident, and especially with the accidental actus, and ask whether then in truth what we call soul, as distinct from spirit, be nothing more than the actuality of the spirit referred to the corporeity; or, according to Tertullian, whether the spiritual-psychical inward nature of man is to be regarded as uniformis duntaxat substantia, and the soul as nothing more than substantia officium, i.e. the selfoperation of the spiritual substance. This question we believe we must, in the sense of the Scripture, answer in the negative, and say, as does v. Eudloff, spirit and soul are of one nature, but of distinct substances.¹ If any one would rather say that the soul is a Tertium, or third existence, not substantially indeed, but potentially, independent, between spirit and bod}', but by its nature pertaining to the side of the spirit, we have no objection to it.⁴ The principle in which it results is this, that the soul, whether it be called substance or potentiality, is not the spirit itself, but another nature conditioned by it, although standing incomparably nearer to it than the body. We do not purpose to prove it from individual texts where soul and spirit are named in juxtaposition, and are distinguished from one another, as Isa. xxvi. 9. The main proof rests, on the one hand, in Gen. ii. 7, according to which the human soul is related to

¹ My reviewer in the Catholic Litcratur-Ztitung, 1855, No. 48, characterizes my view as false, and contrary to reason,—that the soul emanates from the spirit, and is no distinct nature, but a distinct substance from the spirit. He remarks: "Capiat qui capere potest. For, apart from the fact that it is a question whether a created spirit can emanate from itself, still that which had emanated could not possibly be another new substance, in the same way as in the Trinity the three Persons are not distinct substances." This reproach I think I have now replied to in the above more accurate explanation. As far as concerns the emanation, it is conceded by my reviewer, (1) that in the Holy Scripture the Bpirit and soul of man are in nowise contrasted as essentially opposed; (2) that the 'human Boui is nowhere placed in juxtaposition with the spirit as an independent monad. I add, moreover, (3) that they are none the less distinguished as conditioning and produced, and that precisely from these three points the conclusion results to me, that the soul stands to the spirit in the relation of emanation. For the rest, emanare is certainly an expression not exactly suited to the subject. The names fin (nDEO) and #W rather suggest spirare. But both expressions are only natural figures of that which is supernatural.

* Thus v. Zeschwitz, Profangriicitiit und Bibl. Sprachycist, p. 49, comp. 37, where xmifit t is with perfect justice defined as the highest spiritual power, comprehending, ruling, penetrating all the powers of the soul and the body in the power of its own connection with God.

the inbreathed creature-breath of life, just as the brute soul is related to the absolute Spirit which brooded over the waters of chaos. On the other hand, in the undeniably biblical representations, that in consequence of sin the human spirit is absorbed into soul and flesh, and man, who ought to pass over from the position of the -^v^r) t/S>aa into the position of the irvev^a faKwroiow, has become, instead of irvevfiariK6<;, a being i/ri^i/io? and aapKiKix;; and further, that just for that reason, because the spirit stands in immediate causal relation to God, all the divine operations having redemption in view address themselves first of all to the nri, irvevfia, and thence first attain to C'ap, yfrv^fi: for when God manifests Himself, He appeals to the spirit of man; and if He deliver man from the old nature of sin, it is man's spirit which is renewed (e.g. Ps. li. 10; Tit. iii. 5). Not as though the soul were not a participant in such divine operations, but they are determined in the spirit, in order there to concentrate themselves in the soul; and we may thence conclude, that although it originates out of the essence of the spirit, it is not of absolutely identical condition with it, or, as we prefer saying, that it is not one and the same substance with the spirit, but a substance that stands in a secondary relation with it. It is of one nature with it, but not one distinct nature, as the Son and the Spirit are of one nature with the Father, but still not the same hypostases.

This internal divine relation, however, is absolutely not that which is prototypical herein. When Justin (fragm. de resurrectione carnis) says, Oiko<; To awfia yfrvyfi< ; irvevfiaro<; 8e yfrv^rj Oiko<;, and when Irenasus calls the soul spiritus velut habitaculum, they are referring to another prototypical relation; and when Philo (de opificio mundi) calls man, in relation to the powers of his soul, /Upa^y< ; el Sei rajde<; ehreiv ovpavb<;; or when Peter, in the Clementine Homilies (xvi. 12), says of the eternal wisdom, fjvwrai to? -^vyrj T&> QeS,¹ the true substance of the matter is plainly intimated: the human soul is related to the human spirit as the divine doxa is related to the triune divine nature. It is a comparison which is certainly not strictly completed in the Scripture,² but for which Scripture offers all necessary premises.

¹ See thereupon Moller, Geschichte der Kosmologie in der Griech. Kirche bis auf Origenes (1861), p. 471.

² It would be almost strictly completed if Ps. xxiv. 4 were translated,

For if the human n»r3 (= nn) is a candle of Jehovah (Prow xx. 27), and if the Lord calls the spirit of man To To ev aoi (Matt. vi. 23, comp. 1 Cor. ii. 11), what can the soul be other than the avavyaafia of this light, since, according to the prevailing use of scriptural language, the soul is related to the spirit as the life to the principle of life, and as the effect to that which produces it? And as the human spirit is the self-knowing nature, as is collected even from its source, and as 1 Cor. ii. 11, comp. Prov. xx. 27, expressly says, how could t?W, •^'v^rj, so very commonly denote the entire life—the whole internal nature —the person of man—if it were not the self-expression, and, so to speak, the reflection of the spirit—the sphere essentially like

/ to it of its self-knowledge? t?D3, in general sense, means the | person, not because the soul is that which forms the personality of man, but because it is the mediating link of the spirit and < the body, and the peculiar form of its personality. The spirit \ is the in-breathing of the Godhead, and the soul is the out

Ibreathing of the spirit. The spirit is spiritus spiratus, and endows the body with soul, as spiritus spirans. The spirit is the life-centre provided for the body, as for the object of its endowment with soul, and the soul is the raying forth of this centre of life.¹ The spirit is (let it be well considered) the inward being of the soul, and the soul is the external nature

according to the original text, "who does not exhaust my soul for vanity:" for the soul of God would then be here His name, Ex. xx. 7, and then a revelation of the nature of God; as also Jer. Ii. 14, iD'Wa, per animam suam,

is explained by iDS'a, per nomen suum. The Chethib, "who does not lift

his soul to vanity," certainly reads more naturally. But the Keri '[}'D3 is old,

and recognised by the oldest testimonies (even LXX., Cod. Vat., rin ^"xv' fiov); only Elias Levita rejects it, but on the ground of a misunderstood Masora (see Bar's Psalterium Hebr. p. 130). Norzi, whose critical judgment I followed earlier, and also Hupfeld in loe., distort the fact.

¹ So far as spirit and soul stand related to one another as centre and circumference, we might express the relation also as Philo does in B. i. de opificio mundi. The spirit is, so to speak, the Psyche of the Psyche, as the apple of the eye in the eye (vo5» f|x/pfto» ilupuro \pvx*i Twx ^vxri» xxiivtp xopnn it oQix^fiy); and so far as the soul serves to the spirit as the means of self-attestation and of operation on the cosmical side, we might say that the soul is as the chariot (the mercabd) of the spirit, and the spirit its charioteer (»o5f i i-ijf ^vxij; %n'oxo; xioDrioiain ixinrintt;).—Const. Apost. vii. 34, 3.

of the spirit; for there is nothing internal without a corresponding external, and nothing external without internal. From the side of the body it is the beaming forth doxa of the spirit—its immaterial bodily self—by means of which it governs the material corporeity, with the powers that are involved in it, as the Godhead, by means of its doxa, fills and pervades the world. Therefore in the Old Testament the soul also is absolutely called 1i33, Gen. xlix. 6 (where it is constructed as feminine because it is akin to t^W), Ps. vih 6, xvi. 9,¹ xxx. 13, lvii. 9, cviii. 2; for the spirit is the image of the triune Godhead, but the soul is the copy of this image, and is related to the spirit as the kirra nvevficna are related to the Spirit of God, or to God the Spirit.

How deeply penetrating the parallelism is, will appear when we proceed to consider the psychical origin of man in an ethical point of view.