I AM the Spirit in the Body (Revelations of the Soul Book 1)

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As I have often pointed out, here and in for instance 1 Peter 1. Throughout the whole New Testament, actually, the questions that have so preoccupied philosophers seeking to hold out for some non-reductive, non-materialistic account of human nature are simply not discussed. Where the earliest Christian authors come close to such discussion, they never use the word psyche in the way which has become common from at least the third century. It is unwise to claim biblical authority for a view which is nowhere discussed, let alone promoted, in the Bible.

If there is some version of non-reductive anthropology which is taught in the Bible, we had better try to discern what it is, rather than assume it will conform to what much later tradition such as the Cartesian philosophical tradition has said or thought. One fourth and final question or challenge to the popular dualistic paradigm. To begin with, however much we may deny it, an anthropological dualism tends to devalue or downgrade the body.

We see this in ethics. Yes, much discussion of things like embryo research, not least in Roman Catholic circles, has concentrated on the question of whether the embryo possesses a soul. But I regard this as the wrong tactic.

The important thing is that it is already a body , a human body, and as such possesses dignity and worth. To imply that dignity and worth will only come about if we can postulate a soul is a dangerous hostage to fortune, and falls back into that soul-of-the-gaps problem I mentioned earlier. The resurrection will give new life to the body, so that what you do with it in the present matters.

It is Gnosticism, not Christianity, that focuses attention on the soul; and it is precisely the post-enlightenment Gnosticism of much western culture which has produced the moral morass we see all around us, where the cultivation of the soul allows, and often encourages or even insists upon, a relentless bodily hedonism.

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But the implicit devaluation of the body and over-evaluation of the mind has been a major problem in the western world for many generations and I would hate to think of this being simply pushed further. Indeed, it might encourage that rationalism which still persists in much western thought, including some Christian thought, splitting off absolute from relative, objective from subjective, reason from emotion, and indeed reason from sense. All of this fits only too closely with other dichotomies such as sacred and secular and even grace and nature.

And all these split-level worlds, the cosmologies they postulate and the epistemologies they encourage, are in my view leading us away from a truly biblical perspective. By contrast, I wish to propose a differentiated unity in terms of cosmos and of the human person, both rooted in a fully-blown biblical understanding of God and of humans in his image.

Such an ontology is the root for what I have elsewhere called an epistemology of love, which transcends these epistemological dichotomies and reaches out for a truth which comes to fullest biblical expression, I think, in the gospel of John. This brings us to the second, and shorter, main part of my paper. I now wish to propose a kind of thought-experiment, in line with the experiment I offered in After You Believe. Now, in line with this, I want to suggest that the way to discern and articulate a genuinely biblical anthropology is not to start where we are and try to tease out a soul-of-the-gaps, but to start at the promised end and work backwards.

We begin with the obvious telos. Paul, the author of Revelation, and other early Christian writers point to the final goal of an immortal physicality, an emphatically bodily body if I can put it like that beyond the reach of sin, pain, corruption or death. The body of the Christian is already a Temple of the Holy Spirit, and as God had promised in Jeremiah, Ezekiel and elsewhere that the Temple would be rebuilt after its destruction, so Paul envisages the rebuilding of the body-Temple after its bodily death Romans 8. What we see in Paul, I propose, is the anthropological equivalent of what he says about the cosmos itself.

This is realized in advance in Ephesians 2. This is then worked out in Ephesians 5 in the differentiated unity of male and female in monogamous marriage.

1. Questions to the Dominant Dualist Paradigm

What I propose is that just as in all these ways there is a present reality which anticipates and points towards the eschatological unity of all things, so within the human being itself we find something similar. And, let me stress, this is not primarily a matter of analysis but of vocation. I have spelled all this out in much more detail in After You Believe. The whole paragraph, Ephesians 3.

Paul repeats the substance, omitting the simile, but anchoring the reality in Jesus himself: There is a question still on the table about just how much the kardia in Paul is a metaphor and how much it is, in passages like this, intended as the concrete reality. John Wesley was not the only one to experience, and to speak of, a strange but actual warming of the heart. This enables us to read passages such as Ephesians 4. Left to itself, humanity fractures, fragments and disintegrates. The Gentiles walk in the foolishness of their mind, darkened in their understanding, separated by ignorance from the life of God through the hardness of their hearts, giving themselves over to all kinds of dehumanizing bodily practices.

There is, I suppose, some sort of integration there.

Mind, understanding, heart and action are all, in a sense, synchronized, even though they are all looking in, and going in, the wrong direction. But it is an integration of death. In verses 20 to 24 we find the elements of the human person put back together again properly, and this time reflecting God into the world. Truth, we note, is here contrasted with the deceit of the old human. Spirit and mind, we note: The kata theon of verse 24 is cognate with the more explicit Colossians 3. Paul refuses to propose an anthropology on its own, self-analyzing, looking at itself in a mirror.

He will only propose the genuine article, the humanity which, worshipping the creator, reflects his image into the world. The same point is visible in many passages, but perhaps most strikingly in Romans And then, as in Colossians 3. I suggest that his anthropology takes precisely the same form: We note that in Romans The psyche is not a bad thing; but its goodness does not consist in its being either the locus of present spirituality or the bridge into future heavenly life. How then — supposing Paul asked himself the question — does he envisage the causative role played by the renewed mind in calling the body to its new role of sacrificial service?

This is one of the points where Bultmann got Paul at least partly right. What then can we say about Paul within his own contexts? He uses language familiar from the debates of the time, but as I have hinted his primary conversation partner is likely to have been some sort of Stoicism. Stoicism was, of course, a pantheistic worldview, which offered a radically different outlook from any sort of Platonism — and indeed from Epicureanism, whether ancient or modern.

Paul is, obviously, no pantheist, but he is no Epicurean either: And, again as a good Jew, he believes that one discerns and discovers in practice what it means to be human not by introspection but by obedience. His language there is, in any case, wholistic: It seems to me, then, taken all together, that when Paul thinks of human beings he sees every angle of vision as contributing to the whole, and the whole from every angle of vision.

All lead to the one, the one is seen in the all. And, most importantly, each and every aspect of the human being is addressed by God, is claimed by God, is loved by God, and can respond to God. It is not the case that God, as it were, sneaks in to the human being through one aspect in order to influence or direct the rest. Every step in that direction is a step towards the downgrading of the body of which I have already spoken. And that downgrading has demonstrably gone hand in hand, in various Christian movements, with either a careless disregard for the created order or a careless disregard for bodily morality.

But, after all, faced with this richly diverse and yet richly integrated vision of being human, why would one want to argue for something so thin and flat as dualism? Of course we must resist something even thinner and flatter, namely the monochrome reductionism of materialists and the like. A rich meal is set before us, and every course and every wine contributes to the complete whole. So, to conclude, some remarks on a possible biblical contribution to the mind-body problem as it has appeared in philosophy over the last few hundred years.

Here, as often, I have the distinct impression that philosophical problems are the two-dimensional versions of what in theology are three-dimensional questions, and that once we grasp the three-dimensional version we see how to hold on to the apparent antinomies of the two-dimensional version.

My basic proposal, as is already apparent, is that we need to think in terms of a differentiated unity. Each denotes the entire human being, while connoting some angle of vision on who that human is and what he or she is called to be. Thus, for instance, sarx , flesh, refers to the entire human being but connotes corruptibility, failure, rebellion, and then sin and death. Psyche denotes the entire human being, and connotes that human as possessed or ordinary mortal life, with breath and blood sustained by food and drink.

No doubt none of the terms is arbitrary; all would repay further study. What then about the problem of causation, and the related problem of determinism and free will? Here again we have the two-dimensional version of a three-dimensional theological puzzle — that of divine sovereignty and human responsibility. He is capax humanitatis , because humans were made in his image.

All of those words imply, or even presuppose, a latent Epicurean framework: They overlap and interlock. God is always at work in the world, and God is always at work in, and addressing, human beings, not only through one faculty such as the soul or spirit but through every fibre of our beings, not least our bodies. That is why I am not afraid that one day the neuroscientists might come up with a complete account of exactly which neurons fire under which circumstances, including that might indicate the person as responding to God and his love in worship, prayer and adoration.

2. New Testament Anthropology in Eschatological and Cultural Context

Why should the creator not relate to his creation in a thousand different ways? Why should brain, heart and body not all be wonderfully interrelated in so many ways that we need the rich language of mind, soul and spirit to begin to do justice to it all? And — a quite extra point but not unimportant — if in fact we humans are much more mysterious than modernist science has supposed, there might be further interrelations of all kinds.

Dogs That Know When their Owners are Coming Home and similar works, exploring the reality of intersubjective communication where physical links are demonstrably absent. Yes, of course, we have to postulate that God looks after those who have died in the Messiah.

A human being: body, soul and spirit

Part of death, after all, is the dissolution of the human being, the ultimate valley of humiliation, the renouncing of all possibility. All is given up. That is part of what death is. Amen, says the Spirit Revelation One closing remark, if I may, about epistemology. I have argued for an ontology of differentiated unity as both eschatological reality and as given in the Messiah, restoring and recapitulating the goodness of the original creation. Part of that praise, and part of that rule, is I believe to be construed as truth-telling: Nor is it a matter of coherence within a whole system.

Truth is a dynamic thing; it happens. And, in this speech, reason and emotion, objective and subjective, absolute and relative are all transcended in the reality which John sometimes calls truth and sometimes calls love. We perceive in order to praise: We perceive in order to speak: And all of this is what is meant by love. And love is what is meant by being human. Join and get free content delivered automatically each time we publish.

Wright University of St Andrews An exegete among philosophers! Questions to the Dominant Dualist Paradigm Let me first say that of course I understand the impetus which has driven many, perhaps many of you, towards what has called itself dualism. Really gets down to the core of who we are in Christ and how to start renewing our minds and walk by the spirit. Jul 05, Michelle Moyo rated it it was amazing.

May 03, Shannon Miller rated it really liked it. A little repetitive, but will use a good study guide. Jan 22, Roxanne Troup rated it it was amazing. A foundational truth you may not know that will revolutionize the way your Christian walk. Jan 12, frank. Great book Great revelation enjoyed reading. Would greatly recommend to read. Sep 01, Steven Ramos rated it it was amazing. This book is a huge blessing to understand who you are in spirit is amazing! I like the explanation of the spirit, soul and body.

That part deserves five stars.

The truth behind salvation: body, soul, and spirit

I don't understand the author's statement that he has lived a holier life than most people. That sounds like the pharisee thanking God that he is not like the tax collector. Does the author mean that he intimately knows three billion people? If not then it is a statement of invalid authority as well.

I have to disagree with the author's contentions that drinking coffee and drinking alcohol are sins. I see nothing w I like the explanation of the spirit, soul and body. I see nothing wrong with coffee. People drink it to wake up. What's wrong with that? Drinking alcohol is not a sin.

Alcohol helps people to relax and unwind. Alcohol can be overused, and so can food. That does not mean eating food is a sin either. Neither one is a sin when consumed in moderation. Does the author think Jesus committed a sin when he changed water into wine? I also don't understand the stuff about speaking in tongues. I have been baptized and I can't speak in tongues. View all 4 comments. May 21, Josh Giddings rated it it was amazing. This book covers a topic I think every born-again Christian needs to be familiar with and provides a lot of scripture to back up the point.

The book explains who you are and how you function as a born-again believer, something so many don't have any clue about. I believe this book topic in general is an essential piece to a victorious and purposeful Christian walk. Plus, it calls out some bad theology. Jan 05, Bukunmi Ajani rated it it was amazing. If you constantly ask yourself 'so what changed after I got born again? Christians should know that being born again means your spirit has been perfected in Christ, technically, you are of one spirit and mind with Christ The Christian life afterwards entails renewing your mind to belief that fact which would in turn manifest through your physical self your body Nov 09, Kay-em rated it it was amazing Shelves: This is one of AW's best books.

It clearly explains how we can be a new creation of God and yet still struggle with sin, in a way that is insightful and biblical. It also highlights how this "double-mindedness" can be overcome, using relevant scripture. May 20, Carol rated it it was amazing Shelves: There is so much in this small book that I cannot sum it up in a few lines. The truths in this book are the foundation for releasing your true identity and walking in the spirit.

Separated from God

Nov 01, Larry Fox rated it it was ok Shelves: Some of what the author states is good, but I strongly disagree with some of his key points. May 07, James Lucas rated it it was amazing. Having read this for the 7th time, revelation still continues to flow.

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