Man—A Bodied Spirit

The writings of Ray Kurzweil got me started into re-examining what the Bible has to say about mankind, that is Biblical anthropology. Of course I'm not about to tackle everything there is to say. Instead I continue to focus upon the issue of the soul and the body. Some like to suggest that the soul is immaterial—whatever that means—and the body is material. I want to point out that the Scriptures never approach man in those categories. The issue of matter vs. non-matter, etc. comes along a couple thousand years after the Bible was written.

Last time I addressed the matter of soul/body I pointed out that the Hebrew has three words to describe a living human being: Nephesh, Ruach, and Nashamah. English translators have used the words creature, life, soul, person, mind, heart, appetite and body to tell us what the Hebrew writers meant by Nephesh. In other words the word describes a living human person from the outside in or the inside out, depending on the context. He is alive because God has breathed into him the breath of life. There is never a separation of the body from the soul, as if they are two entities. A man is a whole, a unity. He is Nephesh. 

Ruach, on the other hand, is never translated as body or life. The word stands for what we call wind, breath or spirit. It is what man has when he is alive. He breathes the wind. God is Ruach and He breathes life into man, as well as the other creatures. Further, when the LORD wants to reveal Himself, He sends His Ruach upon a prophet. So even Saul, Israel's first king, temporarily received the Ruach of God and prophesied (1 Samuel 10:6-12). Ruach describes man's inner life. From the inside out he is spirit. Because he is spirit, he is capable of communicating with God, the almighty and eternal Ruach.  So Pharaoh's spirit (Ruach) was troubled by his dreams (Genesis 41:8). That's why he called for his wise men to tell him what he had dreamed and what those inner events meant. Animals also are Nephesh, but they never have God's Ruach poured out upon them. 

Nashamah is similar to Ruach. The word describes what a living man does, he breathes, he has breath. It is what the Almighty gives to animate a man.

The Old Testament was translated, as you know, into Greek. sometime between 300 and 100 years before Christ. It was necessary because many Jews were scattered in the Greek speaking world and could no longer understand the O.T. Hebrew. The Septuagint (LXX), as this translation was known, was the preferred Bible of the New Testament writers.

The LXX translates Nephesh with the Greek Psyche. So if you want to speak in English about a living human being, you might use the word soul. In that sense, animals are souls as well as humans (Genesis 1:20,24,30). You might say that the soul (Nephesh or Psyche) is the life of a person or animal. A soul is nothing more than a whole person. It can even refer to a dead person or body from which the life has gone (Numbers 6:6; Haggai 2:13).

Man as Nephesh or Psyche, has an inner life. He becomes sad, grieved, happy, troubled. He hates and loves. When looked at from within, a man longs for God's presence in his life. He needs God (Psalm 42:1; 63:1; 84:2, etc.). Thus a man seen from the inside out has needs, desires, feelings. He thinks, remembers, makes moral decisions and has consciousness. This soul does not exist without a body. The blood coursing through the person's vein carries his life (Nephesh or Psyche)—Deuteronomy 12:23.

When the LXX translated Ruach it used the Greek Pneuma. Once again, the Pneuma is a human viewed from the inside. In English we find the word spirit. It is in his Pneuma also that a person searches for communion with God (Isaiah 26:9).

OK. What do we have so far?

• Man does not have two separate entities, soul and body
• Man does not have something that is eternal, a soul that comes to occupy a body and departs when the body dies. Man's soul certainly does not migrate from some lower form of bodily life to something higher, as suggested by Hindu teaching. 
• Rather man is a created being, given life by God. He is completely dependent upon God for his life.
• This man, is the highest of all God's created beings. He bears God's Image and is intended by His Creator to be in communion with Him. When man disobeys his Creator and breaks the communion, when he worships other gods, he dies.
• Man may be viewed from the outside in or from the inside out. He has a bodily existence and an inner life or spiritual existence. However, the two sides of his life are integrated and inseparable. He is a whole person, a unity. 
• When his breath, his life, leaves he continues to exist, but in a weakened condition. He was not created to die. He was created to live and breathe the breath or life God grants. And to live means that he must be a body, a child of Adam who was made from the dust of the earth. Man is created to be a bodied spirit if you will. 

Next time I shall take these concepts along with us as we move into the writings of the New Testament where the Greek words for body (Sarx and Soma) and soul (Psyche) and spirit (Pneuma) are used in ways that reflect their true source, the LXX or Greek Old Testament. Stay tuned.