In Christian theology, the tripartite view (trichotomy) holds that humankind is a composite of three distinct components: body, spirit, and soul.
[1] Delitzsch, commenting on this passage, says, "We cannot consider with sufficient care Gen. 2:7; for this one verse is of such deep significance that interpretation can never exhaust it: it is the foundation of all true anthropology and psychology.
1 Thessalonians 5:23 Proponents of the tripartite view claim that this verse spells out clearly the three components of the human, emphasized by the descriptors of "whole" and "completely".
[11][12] Opponents argue that spirit and soul are merely a repetition of synonyms, a common form used elsewhere in scripture to add the idea completeness.
Hebrews 4:12 Proponents of the tripartite view claim that this verse spells out that there is a clear difference between soul and spirit,[13][14][15] though they may be so intertwined and similar that they would be difficult to separate without scriptural clarity.
Genesis 2:7 "rather implies than asserts the trichotomy of spirit, soul, and body"[19] and must be "illuminated by the light of subsequent Scriptures"[20] to reveal its full import.
[21][22][23] As with Genesis 2:7, other verses in the Old Testament directly correlate man's spirit (ruach) with God's breath (neshamah) (Job 27:3; 32:8; 33:4; 34:14).
In the same way that the plurality of Persons in the Godhead, and their relation to each other, was only gradually unfolded in Scripture, so we may expect it to be with the trichotomy of man's nature, spirit, soul, and body.
The physiology and psychology of the Hebrew and the Archaic Greek world were speculative, and so, reasoning on imperfect data, they spoke of various physical organs as the seat of thought, feeling, and decision.
It wasn't until the Alexandrian physicians (e.g. Erasistratus and Herophilus) and the Classical Greek philosophers (e.g. Plato and Aristotle) that a more accurate understanding of man's inward parts began to emerge.
After Plato and Aristotle, there was a richer array of words to describe the inward parts of man, particularly the mind (e.g., nous, noëma, di-anoia, and phronëma).
One could likewise attribute the source of the dichotomist view with Greek dichotomy (matter and spirit); some writers have argued for such a connection.
[39] A full treatment of man's nature must consider the New Testament use of such words as flesh, body, spirit, soul, heart, mind, and conscience.
"But", Delitzsch argues, "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.
"[45] In the 4th century, after Apollinaris of Laodicea employed it in a manner impinging on the perfect humanity of Jesus, the tripartite view of man was gradually discredited by association.
[46] Apart from this heretical doctrine, which was condemned at the First Council of Constantinople in 381, Apollinaris was an orthodox theologian and contemporary of Athanasius of Alexanderia and Basil of Cesaraea.
In History of the Christian Church, Philip Schaff remarks: Apollinaris, therefore, taught the deity of Christ, but denied the completeness (teleiotes) of his humanity, and, taking his departure from the Nicene postulate of the homoousion, ran into the Arian heresy, which likewise put the divine Logos in the place of the human spirit in Christ.
[49] Heard explains: The Greek Fathers, generally speaking, understood the psychology of Scripture aright; but unfortunately confounding the Platonic Logos or Nous with the Pneuma of the New Testament, they either distinguished the pneumatical and psychical as the intellectual and the carnal man respectively (which was the root error of the Gnostics), or confounded in a semi-pantheistic way the human Pneuma with the divine, which, in the case of Origen and Apollinaris, led to distinct heresies, which the Church afterwards formally condemned.
The semi-Pelagians used the distinction to teach that "the spirit is excepted from the original sin which affected the body and soul" [51] and therefore human nature is essentially good and retains the free will to initiate salvation.
[53] Heard, however, argues that the distinction of soul and spirit "so far from making void the doctrine of original sin, actually confirms and explains it":[54] Had Augustine but recognized the trichotomy, and taught that the ruach, or pneuma, or spiritus—i.e.
the inspired and Godlike part of man—was deadened by the fall, and that in that state of spiritual injury a propagation of soul and body from Adam to his posterity must ex traduce carry with it a defective, and hence a diseased constitution, his refutation of Pelagius would have been sufficiently convincing, without hurrying him into an exaggeration in the opposite extreme...[55]Augustine's influence on the history of Western Christian thought, in form and content, swayed decisively the decision for the dichotomous view of man.
Heard says, "the authority of Augustine decided the course of the Western Church in rejecting the distinction as mystical, and tending to deprave the doctrine of man's fall and corruption.
"[60] Augustine expresses this longing in his Confessions when he says, “Thou has made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee.”[61] For Thomas Aquinas, “it is natural to ascribe the desire of the finite for the infinite to the human spirit.”[62] Martin Luther identifies the human spirit as “the highest, deepest, noblest part of man, by which he is able to grasp incomprehensible, invisible, and eternal things.”[63] It soon came to be felt, however, that such a view could not be held in conjunction with the main emphasis of the Reformation.
His soul is the holy place, with its seven lamps, that is, all manner of reason, discrimination, knowledge, and understanding of visible and bodily things.
[70]Others, including John Bickford Heard, George Boardman, James Stalker, Watchman Nee, and Witness Lee have used the tabernacle to illustrate the tripartite man.