Eight years ago this month this church called together a counsel of representatives from a number of our sister churches in order to examine me for the purpose of ordination to the gospel ministry. A group of men, mostly pastors, read through a doctrinal statement that I had prepared and questioned me to determine that I was adequately prepared to handle God’s word and biblically qualified to minister as an elder. Most of the questions were expected, but I was taken by surprise by one, “Is man a two-part or three-part being?” I must have looked strangely at the man who asked it, because he followed up by quoting 1 Thessalonians 5:23 to explain, “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The question caught me off guard, because I had never actually thought about it before, or if I had, it didn’t seem to be a very significant issue.
Last week we looked briefly at an internet post claiming to answer the question, “What is the baptism of the Holy Spirit?” and found that the author, Michael Bradley, based his answer in large part of the belief that man is a 3-part being. He said this verse represents the Bible’s view of the make-up of man, and the difference between just having salvation and having the baptism of the Holy Spirit is whether the Spirit resides in your spirit only or if he has access also to your soul. I honestly do not know if Mr. Bradley’s views are representative of charismaticism in general, a particular denomination within the movement, or to the author alone. For our purposes, it doesn’t much matter. Today I’d like to examine the question of the nature of man and move on to discuss the Bible’s teaching on Holy Spirit baptism in the coming weeks.
Is Man a Two-Part or Three-Part Being?
Louis Berkhof, in his Systematic Theology, begins his discussion of this question saying, “It is customary, especially in Christian circles, to conceive of man as consisting of two, and only two, distinct parts, namely, body and soul.” He explains that this has been the majority view among believers for the entire history of the church with some notable exceptions among the early church fathers, and only during the 19th century did the 3-part view begin to gain a renewed following.
It is important to understand that the Bible teaches us to view man as a unity rather than a plurality, being made up of different parts which can act independently of one another. So when a man sins, it is the man who sins, not simply his body or his soul or spirit. When a man dies, it is the man who dies, not simply his body. And when a man is redeemed by Christ, it is his whole person, not simply his spirit or soul which is saved. So whether we speak of man as a 2- or 3-part being, I believe it is incorrect to speak of the Holy Spirit indwelling believers but being confined to the spirit and not able to enter the soul until he is “released” from confinement. If the Holy Spirit indwells every Christian (as Romans 8:9 says he must), then he indwells us wholly, not in part. This is why Paul can say in 1 Cor. 6:19 that “your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you.” He is not confined to your spirit or even your soul, but indwells you as a whole person.1
Does it really matter, then, whether man is composed of two or three parts? I still don’t think the distinction is very significant, but if I were pressed, I would say that the Bible teaches clearly that man is both a physical and spiritual being (2-part), but with a variety of facets or aspects to those natures. For instance, the Old Testament speaks of the physical nature using a whole host of terms including “flesh,” “dust,” “bones,” “body,” and “heart,” and it speaks of the spiritual nature using the terms “spirit,” “soul,” “heart,” and “mind.” Does this mean we should consider man to be a 9-part being? Of course not. We recognize that the Bible uses a variety of terms to describe the same thing, and that there is quite a bit of overlap between them. The fact that the term “heart” is used to refer to both aspects of man’s nature pretty well settles that, doesn’t it?
The NT doesn’t contradict this in any way. For instance, in Luke 1:46-47 Mary says, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.” Jesus says in Mt. 10:28 to fear the one who can destroy “both soul and body in hell,” yet the apostle Paul tells believers in 1 Cor. 6:20 to “glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” These terms are essentially interchangeable in Scripture, so when Paul prays in 1 Thess. 5:23 that their whole spirit, soul, and body may be preserved blameless, he is simply emphasizing the exhaustive nature of God’s sanctifying work in the Christian. No part of us will be left out, but all will be made perfect unto the coming of Christ. If you want to argue that man has three parts, that’s fine with me, just don’t make the mistake of treating those parts separately when the Bible treats us as whole persons, and don’t build your doctrine of the baptism of the Holy Spirit on your own imaginations.
1Mr. Bradley does not quote this verse, but he does quote 1 Cor. 3:16, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” Apparently, he does not realize that in this verse the pronoun “you” is plural, referring to the church not the individual, so it says nothing about his conclusion that “This verse teaches us that the Holy Spirit literally lives on the inside of each of us.”