Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 05045 Few theological questions about human nature have generated more sustained discussion than how many genuinely distinct elements make up a human person. The debate between dichotomy and trichotomy — between the view that human beings consist of two elements (body and soul/spirit) and the view that they consist of three (body, soul, and…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 05030 Few words are used more freely in religious conversation, and understood less precisely. “Soul” appears in hymns, in everyday speech, in philosophical debates about consciousness and identity, and throughout Scripture. Yet what the Bible actually means by the word is more specific, and more interesting, than most people assume. The Biblical Word for…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 05031 When the Bible speaks of the human spirit, it is pointing to something distinct from the soul, though the two are closely related. The spirit is the God-ward dimension of who we are – the aspect of our humanity that stands most directly in relation to God and most directly under the influence…