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was revived in some form or other by certain German and English theologians, as Roos,
Olshausen, Beck, Delitzsch, Auberlen, Oehler, White, and Heard; but it did not meet with great
favor in the theological world. The recent advocates of this theory do not agree as to the nature
of the psuche, nor as to the relation in which it stands to the other elements in man’s nature.
Delitzsch conceives of it as an efflux of the pneuma, while Beck, Oehler, and Heard, regard it as
the point of union between the body and the spirit. Delitzsch is not altogether consistent and
occasionally seems to waver, and Beck and Oehler admit that the Biblical representation of man
is fundamentally dichotomic. Their defense of a Biblical trichotomy can hardly be said to imply
the existence of three distinct elements in man. Besides these two theological views there
were, especially in the last century and a half, also the philosophical views of absolute
Materialism and of absolute Idealism, the former sacrificing the soul to the body, and the latter,
the body to the soul.
2. THE TEACHINGS OF SCRIPTURE AS TO THE CONSTITUENT ELEMENTS OF HUMAN NATURE.
The prevailing representation of the nature of man in Scripture is clearly dichotomic. On the
one hand the Bible teaches us to view the nature of man as a unity, and not as a duality,
consisting of two different elements, each of which move along parallel lines but do not really
unite to form a single organism. The idea of a mere parallelism between the two elements of
human nature, found in Greek philosophy and also in the works of some later philosophers, is
entirely foreign to Scripture. While recognizing the complex nature of man, it never represents
this as resulting in a twofold subject in man. Every act of man is seen as an act of the whole
man. It is not the soul but man that sins; it is not the body but man that dies; and it is not
merely the soul, but man, body and soul, that is redeemed in Christ. This unity already finds
expression in the classical passage of the Old Testament — the first passage to indicate the
complex nature of man — namely, Gen. 2:7: “And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” The
whole passage deals with man: “God formed man . . . and man became a living soul.” This work
of God should not be interpreted as a mechanical process, as if He first formed a body of clay
and then put a soul into it. When God formed the body, He formed it so that by the breath of
His Spirit man at once became a living soul. Job 33:4; 32:8. The word “soul” in this passage does
not have the meaning which we usually ascribe to it — a meaning rather foreign to the Old
Testament — but denotes an animated being, and is a description of man as a whole. The very
same Hebrew term, nephesh chayyah (living soul or being) is also applied to the animals in Gen.
1:21,24,30. So this passage, while indicating that there are two elements in man, yet stresses
the organic unity of man. And this is recognized throughout the Bible.
At the same time it also contains evidences of the dual composition of man’s nature. We should
be careful, however, not to expect the later distinction between the body as the material