Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 47:187 (Jul 1890)
Article: Trichotomy: A Biblical Study
Author: S. H. Kellogg

BSac 47:187 (July 1890) p. 461

Trichotomy: A Biblical Study

Rev. S. H. Kellogg

Consciousness and revelation alike bear witness that, to speak in a general way, man is a being with a dual nature. I have a body; I am also conscious that I have a soul, of which my body is but the instrument. This is the true Ego; an immaterial essence, which thinks and feels and wills; but a material body has been assumed into organic union with it. Thus I am body and soul. In a like general way, in the account of creation as given in the book of Genesis, we read of two different elements as entering into the constitution of man; the one, material, a body, made “of the dust of the ground,” the other, immaterial, the נִשְׁמַת חיּים, “the breath of life (lives),” breathed into man by God, in the day that he created him. On this point, then, consciousness and Scripture bear consentient testimony; there is a dichotomy in the nature of man. But this being granted, the question still remains, whether a further analysis is possible. Philosophy, indeed, whether right or wrong, long ago insisted that a further distinction must be made in the immaterial part of man, as containing in the unity of the one person, first, the ψυχή or “animal soul,” and secondly, the νοῦς, or “intelligence.” Whether these names were well chosen or not, or whether there was any sufficient ground for the distinction, we do not yet inquire. But the fact that long ago such a distinction has been made by an influential school of philosophy, at least suggests that there may probably be in human consciousness some phenomena which seem to point

BSac 47:187 (July 1890) p. 462

to a duality in the immaterial part of man. The application which was made of the doctrine of a trichotomy by the Gnostics, and later, in the fourth century, in the formulation of the Apollinarian doctrine of the person of our Lord, no doubt has had much influence, even until now, in predisposing theologians against a view which has seemed to them to accommodate itself too readily to certain forms of erroneous doctrine; as, in a matter so important as the constitution of the person of Christ. But there are many indications that in our time, partly as a result of an exegesis less than in former days under the control of the dogmatic spirit, and still more in consequence of recent discoveries in physiology, the minds of many are inclining again to affirm the reality of a true trichotomy in human nature, as attested apparently both by Holy Scripture and by modern physiological research.

Stated as a biblical question, the question may be put in this form: When the sacred writers speak as they do of “body, soul, and spirit,” do they mean th...