Body, Soul, and Spirit
John Michael Talbot

Who are we? What makes us human, and how do we function? Christian anthropology would see the human being as trinitarian after the example of the Trinity of God. St. Paul says that we are "whole and entire, spirit, soul, and body." (I Th. 5:23) The monastic tradition maintained this until the Christian west reverted to the dualistic anthropology of the Greek philosophers. They simply used the description of "body and soul." But even then, they divided the soul into a lower, and higher soul, so the actual meaning remained much the same. In the Far East Taoism also speaks of a different, but similar, tripartite classification of the main aspects of our human being as Vitality and Jing for the body, Energy and Chi for the life soul, and Essence and Shen for the spirit.

"Body" is the sensual part of our being. In light of modern medicine it could also include much of the emotions, since so many of our emotional responses are chemical. "Soul" would be the awareness and cognition of the mind. But it would be more than just thoughts, or the brain. Many medieval theologians would use mind and soul interchangeably. "Spirit" is the inner spiritual essence of our being. It is the part of us that is the very essence of who we are as human beings. The eastern Christian fathers would also say that it is able to exist beyond the boundaries of space and time, where body and soul are clearly bound by space and time. The spirit exists beyond the beyond, yet can permeate everything. It can only be known through pure spiritual intuition beyond thoughts, feelings, or senses, but completing them all.

The Eastern Christian fathers would say that the things of body and soul constitute our "energies." The spirit is our "essence." The former can be known through senses, emotions, and thoughts. They are a very real part of who we are. But they are not our deepest being, though they point us to that place of spirit and reality. Spirit can only be known through pure intuition beyond all thought, emotion, or sensual perception.

God also exists in uncreated energies, and essence. His "uncreated energies" are the things we can know about God through thought, emotional response, and even incarnational sense perception. These are things like his attributes of omnipotence, justice, truth, and love. The Incarnation of the Word in Jesus is also knowable through thought, emotion, and senses. These constitute God's "immanence," or his ability to extend out to all creation. These are all areas that can be known through positive meditation through the use of our own energies in the perception of Divine Energies.

God's "essence" is beyond all human sensual perception, all emotion, and all knowledge. In his energies he is knowable through image and form. In his essence he is beyond all image and form. Here he is utterly "transcendent," or beyond the beyond. Yet, it constitutes the deepest reality of God's Being. The Christian mystics say that this mystical part of God can only be known through "unknowing." This is a part of relationship with God that is given only by His own divine Spirit directly to our own human spirit.

Originally, humanity operated with the spirit first. Next came the soul as the cognitive awareness that helped discern and direct us. Last came the emotions of the body as the enthusiasm that empowered us, and the body's senses as the vehicle and initial preceptors of the physical world. The body was the vehicle, the soul was the driver, but the spirit was the passenger for whom the whole thing existed.

But somewhere back in primal time humanity got this turned upside down. Christians call this original sin, or the Fall. Different religions speak of this problem in different ways, but they all recognize that something in our human being has gone wrong, and needs correction. In this fallen era we operate with our sensual self first. When they do not get what they want, they upset the emotions, and when the emotions are upset, the thoughts become clouded and confused as well. Then the spirit gets almost entirely covered over and lost in the confusion of our upside down lives. This is the condition of the average human being today.

All religions point to the way out. This way is through the total letting go of our enslavement to the senses, emotions, and thoughts, through ascetical renunciation, and meditation. It is through a death to the old self so a new person can reborn to operate function in the original freedom of God's plan for us.

Christians believe that Jesus is the Way to which all else points. In Christianity this happens most perfectly through the dying of Jesus Christ on the Cross, and His rising from the dead. Our spirit is then reborn through the added gift of God's Spirit. Then all life becomes a miracle of rebirth and awakening in a way that cannot be achieved through anything else in this material world.

This article was part of a 20-week series originally published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper between July 14 and November 24, 2001