The Human Spirit

Exegetical and Lexical Word Studies

Spirit in the NT is pneuma, which is translated as spirit, wind, or breath. It is from the verb pneo, to breathe or blow. There are at least nineteen cases in the NT of the human spirit and over 100 of the Spirit of God. (See Dunn, Theology of Paul, 76fn.)

1. Function of the human spirit
1. “The spirit is the highest and distinctive part of man….(It is) that part whereby we are receptive of the Holy Spirit of God” (Alford, 3:1335).
2. “Our spirit is a mirror reflecting the attributes of God and an eye created of a kindred nature with the sun, in order to look upon the sun (Gregory of Nyssa)” (Delitzsch, 197).
3. The spirit denotes “man in so far as he belongs to the spiritual realm and interacts with the spiritual realm.” It is through the spirit that “God most immediately encounters him (and man) is most immediately open and responsive to God. (The spirit is) “that area of human awareness most sensitive to matters of the spiritual realm” (Dunn, DNTT, 693-4; see also Dunn, The Christ and the Spirit, 2:3).
4. “The spirit is evidently that dimension of the human person by means of which the person relates most directly to God” (Dunn, Theo. of Paul, 77).
5. “The pneuma is that part of man which was made in the image of God (and is) the faculty of God-consciousness which has been depraved by the fall, and which is dormant, though not quite dead” (Heard, V).
6. “The sphere of the Spirit's operation is in the pneuma, witnessing to our spirits that we are sons of God”
7. “The true presence-chamber of God is the pneuma; there He meets with man. We pass through the outer court of the senses and the inner court of reason even to reach this sanctuary where God makes himself known” (Ibid., 102).
8. “Reason or the psyche is superior to the flesh, it is true; but it is not the rightful master within us—it is not the lord of every motion there, because it is not the faculty which brings us into relationship with God, the true Lord of our being” (Ibid., 197).
9. It “is the spirit by which alone communication is maintained with God” (Lightfoot, Notes, 88).
10. “A divine service in the spirit is the opposite of a divine service expressed in purely material forms” (Moe, Paul, 119).
11. “The spirit is that part by which we commune with God and by which alone we are able to apprehend and worship Him. Because it tells us of our relationship with God, the spirit is called the element of God-consciousness. God dwells in the spirit” (Nee, Spiritual Man, 1:26).
12. “The spirit is the noblest part of man and occupies the innermost area of his being….Before the fall of man the spirit controlled the whole being through the soul” (Ibid., 1:27).
13. It is the “spirit by which man holds converse with the unseen (and) affinity with God” (Westcott, Hebrews, 117).

2. Distinction between spirit and soul
1. “The NT seems to make a clear and substantive distinction between pneuma (rûach) and psyche (nepesh)” (Archer, TWOT, 2:837).
2. In German, “Geist (spirit) has the signification of a stronger, and Seele (soul) the signification of a weaker, moving principle; and when we speak of the breath of life, the spirit of life, we never say the soul of life” (Delitzsch, 96-97).
3. The “spirit and soul are in Scripture, actually distinguished” (Ibid., 99).
4. “The Scripture certainly appropriates to the spirit and to the soul distinct functions, and often speaks of the two in juxtaposition” (Ibid., 99).
5. “Scripture speaks (of man) as absolutely and undeniably trichotomic, as 1Thess. 5:23 (and) Heb. 4:12” (Ibid., 103).
6. “I certainly agree entirely with the view that the spirit and soul of man are distinguished,…but not with the view that spirit and soul are substantially one and the same ” (Ibid., 109).
7. “The essential condition of man subsisted in three concentric circles. The innermost was his spirit; the inner, his soul; and the external, his body” (Ibid., 147-8).
8. Luther says, “Scripture divides man into three parts, as says St. Paul (1Thess. 5:23)….The spirit is the highest, noblest part of man, wherewith he is fitted to apprehend intangible, invisible, eternal things; and it is briefly the house within which the faith and word of God dwells” (Exposition of the Magnificat of the Year 1521, quoted by Delitzsch, 460).
9. In distinction to Hellenistic thought, “it is the pneuma which is the highest (or deepest) dimension of the person rather than the nous (mind)” (Dunn, Theo. of Paul, 77).
10. In the NT there is a psychological division (1Thess. 5:23; Heb. 4:12) “which is exactly similar to what we find running through the whole OT” (Girdlestone, Synonyms of OT, 55).
11. “Very different is the idea which Scripture gives of the spirit from that which is to be understood by the word soul. God is not set forth in Scripture as soul…but as a spirit….God, and He alone, has the faculty of communicating His spirit or life to His creatures” (Ibid., 59-60).
12. “The distinction between soul and spirit…distinguishes Christian psychology from that of the (Greek) schools” of philosophy (Heard, V).
13. “The psychology of the schools is radically different from that of Scripture; yet to this day divines treat the distinction of soul and spirit as if it were only a verbal one, and speak of mortal body and immortal soul in phrases which are unconsciously borrowed from Plato rather than from St. Paul” (Ibid., VI).
14. “Those who fail to grasp the distinction between pneuma and psyche fail also to grasp the deep meaning of the personal indwelling of God the Holy Spirit in the breast of a regenerated believer….The pneuma, or diviner part in man, is occupied and possessed by the Holy Spirit of God” (Ibid., 103).
15. “There is that in the pneuma which we do not find in the psyche, viz., that it is made for God, and meant to enjoy Him for ever and ever” (Ibid., 105).
16. “Since Christ was perfect man, he took all three parts of our nature, spirit, soul, and body” (Ibid., 147).
17. “One part in man is the image of God, and that he can become after his likeness in every part. He is Godlike in his spirit, and is to become Godly in his spirit, soul, and body….The end of his being is to reflect or set forth God in all parts of his nature; whether he eats or drinks, or whatever he does, he is able to do all to the glory of God. One part of his nature, the spirit, proceeds from God, but the whole man is of God, and through Him and to Him” (Ibid., 133).
18. In 1Thess. 5:23, “a tripartite division (of man) is recognized, soma, psyche, and pneuma” (Lightfoot, Notes, 88).
19. “Psyche and pneuma are distinguished in Heb. 4:12 (see also Phil. 1:27)” (Ibid., 88).
20. “The words, (spirit and soul) here are (not) to be treated as a mere rhetorical expression. The spirit…is the ruling faculty in man and through which he holds communion with the unseen world” (Ibid., 89).
21. Spirit and soul are not used interchangeably. “The spirit is placed in direct opposition to both flesh and body—something quite unthinkable if one were talking about the soul” (Moe, Paul, 119).
22. “This verse (1Thess. 5:23) makes a distinction between spirit and soul….To fail to distinguish between spirit and soul is fatal to spiritual maturity. Christians often account what is soulical as spiritual” (Nee, Spiritual Man, 1:22).
23. “A complete man is a trinity—the composite of spirit, soul, and body” (Ibid., 1:24).
24. “The spirit cannot act directly upon the body. It needs a medium, and that medium is the soul produced by the touching of the spirit with the body (in creation)” (Ibid., 1:26).
25. “The separation here made between pneuma and psyche implies an express threefold division of man into body, soul, and an additional divinely given pneuma” (Schweizer, TDNT, 6:395).
26. There is a “fashion of talking about the soul, as though it were the highest part of man, (and the spirit) as though there were only light shades of distinction between them” (Trench, Synonyms, 256).

3. Divine and human spirit
1. “Scripture distinguishes…a human pneuma from the pneuma of God or of Christ (which) is shown by passages such as Rom. 8:16, 2Cor. 7:1, comp. 1Cor. 2:11, 5:3, without a contradiction” (Delitzsch, 398).
2. Paul “teaches that it is only by…opening the human spirit to the divine Spirit that the human being can be whole” (Dunn, Theo. of Paul, 78).
3. “Scripture…tells us of a faculty—let us call it God-consciousness—which is dead or dormant in a great degree since the fall, and which it is the office and work of the Holy Ghost first to quicken, and then to direct, sanctify, and govern. This faculty, to which Scripture gives the name of rûach or pneuma, is altogether ignored by Aristotle, and confounded by Plato with the intellectual nous” (Heard, 84-5).
4. “The working of the divine spirit on man begins right in that human spirit which is that element in man's nature most closely akin to God” (Moe, Paul, 118).

4. Soulish and spiritual man
1. “The difference between spirit and soul is seen clearly in Paul's contrast of the spiritual (pneumatikos) with the unspiritual (RSV) or natural (psychikos, i.e., soulish) person (1Cor. 2:13-15). The first knows God because that person has received the Spirit of God, not the spirit of the world, so that he may understand the things of God (vs. 12). The second knows only human wisdom and is unable to understand the spiritual truth which must be 'spiritually discerned'; to him the latter is folly (vs. 14). The contrast is especially sharp because Paul recognizes no neutral ground between them” (Osterhaven, EDT, 1041).
2. “The psyche is the center of the personal being, the 'I' of each individual. It is in each man bound to the spirit, man's higher part, and to the body, man's lower part; drawn upwards by the one, downwards by the other. He who gives himself up to the lower appetites, is fleshly; he who by communion of his spirit with God's Spirit is employed in the higher aims of his being, is spiritual. He who rests midway, thinking only of self and self's interests, whether animal or intellectual, is the psychikos, the selfish man, the man in whom the spirit is sunk and degraded into subordination to the subordinate psyche” (Alford, 4:1776-1777).
3. “The psychikos (soulish) person is by definition one who is unable to receive or appreciate the things of the pneuma ” (Dunn, Theo. of Paul, 78).
4. “So long as we are in the outer court of the intellect, we have no open vision, no sense of His presence and nearness. We are dealing with notions about God, but His own being we do not feel (nor have a) sense of His presence. Of this the psychical man knows nothing, he does not even desire it” (Heard, 101).
5. “Psychikos is markedly opposed to pneumatikos as the natural to the spiritual in 1Cor. 2:14; 15:44-46. And not in St. Paul only; compare also James 3:15; Jude 19” (Lightfoot, Notes, 88).
6. “In 1Cor. 2:13-15 the pneumatikos is the man who knows God's saving work by virtue of the Spirit of God, while the psychikos is blind thereto” (Schweizer, TWNT, 6:436).
7. “Psychikos (soulish) was used as the highest in later classical Greek literature (Aristotle, Plutarch, etc.) and constantly employed in praise, as the noblest part of man….That old philosophy knew of nothing higher than the soul of man; but Revelation knows of the Spirit of God, and of Him making his habitation with men, and calling out an answering spirit in them. According to it the psyche, no less than the sarx, belongs to the lower region of man's being (and) it is plain that psychikos is not a word of honor any more than sarkikos….The psychikos of Scripture is one for whom the psyche is the highest motive power of life and action; in whom the pneuma, as the organ of the divine Pneuma, is suppressed, dormant, for the time as good as extinct….It may be said that the sarkikos and the psychikos alike, in the language of Scripture, stand in opposition to the pneumatikos. Both epithets ascribe to him of whom they are predicated a ruling principle antagonistic to the pneuma.…When St. Paul reminds the Ephesians how they lived once, 'fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind' (Ephesians 2:3), he describes them first as sarkikoi, and then as psychikoi” (Trench, Synonyms, 256-7).
8. “There are sarkikoi in whom the sarx is more the ruling principle, as there are psychikoi in whom the psyche (is the ruling principle)” (Ibid., 258).

5. Soulish body and spiritual body

“The soma psychikon (soulish body) which the faithful now bear about is contrasted with the glory of the soma pneumatikon (spiritual body) which they shall bear (1Cor. 15:44-46)” (Trench, Synonyms, 255).

6. Regeneration (new birth)
1. “We are in our regenerate nature mystically one with the Lord—the seed of the divine life in our spirits, which cannot sin, being taken from Christ, as Eve was taken from the side of Adam” (Heard, 169).
2. “The new birth is the quickening of that conscience or pneuma by the Divine Spirit, the Lord and giver of life. The person and work of the Holy Spirit is thus evidenced by His indwelling in our spirit. So that believers have the witness that they are born again—the spirit witnessing with their spirits that they are the sons of God” (Ibid., 328).

7. Scripture references
1. 1 Thessalonians 5:23
1. “ 'And the very God of peace,' says the apostle, 'sanctify you holotelais,'—Lat., vos totos; German, as Luther pithily translates, 'through and through,' so that nothing in you remains uninfluenced by the sanctification;—'and…may your spirit and your soul and your body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ!' ” (Delitzsch, 109).
2. “Paul distinguishes three essential elements of man, to every one of which the work of sanctifying grace extends” (Ibid., 110).
3. Man's order is “body, soul, and spirit. But the Most High…will not leave His work till spirit, soul, and body are all redeemed” (Govett, Thessalonians, 46).
4. “Just as all courts of the Jewish temple were holy, and not only the priest's court, or the innermost court of all, in which the Shekinah immediately dwelt: so it is with our body and our soul. If sanctification is entire, it must enter everywhere. It must sanctify man as a whole by wholly occupying every part” (Heard, 69).
5. “The complete sanctification of the believer thus suggests those parts of man's nature that the Divine Spirit is to enter and entirely (entierement) inwardly sanctify by His indwelling Power….If sanctification, as the work of God the Holy Spirit, is to reach its proper telos, or end, He must first enter in and occupy each several part of man's nature, and then sanctify that several part thoroughly. This passage…teaches us, in the first place, that there are three parts in man, and not two only….It also confirms those other passages of Scripture which speak of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost as not being confined to the human spirit, but extending as well to the soul and body” (Ibid., 68).
6. Justin Martyr gave “the comparison…that the body is the house of the soul, and the soul the house of the spirit” (Ibid., 58).
7. First Thessalonians 5:23 points “to the actual inward sanctification of the Thessalonians 'in their whole persons.'...It will not do to regard the three subjects (spirit, soul, body) as of 'mere rhetorical significance'…(but a) view of the constitution of man” (Milligan, Epis. to Thess., 78).
8. “The Word of God does not divide man into two parts of soul and body. It treats man, rather, as tripartite—spirit, soul, and body” (Nee, Spiritual Man, 1:21).
9. God's order is 'your spirit and soul and body.' In the OT “temple service moves according to the revelation in the Holy of Holies. All activities in the Holy Place and in the outer court are regulated by the presence of God in the Holiest Place….And this is the order God still wants: first the spirit, then the soul, and lastly the body” (Ibid., 1:30).
10. Man is tripartite according to 1Thess. 5:23, which gives Paul's “analysis of man's constitution…with the fundamental division…body, soul, spirit” (Westcott, Hebrews, 117).

2. Hebrews 4:12
1. Since “Paul distinguishes three essential elements of man (1Thess. 5:23),…how else in the Epistle to the Hebrews (4:12), could a dividing asunder of the soul and spirit, which God's word effects in us, be spoken of ? This passage, together with 1Thess. 5:23, is valuable as the special deposit of the Pauline view of the essential condition of man” (Delitzsch, 110).
2. “The writer attributes to the word of God a dividing efficacy…which extends to the entire spiritual, psychical, and corporeal condition of man” (Ibid., 111).
3. “The sword of the Spirit, not only pierces through to the spirit, it divides between soul and spirit. Here we come to the important truth that the trichotomy of man's nature is only discovered under the Spirit's convincing power” (Heard, 58-59).
4. “The writer in this verse divides man's non-corporal elements into two parts, 'soul and spirit.'...Since soul and spirit can be divided, they must be different in nature” (Nee, 1:23).

3. 1 Corinthians 2:11

“1Cor. 2:11, the apostle lays down this principle, that man needs a corresponding divine faculty in order to understand divine truth; that as the eye is the organ for seeing and the ear for hearing, so the pneuma is the organ or faculty by which we know God” (Heard, 75).

4. 1 Corinthians 15:44-45
1. Adam “was of the earth, earthy, and hence his name Adam. In his case the soul, and not the spirit, was the center of his personality….He was endowed with a living soul, but not yet given the quickening spirit as the center of his personality” (Heard, 78).
2. “This pneumatical nature, therefore, must come by spiritual birth from our spiritual head, just as the psychical nature comes by natural birth from our natural head” (Ibid., 80).

5. James 3:15

“earthly wisdom, unlike that which comes down from above, has its seat in the psychical nature only. As there is nothing heavenly about it, so it does not spring from the pneuma, but only from the soul, the seat of his affections and impulses….Satan, not the Holy Spirit, is the inspirer of this kind of wisdom; it is devilish, not godlike” (Heard, 81).

6. Jude 19
1. “These men have not indeed ceased to have a spirit, as a part of their own tripartite nature; but they have ceased to possess it in any worthy sense; it is degraded beneath and under the power of the psyche, the personal life, so as to have no real vitality of its own” (Alford, 4:1777).
2. “Luther renders it 'Fleischliche die da Keinen Geist haben.' But the Berlenburgh Bible,…renders it more accurately still, 'Seelische die Keinen Geist haben,' men, that is, who act on psychic principles only, because they lack the pneumatical faculty” (Ibid., 82).

7. 2 Peter 1:4

“become, through the God-man, who thus communicates to us of His essential fullness, and makes us partakers of His nature, and at the same time partakers of the divine nature, theias koinonoi phuseos, 2Peter 1:4” (Delitzsch, 404).

Main | Intro & Background | In the Old Testament | In the New Testament
Hymn | Bibliography | Site Map | Links