Trichotomy Or Dichotomy

Down through the centuries there has been a debate as to the makeup of the human being. One camp believes humans are two-part -- Dichotomy: Body and Soul; while another camp believes that humans are three part -- Trichotomy: Body, Soul and Spirit. The purpose of this paper will be to discuss the two-part theory as explained by the early philosophers Plato, Aristotle and Augustine and a more modern view as three-part and its impact on spiritual formation.

It will be important to note that by early we will mean those philosophies that came to prominence around 427 B.C.E. through Plato, then Aristotle and then an early Christian view that will be as closely aligned with Augustine (348 C.E.) as possible. It is apparent through his writings in "Confessions" that Platonian thought influenced Augustine. This paper will then discuss how Augustine developed those principles. By modern, we will mean the current views of the author.

Plato (427-347 B.C.E.) was influenced by his mentor Socrates. Plato believed the human being to be composed of two things: the Body and the Soul or mind. This composes a view known as the dualist view. "Plato is one of the main sources of the dualist view, according to which the human soul or mind (these terms are here used synonymously) is a nonmaterial entity that can exist apart from the body. According to Plato, the soul exists before birth, it is indestructible, and will exist eternally after death."¹ Plato's belief in the preexistent soul differs greatly from the modern view that the soul is infused in the baby while it is in the womb. To Plato the soul and the body were two distinct features of the human. He believed that the soul was non-material and the body material. However, they were two different parts of one whole. Plato argued that, "The soul is the higher element in human nature, the body the lower. The preoccupation of the philosopher or wise person should be the care of his or her soul; and since the soul is immortal, this is also a preparation for death and life after death."²

There is the thought that God through prevenient grace reveals himself to humankind. Moreover, that this prevenient grace continues to reveal God from the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden to the present day. The knowledge of our first parents, through oral tradition, passes this information from generation to generation to all the various cultures as they dispersed after the tower of Babel.³ Then, as time passed, it became pertinent and discussion ensued during the era of the Great Philosophers. Plato defended the dualist view. According to this paradigm, the human soul is an immaterial substance that can exist apart from the body after death.

The next movement in the development of the thought of human makeup came with Aristotle. "Aristotle radically undermines Plato's whole way of thinking in a subtle way."4 He agrees that there is a material body and that the soul was the thing that gives life to the body. Moreover, that the soul is that complex grouping of senses, thought and actions that make a person alive. "He suggests that there is something especially different about the human intellect, namely our faculty for purely theoretical thought (which he calls "contemplation"... and he seems to say that this faculty, or this kind of soul, can exist separately from the body".⁵

It was his contention that the body and soul were perishable, just like the animals, but that this ability for contemplation was another soul that was immortal. He comes very close to a modern interpretation of a trichotomy of body, soul and spirit. However, it is important to note that he does not. He thought that there were different types of soul in the body, some mortal and at least one immortal.

As we progress, this paper will now address the view of Augustine (354-395 C.E.). That Augustine read and was influenced by Plato is easy to see. He writes, "For I had my back to the light and my face to the things upon which the light falls; so that my eyes, by which I looked upon the things in the light, were not themselves illumined."6 Here is a clear reference to Plato's Forms.

Plato influenced him in other ways as well. Augustine believes that there is body, and soul, a clear dichotomy or recitation of the dualist view. He writes, "I, the soul, through the senses of the body."⁷ and again, "Now clearly there is a body and soul in me, one exterior and one interior. From which of these two should I have enquired of my God?"⁸ Here he recognizes that the soul is the "inner man" that dwells inside the body. He realizes that the soul gives life to the body and recognizes that there is "something more". He writes, "This faculty also I must mount beyond; for this also the horse and mule have."⁹ He thought that possibly this "beyond" was the memory. Augustine did not clearly articulate the three-part human. He believed that the spirit and the soul were one. He also believed that the soul gives life to the body, and God gives life to the soul. "For my body lives by my soul and my soul lives by you."¹⁰ Augustine does not see the body as just flesh and blood but sees it as having an appetite that was against the soul. His concept of the human being was a Dualist view but he recognized that this view was inadequate in describing the part of the soul that made connection with God. He made every attempt to articulate the connection but his dualist view came up short of a satisfactory explanation.

A more modern view says that the body is simply material, neither moral nor immoral, but amoral. The common thought now is that we are composed of body, soul, and spirit. Many believe that the spirit and soul war against each other within the confines of the body. The battle between the soul and the spirit happen when the person realizes that there is a way that they should go but their soul fights against that right or correct way. The battle intensifies when that person accepts Christ as Lord and Savior, because now the spirit is in submission to a higher law, the Law of Love, and the soul still wants to gratify the deeds of the body. The soul longs to fulfill the desires of the flesh but the spirit the things of God. This battle is won or lessened when by an act of the will, enabled by the Holy Spirit; we consecrate the body, soul, and spirit totally to God.

These thoughts are important to spiritual formation because as we develop our relationship with God, we have to continue to bring our body, soul and spirit into subjection to Him. We need to bring our spirit, by the enabling and empowering of the Holy Spirit, to God as a "living sacrifice" (Romans 12:1). There are many who still hold to the Dualist view of the human being and they may be correct. However many are seeing the intellectual arguments silenced through a Trichotomist view.

¹ Lesley Stevenson, David L. Haberman, Ten Theories Of Human Nature, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, p.75.
² Ibid, P. 76.
³ Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version, Genesis 11:1-9, Nashville: Thompson Nelson, 1996, c1998.
⁴ Lesley Stevenson, David L. Haberman, Ten Theories Of Human Nature, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, p.91.
⁵ Ibid, p.93.
⁶ F.J Sheed, Augustine, Confessions, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1943, p.65.
⁷ Ibid, p.177.
⁸ Ibid, p.177.
⁹ Ibid, p.178.
¹⁰ Ibid, p.188.

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Bibliography

Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Nelson, 1996, c 1998
Sheed, F.J., Augustine, Confessions, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1943.
Stevenson, Lesley, Haberman, David L., Ten Theories Of Human Nature, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

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