Man - in what form does he exist?

Light of the East

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ORTHODOX RESPONSES ONLY, PLEASE !!

Does man exist as body, soul, and spirit?

Or does he exist as body and soul, with spirit being the "higher faculty of the soul?"

What does this statement mean:

The distinction between *soul* and *spirit* is conceptual rather than real. The term *spirit* is generally held to refer to the higher faculties of the soul.

Thank you
 

ArmyMatt

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in the case of how this has been defined (I think), man is a body and soul like an animal, but has a nous (or spirit, I think in the context of what you said) like the angels. this is why man is given a living soul in Genesis.
 
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Light of the East

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in the case of how this has been defined (I think), man is a body and soul like an animal, but has a nous (or spirit, I think in the context of what you said) like the angels. this is why man is given a living soul in Genesis.

So back to my original question, Father. Are there two or three parts to man?

Is the difference between soul and spirit conceptual?

** I was thinking along these lines:

Spirit is the energy of life given by God.

Soul is that part of us which makes us uniquely individual.

Body is the fleshly part of us which contains the first two.
 
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ArmyMatt

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So back to my original question, Father. Are there two or three parts to man?

Is the difference between soul and spirit conceptual?

both. Fathers have said man is tripartate and bipartate.
 
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Light of the East

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both. Fathers have said man is tripartate and bipartate.

I just posted an addendum to my question while you were posting.

Spirit is the energy of life given by God.

Soul is that part of us which makes us uniquely individual.

Body is the fleshly part of us which contains the first two.

Correct or incorrect?
 
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ArmyMatt

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I just posted an addendum to my question while you were posting.

Spirit is the energy of life given by God.

Soul is that part of us which makes us uniquely individual.

Body is the fleshly part of us which contains the first two.

Correct or incorrect?

one of many correct understandings, yes.
 
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Light of the East

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one of many correct understandings, yes.

Interestingly enough, I was just doing a little follow up reading in this regard and found this statement online"


QUOTE: "Among the Greek philosophers there was only a realization of man as a dichotomy: body and soul. The spirit, which is understood only by divine revelation, was not grasped by the natural Greek mind.

Plato and the Greek philosophers were dichotomists only. Every man, Plato taught, consisted of two parts, a mortal body and an immortal soul (Heard, 60).To harmonize Plato and St. Paul together is impossible….The pneuma (spirit) of St. Paul is unknown to Plato. How could it be otherwise (Ibid., 59)?The prevailing dichotomy of body and soul rests on an old Protagorean system of couples of logical antitheses and opposites. Thus, mind and matter, finite and infinite,…were supposed to be entities co-eternal with God. These…supposed man to be made up of two parts, the reasonable soul and human flesh. The division has come down unchallenged to our day, and little modified even by those who recognize the trichotomy of Scripture (Ibid., 7)."


So once again we see yet another error on the part of the Roman Church, who, in keeping with the thinking of the Greeks, state that man is only body and soul.
 
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ArmyMatt

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Interestingly enough, I was just doing a little follow up reading in this regard and found this statement online"


QUOTE: "Among the Greek philosophers there was only a realization of man as a dichotomy: body and soul. The spirit, which is understood only by divine revelation, was not grasped by the natural Greek mind.

Plato and the Greek philosophers were dichotomists only. Every man, Plato taught, consisted of two parts, a mortal body and an immortal soul (Heard, 60).To harmonize Plato and St. Paul together is impossible….The pneuma (spirit) of St. Paul is unknown to Plato. How could it be otherwise (Ibid., 59)?The prevailing dichotomy of body and soul rests on an old Protagorean system of couples of logical antitheses and opposites. Thus, mind and matter, finite and infinite,…were supposed to be entities co-eternal with God. These…supposed man to be made up of two parts, the reasonable soul and human flesh. The division has come down unchallenged to our day, and little modified even by those who recognize the trichotomy of Scripture (Ibid., 7)."


So once again we see yet another error on the part of the Roman Church, who, in keeping with the thinking of the Greeks, state that man is only body and soul.

that's not necessarily an error, depending on one's understanding.
 
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~Anastasia~

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both. Fathers have said man is tripartate and bipartate.
Which would explain why I've had a difficult time pinning down a precise answer lol ... I was watching to see what you'd say as well, Father. :)
 
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ArmyMatt

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Which would explain why I've had a difficult time pinning down a precise answer lol ... I was watching to see what you'd say as well, Father. :)

yeah, it's because man is a mystery. that is why you gotta ask what someone means.
 
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My best understanding has been that man consists of the immaterial and the material.

The material being the physical body.

The immaterial I cannot concisely define. I've gotten the sense that we are also our immortal soul, and also possess a faculty for apprehending and communing with God (as far as we are able).

So I kind of gathered we were bipartite Body/material and soul/spirit/immaterial ... but that the immaterial itself could be distinguished between simple soul and "nous" ... which is kind of a tripartite theory.

I've been a little fuzzy on this.
 
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nutroll

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I just came across this quote in commentary on Ephesians and thought it seemed relevant "Their souls have this been reconciled to the eternal and the spiritual, to all things above. The Savior, through the Spirit, indeed the Holy Spirit, descended into souls. He thereby joined what had been separated, spiritual things and souls, so as to make the souls themselves spiritual. He has established them in himself, as he says, in a new person. What is this new person? The spiritual person, as distinguished from the old person, who was soup struggling against flesh." Marius Victorinus
 
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Interestingly enough, I was just doing a little follow up reading in this regard and found this statement online"


QUOTE: "Among the Greek philosophers there was only a realization of man as a dichotomy: body and soul. The spirit, which is understood only by divine revelation, was not grasped by the natural Greek mind.

Plato and the Greek philosophers were dichotomists only. Every man, Plato taught, consisted of two parts, a mortal body and an immortal soul (Heard, 60).To harmonize Plato and St. Paul together is impossible….The pneuma (spirit) of St. Paul is unknown to Plato. How could it be otherwise (Ibid., 59)?The prevailing dichotomy of body and soul rests on an old Protagorean system of couples of logical antitheses and opposites. Thus, mind and matter, finite and infinite,…were supposed to be entities co-eternal with God. These…supposed man to be made up of two parts, the reasonable soul and human flesh. The division has come down unchallenged to our day, and little modified even by those who recognize the trichotomy of Scripture (Ibid., 7)."


So once again we see yet another error on the part of the Roman Church, who, in keeping with the thinking of the Greeks, state that man is only body and soul.
If the Roman Church teaches this, it's likely because they are combining the soul and spirit into one thing, which can be done so long as there is an understanding the the soul contains an "eye" which can noetically observe both the activities of the soul and body, as well as behold God in His uncreated Energies. The Spirit is the eye of the soul (also called the nous, by the fathers), and can look upon all aspects of oneself (i.e. the whole person, both body and soul, including mind and heart), and can also receive sight of Divine things in the measure to which the Holy Spirit enables it, according to personal readiness.
 
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buzuxi02

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In the east Syrian tradition, the spirit of man is the divine element which returns back to God upon death. The Spirit is what separates man from other life forms. The Body and soul being distinct is yet inseparable, the soul is the animating force of the body. This view of man as Spirit (Ruah)/body-soul is usually how scripture describes man. The Syriac understanding is basically the semitic understanding. (And there are many scriptural verses both from the old and new describing this). St. Ephraim the Syrian speaks about this tripartite of man quite a bit in his writings and hymns.
The Greek understanding which is the predominate western view is similiar but not identical and uses interchangeable terms. When Christ said to Love the Lord your God with all your Heart, all your soul and all your mind (Matt 22:37) he was speaking of the tripartite aspect of this soul. The Nous would correspond to the Spirit in the writings of St. Ephraim and St. Paul the Apostle. In this version the Nous does not automatically ascend to its Creator upon death. Instead it's that higher aspect of the soul which controls the natural will to yearn to be with its creator but maybe hindered from Him by the pollutions of the soul(sin). God calls out for it but it must disentangle itself from its bondage:
The Nous - Saint Sophia
 
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In the east Syrian tradition, the spirit of man is the divine element which returns back to God upon death. The Spirit is what separates man from other life forms. The Body and soul being distinct is yet inseparable, the soul is the animating force of the body. This view of man as Spirit (Ruah)/body-soul is usually how scripture describes man. The Syriac understanding is basically the semitic understanding. (And there are many scriptural verses both from the old and new describing this). St. Ephraim the Syrian speaks about this tripartite of man quite a bit in his writings and hymns.
The Greek understanding which is the predominate western view is similiar but not identical and uses interchangeable terms. When Christ said to Love the Lord your God with all your Heart, all your soul and all your mind (Matt 22:37) he was speaking of the tripartite aspect of this soul. The Nous would correspond to the Spirit in the writings of St. Ephraim and St. Paul the Apostle. In this version the Nous does not automatically ascend to its Creator upon death. Instead it's that higher aspect of the soul which controls the natural will to yearn to be with its creator but maybe hindered from Him by the pollutions of the soul(sin). God calls out for it but it must disentangle itself from its bondage:
The Nous - Saint Sophia
The Syrian tradition sounds like Neoplatonism to me; is that correct?
 
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buzuxi02

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I would have too look deeper into neoplatonism. But in the OT God tells Cain that the blood of his brother Abel is crying out to him from the earth (,Gen 4:10-11). The blood being where the soul resides in the Pentateuch.
In 1Samuel 28:13 the witch of Endor calls Samuel from the earth. And yet the OT says how the Spirit of man ascends to God Ecclesiastes 12:7. Jesus descended into Hades but commends his Spirit to God on the cross. Paul mentions the tripartite of man 1 Thess 5:23 & Hebrews 4:12.

Here is a hymn of St Ephraim on paradise (scroll to 9.20-22, hymn 8 is interesting as well) :http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/anderson/ephrem.hymns/parad.9.htm

Here is St. Gregory of Nyssa on The Making of Man:
so that man consists of these three: as we are taught the like thing by the apostle in what he says to the Ephesians , praying for them that the complete grace of their body and soul and spirit may be preserved at the coming of the Lord; using, the word body for the nutritive part, and denoting the sensitive by the word soul, and the intellectual by spirit. Likewise too the Lord instructs the scribe in the Gospel that he should set before every commandment that love to God which is exercised with all the heart and soul and mind : for here also it seems to me that the phrase indicates the same difference, naming the more corporeal existence heart, the intermediate soul, and the higher nature, the intellectual and mental faculty, mind.
 
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