Nowadays, abortion has been a hot topic amongst the populous and Christians alike. Suffice it to say, there are some Christians that abhor the idea of abortion and make it their mission for it to no longer exist. I can say that some of my own family is motivated to have the soul be formed within the womb (more on that later) because that would imply that babies that are not able to be brought to term would not be found in heaven.
I've decided to tackle this as my first topic because of how fresh it is on my mind. For people that are reading, this is my own viewpoint based on the doctrine I know and understand on the subject. Use your own discernment and judgement on whether this is correct or not. Just make sure your disagreement is founded upon doctrine and not your personal opinions on the subject.
As writing this, I found a pretty good article online here: https://archive.gci.org/articles/soul-and-spirit-in-scripture/ which goes into some of the original Hebrew for ruach, nephesh, and others. Saves me the time having to write all that here.
It is an interesting perspective that differs slightly from the doctrine I have been traditionally taught mainly due to the usage of nephesh to refer both to animals and humans. The writer then goes to equate the soul to life itself. I'm personally fine with that viewpoint for some, but it doesn't really jive with my usage of the word "soul". It's semantics, and if you want to equate the English word for "life" with "soul", be my guest, you'll just run into issues with vocabulary later.
This is due to the "breath of life" which is often used in Hebrew as ruach except in Genesis 2:7. The breath of life is the distinguishing factor between animals and humans. It is likely how man are made in the "image of God" while animals are not. This ruach contains man's consciousness, mentality, judgement and more. And this is what goes up to heaven while our body stays.
In the New Testament, according to the article, psuche is used for soul which more closely aligns to the usage of the word ruach found in the Old Testament for the breath of life or spirit. I make this point because I have been traditionally trained that man is dichotomous at birth; they have a physical body and a soul referring to the human mentality that returns to heaven. Only through faith in Christ do humans become trichotomous as found in 1 Thessalonians 5:23.
The final part, the spirit, in this interpretation refers to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit upon faith in Christ. This allows the believer the ability to understand doctrinal concepts among other things. The fact the Holy Spirit permanently indwells a believer upon salvation isn't a contested topic (however when the indwelling occurs is), so I will not dive into that area here. It is also not very contested that few Old Testament believers had the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and sometimes it was temporary.
Update: Upon researching the topic of forgiveness, I came across the Greek word for the human spirit: pnuematikos. This refers to the "spiritual man". This would be the Greek word to describe a trichotomous man.
Since I don't want to make this post too lengthy, I'll leave it to your discretion on your interpretation of 1 Thess 5:23 refers to body, life, and soul/spirit or body, soul, and spirit. But from the doctrine I have been taught, it is the latter. Additionally, I have been taught that humans only become trichotomous upon receiving salvation. We can consider the indwelling of the Holy Spirit as the third element within 1 Thess that is only available to believers.
I feel this post only touches the surface of this complex study. I recommend you read the post I sent to really get an in-depth perspective of this topic. It's not really my intent of this blog to go that deep into the translations of the original languages of the Bible due to my lack of formal training. I'd like to focus more so on linking doctrines together to form conclusions.
I will create another post where I go into the implications of the soul on abortion. Admittedly, I didn't expect the topic of life vs soul vs spirit to be so long, so I didn't get into the more debated topic that has more application to your spiritual life. Let me give a teaser though: Ezekiel 37.
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