Why Trichotomy is Wrong 3 D, The Errors It Spawns

3D. Anti-intellectualism

This is a very difficult subject to handle for two reasons. First, it is very hard to talk about the anti-intellectualism that Trichotomy is responsible for without sounding uncharitable. I have a natural sarcastic streak in me anyway, and much of what passes for Evangelical teaching literally begs to be made fun of. So I admit that it is very hard to demonstrate how this anti-intellectualism works without sounding unnecessarily harsh. Secondly, much of this same teaching is clearly Gnostic in origin. I plan to treat Gnosticism as a separate offspring of Trichotomy.

I have argued already that Scripture teaches that cognitive understanding is in one's spirit, thus further demonstrating the proposition we already made that the Bible uses soul and spirit interchangeably. It is important to remember this while we proceed.

How does Trichotomy breed anti-intellectualism? And even if it does, is this wrong? First of all, we must answer that, yes, it is wrong because Christ explicitly commands us to love God with all of our mind. A love for God which neglects the mind is disobedient at best. But how does Trichotomy cause this to happen? Popular Pentecostal teaching provides the best example of how this happens.

When I was a Pentecostal I was taught that by praying in 'tongues' I could nurture my spirit and grow. I remember explicitly an occasion when a woman I knew testified to me how she had experienced a period of prodigious spiritual growth when she made it a point to pray in tongues daily for an extended period of time. Never mind how she knew that she had grown spiritually, let's just ask how this is supposed to have worked. According to this theory, while one is praying in tongues, one's spirit is saying things and asking God for things of which the mind is unaware. Thus God, answering these prayers, grants phenomenal spiritual growth to someone who hasn't the foggiest clue of what he/she has asked God for in prayer. A weird idea indeed. Where does such a strange notion come from, you ask? It comes from a Trichotomist interpretation of 1 Corinthians 14:14, which reads, "my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful." The Trichotomist reads this to mean that the man is uttering things which his mind does not understand. So the Trichotomist claims that his spirit speaks in a heavenly language which completely bypasses the mental understanding of his soul. Furthermore, he assumes that back in verse 2 of chapter 14, when Paul speaks of mysteries, he is referring to these deep secrets that are in his unintelligible utterances in tongues.

To call this heretical is understatement. First of all, "mystery" is used in Scripture in a way that is completely different from contemporary Trichotomist usage. Throughout the New Testament, the word musterion, (mystery) is consistently used in reference to the Gospel of Christ which was hidden in ages past, but which is now clearly revealed to the Church. See Matthew 13:10, Mark 4:11; Luke 8:10; Romans 16:25-27; 1 Corinthians 2:7; 1 Corinthians 15:51; Ephesians 3:2-6; and Colossians 1:25-27. Jesus and Paul invariably use the term in reference to revelational truth which, though hidden in the past, is now revealed and understood. This is diametrically opposite to the way Trichotomists use the word.

Tie these strands all together and here's what you get: The mind is denigrated. Our spirit gets fed and strengthened by circumventing the mind. Therefore to be truly spiritual one must be anti-intellect and anti-doctrine. It is not uncommon for Pentecostals to be told that they need to spend less time reading and studying and more time learning to "operate in the spirit." Anti-intellectualism runs rampant through the Pentecostal and Charismatic world as a direct result of their Trichotomist anthropology. Authors like Andrew Murray and Watchman Nee, who are popular among Pentecostals and Charismatics, have promulgated Trichotomy to the Evangelical world and have corrupted Christian piety by juxtaposing "soul" to "spirit," thus affirming that the intellect hinders true spirituality. Thus the only way to grow spiritually is to 'crucify' the flesh and the soul life.

How has this been borne out in the Church's experience? The Creeds, Confessions and Catechisms for which our forefathers labored so vigorously and for which they gave their lives are virtually unknown in both name and content. Doctrinal teaching, intended to educate Christians on the content of their faith has been ousted in favor of practical teaching. I regularly receive Christian book catalogues and I am constantly amazed at how many books come with a DVD and curriculum intended to help the readers learn how to 'put into practice' the things they have learned from the book. This is substituting Law for Grace. B.B. Warfield rightly criticized the 'coterie' of Keswick teachers for this very reason. Though many of these men were ostensible Calvinists, their Trichotomist anthropology led them straight into the Arminian form of the doctrine of sanctification. I cannot count how many times I have heard the validity of doctrinal study questioned because the student might not put it into practice. Being unsure of how to put the doctrine of the Trinity into practice, they assume that is a mere piece of speculation that is not practically important for Christian living. Countless other biblical doctrines are treated with the same disdain.

I don't want to poison myself. Lysol is poisonous. I know this. Therefore, I don't drink Lysol. That's just how it works. Life is affected by what we believe. Hence it is important that we believe aright. Idolatry is a damnable sin. Idolaters will be cast into the lake of fire. Entertaining false ideas about God is idolatry. Therefore it is important to engage one's mind when reading Scripture so that Scripture correctly informs our minds about God.

Further, think of some of the strange things to have come out of the Charismatic movement. Benny Hinn claims that Adam could fly and that he actually flew in outer space and even went to the moon. Morris Cerrulo and others of his ilk, claim to be gods. Kenneth Copeland claims that Christians have the same creative power as God does to speak things into existence. This is why 'confession' is such a big deal among the Word of Faith types. We all remember Benny Hinn claiming that the Trinity was actually composed of 9 Persons. John Hagee teaches that Jesus never claimed to be the Messiah. Recently some goof of a preacher prayed at a Nascar event and thanked God for his "smokin' hot wife." I could go on and on and on and on and on. I am not exaggerating what these people teach. This stuff is sheer and utter stupidity! But this is exactly what happens when we check our brains at the church door. I heard a preacher once point out a man in the audience and tell him that God had spoken that he was to give the preacher $50. The man complied without hesitation. I saw Tammy Faye talk a diamond ring off a lady's finger. Anyone who falls for that nonsense deserves to be deceived! And these people pride themselves on their discernment!

I recently saw a video wherein Mark Driscoll was describing his "gift of discernment." He described having a screen in his head (figuratively speaking) on which he 'saw' things. Where in Scripture is discernment described this way? Again, stupidity! The Greek word for discern is diakrino. It derives from dia, which means 'through' and krino, which primarily means 'distinguish,' or 'decide,' but also has, by implication, the meanings 'think, judge, and question'  - all of which are mental activities. Here we see more ridiculous consequences of Trichotomy: Discernment is placed in the 'spirit,' completely divorced from any action of the mind. But the mind is precisely where Scripture places discernment. I mean, think about it. How can you think about something, ponder its ramifications, weigh its evidence, question its reasonableness, distinguish among its aspects and decide in favor of it or against it  WITHOUT YOUR MIND? Sheesh!

Try to correct one of these people's doctrine and you'll get a crash course on anti-intellectualism. They'll tell you, "I hear what you're saying. I'm gonna go home and pray about this and see what the Holy Spirit tells me about these verses." Oh, it sounds humble, but in fact it is rank pride. Trichotomy gives men an excuse to reject the time-honored stance of the Church on doctrinal issues as affirmed in the creeds and confessions. It breeds individualism (just me and the Bible) and ignores the covenantal and corporate aspects of the Spirit's work. It substitutes some indefinable 'impression' in one's spirit for the authoritative statements of Scripture. We are to form our beliefs based on what saith the Scripture, not on what the Spirit impresses upon us. Trichotomy puts us in the driver's seat.

Why Trichotomy is Wrong 3 C, The Errors It Spawns

Part 3C: Split level Christianity

Back in the first post of this series, I said that the early Church rejected Trichotomy because it was a piece of speculative Greek philosophy, not a biblical teaching. Here’s where we begin to make good on that accusation.

The tri-partite concept of man dates back at least to Plato, but the form we are all most familiar with comes from Plotinus. Before we illustrate this, we need to put a little bit of groundwork in place. In common popular evangelical teaching and literature on the Christian life, Trichotomy is the soup de jour. Although nearly all theologians reject this understanding of man, it is nonetheless the most prominent view out there among run-of-the-mill Evangelicals. This teaching has resulted in many theological errors, some of which we have already exposed; but one in particular has been gained widespread acceptance and has caused great havoc on personal Christian piety. I speak, of course, of the wretched doctrine of the carnal Christian.

Where did such an idea come from and what does it have to do with Trichotomy? Let’s look at how a classic Trichotomist, Chuck Smith (an advocate of the Carnal Christian teaching), handles 1 Thessalonians 5:23, one of the two Trichotomist proof texts. He writes, “We meet God in the realm of our spirit." (New Testament Study Guide, pg. 113)

Then when handling 1 Corinthians 2-3, the proof text of the Carnal Christian teaching, he writes, “Many of the Corinthian Christians hadn't entered the spiritual dimension yet," and that the "Holy Spirit gives us knowledge beyond our experience." The Gnostic impulse associated with Trichotomy comes out guns blazing when he says, “Our problem arises from living as redeemed spirits in unredeemed bodies. We desire to be delivered from these bodies of flesh so that we can enjoy the full, rich, overflowing life in the spirit." [Chuck Smith, New Testament Study Guide (Costa Mesa: The Word for Today, 1982), p. 78, 113, 193.]

Historically Christians have always affirmed that God meets us through means - Word and Sacrament. But Smith affirms that God meets us immediately "in the realm of our spirit." And since he affirms this, it follows for him that not all Christians have "entered into the spiritual." This posits two categories of Christians, the "carnal" and the "spiritual.” You will search in vain for this distinction in Scripture.

Chuck Smith did not originate this doctrine, of course. He gets it from his beloved Scofield Reference Bible, which has numerous notes advocating a Trichotomist view of man. For instance, in the notes on 1 Corinthians 2:14, the Scofield notes read:

“Paul divides men into three classes: (1) psuchikos, meaning of the senses, sensous, (Jas 3:15; Jude 19), natural, i. e. the Adamic man, unrenewed through the new-birth (Jn 3:3,5); (2) pneumatikos, meaning spiritual, i.e., the renewed man as Spirit-filled and walking in the Spirit in full communion with God (Eph 5:18-20); and (3) sarkikos, meaning carnal, fleshly, i.e. the renewed man who, walking "after the flesh," remains a babe in Christ (1 Cor 3:1-4). The natural man may be learned, gentle, eloquent, fascinating, but the spiritual content of Scripture is absolutely hidden from him; and the fleshly or carnal Christian is able to comprehend only its simplest truths, "milk" (1 Cor 3:2).”

I said earlier that this Trichotomist view of man was not a Scriptural doctrine, but rather a Plotinian view of man. Let me give you Plotinus’ exact words so that a comparison can be made:

“All men, from birth onward, live more by sensation than by thought, forced as they are by necessity to give heed to sense impressions. Some stay in the sensate their whole life long. For them, sense is the beginning and the end of everything. Good and evil are the pleasures of sense and the pains of sense; it is enough to chase the one and flee the other. Those of them who philosophize say that therein wisdom lies... Others do lift themselves, a little above the earth. Their higher part transports them out of the pleasurable into the honorable. But, unable to perceive anything higher and with nowhere to set themselves, they fall back in virtue's name - on the activities and "options" of that lower realm they had thought to escape. But there is another, a third class of men - men godlike in the greatness of their strength and the acuity of their perceptions. They see clearly the splendors that shine out from on high. Thither, out of the mist and fogs of the earth, they lift themselves. There they stay, seeing from above what is here below, taking their pleasure in truth.” Plotinus, "The Intelligence, the Ideas and Being," in The Essential Plotinus, trans. Elmer O' Brien (Indianapolis: Hacket Publications, 1964), pp. 46-47.

Notice the similarities? On the one hand you have Plotinus’ categories of “sensate,” “above the earth,” and “godlike” And on the other hand you have Scofield’s “natural man,” “carnal Christian,” and “Spirit-filled Christian.” Plotinus’ first level corresponds to the “natural man” in Scofield’s system. Plotinus’ second level corresponds to Scofield’s “carnal Christian” who can only handle “the milk of the Word.” Scofield’s “Spirit-filled Christian” mirrors Plotinus’ third level.

Plotinus’ system is to blame for many of the mystery religions and the New Age movement. But you obviously don’t need to get into weird things like these to be influenced by such a Gnostic philosophy. Merely by adopting Trichotomist anthropology, you can get the same structure of belief. The same belief system behind the New Age movement has infiltrated Evangelicalism through Trichotomy, or the Carnal Christian view of sanctification and the Keswick or "higher-life" teachings that have become central to fundamentalist theology. 

Why Trichotomy is Wrong 3 B, The Errors It Spawns

Part 3B: Christological Heresies

Think of the impact Trichotomy would have, if consistently held, on our Christology. Orthodox Christianity has always affirmed the Hypostatic Union of Christ. This means that Christ is fully God and fully man - two distinct natures, not intermingled - by a mystery of divine wisdom hypostatically united in One Person. Christ is not a human person and a Divine Person sharing a body.

Try to square this with Trichotomy and you rush headlong into blasphemous heresy. You will end up trying to divide Christ in an Apollonarian way. Apollonarius taught that Christ was a human body that had the Second Person of the Trinity, the Logos, in the place of a normal human soul. If you do this, you must postulate two spiritual natures in Christ and you don't want to know where that will lead you. A human nature without a human soul is a non-entity. It is semantic nonsense. If Christ was not fully human, He could not have died for humans. His death is efficacious for the elect precisely because He is one of us. A human without a soul is not a human. Christ had to be human to atone for humans.

The simple fact is, there is no way to square Trichotomy with biblical Christology. Either you end up denying or downplaying Christ’s deity, His humanity or you create a schizophrenic Christ – each option as heretical and blasphemous as the others. Mention is made of Jesus’ soul being troubled in Matthew 26:38. In John 11:33 and 13:21, we read that His spirit was troubled. The same emotion is described in these three texts, again reaffirming what we claimed before about the interchangeable nature of these words. But try dealing with any of those passages from a Trichotomist view point and you head straight down the toilet theologically. There is no way to handle those passages from a Trichotomist view point without ending up in one of the Christological heresies of the first 4 centuries of Church history. 

Why Trichotomy is Wrong 3 A, The Errors It Spawns

Part 3: The dangers and heretical dangers of a tripartite understanding of human nature.

           

Part 3A: Modalism

I will not mask my excitement at finally getting to this point. As I said in the first post in this series, it was very tempting to launch into a full-on polemic. But I felt it would be a wiser approach to deal with the subject by starting with what the Scriptures actually say and teach. After all, this is what matters, not opinions or theories.

We have probably all heard someone wax eloquent on the doctrine of the Trinity and use man’s tri-partite nature as an illustration. There are many flaws in this analogy. First of all, it does not come from Scripture. Nowhere does Scripture present man as a three-part being mirroring God’s Triune nature. And there is good reason why Scripture doesn’t use this analogy: it is false. Let’s just pretend for the moment that I am composed of three parts. How does this mirror the Trinity? I am not three persons! This is a horrible analogy. And if more people were familiar with Church history, they would know that that very analogy was proposed by heretics in the first few centuries of the Church and condemned as heretical.

Instead of being an analogy for the Trinity, this convoluted illustration actually denies the Trinity. If I am body, soul and spirit, I am still me. I am not three persons. The Trinity is not one person with three parts. This is a heresy known as Modalism. It asserts that the Father, Son and Spirit are all really just one Person who reveals Himself in three different modes. The “body, soul and spirit” illustration of the Trinity is blatantly heretical. If a person believes this about God, he cannot possibly be a Christian. He is an idolater who has substituted for the Triune God of the Bible a fiction of his own weak imagination.

I have encountered another variation of this modalistic version of the Trinity. It goes like this: I am a father; I am a son; and I am also a husband. Again, this is a horrendously false illustration because I am NOT three persons – just one. Moreover, I am also a cousin, grandson, uncle, nephew, brother and a second cousin twice removed. Does this therefore mean that Benny Hinn’s idiotic 9 person trinity is correct?

A couple of years ago, I was engaged in something of a debate on a Facebook group page on this subject. I noted that Charles Hodge vociferously handled Trichotomy as a heresy. The person with whom I was engaged in this discussion responded that none of the heretical views which Hodge tied to Trichotomy were held by anyone today. The insinuation was that maybe in Hodge’s day Trichotomy led to heresy, but no one today held those particular heretical views. I think this misses the point, not to mention the fact that all of these heretical views are widely espoused today, just under different names and forms. It misses the point however by failing to realize that Hodge’s inferences were valid even if his examples were straw men (which they weren’t).

Modalism is not some bizarre teaching from the early days of the Church. It is alive and kicking in the form of T.D. Jakes' theology and that of his fellow Oneness Pentecostals.

Why Trichotomy is Wrong 2, Dealing With the Supposed Proof Texts

Part 2: Answering 1 Thess. 5:23 and Heb. 4:12

In our last post, it was stated that once we provided the relevant Scriptural data, we would then handle the supposed biblical support for Trichotomy. There are, in fact, only two Scriptures that Trichotomists can appeal to. They are 1 Thessalonians 5:23 and Hebrews 4:12.

While this post may be short, I do not wish to be seen as treating these passages glibly. But the simple fact is that trying to get Trichotomy out of these passages is like trying to get blood out of a rock. The supposed support just isn’t there.

1 Thessalonians 5:23 states: Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Anthony Hoekema writes, “When Paul prays for the Thessalonians that the spirit, soul, and body of each of them may be preserved or kept, he is obviously not trying to split man into three parts, any more than Jesus intended to split man into four parts when he said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind" (Luke 10:27). This passage therefore also provides no ground for the Trichotomic view of the constitution of man.” Created in God's Image (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1988).

In other words, in the light of the rest of scripture, which overwhelmingly presents man as a dichotomic being, it is irresponsible and cavalier exegesis to make this one verse militate against hundreds of others. And if this passage teaches Trichotomy, then we are equally justified in affirming tetrachotomy based on Luke 10:27 or Mark 12:30. Scripture sometimes calls our body “flesh and blood.” Are we therefore to assume that this teaches that man’s nature has two material parts – that “flesh and blood” are not the same things as “body”? The sort of nonsense and error this sort of hermeneutic creates is easily seen.

The only other passage in the whole of Scripture where the words “soul” and “spirit” occur together with the word “and” in between them (claimed by some to suggest Trichotomy) is Hebrews 4:12, which reads, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

There is really no reason to think that the words soul and spirit necessarily imply that man has two immaterial parts. The text itself gives us reason to doubt this form of exegesis. The passage also refers to joints and marrow and thoughts and intentions. No one in his right mind reasonable infers from this that man has two hearts or two material parts of his total being. Joints and marrow are used synonymously in reference to man’s material part (the body). Heart, soul and spirit are three synonyms for that immaterial part of man. So that if this verse gives support for making a distinction between soul and spirit as two different entities, then it actually goes one further and proposes three immaterial entities. Thought and intentionality are the domain of the mind, which means that this verse uses the word “heart” as a synonym for “mind.”

John Murray asserts that that the verb translated as "piercing" in the ESV is never used elsewhere in Scripture in the sense of distinguishing between two different things. Rather it is always used when distributing and dividing up various aspects of the same thing (John Murray, Trichotomy, Collected Works of John Murray, volume 2). So this passage is not saying that the Word separates two distinct things – soul from spirit. Rather the Word of God judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart. The Word does not divide soul from spirit, as if they were two distinct entities. The Word divides soul and spirit in the sense of penetrating into our inner most parts. Soul and spirit do not imply two immaterial elements any more than flesh and blood imply two material ones.

Whenever one passage of Scripture is used to attain a doctrine without consulting with the entirety of the Scriptural data on that subject, only error can ensue. No one Scripture should ever be treated in isolation from the rest of the Bible. Jeremiah 36:23 says that Jehudi used a penknife to cut up the scroll of the Word of God through Jeremiah. Would it be correct then to conclude that penknives were instruments of evil? As stupid as that sounds, that interpretation has been made and others a thousand times worse are made every day by men who hold one verse in isolation from the rest of Scripture.