A Brief History of Martin Luther, Part 1

Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Therefore I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise – Martin Luther

Luther’s Youth:

Although Christianity was agreeable to their instincts, the Germans were never at home under the rule of the papacy. The medieval conflict between the Emperor and the pope kept up a political antagonism against foreign rule. More than 100 complaints against Roman misrule were brought before the Diet of Nürnberg in 1522. The mysticism of the 13 and 14 centuries fostered love for a piety of less form and more heart. Hence, Erasmus says that when Luther published his Theses, the whole world applauded him. 1 "Totus illi magno consensu applausit." In a letter of Dec. 12, 1524, to Duke George of Saxony who was opposed to the Reformation. Cited in Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. VII, chap. 2

Luther, like all the Reformers, was a man of humble origins. Of all the Reformers Luther is the first. He is so closely identified with the German Reformation that the one would have no meaning without the other. No other Reformer has given his name to the church he reformed.

Martin Luther was born Nov. 10, 1483, an hour before midnight, at Eisleben in Prussian Saxony, where he died, Feb. 18, 1546. He was baptized on the next day and received the name of the saint of the day. His parents had recently moved to Eisleben from Mahra near Eisenach in Thuringia, where Boniface had first preached the gospel to the Germans. Six months later they settled in Mansfeld. His parents were very poor. They were, however, pious, industrious and honest people from the lower class. Luther was never ashamed of his humble origins. His mother had to carry the wood from the forest, on her back, and father and mother, as he said, "worked their flesh off their bones," to bring up seven children (he had three younger brothers and three sisters).

Luther had a hard childhood and was brought up strict discipline. On one occasion, his mother beat him until blood flowed for stealing a nut. His father once flogged him so badly that he ran away for a while. But Luther recognized their good intentions. In the Luther home, he was taught to pray to God and the saints, to admire the church and the priests, and was told scary stories about the devil and witches, stories that haunted his imagination the rest of his life.

Discipline was equally severe in school. Luther remembered being chastised no less than fifteen times in a single morning. But he had also better things to say about school. He learned the Catechism, i.e.: the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, and several Latin and German hymns. He received his elementary education in the schools of Mansfeld, Magdeburg, and Eisenach. By the age of 14 he had to support himself by singing in the street. His lack of refined breeding showed its effects in his writings and actions. It limited his influence in the higher classes, but strengthened his influence over the middle and lower classes.

Why Trichotomy is Wrong 3 F, The Errors It Spawns

3F Various Other Errors

As if the last 5 posts weren't enough to expose Trichotomy for the false doctrine that it most definitely is, we will conclude this series today by looking at a few other assorted erroneous theological consequences of Trichotomy.

1. Let us consider first what Trichotomy means for the doctrine of regeneration. On the Trichotomist scheme, regeneration is the miracle which occurs when God gives us a new spirit, since we are spiritually dead. Christians are said to have a new life which unbelievers do not possess. God has given us a new spirit, or as some prefer to put it, God has created in us a new spirit. B.B. Warfield clearly saw the inherent theological flaw in the Trichotomist scheme. He writes, "Thus the man is not saved after all; a different newly created man is substituted for him. When the old man is got rid of - and that the old man has to be ultimately got rid of [we do] not doubt - the saved man that is left is not at all the old man that was to be saved, but a new man that has never needed saving." (B.B. Warfield, Review of "He That Is Spiritual," by Lewis Sperry Chafer.) Warfield's point, while apparently philosophically obtuse, is actually a very valid objection. If regeneration means that the "old man" who was me is no more and has been replaced by a "new man" by God's miraculous act of creating a new spirit, then I am no longer me. If I replace an apple tree with a cherry tree, I no longer have the same tree. In other words: I was not saved; I was made into a man that didn't even need to be saved.

2. Trichotomy also allows for the false doctrine of free-will. The body, since it is flesh, we are told tends toward evil - and we are said to be spiritually dead. But the soul remains magically unaffected by the Fall into sin, therefore it is able, when properly induced, to make a decision to accept Christ and savingly believe on Him. Trichotomist anthropology lets its adherents appear to take seriously the passages of Scripture which speak of men as dead in their fallen sinful condition, while at the same time, making full allowances for this Baal of free-will. In the final analysis, this makes man's will, and not God's grace, to be the final arbiter and determining factor of each man's eternal destiny. If we reject Trichotomy, we are left with a man who is composed of two elements, a body and a soul, both of which are ruined by sin. Thus any hope of salvation must reside in God's good pleasure and not in man's pretended abilities to do that which is diametrically opposed to his nature. Fish can't fly; neither can dead sinners resurrect themselves.

3. Trichotomy is responsible also for many of the more flagrant errors of Pentecostalism and Charismaticism. Let's consider the issue of Tongues again for a moment. If I edify myself by speaking in a language which my mind does not understand, why is an interpreter required by Paul when I do this in church? If I can edify myself by hearing my babbling of unintelligible syllables, why can't the rest of the church be edified by hearing the same uninterpreted things which edify me? This alone is sufficient to demolish the whole modern tongues-speaking movement. It is obvious from the text that the speaker understood what he was saying in a language he knew but with which the rest of his hearers were unlearned. This is why his understanding was unfruitful. He knew what he was saying, but no one else did. I speak Tagalog fluently. If I were to stand up in a small country church in rural America and speak in Tagalog, I may edify myself by the wondrous truths I was proclaiming, but my understanding would be unfruitful because no one else in the room would benefit from my understanding without an interpreter.

4. Another potential danger of Trichotomy is dualism. By elevating the "realm of the spirit" over the body, i.e., by understanding the spirit to be higher than the body and soul, one creates an unscriptural dichotomy between the material and immaterial. This is plain old Greek speculative philosophy. It pits spirit against soul and body in a way that is unjustifiable. Matter is not evil. God proved this by (1) creating it in the first place, (2) by the Incarnation, and (3) by the promise of resurrection. If matter is inherently evil, how can we maintain that a good God created it? This is exactly what the ancient dualistic heretics did. If the body, as matter, is inherently bad, how can we maintain that Christ took on human flesh? If Christ did not take on human flesh, we are still in our sins, because a hologram cannot die. If our bodies, as matter, are inherently bad, how can we hope for their resurrection? Killing a flawed inferior thing is a good thing. It does not gain dignity simply by being brought back to life. Let me anticipate a question here, too. Why, you might ask, is the soul considered with the body as part of the lower nature of man and not up with the spirit in the higher nature? It is for this reason. "The most familiar, but also the crudest form of Trichotomy is that which takes the body for the material part of man's nature, the soul as the principle of animal life, and the spirit as the God-related rational and immortal element in man" (Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology).

You might object that no professing Christian holds to such false views of the body. I beg to differ. Even if Trichotomists denied belief in such propositions, this would not make them invalid consequences of their system, mind you. Once you divide man into superior and inferior parts - and you put soul and body down into the inferior category, you have nowhere to go logically but to dualism. If you pit the spirit against the soul as the animal life of the body, soul and body must be viewed, and accordingly treated, as inherently bad. This has been proven repeatedly by Church history. Monasticism is a case in point. Why did men and women deprive themselves of sleep and food? Why did Simon sit on the top of a pole for decades? Why did countless monks sleep on the ground and not in beds? Why did they wear hair shirts? Because they saw their bodies as part of a lower nature with the soul, that was necessary to keep under wraps if one was to nourish and nurture his higher, i.e., spiritual nature. Animals eat, drink, bathe, breed, sleep, etc. If we are higher than animals, and the soul is the animal life of the body, then these impulses must be subdued if one wishes to be spiritual. Why was poverty considered such a noble state? To read some of the medieval mystics, or John Wesley for that matter, you'd think that being poor was already a deeply spiritual accomplishment on its own. If one had to choose between poverty and even sufficient provisions, there was no doubt in these people's minds that poverty was the more spiritual option. This foolishness is also what was behind the whole celibacy movement as well. How could a person who enjoys the bodily pleasures associated with the marriage bed be as spiritual as one who has deprived himself of such? Again, nothing in Scripture even remotely suggests that we should ask this question.

5. There is another potential Trinitarian error inherent in Trichotomy. If you recall when we dealt with the false teaching of the 'carnal Christian,' we quoted Chuck Smith, an advocate of such teaching, as saying, "We meet God in the realm of our spirit." Many people have misunderstood John's phrase "in the Spirit" (Revelation 1:10) to be describing a different realm or dimension of reality. This is an extremely dangerous idea. It depersonalizes the Holy Spirit into a 'force' or a 'dimension.' Think of Frank Peretti's novels. There is the realm of the physical and a spiritual realm in which is mirrored all the events of the physical realm. This spawned all the strange idea current in our days regarding 'spiritual warfare.' Christians, through mind-denigrating spiritual exercises can somehow influence unseen things in this spiritual realm, which in turn, impact events in the physical realm. There is nothing new under the sun. The Manicheans of old held the same view of reality. By referring to the Spirit as a realm, the Trinity is denied. The doctrine of the Trinity teaches us that God is one, and that He exists in one divine Essence, yet subsists in three Persons. 'Person' is the operative word. A realm is not a person. This seems to me to be latently pantheistic. Pantheism is the belief that God is the sum total of all existence. In other words, everything is God and God is everything. If my spirit and your spirit and God's Spirit are a realm, then they are all by definition one common realm of common experience for us all - which means that my spirit and God's are essentially the same thing. How can I distinguish my own spirit from God's? This is pantheism. If my spirit is a dimension or realm for experiencing the divine and your spirit is an entirely different realm, then there could be no talk of a "realm of the spirit." We would have to allow for an innumerable multitude of these "realms." But no one speaks this way. Trichotomists constantly and consistently speak of one "realm of the spirit." This has at least a tinge of pantheism in it. Therefore it is no surprise when the spiritual exercises proposed to nurture the spirit are identical, whether they be "Christian" or Pantheist. It also explains why their form of the spiritual gift of a "words of knowledge" looks suspiciously like mind-reading or a Vulcan mind-meld. We reiterate: the Holy Spirit is not a realm, a force, or a dimension of experience. Speaking this way is an implicit denial of the Trinity. Incautiousness in speech begets wrong ideas; wrong ideas beget false doctrine; false doctrine begets more false doctrine; and false doctrine damns, especially when it spawns idolatrous notions about the Godhead. Other doctrines may be negotiable; doctrines about God and His nature are not.

Why Trichotomy is Wrong 3 E, The Errors It Spawns

3E. Gnosticism

I have restrained myself thus far from equating Trichotomy with Gnosticism, but now I must restrain myself no longer. For those who are unfamiliar with Church history, Trichotomy was toyed with by thinkers around the fringes of Christianity in the 2^nd and 3^rd Centuries. It was basically rejected monolithically by orthodox theologians as a speculative Greek philosophical notion rather than a biblical teaching. It was the Gnostics who adhered to this tri-partite division of man into body, soul and spirit. Just to clarify what we’re saying, Gnostics were heretics who claimed to have access to secret knowledge that only those who were initiated into their “mysteries” could learn. Gnosticism is generally defined as the belief and/or practice of attaining 'secret knowledge.' The word derives from the Greek 'gnosis' which means knowledge. More specifically Gnosticism is communion with God without means. Many of the screwball teachings I described in the previous post are Gnostic. How so? They do not derive from Scripture. So how did their purveyors come by them? By an appeal to a personal, private, secret revelation from God. This is what I meant by "communion with God without means." It is an attempt to deal directly with God without Christ the Mediator and without Word and Sacrament.

Now you may say to me, "People in the Bible communed with God without means, didn't they?" On the whole, no they didn't.  Yes, there were instances of this, but they were few and far between. Moreover these people were called Prophets and Apostles. The direct unmediated revelation they received was intended by God to be added to the canon of Scripture. God never dealt with anyone in this way except to expand the canon of Scripture. God alone can do this. And once Revelation was completed, this is no longer a live option since God Himself places a curse on anyone who would dare add to the canon. Gnosticism places one above the Prophets and Apostle since their revelations are intended, not to be added to the canon, but for personal, private edification. Gnosticism claims to receive revelations intended only for the recipient. This make the Gnostic greater than Apostles and Prophets. And it makes Scripture superfluous.

Benny Hinn, as well as many other Charismatics, teaches (or at least he taught this at one time) that Christ underwent spiritual death. Kenneth Copeland amplifies this further by saying that when Christ bore our sins, He died spiritually and was born again in hell. Now I am not going to refute this idiocy here. But let me note something important relating to our subject. Hinn did not come by this teaching through serious study of Scripture. Nobody could. Nor did he arrive at his 9-person trinity from meditating on the Scriptures. Nobody could. No, these were direct revelations to him from God, so he claims. He has since backpedaled on some of his more egregious heretical teachings. But that is not enough. If I once believed something because I misunderstood Scripture and now I no longer believe it, well and good. This is growth. But this is not true in Hinn's case. He did not, according to his own claims, misunderstand Scripture. No, he claims to have received these blasphemous teachings directly by divine revelation. So a mea culpa is not really an option for him, especially since he still claims to receive doctrine in this manner.

Hinn, of course, is an extreme example. But that is precisely my point. We now have 'Evangelicals' like Richard Foster, Dallas Willard and Scott Hodge advocating the unscriptural, mystic, pantheist 'contemplative prayer' of the medieval Roman Catholic mystics. The numbers of men advocating, or at least courting these practices, is steadily growing. At its core, it is Eastern mysticism - which as I have repeatedly asserted, is inherently pantheistic. It has more in common with Jedi religion than Christianity. One is encouraged to quiet the soul and clear the mind of all thought. This is Satanic. Nowhere in Scripture are we taught to empty our minds of all thought so that we can commune with God. This is more Hinduism than Christianity.

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.