About Jesus Steve Sweetman
Faulty And Flimsy Premises
All
of what I’ve been saying is to help us have a sound premise to build our
teaching on. If
we have a flimsy or faulty premise our teaching will be in error.
As
a young Christian in 1972 I wrote about "spirit soul and body".
This teaching states that man is triune in nature, consisting of three
distinct and separate parts - a spirit and a soul housed in a body.
I based my teaching on one verse, something we should never do.
1 Timothy 5:23 says, "I pray your whole spirit and soul and body be
preserved blameless…"
Those who hold to this teaching believe from this verse that Paul taught
that we consist of these three parts.
It never crossed my mind that Paul ”might” not have meant for me to
build a doctrine from these three words, but I did
until one of my Bible college teachers suggested another way of thinking.
It’s
bad hermeneutics to base a teaching on one sentence as I did with 1Timothy 5:23.
There’s also another problem that arises from this, and that is we
often base secondary teachings on this one teaching we derive from just one
verse. If
the premise of the original teaching is faulty because it’s based on one
verse, then any secondary teaching we build from the original teaching will be
faulty as well.
If you base spirit soul and body solely on 1 Tim.5:23 then any subsequent
teaching that comes from spirit soul and body will be based on a flimsy
foundation and is thus questionable.
Those
who hold to spirit soul and body whole-heartedly do build secondary doctrines on
it, such as generational curses and demon possession. Some
of these people suggest that a curse or a demon can reside in your soul but not
your spirit. To say this you need to believe in a distinct separation of spirit
and soul. Personally I believe the line between spirit and soul is way too
blurry and indistinguishable to build such secondary teachings on.
My
Bible college teacher pointed out to me that when God made man, He made him to
be a living soul as the KJV puts it. (Genesis 2:7)
Therefore my teacher suggested that the totality of man is a “living
soul”. If
man is a soul, then there’s no logic in saying we are a body housing a
distinctly separate soul and spirit.
My
teacher also pointed out that Jesus told us to love the Lord with all our
hearts, souls, minds and strength” – four parts that doesn’t even
include our bodies.
(Matthew 22:37, Mark 12:30).
He suggested that if you believe that Paul told us we consist of three
parts then you should believe that Jesus told us that we consist of at least
four parts. Also,
spirit soul and body teaching states that the mind is part of the soul, but
Jesus makes a distinction between soul and mind as if they were distinct and
separate.
I’m
not sure Jesus and Paul wanted us to make a well defined doctrine out of these
particular words.
What I think they were saying is that we should love the Lord and be
blameless in every part of who we are, whatever those parts are.
On
the other side to what I've just said, those who hold to man being a living soul
also build their doctrine on just one verse.
That's Genesis 2:7, which by the way, the KJV translates poorly.
The NIV uses the words "living being".
The Hebrew word that is translated as soul or being means
"breath".
Man did not become a living breath.
He was created as a material being, not s soulish or spiritual being.
Besides, the same Hebrew word that the KJV translates as soul in Genesis
2:7 that some claim to be the totality of man, is used in a number of places in
the Old Testament in a New Testament sense.
That is the soul within the body.
On
both sides of this fence people have made some bad premises.
How
you view this issue is beside the point.
Building your thinking on one statement that can easily be interpreted
differently from person to person results in questionable teaching.