What is the Biblical View of Man?

What do we mean by 'Biblical'? Most people's concept of something being biblical is simply that it is mentioned in the Bible. But of course, this is stupid. By this definition, we would have to take everything from polygamy and genocide (Genesis and Joshua), to Behemoths and Leviathans (Job) to existential despair and slavery (Ecclesiastes and Philemon) as biblical, and we are back where we began. Because words like 'spirit' and 'soul' are used in the Bible, does that mean that they exist as empirically verifiable and separate entities?

Dennis Bratcher (writing from the perspective of Wesleyan theology) makes some rather bold statements on the subject:

"Finally, however, from the perspective of Scripture itself, the whole di- or tri-chotomous idea is not a very good conceptual category for talking about God’s work with human beings. Even though it was used extensively in the Early Church and has been popularized in some circles today, it is not a category used in Scripture.  That simply says that it is not a category that reflects how the ancient Israelites, or even by and large NT writers, conceptualized human beings. It comes largely from Greek philosophy, which begins with some very basic assumptions about the nature of ultimate reality and therefore addresses conceptual issues that lie outside the range and concern of most biblical thought as well as the biblical message (which is focused on "salvation" issues, not questions of ultimate reality)."

 And again, later:

"The Hebraic view that dominates Scripture does not conceptualize human beings this way. There is only a whole person animated (alive) by the breath of God. They are either alive, and have breath (same word translated as "spirit"), or they are dead and do not have breath. The biblical writers could certainly distinguish between different aspects of humanity, such as the difference between thought and hunger, or between pain and love, but never developed dualistic notions of a person being made up of divisible parts. The person was the whole. Anything less than the whole, was not a person. This extended even to how they conceptualized death. For us, it is a biological fact. For them, anything that diminished life was a form of death. All this says, from the biblical view there cannot be a person without a body. That’s why the biblical conception of afterlife requires a bodily resurrection that has a physical dimension, including scars!"

He points out that the word translated as 'soul' in Hebraic scripture (Nephesh) means many things, but none of them are what the English word means now. None of them are a category of being. None of them signify a distinct part of the whole person. Similarly, the word often translated as 'spirit' (ruach) has nothing to do with the parts of a person. It is used to signify the fact of being alive.

Both of these terms are often employed in two common Hebraic literary or poetic devices: parallelism and synecdoche. Parallelism involves repeating the same idea several times (with slight variation) for emphasis. Synecdoche involves referring to a part of a thing when you are really talking about the whole.

Hebrew has a tendency to describe the whole by referencing parts of the whole. "Strong right arm" is a way to refer to the overall strength or power of a person. "From Dan to Beersheba" is a way to reference the entire land of Israel, from far north to south. "David" is a way to talk about the Israelite monarchy. Second, Hebrew has a tendency to string together two or more complementary images for poetic effect or emphasis. That is, the same idea is repeated with a series of words that mean the same thing. This is especially evident in poetic passages, and is termed parallelism . For example, in Psa 19:1, there are 2 pair of parallel lines in which the words of the paired lines mean essentially the same.

The implication of these features is that a series of words, such as "with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might" (Deut 6:4), is not an attempt to describe different aspects or compartments of human beings, but is a way to say "with all of your being," with the whole person. They are not "parts," as in a trichotomous view, but an emphatic way for an element to stand for the whole, and for a series of parallel terms to emphasize a point.

The point is that just because the Bible uses the words 'spirit' and 'soul', this does not mean that saying we have a 'spirit' and 'soul' is biblical.

Another theologian who tackles our subject is Dr Ladd.

The contrast between the Greek and Hebrew views of God and the world is reinforced further by the Old Testament anthropology. Hebrew man is not like the Greek man — a union of soul and body and thus related to two worlds. He is flesh animated by God's breath (ruach), who is thus constituted a living soul (nephesh) (Gen. 2:7; 7:22). Nephesh (soul) is not a part of man; it is man himself viewed as a living creature. Nephesh is life, both of men (Ex. 21:23; Ps. 33:19) and of animals (Prov. 12:10). If nephesh is man as a living creature, it can be used for man himself and indicate man as a person,¹⁰⁶ and also become a synonym for "I," "myself."¹⁰⁷ By an easy extension, nephesh is man seen in terms of his appetites and desires (EccI. 6:2, 7) or in terms of his emotions or thoughts (Hos. 4:8; Ps. 35:25; Gen. 34:8; Ps. 139:14; Prov. 19:2).

If nephesh is man's life, it can be said to depart at death (Gen. 35:18; I Kings 17:21) or return if a person revives (I Kings 17:22). If the nephesh stands for man himself, it can be said that his nephesh departs to the underworld or sheol at death (Pss. 16:10; 30:3; 94:7). However, the Old Testament does not conceive of disembodied souls existing in the underworld after departing from the body, as do Homer and other early Greek writers.¹⁰⁸ The Old Testament does not see souls in sheol, but shades (rephaim), which are a sort of pale replica of man as a living creature.¹⁰⁹ These shades are not altogether different from Homer's souls in Hades, and both represent a common conviction of natural theology, namely, that death is not the end of human existence, but that life in its fullness must be bodily life.

So, for Dr Ladd, this is the biblical view of man:

Man is God's creature; creation is the realm of God's constant activity; and God makes himself known and speaks to men in the ebb and flow of history. Man is not a bipartite creature of the divine and human, of soul and body; in his total being he is God's creature and remains a part of creation. Therefore the redemption of man and the redemption of creation belong together. Salvation consists of fellowship with God in the midst of earthly existence and will finally mean the redemption of the whole man together with his environment.

I agree with him and I think I'm happy to move on from this question now. So that's that.