By Tyson Thorne

October 25, 2017
 
 

Halloween is a time when thoughts turn to costumes, haunted houses and candy – lots and lots of candy. Traditionally it is also a time when people turn to thoughts of flesh and spirit. In secular culture it is the stuff of horror movies, but to the people of faith it is more about the nature of man and what separates us from the animal kingdom. For thousands of years philosophers and theologians have contemplated these two living realities and their struggle against evil and toward virtue. Little agreement was made, even after all that time, leading us to still wonder.

In the earliest manuscripts man and animals are grouped together as “flesh” and contrasts them with God, who is Spirit. Nowhere does it mention that man has a soul, or spirit, within him. In fact, Genesis 6.3 indicates the spirit within man is God when it states, “So the Lord said, ‘My spirit will not remain in humankind indefinitely, since they are mortal. They will remain for 120 more years.’ ” Because of this, Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that humankind does not have a soul, or spirit, and that we are only flesh like the animals. Is this true?

The fact the Old Testament doesn’t teach us about man having a spirit or soul – some theology teaches that we have both and refers to humankind as tripartite – but that doesn’t mean the idea was foreign to early Jewish thought. The Hebrew word Ruah can mean wind or breath and is the word used in Genesis chapter one, describing God breathing life into man, and is associated with the animating force of life. in Genesis chapter six, where God describes his spirit living within man, the same word is used. From this we can assess that man does have a spirit, even if it is one imparted to him from God. We can further the concept, however, by understanding the rest of the Old Testament.

We know, for example, that the Holy Spirit did not permanently indwell anyone until after Jesus ascended to heaven. Examples from the Old Testament abound, when the Holy Spirit comes upon certain people to accomplish God’s work. In fact, this is a foundational concept about the nature of man. God is Spirit, but he made man with flesh so that we could do his work on earth. The most well-known example of the impermanency of the Holy Spirit residing with man from the Old Testament is Psalm 51: “Create for me a pure heart, O God! Renew a resolute spirit within me! Do not reject me! Do not take your Holy Spirit away from me!”

In these two verses, which are often sung in church, we see a clear differentiation between “spirit” and “Holy Spirit” and the truth that God’s spirit did not abide with man throughout his life. So this breath of life, this spirit that God imparted to man that stays until his death, is not the Holy Spirit but something else. And this truth inspired many of the great philosophers of the ancient world. Plato taught that the spirit is pure and the flesh corrupt. Man could overcome his “sin” by freeing the soul from its physical dependence. For Aristotle, overcoming sin was the result of repressing emotion and passion. For many Jews in the New Testament era, the mind that was focused on Torah could subdue sinful passions. But the apostle Paul tells us the truth about our spirit: “…or who among men knows the things of a man except the man’s spirit within him? So too, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 2.11).

We overcome sin not through the strength of our own spirit, given to us in the breath of God back in Genesis 1 and formed by God in every person (Zechariah 12.1), but through our spirit’s cooperation with the Holy Spirit: “Now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things that are freely given to us by God. And we speak about these things, not with words taught us by human wisdom, but with those taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual things to spiritual people” (1 Corinthians 2.12-13).

This Halloween, let us forsake the focus on evil spirits and ghouls and instead focus on those things taught us by the Spirit.

 
 
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