The distinction made by the Trichotomist regarding soul and spirit is that the “soul is our intellect, will, and emotions, while the spirit is our God-consciousness.”[1] This distinction was central to the heresy of Apollinarianism which was condemned in 381 at the First Council of Constantinople.  Apollinarius was reacting to the heretics promoting Arianism, and in his opposition of Arianism he ended up overplaying his defense of the divine nature of Christ, resulting in a denial of a part of His human nature.

Attempts to glean from Scripture what it means to be human has brought about two prominent views.  Dichotomy, which sees that man was created with two aspects of our nature, body and soul, and that soul and spirit are both Biblical terms given to explain our spiritual nature.  The other is Trichotomy, which holds that man was created body, soul, and spirit, with soul and spirit being two distinct parts of our nature. I recently heard someone argue for Trichotomy saying that to be created in God’s image we must have three parts to our nature because God is Triune.  In this post I am going to point out why arguing for Trichotomy using the Trinity is just a bad argument.

Trichotomy and Heresy

Before jumping into the problems with assuming a tripartite nature of man because of the Trinity we must first see the historical issues surrounding Trichotomy.   The distinction made by the Trichotomist regarding soul and spirit is that the “soul is our intellect, will, and emotions, while the spirit is our God-consciousness.”[1] This distinction was central to the heresy of Apollinarianism which was condemned in 381 at the First Council of Constantinople.  Apollinarius was reacting to the heretics promoting Arianism, and in his opposition of Arianism he ended up overplaying his defense of the divine nature of Christ, resulting in a denial of a part of His human nature.

In Philip Schaff’s collected work of the early church fathers we’re given the essence of Gregory of Nazianzen’s summary of Apollinarianism in the introduction to Gregory’s letter, Division I.

“Apollinarius… declares that the Son of God was from all eternity clothed with a human body, and not from the time of His conception only by the Blessed Virgin; but that this humanity of God is without human mind (Soul), the place of which was supplied by the Godhead of the Only-begotten.”

If the soul is the seat of human intellect, will, and emotions Apollinarius and his followers were denying that Christ had a total human nature, and the “mind of Christ” was not human, but divine.  Trichotomy, with a splash of heresy, is required for this theological system to make any sense. Gregory of Nazianzen pointed out the heretical nature of this view.

“…(Apollinarius) assumes that that Man who came down from above is without a mind, but that the Godhead of the Only-begotten fulfils the function of mind, and is the third part of this human composite, inasmuch as soul (Spirit in modern terms in the context of this argument) and body are in it on its human side, but not mind (Soul in modern terms in the context of this argument), the place of which is taken by God the Word.” [2]

[Editor’s note: This article is incomplete. The link (URL) to the original article is unavailable and has been removed.]