Zadok Paper S100 Winter 1999
The Nature of Humans-Mind and Brain; Body, Soul and Spirit
by Alan Gijspers

Biblical psychology

The Bible has a much richer view of humanity than a simple mind-brain dichotomy. It is possible to find a number of different models of human essence and behaviour, which is not surprising if we recognise that the Bible is a library of books in several languages and many cultures written over about a thousand years.

The image of God is the first picture of humankind encountered in Genesis 1:26ff. Humankind as male and female are the crowning of creation, made after God pauses, deliberates and then acts to make them in his image, after his likeness. Throughout the Old Testament the people of God are not to have any image of God. Only people are in God's image. But what does that mean? Henri Blocher37 summarises modern reviews by offering four different interpretations. The image of God is: (a) as spirituality (and as a crown of that spirituality, the ability to reason), (b) in terms of dominion, ruling, as God rules over the fish of the sea etc., (c) as original righteousness, which was lost in the fall and finally (c) as male and female in complementary sexual relationship coming together in relation and in creativity.

There are good commentators who accept each of these interpretations. Blocher reviews the text to point out that humankind is in the image of God as a son is to his father, in a "quasi-filial relationship, endowed with his spirit, to subdue the earth and to be with a person-the woman", and that their relationship is a rich one with creative possibilities. He further points out that this image remains after the fall. This image will not fully be seen in us until we are in Christ who as the Son is the true image of the Father. His likeness we will one day share. In spite of the somewhat patriarchal way in which that view is presented, I am attracted to it. Both male and female as children are in the image of the Father and together they are creative-as God is.

Sherlock gives a more detailed exegesis of both the Old and the New Testament as well as reviewing the history of the doctrine in Christian thought. There is the "creative grandeur and the deceitfulness of human nature. As human beings we are made for growing and active relationship with God, to live as diverse partners in community, fellow stewards of God's creation, sharing the status of creatures with all the earth. We are made in and for hope, to look for the eternal rather than the transient".38 Sherlock's review stresses the image renewed in Christ and both the individual and corporate elements of that image. The concept of the image of God is complex but seems to point to corporate relationships, in particular to each other, to God and to creation, where humans are stewards of God's good creation.

The picture given by the second Genesis story (Gen. 2:1ff) is a very moving one. When people die, their breath leaves them. They expire and inspire no more. Their body starts to decay to dust. In Genesis 2 the process is reversed. Humankind is formed from the dust of the ground, and God breathes in the breath of life. We can almost set up an equation

Dust + Breath = living being (soul) (1)

With the beautiful ambiguity of breath and spirit in the Bible we can parallel equation (1) with the second:

Physical + God's spirit = a living human being (2)

Does this picture help in the current scientific debate between monism (humans are made all of one stuff) or dualism (humans are made of two distinct substances: the material and physical)? Blocher points out that this passage can be seen monistically, that the living soul is a combination of spirit and matter, a single physical entity; or it can be seen in dualistic terms, as humankind having a spiritual as well as a physical aspect.39 He interprets that there is a duality of physical and spiritual described here in the Old but most fully developed in the New Testament. He points out that there is a concept not just of life but of an inner life even in the Old Testament. In humans there is a meeting between the visible and the invisible world. Thus the passage before us could be interpreted monistically, dualistically or as recognising two aspects of the one thing-a dual aspect monism!

The most characteristic anthropology in the New Testament is the concept of flesh verses spirit. Ladd in his helpful chapter on Pauline psychology40 defines all the various ways the word flesh is translated. While there is a war between the flesh and the spirit41 it should not be seen in Greek dualist terms of the physical versus the non-physical but in terms of the sinful nature (thought, volition, emotions as well as the physical appetites wrongly directed) versus the person infused with the spirit of God. Thus the physical appetites, whether for food, water or sexual fulfilment, are not bad in themselves but are used badly by that within us which drives us to covetousness and greed.

Ladd42 points out that conscience has no Hebrew equivalent, but is included in the Hebrew word for heart. It is the faculty for moral judgment. The root of the word is to share knowledge with oneself. This suggests something in common with consciousness defined below, but with the added capacity for judging whether an action I have done is right or wrong. It is not the final court of appeal, however, for a clear conscience can be wrong,43 and a conscience can be evil44 or seared, that is impervious to the promptings of the spirit of God45 or weak as in having scruples about meat offered to idols.46 Thus our conscience needs to be trained and its promptings evaluated in the light of other sources of truth and right.

Which biblical model predominates? Sherlock very usefully regards a holistic understanding as not possible before the final resurrection. "There is a proper sense in which the tripartite and bipartite models are of practical use . . . When we with our limited and distorted perspective try to treat humans as a unified whole we end by reducing them to one facet . . . such reductionism is to be countered and the richness and mystery of our human existence affirmed".47

This brief survey of the nature of humans according to the biblical understanding is far more multi-faceted that that of a simple mind-brain model or the even more reductionistic "evolution of consciousness". Yet the issue of the mind as consciousness and its relation to the brain is the issue debated currently in science so we will discuss aspects of it now.

To: The mind and consciousness

Alan J. Gijsbers MBBS FRACP DTM&H PGDip Epi, is Specialist Physician at Turning Point Drug and Alcohol Centre and at the Department of Drug and Alcohol Studies St Vincent's Hospital. He is a Visiting Physician at the Epworth Hospital, a Senior Lecturer in Clinical Medicine at the Department of Psychological Medicine Monash University and Senior Fellow at St Vincent's Hospital Clinical School, University of Melbourne. He also contributes to a Dual Diagnosis Clinic at the St John of God and St Vincent's Collaborating Centre consulting on people with both Drug and Alcohol and Psychiatric Disorders. He is a fellow ISCAST and editor of their national bulletin. He also somehow manages to be a husband to his wife, Lois, and a father to three children.