Lost In Translation 2: The Biblical Distinction Between Soulish and “Spiritish”
This is the second of two very geekish posts. I promise to be way less geekish starting Thursday. So let’s look at what’s been lost in translation.
Last week I mentioned how much I’ve been enjoying David Bentley Hart’s The New Testament: A Translation. Jude 1:19 is what Dr. Hart calls his “acid test” for any new Bible translation. (His own translation of Jude 1:19 reads this way: “These are those who cause divisions, psychical men [psychikos men], not possessing spirit.”)
In 1 Th 5:23, Paul says, “May your whole spirit [pneuma], soul [psyche], and body [soma] be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (WEB). To change these nouns to adjectives, change the endings. The Greek words for spiritual, soulish, and bodily are pneumatikos, psychikos, and somatikos.
I have now noticed--thanks to Dr. Hart--that Jude 1:19 isn’t the only Bible passage to mention “psychical” men. Dr. Hart’s translation of 1 Corinthians 2:14 says this: “But a Psychical man does not receive the things of God’s Spirit; for to him it is folly, and he is unable to know them, since they are discerned spiritually.” And his footnote on this verse says: “here is the first appearance of an antithesis, crucial to Paul’s larger argument, especially in chapter fifteen, between “psychical” life (which comes from psychē or, in Latin, anima: hence also “animate” or “animal” life) and “pneumatic” or “spiritual” life (which is of a radically different nature).”
In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says:
Thus also the resurrection of the dead: it is sown in perishability, it is raised in imperishability; It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; It is sown a psychical body, it is raised a spiritual body.ad If there is a psychical body, there is also a spiritual. 1 Corinthians 15:42-44 (The New Testament: A Translation)
And in his footnote Dr. Hart explains:
The distinction is between a σῶμα ψυχικόν (sōma psychikon) (a body literally “ensouled,” “animated,” or “animal,” given life by psychē, the “soul” or organic “life-principle”) and a σῶμα πνευματικόν (sōma pneumatikon) (a body that is of a “spirited” nature, or constituted from or made to live entirely by deathless spirit, pneuma). As is even more clear in the succeeding verses, this is also a distinction between earthly and heavenly origin; and, as is clearest of all in v. 50, resurrection for Paul is not a simple resuscitation of the sort of material body one has in the fallen world, but a radically different kind of life. 1 Corinthians 15:44 (The New Testament: A Translation--italics added)
Paul finishes his discussion of our present earthly bodies by saying this:
So it has also been written, “The first man Adam came to be a living soul,” and the last Adam a life-making spirit. But not the spiritual first, but rather the psychical, the spiritual thereafter. The first man out of the earth—earthly; the second man out of heaven. As the earthly man, so also those who are earthly; and, as the heavenly, so also those who are heavenly; And, just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man. And I say this, brothers: that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God; neither does perishability inherit imperishability. (1 Corinthians 15:45-50 (New Testament: A Translation)
My take on all of this is as follows: We don’t know what the heavenly man is going to be like, but we di know it’s going to be good. So like Paul, I am praying this: “May our whole spirit [pneuma], soul [psyche], and body [soma] {including mine!!!} be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Th 5:23 WEB).
Margot Armer
