[hosepipe]

[.. And even then, man was not really created until God breathed the soul through man's nostrils. So, there was a deifnite time, not before all ages, when man was not and his soul was not. The same goes for all of us. ..]

This proves (to me) that what the body is, what the soul is, and what the spirit is, and how they relate to each other, is base knowledge to determining pretty much anything spiritual.. How can you(somebody) know what most/many verses even mean without that base..

This question is NOT MINUTIA... IMO.

[Quix]

What?

You don’t believe in angels-on-pin-heads-theology?

What a heretic!

LOL.

Love it.

[kosta50]

This proves (to me) that what the body is, what the soul is, and what the spirit is, and how they relate to each other, is base knowledge to determining pretty much anything spiritual

We are not made up of body, soul and spirit. The error of Trichotomy is a direct misinterpretation of +Paul's teaching.

from the Catholic Encyclopedia [emphases added]:

In St. Paul we find a more technical phraseology employed with great consistency. Psyche is now appropriated to the purely natural life; pneuma to the life of supernatural religion, the principle of which is the Holy Spirit, dwelling and operating in the heart. The opposition of flesh and spirit is accentuated afresh (Romans 1:18, etc.).

This Pauline system, presented to a world already prepossessed in favour of a quasi-Platonic Dualism, occasioned one of the earliest widespread forms of error among Christian writers -- the doctrine of the Trichotomy.

According to this, man, perfect man (teleios) consists of three parts: body, soul, spirit (soma, psyche, pneuma).

Body and soul come by natural generation; spirit is given to the regenerate Christian alone. Thus, the "newness of life", of which St. Paul speaks, was conceived by some as a superadded entity, a kind of oversoul sublimating the "natural man" into a higher species.

This doctrine was variously distorted in the different Gnostic systems. The Gnostics divided man into three classes: pneumatici or spiritual, psychici or animal, choici or earthy..."

The Gnostics gave each of of the three a separate source (continuing the same thread). Their writings are claim +Paul as their source, and one can indeed find similarities in Gnsotic texts with modern Protestant leanings, indicated with emphases and square bracket comments:

To each class they ascribed a different origin and destiny. The spiritual were of the seed of Achemoth, and were destined to return in time whence they had sprung -- namely, into the pleroma.

Even in this life they are exempted from the possibility of a fall [assured salvation] from their high calling; they therefore stand in no need of good works, and have nothing to fear from the contaminations of the world and the flesh [Luther's pecca fortiter...]. This class consists of course of the Gnostics themselves. [i.e. the 'elect']

The psychici are in a lower position: they have capacities for spiritual life which they must cultivate by good works. They stand in a middle place, and may either rise to the spiritual or sink to the hylic level. In this category stands the Christian Church at large.

Lastly, the earthy souls are a mere material emanation, destined to perish: the matter of which they are composed being incapable of salvation (me gar einai ten hylen dektiken soterias). This class contains the multitudes of the merely natural man.