Chapter 4 of When Heaven Invades Earth has what I said in Part 1 of this article was a vague, hazy anthropology. Bill Johnson did not give a clear and specific description of human nature in chapter 4. Yet he appeared to assume one as he frequently used words and phrases regularly found in classical discussions of a biblical sense of human nature, of a biblical anthropology; words like heart, soul, mind, spirit. Although he did not explicitly refer to the body, he did discuss the material realm or natural world and contrasted it to the invisible or spiritual realm, which he thought was superior to the natural. Let’s see how this sense of human nature compares to a classical anthropology, and see if it is supported by Scripture.
The first thing Anthony Hoekema said in chapter 1 of Created in God’s Image, was: “It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of a doctrine of man.” Central to a biblical understanding of the Christian doctrine of man is that we were created in the image of God. He thought this image had both a structural and a functional aspect and a threefold relationship to God, to others, and to nature. It had four stages—the original image, the perverted image, the renewed image, and the perfected image. He also contrasted this biblical anthropology with two non-Christian anthropologies—an idealistic and materialistic one.
Non-Christian Anthropologies
Idealistic anthropologies consider humans to basically be spirit, with their physical bodies foreign to their real nature. This was the view of ancient Greek philosophy. Plato thought what was real about humans was their intellect or reason, “which is actually a spark of the divine within the person that continues to exist after the body dies.” According to Plato,
The human body, however, partakes of matter, which is a lower order of reality; it is a hindrance to the spirit, and one is really better off without it. Those who hold this view teach the immortality of the soul but deny the resurrection of the body.
Bill Johnson seems to hold a similar view with regard to the material world being of a lower order of reality. He said people of unbelief will call themselves realists. “They believe the material world rules over the spiritual world. However, people of faith are also realists. “They just have their foundation in a superior reality.”
More common today are the materialistic anthropologies that see humans as being composed of material elements. Their mental, emotional, and spiritual life are byproducts of their material structure. “Human beings have not been created in the image of God.” In fact, for these anthropologies there is no God. Humans are products of nature and their environment.
One way of evaluating these views would be to say that they are one-sided; that is, they emphasize one aspect of the human being at the expense of others. Idealistic anthropologies lay all the emphasis on one’s “soul” or “reason,” while denying full reality to his or her material structure. Materialistic anthropologies like those of Marx and [B.F.] Skinner, absolutize the physical side of man while denying the reality of what we might call his or her “mental” or “spiritual” side.
Hoekema said these anthropologies are guilty of idolatry—of worshipping an aspect of creation in the place of God. “If, as the Bible teaches, the most important thing about man is that he is inescapably related to God, we must judge as deficient any anthropology which denies that relatedness.” He said the purpose of his book was to explore the Christian view of man— “what it is, how it is different from non-Christian views, and what are its implications for our thinking and living.” He cautioned that historically non-Christian notions have crept into so-called Christian anthropologies and we have to ask ourselves if there are any remnants of non-Christian anthropology in our thinking about human nature.
Although Johnson does not explicitly affirm an idealistic anthropology, note how he seems to consider the material world as a lower order of reality. “The invisible realm is superior to the natural… The natural realm is the anchor of unbelief” (p. 45). Is this evidence of an idealistic, non-Christian notion creeping into his anthropology?
Humans as Created Persons
Hoekema said we are created persons; we are both creatures and persons (Genesis 1:27). God give humans breath and life (Acts 17:25). “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). As a person we have a kind of independence; we make decisions, set goals, and move in the direction of those goals. This independence is not absolute, but relative.
To be a creature means that I cannot move a finger or utter a word apart from God; to be a person means when my fingers are moved, I move them, and that when words are uttered by my lips, I utter them. To be creatures means that God is the potter and we are the clay (Romans 9:21); to be persons means we are the ones who fashion our lives by our own decisions (Galatians 6:7-8).
The creaturehood and personhood of man must be held both together and in tension. When theology stresses creaturehood and subordinates personhood, a hard-faced determinism surfaces and man is dehumanized. . . When personhood is stressed to the exclusion of creaturehood, man is deified and God’s sovereignty is compromised. The Lord is left standing helplessly in the wings as if man has the power to veto the plans and purposes of God. (Robert Brinsmead, “Man as Creature and Person”)
In Part 1, I noted that Bill Johnson seemed to disregard the physical, material—bodily—part of humanity. He focused his discussion on the invisible, immaterial and spiritual aspect of human nature and saw the material realm in a negative, inferior way. There is then an evident emphasis on what Hoekema calls the personhood of humanity and a minimization of the creaturehood of humanity. This emphasis of personhood over creaturehood is likely a bias stemming from Bill Johnson’s NAR theological leanings. Bringing heaven to earth, apostles and prophets bringing us new revelation, open theism and more are beliefs that appear to grow out the unacknowledged “deification” of man in NAR and in When Heaven Invades Earth.
The Whole Person
Hoekema went on to say in Created in God’s Image is that one of the most important aspects of a Christian anthropology is that we must see humans in their unity, as whole persons. Human beings have been described as distinct parts abstracted from the whole. “So in Christian circles, man has been thought of as consisting either of ‘body’ and ‘soul’ [dichotomy], or of ‘body,’ ‘soul,’ and ‘spirit’ [trichotomy]” He noted it was not possible to construct an exact, biblical psychology since the Bible uses terms like soul, spirit and heart “more or less interchangeably.”
He said trichotomy must be rejected because it does violence to the unity of humanity and often presupposes an antithesis between spirit and body. Further, it posits a sharp distinction between spirit and soul that is not supported in Scripture. People are described as having body and soul (Matthew 10:28) and body and spirit (1 Corinthians 7:34). Praising and loving God is ascribed to both soul and spirit (Luke 1:46-47; Mark 12:30). And salvation is associated with both soul and spirit (James 1:21; 1 Corinthians 5:5).
He then described how Hebrews 4:12 does not intend to say the word of God causes a separation between the soul and spirit any more than “he intends to say that the word causes a division between the joints of the body and the marrow found in the bones.” And 1 Thessalonians 5:23 was not a doctrinal statement, but a prayer.
When Paul prays for the Thessalonians that the spirit, soul, and body of each one of them may be preserved or kept, he is obviously not trying to split man into three parts, any more than Jesus intended to split man into four parts, when he said in Luke 10:27, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.”
Hoekema also thought dichotomy should be rejected by Christian believers, not only because of its non-Christian Platonic sense, but also because it is not an accurate view of human nature. It suggests the human person can be cut into two parts. “But man in this present life cannot be so cut.”
Plato thought body and soul should be thought of as two distinct substances—the thinking soul which was divine, and the body. “Since the body is composed of the inferior substance called matter, it is of lower value than the soul.” At death, the body disintegrates, while the rational soul returns to the heavens. “The soul is considered a superior substance, inherently indestructible, while the body is inferior to the soul, mortal, and doomed to total destruction.”
When examining Hebrew and Greek terms used for soul, nephesh and psyche respectively, Hoekema said they often stood for the whole person. And the Hebrew and Greek terms usually meaning spirit were rūach and pneuma respectively. Pneuma and psyche are also frequently used interchangeably for soul and spirit in the New Testament.
The Hebrew word for heart, lēbh or lēbhābh, described the whole person and has a religious significance. It’s used to describe the seat of thinking feeling and willing; and can also be the seat of sin (Genesis 6:5), the seat of renewal (Psalm 51:10) and the seat of faith (Proverbs 3:5). The New Testament usage of kardia (heart), is similar. The primary meaning for kardia is “the seat of physical, spiritual and mental life.” Notably, it is also said to be the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.
So here again, we see the biblical emphasis on the wholeness of man. Kardia stands for the whole person in his or her inner essence. In the heart of man’s basic attitude toward God is determined, whether of faith or unbelief, obedience or rebellion.
According to Hoekema, the biblical use of soul, spirit and heart typically refer to the whole person. Whether in the Old or New Testament, soul and spirit are often used interchangeably. Heart also describes the whole person in the both Old and New Testament. Not only is it the seat of sin, renewal and faith, it is the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.
In contrast, Johnson specifically said, “Faith is born of the Spirit in the hearts of mankind” and “The Holy Spirit lives in my spirit.” He seems to distinguish between heart/spirit and soul, stating the soul is a combination of mind, will and emotion. Carnal or soul-driven Christians are ruled by their intellect and reject things that don’t make sense to their rational mind. But, “When we learn to receive from our spirit, our mind becomes the student and is therefore subject to the Holy Spirit” (p. 47).
In a vague and hazy way, Johnson seems to distinguish between spirit and soul, where our spirit is the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit; “the place of communion with God.” The heart and/or spirit is not where the mind, will and emotions are; they are in the soul. I’d suggest again, this distinction comes from Johnson’s NAR theological leanings and contributes to an unacknowledged spiritualization and “deification” of man in NAR theology.
The Old Testament doesn’t really have a word for body, but it does use bāsār to refer to the physical aspect of flesh. In the New Testament there are two words for body, sarx and sōma. Sarx is usually translated as flesh. Some of the other meanings in the standard Greek lexicon for sarx are a human being, human nature, and the willing instrument of sin.
Sōma is also commonly translated as body. It can mean the human body, living or dead; or the resurrection body: “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:44). It can also mean a body of people, as in the Christian community or church (Romans 12:5; Ephesians 5:23). The term sōma is used to represent the whole person, and weighs against the idea of the individual person as existing apart from a bodily manifestation. Hoekema then said:
We may summarize our discussion of the biblical words used to describe the various aspects of man as follows: man must be understood as a unitary being. He has a physical side and a mental or spiritual side, but we must not separate these two. The human person must be understood as an embodied soul or a “besouled” body. He or she must be seen in his or her totality, not as a composite of different “parts.” This is the clear teaching of both the Old and New Testaments.
Biblically, human beings are one person, with two sides: physical and nonphysical. They have physical bodies, but also personalities. They have a mind with which they think, but also a brain which is part of the body, and without which they cannot think. While a human being is one person, they can be looked at from two sides. Having rejected the term dichotomy, Hoekema suggested speaking of human beings as a psychosomatic unity. “The advantage of this expression is that it does full justice to the two sides of man, while stressing man’s unity.”
Bill Johnson’s unacknowledged anthropology distinguishes between the heart/spirit and the soul. He seems to either disregard humanity’s physical side, or sees it as inferior to the heart/soul. He does not see humans wholistically as psychosomatic beings. His sense of heart, soul and spirit neglects the biblical inclusion of the physical, material part of the whole person when the Bible uses those terms. And this appears to be a consequence of his obsession with the unseen realm, where the spirit and the Holy Spirit are.
He doesn’t describe humans as created persons; as both creatures and persons (Genesis 1:27). He ignores or disregards the physical, material—bodily—side of humanity. When we commune with God in our spirit, “As we learn to receive from our spirits we learn how to be Spirit led.” I don’t think Bill Johnson gives us a clear, biblical picture of how God created us in His image.
