Man is a Three-Part Being
This is the part my journey that has taken a lot of soul searching and studying the scriptures along with much time in meditation.
I ask you too, not to jump to any preconceived ideas but allow these thoughts to hang lightly and prayerfully consider them. A very common way that this topic is explained is Man is Spirit, he has a Soul, and lives in a Body. This clearly shows we are a three-part being, but to me this did not truly explain what I saw in the scriptures.
We need to find out how each part relates to the three aspects we find with God, a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This did not sit well with me because I found a lot of difficulty in placing the persons together. Father, Spirit; Son, Soul; and Holy Spirit, Body. You see this does not fit together very well.
Another idea that might be used is the family unit, because God functions as a unit but three different roles. Here again the pieces just don’t fit together very well. Who would be the Male, who would be the Female, and the Child, well the child could be male or female, so this really did not fit together either?
I came to realise that the analogy had a lot to do with the way that each work in unity, God and Man. There is one place, well possible more that we see this. The first place we see The God Head working together and displaying their individual roles is in the first Chapter of Genesis. Let’s go there and I show you what I am referring to.
To briefly go over the passage we see, God speaks a Word and that Word goes out and something is created. Can you see the three things that are going on here? Now you will need to use a little bit of your imagination. This process took me many hours just contemplating the first chapter of Genesis.
God Speaks. Now before you speak, mostly you need to have contemplated what you are about to speak. I say mostly because we can speak rashly without pre-thinking at all. This aspect of speaking creatively needs to be done knowing every small part of the thing you are going to speak into existence. Then you have all the building blocks that nead to be available to make that Word become a reality. This process requires the imagination to ‘see’ all the bits working together and is often called the intuitive aspect of our mental processing.
Now the ‘Word’ or Words, can be simply seen as the structure of what is being created. That ‘Word’ needs to have all the life in it to form, to process, and bring materialisation, to give "substance” to that thought. This process can be referred as the logical step-by-step process and is often called the left side of the brain that is working.
That ‘Word’ although has life in it, needs something to gestate it into being, this process can also be referred to as the reproduction process that encapsulates all the fullness of that “Word” into being.
Now hold on to your hats, I’m going to interpret all this above.
The Intuitive aspect of this process can be said to be the Feminine side, the Word being the structed the Masculine side, and the force that combines it all together the Productive side. To unwrap this more, The Father has the planning, intuitive process, the whole picture, then the Son (Word) brings it all into the physical realm, and the Holy Spirit is the reproductive side.
Are you still with me?
So, you have the Man and the Woman coming together and sharing their reproductive process, each having half of the material that is going to form the new being. When we read the first chapter of Genesis we see that Man is described as being Male and Female, made in the “Image of God”. Does this not show a common idea? The Man and The Woman coming together as One Flesh operating to produce a new being. Each giving of their own individuality and sharing the third part that is given to this new being.
May I suggest that this is what Paul the Apostle is trying to convey when he talks about ‘being one flesh’. This opens up the idea that when God separated the Woman from the Man, that in taking a rib (more correctly a side) they were joined at the hip or the whole side. This also can lead one to ‘see’ that the woman was physically present when God gave the Instructions about the "Tree of Good and Evil", so she was also party to that Instruction.
It also adds clarity to as to why we don’t have any discourse from Adam when the snake is talking with the Woman. They were always functioning in “tandem” and that Adam accepting the decision of eating of the fruit. As you might suspect there is much more that can be added here but it is best to leave it for now.
How did Man’s disobedience change God’s plan?
Let's follow on to see more.
PaulT.