What is the human consciousness?

It will be seen therefore how far they err from the truth who think that Christians only have "spirit" as well as soul and body. Even beasts have, though in them it may be but instinct, in man an incomparably higher and larger faculty, rising with the immensely higher character of man's immortal soul; whereas beasts, however wonderfully endowed according to God's will, are creatures without reason, mere animals to be taken and destroyed (2 Peter 2:12). Consciousness of "I" is in the soul, and on its real existence hangs personal identity; but capacity of reflex reasoning on that consciousness, as on every other object, is in the spirit of man; as capacity for the things of God is with "I" quickened, the power of which is in the Holy Spirit given to the Christian. It is wholly false therefore to confound mind, still more knowledge, with the soul, though the soul has a kindred spirit capable of reflection, discrimination, and all other mental operations within the order of its being. Reflective self-consciousness distinguishes man; still more does God-consciousness. "There is a spirit in man, and the breath at the Almighty gives them understanding" (Job 32:8).

This reflective self-consciousness is man's distinctive prerogative, as having a spirit. "I" has the power of using the upper faculty to reflect on the workings of "I." I reflect, but the capacity is in the spirit of man. "There is," says Elihu, "a spirit in man." But how was this before the fall? I mean as to "will." And here I have to remark that I think "will" is used in two ways - intention, the tendency of nature or "I," towards something, and the determination of "I" to go out towards that something, and where this question is raised in a moral ground.

87 "Spirit" is used often for the soul including the higher part. So even of Jesus, "He gave up the ghost" (paredoken to pneuma). This word we must also examine. It is used not uncommonly for the spiritual part of man in contrast with his body, as Luke 8:55, "Her spirit came again," confirming the clear distinction between the two, as with soul. So where the two latter are also distinguished, spirit, soul, and body. But I think it has another force than "soul," though used in a general way like it, in contrast with "body," as the non-corporeal part of man. "Soul," as connecting itself with its action in the body, though clearly distinct, is more connected with life, and so used for it. "Spirit" is more the active, intelligent consciousness, or the seat of that consciousness, which belongs to the inner man; and just what distinguishes man from the beast is that the latter has merely a living soul connected with an organism, passions, habits, faculties, such as memory, affections; while man has received this state of existence through God's breathing into his nostrils the breath of life - by the spirit of life he became a living soul. Hence in ordinary language the two may be used as one; because of the pneuma zoes (the spirit of life) he has a psuchen zosan (a living soul). The mere animal has a psuchen zosan, but not through a divine pneuma zoes. The mere breath of natural life is organic, and has nothing to do with this. Hence "spirit" is used for this active, intelligent, consciousness. In the Christian it is connected often with the Holy Spirit which dwells in him, as its activities are produced by it, not the soul. The Spirit and its fruit may thus also characterise the state of the soul. This character of the spirit of man, the connection of the term with active intelligent consciousness is frequently found; Matt. 26:41, "The spirit indeed is willing"; Mark 2:8, "Jesus perceived in his spirit; chap. 8:12, "He sighed deeply in his spirit"; Luke 1:80, "Waxed strong in spirit;" chap. 2:40; chaps. 10:20; 23:46; John 4:23-24; chaps. 11:33; 13:21; (chap. 19:30, used in general, so Acts 7:59). Acts 17:16; Rom. 1:9; chap. 12:11; 1 Cor. 2:11; chap. 5:3-5 (used in special manner for activity of the inner man and a power, not intelligent, thus contrasted with nous - proof of the difference of mere mind from the active principle, though usually acting, in the present state of human nature, in it as the present form of its power; so that consciousness, not mind, is essential to it); 1 Cor. 14:2, 14, 15, etc.; 2 Cor. 2:13; chap. 7:1, here through the mind, verse 13; Gal. 6:18; 1 Thess. 5:23; 2 Tim. 4:22; Heb. 12:23. In Thessalonians and Hebrews, the contrast with body is clear, and in the former with soul also.

In some such way deadly false doctrine befalls such as venture to pry into what is only known to the Father and immeasurably above man's ken. The Apollinarian heterodoxy prevails largely at present; as the error which led to it is a relic of heathen philosophy, accepted by early Fathers such as Clement of Alexandria, and exceedingly common among "thinkers" now as at all times. It pervades Franz Delitzsch's Psychology and its English analogue, The Tripartite Nature of Man. They (and F.E.R. follows them) make the self-conscious "I" or individuality to reside in man's spirit. But scripture abundantly proves its seat to be in the soul. The spirit is inner capacity as to which man is responsible to God; but the soul is that in which he is so; and the body is the outer vessel which displays the result, whether by grace for God's will or by self-will in Satan's service.

But this, then, in brief, is man; and thus he is distinguished from the beast. His kingdom is that of spirit, while it is fully allowed that by one side he is related to the beast. Granting this, it is yet only a partial and materialistic classification that can assign him his place in nature with the beast. He is a true microcosm, in whom all the elements of the world in which he is are assimilated into a perfect unity, which sin has indeed obscured, but not destroyed. Life is indeed, as has been already said, the basis of organic unity. Yet in the plant, the individual organism can be divided again and again, and multiplied by division. So in the lowest animals, as notably in the Hydrae, we find soul itself little jealous of a similar division. In the Zoophytes it is often hard to say what an individual really is; and thus we may suspect even in the higher animals that it is more the complexity of the organism than the nature of the soul that resists division. But in man with spirit we find personality, a unity which appears in consciousness, and asserts sovereignty over all the lower nature. Here is at last a being who can say "I," and despite the constant change in his material frame, affirms his own continuous identity. Thus in his sphere, small though it may be, he is truly in the image of God, the unchangeable One, — His offspring.

36 But consciousness, self-consciousness, is the hinge of all this. I affirm that I am so constituted that I have the instinctive consciousness of "I." This Mansel has not at all seen. I do not take Descartes' dictum - "I think and therefore am" (that is, as if it made no difference). When one says "I think," one must have a thought to think (that is, an object, the intelligible as well as the intelligent). But when one says "I," there is self-consciousness. I am so created as to say "I." This does not say Descartes is wrong: he is right; but in his syllogism consciousness is the object of his reasoning. "I" is a thinking being, and therefore "I" is a being. But this is drawn from consciousness, and has no force save in it. Yet it remains true that I can say "I" as the expression of self-consciousness. But, having this self-consciousness, I have senses; I am so constituted as to have the knowledge of existence with self-consciousness, and that as an excellence. It is that to which thought attaches itself. I cannot have knowledge without it; I can have sense and memory, but not reflective thought.

In man, once more we have a distinct addition, that of spirit; and by this it is, clearly, that he is created in the image of God. For God is Spirit, and the Father of spirits (Heb. 12:9). The son is therefore in the Father's image; and in the human spirit, the mental and moral faculties are added to the instinctive and emotional ones. But then by this union the gain of the soul over that of the animal merely is easily to be seen. The law we have traced thus far manifests itself again; the soul in its turn acquires an inseparable union with spirit, by which it shares in the light of self-consciousness in which the spirit moves, and becomes partaker also in its immortality. The beast perishes, but not the soul of man, which they that kill the body cannot touch.*

Mr. Grant's view requires nothing of the sort. The "things of man" are just human things, as "the things of God" are divine things. It is not a question of another person in either case. But if the Spirit of God knows divine things, then He is conscious and intelligent; and so is the spirit of man in human things. And I know not what argues personality more than consciousness and intelligence. Does Mr. Roberts? Of course this infers the personality of the spirit of man, and this is obnoxious to him but the passage before us does plainly intimate that the essence of personality in man is in his spirit. This is a very important point, which will come up again in its own place.

Now here it will require no lengthened examination to see that the spirit is presented in Scripture as the seat of the mind or understanding, as we have just seen it to be sometimes even translated. The passage from 1 Cor. 2:11, is indeed the most positive assertion of it that can well be: "What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him?" Here the spirit of man in the man is that part of him to which all intelligence is referred. Hence we may know what to think of the knowledge or honesty displayed in such a statement as the following from one of Miles Grant's writings: "In all the 400 passages in the Old, and the 385 in the New Testament, where these words occur, we do not find one that teaches that when this spirit or breath is in man, it is the thinking, accountable part, or that it ever did or ever will think. Why is the Bible wholly silent on this point? Why are we not taught somewhere that the ruach or pneuma is the real man?" Mr. Grant of course adopts the usual confusion of the breath of life with the spirit of man, and I do not mean to assert by any means, that the breath of life is the "real man." But to his latter question I do most positively and distinctly answer that the Bible does teach that the spirit of man is the conscious thinking part, and that his not seeing it is only due to his own blindness, not to its not being there. It says most definitely and distinctly, that the "man" which knows the "things of a man" is "the spirit of man, which is IN him." There is no escape from its plain speaking. It speaks so plainly indeed that Mr. Grant has seen it best to ignore its testimony in his pamphlet just referred to and it is his silence that is to be remarked, and not the silence of the Scriptures.

This "spirit of man," then, cannot be with Mr. Grant either an "influence" or "a state of feeling," or the "atmosphere or breath of life." It cannot be Mr. Morris' new nature (or else all unconverted men are born idiots), or "motions and emotions of the soul." No, it is simply what the words declare, a conscious intelligent existence in the man, and that to which all his intelligence of human things is due. "What man knoweth the things of a man, save the SPIRIT OF MAN which is IN him?"

The body is not the whole man, for he is often said to be in it or absent from it, clothed with it or unclothed. Thus for faith the body is the clothing of the man, and his "tabernacle," which supposes an inhabitant. Paul has a vision of unutterable things, and does not know whether he was in the body or out of the body at the time he saw them. 2. In the language of sense man is identified with the body; for faith, with what dwells in it. The Lord lay in Joseph's tomb, yet confessedly His divine nature did not lie there. 3. Man is spirit and soul and body. 4. Spirit is not an universal principle floating in the atmosphere, but a separate entity in every individual, "spirit of man," "spirits of men." It was formed within him by the Lord, and all his knowledge is ascribed to it This spirit the beast has not. 5. The soul is not the body, but in the body. Beasts have and are living souls, and man is called a soul to distinguish him from the rest of intelligent creatures, who are called "spirits." The soul is the link also between the spirit and the body, the life of the latter while in connection with it; the seat of affection, nay, of appetite, lusts, etc. 6. It thus characterizes the man himself, so as to be identified with him, soul and person being used as the same thing, while in the intermediate disembodied state the general term for him is that he is a spirit. 7. Again the soul is that through which man was seduced and fell, and which characterizes the natural man as led by it. It is thus specially connected in Scripture with will and lust, with sin and with atonement. 8. By the possession of a spirit distinguishing him from beast man is in relationship with God, the Father and God of spirits, and is a moral, responsible being, made for eternity in contrast with the "beasts that perish."