There Is No Spiritual-Material Dualism: Only God’s Unified Creation of the Human Person

The human person is not divided into separate “spiritual” and “material” sides, as if they were opposing or independent realities. Scripture and Catholic tradition, rooted in pre-1300 sources, affirm the profound unity of the human being as a single nature ordered entirely to God.

Old Testament: Original Hebrew Terms and Unity

In Genesis 2:7 (Hebrew text):
“Yahweh God formed (yatsar) the man (adam) from dust (aphar) of the ground (adamah), and breathed (naphach) into his nostrils the breath (neshamah) of life (chayyim); and the man became a living being (nephesh chayyah).”

• Nephesh (often translated “soul”): Means a “living being” or “breathing creature”—the whole animated person, not an immaterial part trapped in a body. The same term (nephesh chayyah) applies to animals (Gen 1:20, 24). Man does not have a nephesh; he is a nephesh when God’s breath animates the dust-formed body. This is holistic unity: body + divine breath = one living person. No dualism here—the person is one, from God’s side alone.

Hebrew anthropology rejects Platonic separation; the body is not evil or secondary. Death is disintegration (Eccl 12:7: spirit/breath returns to God, dust to earth), not liberation of a “spiritual side.”

New Testament: Original Greek Terms and Unity

The NT, written in Greek, draws on Hebrew thought, not Greek dualism.

• Genesis 2:7 echoed in 1 Cor 15:45: Paul calls Adam “a living psyche” (psychē zōsa, direct Septuagint quote of nephesh chayyah)—the whole person, animated by God’s pneuma (breath/spirit).
• Key terms:
  • Sōma (body): The physical, embodied person.
  • Psychē (soul/life): Often the whole self or life-principle (e.g., Matt 16:26: lose one’s psychē = lose one’s whole life/self).
  • Pneuma (spirit/breath): God’s animating power or the human spirit oriented to God (not a separate “spiritual side”).

In 1 Thessalonians 5:23 (Greek):
“Autos de ho theos tēs eirēnēs hagiasai hymas holoteleis, kai holoklēron hymōn to pneuma kai hē psychē kai to sōma tereitheie amemptōs en tē parousia tou kyriou hēmōn Iēsou Christou.”

Paul prays for complete sanctification of “your whole pneuma and psychē and sōma.” This is not trichotomous division into separate parts but comprehensive wholeness—covering every aspect of the person (like “heart, soul, mind, strength” in Mark 12:30). Biblical scholars note this as Hebrew-style parallelism for totality, not ontological separation. The person is one, sanctified wholly by God.

NT rejects Greek body-soul dualism (e.g., body not inherently evil; resurrection affirms embodied life—1 Cor 15).

Pre-1300 Catholic Teaching: Unity from Church Fathers and Aquinas

The Church preserved Aristotle’s insight (harmonized with revelation) against Platonic dualism.

Aristotle (De Anima): Soul (psychē) is the form (eidos) of the body—its actuality and principle of life. Not separate substance but what makes body a living unity (hylomorphism: matter-form composite). Plants: vegetative soul; animals: sensitive; humans: rational—yet one soul, one substance.

St. Thomas Aquinas (13th century, pre-1300 culmination): Synthesizes this in Summa Theologica (I, q. 76):

• Human soul is substantial form of the body—one substance, profound unity.
• Soul not “spiritual side” separate from “material side”; it informs matter, making one nature.
• Intellect immortal, but naturally united to body; separation at death unnatural.

Church Fathers (e.g., Augustine, influenced by Plato but corrected toward unity) and councils affirm creation ex nihilo—one God creating unified persons.

No pre-1300 council decrees strict dualism; emphasis on resurrection of the body (Apostles’ Creed) shows embodiment essential.

Catechism of the Catholic Church (Rooted in Tradition)

Though post-1300, CCC distills ancient teaching:

• CCC 362–368: “Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity… The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the ‘form’ of the body… spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.” (CCC 365)
• No divided “sides”—only God’s creation: one person, body-soul composite, wholly ordered to Him.

True dichotomy is sin vs. grace, not spirit vs. matter. Modern dualisms (e.g., body as shell) echo condemned heresies. The human person is one reality—from God’s side alone.