Well, personally I'd be rather cautious about assuming a fully uniform
conception of human psychology in all NT writers: certainly, as I think I
remarked a day or two ago, SARX doesn't appear to have quite the demonic
associations for the gospel of John as it does in the unquestioned letters
of Paul.
It may be a bit more difficult to decide about the author of Hebrews (oh
yes, Priscilla?), who is clearly familiar with Greek philosophical notions
as well as with Greek rhetoric, but one POSSIBLE way of looking at the
implicit psychology of Heb 4:12 is to see the PNEUMA as representing the
"breath of life," the RUACH, breathed by God into Adam's nostril's to make
him a NEFESH, "a living creature." And that really is a unified whole that
can't be thought of as a separable body and soul in terms of Platonic
dualism. On the other hand, YUCH is sometimes used in Greek to represent
the NEFESH, and it is just possible--I don't say this is more than a
guess--that the author of Hebrews is thinking of that line between what
makes a human being alive as a creature and the creature as a whole that
cannot subsist without the life-giving RUACH.
In sum, I'd be leery of trying too hard to derive a clear and consistent
anthropology from different NT writers--and it's hard enough to try to get
a clear sense of what the author of Hebrews means in this passage.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/