Andrew Murray on the Tripartite Man

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

ANDREW MURRAY (1828-1917)

In his masterpiece The Spirit of Christ, Andrew Murray refers several times to the fact that man is tripartite. In chapter 24 entitled “The Temple of the Holy Spirit” Murray states,

One of these realities—for Divine Truth is exceeding rich and full and has many and very diverse applications—one of these realities shadowed forth by the Temple, is man’s three fold nature.…Man is God’s temple. In him, too, there are the three parts. In the body you have the outercourt.…Then there is the soul, with its inner life, its power of mind and feeling and will. In regenerate man this is the holy place.…Man has not only body and soul, but also spirit. Deeper down than where the soul with its consciousness can enter, there is a spirit-nature linking him with God. (159-160)

Deeper down than where the soul with its consciousness can enter, there is a spirit-nature linking him with God

In chapter 29, entitled “The Spirit of Love,” Murray continues, “We must here again refer to what has been said of man’s three-fold nature, body, soul, and spirit, as constituted in creation and disorganized by the fall” (193).

Finally, in a note on “The Place of the Indwelling” (Chaps. 6 and 29) Murray says, “In the constitution of these three parts of man’s nature, the spirit, as linking him with the Divine, was the highest; the body, connecting him with the sensible and animal, the lowest; intermediate stood the soul, partaker of the nature of the others, the bond that united them, and through which they could act on each other.”