Chapter 5

The Creation of Human Nature — God Forms Body, Soul, and Spirit

A. Introduction: Where Everything Begins

Every building stands or falls on its foundation. Get the foundation wrong, and it does not matter how beautiful the walls are or how carefully you lay the roof. Sooner or later, the whole structure shifts.

The same is true for our understanding of what a human being is. If we get the anthropology wrong at the very beginning—at the moment of creation—then everything built on top of it will be crooked. Our view of death, our hope for resurrection, our understanding of the intermediate state, even the meaning of final judgment—all of it depends on what we believe happened when God made the first man.

That is why this chapter matters so much. We are going back to the beginning. Back to Genesis 2:7, the most foundational verse in all of biblical anthropology. Back to the moment when God stooped down, scooped up dust from the ground, and did something so extraordinary that every generation since has struggled to put it into words. He breathed. He breathed His own breath into that lifeless clay, and what had been mere dirt became a living being—a nephesh chayyah, a living soul.

But Genesis 2:7 is not the only creation text that speaks to the question of human nature. Across the Old Testament, scattered like gemstones in the soil, there are passages that describe how God made us, what He put inside us, and what distinguishes us from the rest of the created order. These passages do not all use the same vocabulary. Some speak of the nephesh (soul). Others speak of the ruach (spirit). Some describe God as actively forming an immaterial dimension within the human person. Others draw a sharp line between flesh and spirit as fundamentally different kinds of reality.

In this chapter, we will walk carefully through six of these creation-related passages: Genesis 2:7, Job 32:8, Psalm 139:14, Proverbs 20:27, Zechariah 12:1, and Isaiah 31:3. Together, they paint a picture of human nature that is richer, deeper, and more complex than the physicalist reading can accommodate. They show us that God did not merely organize dust in a clever way. He added something to the dust that the dust did not already contain. He gave us an immaterial dimension—a soul, a spirit, an inner life—that cannot be reduced to biology.

Here is the pattern we will see again and again: Fudge discussed only one of these six passages (Genesis 2:7), and even then his treatment flattened the text into a physicalist framework. The other five—Job 32:8, Psalm 139:14, Proverbs 20:27, Zechariah 12:1, and Isaiah 31:3—he ignored entirely. Not a word. Not a footnote. These are passages that speak directly to the nature of the human spirit, and the most influential book in the CI movement simply passed them by.¹

That silence is not a minor oversight. It is a structural gap. And filling that gap is exactly what this chapter sets out to do.

Before we dive in, a word about methodology. This is an exegetical chapter, which means we are going to work through each passage carefully, paying close attention to the Hebrew text, the literary context, and what the passage teaches or assumes about the relationship between body and soul. For each passage, I will present the text (in the NKJV), identify the key Hebrew terms, offer an exegetical exposition, explain what the passage means for the body-soul question, and note Fudge’s treatment (or lack thereof). At the end, we will draw the threads together and see what the cumulative picture looks like.

Here is what I am not doing: I am not cherry-picking verses to prove a predetermined conclusion. I am not reading Greek philosophy into the Hebrew text. I am not ignoring the holistic emphases of the Old Testament. I affirm wholeheartedly that the Old Testament presents human beings as unified, integrated creatures who function as whole persons. Body and soul work together. They were designed to work together. The human person is not a ghost driving a machine. What I deny is that this functional holism requires us to reject the existence of an immaterial soul. You can be a whole person and be composed of body and soul. In fact, the creation texts say that is exactly what you are.

B. Passage Expositions

1. Genesis 2:7 — The Two-Ingredient Creation

“And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7, NKJV)

This is the verse that starts it all. If you want to understand what a human being is, you have to start here. Everything else in biblical anthropology builds on what God did in this moment.

The verse describes a two-stage act of creation. First, God formed (Hebrew: yatsar, which means to shape or mold, like a potter shaping clay) man from the aphar (dust) of the ground.² This is the material component. Adam’s body is made from the earth—the same basic elements found in the rocks, the rivers, and the trees. His very name, Adam, is related to adamah, the Hebrew word for ground or earth. We are, in the most literal sense, earthlings.³

But then something else happens. God does not simply form the dust and step back. He breathes. The Hebrew says He breathed into man’s nostrils the nishmat chayyim—the “breath of life.” The word neshama (breath) is closely related to ruach (spirit/wind/breath), and together with nephesh (soul/life/being), these three terms form the core vocabulary of Old Testament anthropology.⁴ The result of God’s breathing is that man became a nephesh chayyah—a “living soul” or “living being.”

Now, what exactly happened here? This is where the physicalist and the dualist part company.

The physicalist reading—the one Fudge adopts—says that God took dust and breathed life into it, and the result was a living being. On this reading, the “breath of life” is not a separate substance or entity. It is simply God’s act of animating the dust. The dust, once animated, is the person. There is no separate soul. The whole person is physical, and nephesh chayyah just means “a living creature”—nothing more. Fudge follows this line closely. He writes that God forms Adam of dust, breathes into him the “breath of life,” and Adam becomes “a living soul,” noting that we use similar language when we say a man or animal is a conscious being.⁵ Fudge then emphasizes that the Old Testament applies the same terms—nephesh, ruach, and neshama—to both humans and animals, suggesting that these terms describe biological life rather than an immaterial soul.⁶

Fudge draws heavily on Hans Walter Wolff’s Anthropology of the Old Testament and the Finnish scholar Aimo Nikolainen to support a “holistic” reading in which nephesh stands for the whole person, not for an immaterial part. He quotes Wolff’s breakdown approvingly: “Soul speaks of ‘needy man,’ flesh is ‘man in his infirmity,’ spirit points to ‘man as he is empowered,’ and heart signifies ‘reasonable man.’”⁷ He also cites Nikolainen’s summary that “man is an indivisible whole” and that body, soul, and spirit are not parts into which a person can be divided.⁸

This is the reading that has dominated academic Old Testament scholarship for the better part of a century, and we should be fair about its strengths. It is true that nephesh has a wide range of meanings. It can mean “throat,” “appetite,” “life,” “person,” “self,” and even “corpse.”⁹ It is true that the same term is used of animals. And it is true that the Old Testament does not use nephesh in the precise philosophical sense that Plato used psyche. Nobody is arguing that it does.

But here is where the physicalist reading goes wrong. It confuses the semantic range of a word with the ontological reality the text describes.

The fact that nephesh can mean many things does not mean that human beings lack an immaterial soul. It just means that Hebrew is a flexible, concrete language that uses the same word in different contexts to pick out different realities. In English, the word “heart” can refer to the fleshy organ in your chest, to the emotional center of your being, or to the courage of a person (“she has heart”). Nobody concludes from this that courage is therefore a physical organ. The flexibility of the word does not collapse the reality it sometimes points to.¹⁰

What matters is not the word count for nephesh. What matters is the structure of the creation event itself. And the structure of Genesis 2:7 is strikingly dualistic. God takes two fundamentally different kinds of input—dust from the ground and breath from His own person—and combines them to produce one living being. The dust comes from the earth. The breath comes from God. These are not the same kind of thing. They do not come from the same source. They do not have the same properties. And when they are separated at death (as Ecclesiastes 12:7 describes), the dust returns to the earth and the spirit returns to God. The two ingredients go back to where they came from.

Cooper’s argument here is powerful, and it deserves to be spelled out. If materialism were true—if human beings were entirely physical—then in Old Testament language, the ruach (spirit/breath) would have to be something already contained within the dust itself. The dust would just need to be organized in the right way for life to emerge on its own. But that is not what Genesis describes. God did not simply shape the dust and wait for consciousness to pop out. He actively breathed something into the dust from the outside. As Cooper puts it, “human existence is created only when God puts the power to exist and function into the formed dust from the outside. Existential power is not inherent in the dust itself. God simply did not make the dust that way.”¹²

This is not Platonic dualism. Nobody is saying the soul is a divine spark trapped in a prison of flesh. The body is good—God made it, and He called it good. But the body by itself is not the whole story. God added something to the body that the body did not generate on its own. That “something” came directly from God, and it is what makes a human being alive, conscious, and capable of knowing its Creator.

The physicalist can respond that the “breath of life” is simply a metaphor for God’s act of giving life, not a description of a second substance. Fair enough. But notice what that response costs. If the breath is merely a metaphor for animation, then Genesis 2:7 tells us almost nothing about how God made us. It just says He made us alive. The entire two-stage structure of the verse—first the forming of dust, then the breathing of life—becomes decorative rather than informative. And the parallel with Ecclesiastes 12:7 (where the dust returns to the earth and the spirit returns to God) becomes inexplicable, because on the physicalist reading there is no “spirit” to return anywhere.¹³

The dualist reading, by contrast, takes the text at face value. God made us from two kinds of input: material (dust) and immaterial (the breath/spirit from God). Together, they constitute one living being. The person is a unity, yes—but a unity composed of two fundamentally different dimensions. That is what the text says. That is what the structure of the verse demands. And that is what the rest of the Old Testament confirms.

Consider an analogy. When a musician plays a violin, the music that fills the room is not produced by the wood alone. The wood is essential—without it, there is no instrument. But the music requires something the wood cannot generate on its own: the energy, skill, and intention of the musician. The violin is one unified source of music, but it is constituted from two fundamentally different inputs—the material instrument and the immaterial artistry. Neither one alone is sufficient. Together, they produce something beautiful.

That is something like what Genesis 2:7 describes. The dust is the instrument. The breath of God is the animating reality. Together, they produce a living soul. The person is one, but the person is made of two. And the two are radically different from each other. Dust does not think. Dust does not pray. Dust does not know its Creator. Whatever it is that enables a human being to do those things, it did not come from the ground. It came from God.

It is also worth noting what the text does not say. It does not say that God organized the dust into a sufficiently complex arrangement and then consciousness emerged on its own. That would be the physicalist story—matter, organized just right, produces mind. But Genesis tells a different story. God had to add something to the dust. The dust, however skillfully shaped, was lifeless until God breathed into it. Life did not bubble up from the bottom. It was poured in from the top.⁶⁰

Fudge’s Treatment: Fudge discussed Genesis 2:7 at some length (pp. 26–27), but his treatment consistently reads the verse through a physicalist lens. He emphasizes the holistic result (nephesh chayyah) while minimizing the duality of the inputs (dust + breath). He leans heavily on Wolff and Nikolainen while ignoring the substantial dualist scholarship on this text, particularly Cooper’s extended analysis in chapters 2 and 3 of Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting.¹⁴

2. Job 32:8 — The Spirit That Gives Understanding

“But there is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty gives him understanding.” (Job 32:8, NKJV)

Elihu is angry. He has been sitting quietly, listening to Job and his three friends go back and forth, waiting for one of the older men to say something wise. He has held his tongue out of respect for their age. But now he cannot hold back any longer. And before he launches into his speech, he says something remarkable about why he—a younger man—has the right to speak at all.

It is not age, he says, that gives a person wisdom. It is not the number of years on the calendar. There is something inside a person—a ruach (spirit)—and it is the neshama (breath) of the Almighty that gives that spirit understanding.¹⁵

Notice what Elihu is claiming. He is not saying that the brain gives understanding. He is not saying that the body’s physical processes generate wisdom. He is locating the capacity for understanding in a ruach—a spirit—that is in the person. The preposition matters. The spirit is in the man, the way a hand is in a glove. It is inside the person, but it is not identical to the person’s body. It is the inner seat of rational, intellectual, and spiritual capacity.

And where does this spirit get its power? From the neshama of the Almighty—the breath of God. This directly echoes Genesis 2:7, where God breathed the nishmat chayyim into Adam’s nostrils. The connection is unmistakable. The same breath that made Adam a living being is the breath that gives human beings the capacity for understanding, wisdom, and moral reasoning. And that breath comes from God, not from the dust.¹⁶

The physicalist reading struggles with this verse. If human beings are entirely physical, then what is the “spirit in man” that Elihu is talking about? One could say it is a metaphor for the capacity of rational thought—but that just pushes the question back. What has this capacity? On the physicalist view, the answer would be the brain. But Elihu does not say, “There is a brain in man.” He says there is a ruach. And he ties that ruach to the breath of God, not to the organization of matter.

J. P. Moreland observes that the Old Testament consistently treats the ruach as the seat of higher human capacities—reasoning, choosing, willing, responding to God—in a way that cannot simply be reduced to physical brain function.¹⁷ The spirit “can reason, deliberate, choose, will, rebel against God, hate one’s neighbor, be depressed or courageous, and err or lie,” as Cooper catalogs.¹⁸ These are not mere biological functions. They are the activities of a rational, volitional agent. And Elihu locates these capacities in a ruach that is empowered by the breath of God.

Now, I want to be careful here. I am not saying that Job 32:8 by itself proves substance dualism. What it does is provide a data point—one of many—that fits naturally within a dualist framework and awkwardly within a physicalist one. It describes the human person as having an inner spiritual dimension that is the source of understanding, and it traces that dimension back to God’s own creative breath. That is exactly what substance dualism predicts. It is not what physicalism predicts.

What is especially striking is the parallel structure of the verse. Two clauses, two subjects: “there is a spirit in man” / “the breath of the Almighty gives him understanding.” The spirit is in the man. The breath of God empowers that spirit. The result is understanding. This is a miniature version of the Genesis 2:7 pattern: a material being receives an immaterial endowment from God, and the result is a functioning, reasoning person.¹⁹

Think of it this way. Imagine you find a beautiful lamp in a dark room. The lamp has a bulb, a shade, wires, and a base—all the physical components. But it is not giving any light. Then someone plugs it in, and suddenly the room is bright. The electricity did not come from the lamp itself. It came from an outside source. Without it, the lamp was just a nice-looking piece of furniture. With it, the lamp does what it was designed to do.

That is what Elihu is describing. The “spirit in man” is like the electricity. It does not come from the body. It comes from God. And it is what gives us our capacity for understanding, wisdom, and moral discernment. Remove it, and we are just organized dust.

Fudge’s Treatment: Fudge completely ignored this verse. It does not appear in The Fire That Consumes—not in the main text, not in the footnotes, not even in passing. For a book that devotes several pages to the meaning of ruach and neshama, the omission of a verse that explicitly describes a ruach inside the human person giving understanding by the breath of God is a significant gap.²⁰

And the gap matters. When Fudge discusses ruach, he treats it as a “vital force” or “breath”—a kind of biological energy, not a personal, knowing reality. But Job 32:8 simply does not fit that description. A vital force does not “give understanding.” A biological energy does not receive wisdom from the breath of the Almighty. The verse demands a richer, more personal reading of ruach—one that the physicalist framework cannot easily provide.

3. Psalm 139:14 — My Soul Knows Very Well

“I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.” (Psalm 139:14, NKJV)

Psalm 139 is one of the most beloved passages in all of Scripture. It is a hymn of wonder at the intimate, all-knowing presence of God. David marvels that God knows when he sits down and when he stands up, that God perceives his thoughts from afar, that there is no place in heaven or earth or Sheol where he could flee from God’s presence (vv. 1–12). And then, in verses 13–16, David turns to the miracle of his own creation. God formed his inward parts. God wove him together in his mother’s womb. He is “fearfully and wonderfully made.”

The verse that matters most for our purposes is verse 14, and specifically the final clause: “and that my nephesh knows very well.”

Here David attributes a specific cognitive act—knowing—to his nephesh. His soul knows. Not his brain, not his body, not his physical organs—his nephesh. The verb yada (to know) is one of the richest words in the Old Testament. It can mean intellectual knowledge, experiential knowledge, intimate personal awareness, and even relational knowledge (as in “Adam knew Eve,” Genesis 4:1). When David says his nephesh knows that he is fearfully and wonderfully made, he is attributing deep, personal, experiential awareness to his soul.²¹

The physicalist will say this is just a way of saying “I know very well.” And in a sense, that is correct—nephesh often stands in for the personal pronoun, as scholars like Wolff have demonstrated.²² But even if we grant that nephesh here functions as a kind of emphatic “I,” we still need to ask: what kind of “I” is being described?

Look at the context. In verse 13, David says, “You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb.” The phrase “my inward parts” translates the Hebrew kilyah, which literally means “kidneys” but is used figuratively in the Old Testament to refer to the deepest interior of a person—the seat of emotions, thoughts, and moral discernment.²³ David is celebrating the fact that God made not just his outer, visible body, but his inner, invisible self. He is marveling at the complexity and beauty of the whole person—body and soul together.

And notice what he says about this inner reality: his nephesh knows. His soul is aware. His soul perceives. His soul recognizes the handiwork of God. This is not the language of a purely physical being reflecting on its own brain chemistry. This is the language of a person who has an inner life—a self that is aware of itself, aware of God, and capable of knowing truth at the deepest level.²⁴

Cooper points out that even when nephesh functions as a kind of “self” pronoun, this does not automatically mean it refers to the whole physical person. The very concept of a “self”—something that is aware, that knows, that reflects—raises the question of whether that self is identical to the body or whether it is something more.²⁵ Physicalism says the self is the body (or the brain). Dualism says the self is the soul, which operates through the body but is not identical to it. Psalm 139:14 does not settle that debate by itself, but it is far more naturally at home in a dualist framework. The soul knows. The soul is aware. The soul is the “I” that marvels at the work of God.

There is one more detail worth noting. In verse 15, David says, “My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.” The word “frame” here translates otsem, which refers to the body’s bones or skeletal structure. David distinguishes his otsem (his physical frame) from his kilyah (his inward parts) and his nephesh (his soul). He is not collapsing these into one thing. He is marveling at how God made all the dimensions of his being—the outer body, the inner depths, and the knowing soul.²⁶

Fudge’s Treatment: Fudge ignored this passage entirely. Psalm 139:14 does not appear anywhere in The Fire That Consumes. Given that this is one of the most frequently cited creation texts in all of Scripture—and that it explicitly attributes knowledge to the nephesh—the omission is puzzling.²⁷

4. Proverbs 20:27 — The Lamp of the LORD

“The spirit of a man is the lamp of the LORD, searching all the inner depths of his heart.” (Proverbs 20:27, NKJV)

If there were a single verse in the Old Testament that most clearly distinguishes the immaterial dimension of the human person from the material, this one might be it.

The verse has two parts. First, the neshama (breath/spirit) of a person is called “the lamp of the LORD.” Second, this lamp “searches all the inner depths of his heart” (chadarei baten, literally “the chambers of the belly” or “the rooms of the innermost being”).²⁸

Think about what this metaphor is doing. A lamp illuminates. It makes things visible that would otherwise be hidden in darkness. Solomon is saying that the human spirit functions as God’s lamp inside the person—it is the means by which God searches and knows the hidden depths of the human heart.

Several things are worth noticing. First, the neshama here is clearly something inside the person, not identical to the person as a whole. It is compared to a lamp inside a house. The house is the person. The lamp is the spirit. The lamp illuminates the rooms of the house (the “inner depths”). This spatial metaphor only makes sense if the spirit is a distinct dimension within the person, not simply another word for the person.²⁹

Second, the spirit is described as having an active function: it searches. This is the same Hebrew root (chaphes) used elsewhere for investigating, examining, probing. The human spirit actively probes the depths of the heart. It has a kind of searchlight capacity—an ability to perceive, examine, and reveal what is hidden in the innermost recesses of the person.³⁰

Third, the spirit is described as belonging to the LORD in some functional sense. It is God’s lamp. This is not to say that the human spirit is divine. It is to say that God implanted this capacity within us for a purpose—to serve as the means by which He knows us and by which we know ourselves at the deepest level. The spirit is the interface between God and the innermost person. It is the channel through which self-awareness and God-awareness meet.

The physicalist has a very hard time with this verse. If a person is entirely physical, then what is the “lamp of the LORD” inside them? The brain? The nervous system? These are physical structures that can be examined under a microscope. They are not lamps that search the hidden depths of the heart. The metaphor assumes that there is a non-physical reality inside the person—a spirit given by God—that functions as the seat of self-knowledge, moral awareness, and divine accessibility.³¹

This is worth pausing on. We live in a culture that assumes the brain explains everything about the human mind. If you feel sad, it is brain chemistry. If you make a moral decision, it is neural pathways firing. If you have a religious experience, it is your temporal lobe. And there is real science behind some of these claims—the brain does play a crucial role in our mental life. Nobody is denying that.

But Solomon did not know anything about neuroscience, and yet he identified something that neuroscience still struggles to explain: the human capacity for self-examination, for looking inward and seeing the truth about ourselves. Where does that come from? How does a purely physical system turn the searchlight on itself and come back with moral judgments? The physicalist says it is all just neurons. Solomon says it is the neshama—the spirit that God breathed into us—doing what God designed it to do. I find Solomon more persuasive.

Moreland argues that this is exactly what substance dualism predicts: the human spirit is an immaterial reality, distinct from the body, that serves as the “locus or source of all the higher subjective human capacities.”³² The spirit knows, examines, discerns, and responds to God. It is not generated by the physical body. It is given by God and functions within the body as a distinct kind of reality.

The analogy of a lamp in a house captures this perfectly. The house does not produce the light. The light comes from a source that is fundamentally different from wood and plaster. It illuminates the rooms of the house, but it is not made of the same stuff. In the same way, the human spirit illuminates the inner person, but it is not made of the same stuff as the body. It is immaterial. It is God’s gift. And it does something that organized matter, by itself, simply cannot do: it searches the deep things of the heart.

Fudge’s Treatment: Fudge completely ignored Proverbs 20:27. This verse does not appear in The Fire That Consumes. For a book that spends considerable time defining neshama and arguing that it refers only to biological breath or life-force, the absence of a verse that explicitly describes the neshama of a person as a lamp searching the inner depths of the heart is a striking omission.³³

5. Zechariah 12:1 — The LORD Forms the Spirit Within

“The burden of the word of the LORD against Israel. Thus says the LORD, who stretches out the heavens, lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him.” (Zechariah 12:1, NKJV)

This is one of the most theologically dense single verses in the prophetic literature, and it is almost never discussed in the physicalism-versus-dualism debate. That is unfortunate, because it says something extraordinary.

Zechariah begins with a declaration of God’s creative power. God is the one who “stretches out the heavens”—He made the cosmos. He is the one who “lays the foundation of the earth”—He made the material world. And He is the one who “forms the spirit of man within him.”

Stop and let that sink in. God is described as the author of three great creative works: the heavens, the earth, and the human spirit. The human spirit is placed alongside the creation of the cosmos and the creation of the earth as one of God’s foundational achievements. That is how important the human spirit is in the mind of the prophet.³⁴

The Hebrew verb for “forms” is yotser—the same root (yatsar) used in Genesis 2:7 for God forming Adam from the dust. But here the object is not the body. The object is the ruach—the spirit. God forms the spirit of man within him. The preposition “within” (beqirbo, literally “in his midst” or “in his inner parts”) places the spirit inside the person, as a distinct created reality located within the body.³⁵

This is devastating for the physicalist reading. If the human spirit is simply another word for the whole person, or if ruach is merely the biological breath of life, then it makes no sense to say God “forms” the spirit “within” the person. You do not form the whole person within the whole person. You do not place the breath of life inside itself. The language requires two realities: a person (the body/outer self) and a spirit (an inner reality formed by God and placed within the person).³⁶

The theological implications are enormous. First, the human spirit is a distinct creative act of God. It is not simply an emergent property of complex physical organization. It is something God actively forms. Second, the spirit is placed within the body—it is an interior reality, hidden inside the physical frame. Third, this creative act is mentioned alongside God’s creation of the heavens and the earth, suggesting that the human spirit is just as real, just as substantial, and just as much a product of divine craftsmanship as the physical cosmos itself.

This verse echoes and reinforces the pattern we saw in Genesis 2:7. In Genesis, God forms the body from dust and adds the breath of life. In Zechariah, God forms the spirit within the already-existing person. Both describe a two-dimensional creation: a material component and an immaterial component, brought together by the creative act of God.³⁷

The implication for the CI movement is direct. If Fudge and others are right that ruach merely means “breath” or “life-force” with no immaterial reality behind it, then Zechariah 12:1 is describing God as forming the breath of life within the person. But the verse places this act on the same level as creating the heavens and the earth. Would the prophet really be saying, “God, who made the cosmos and the planet and also gives people oxygen”? That trivializes the text. The much more natural reading is that the human spirit is a significant, substantive, immaterial reality—one that God creates with the same intentionality and care that He brought to the heavens themselves.³⁸

Fudge’s Treatment: Fudge completely ignored Zechariah 12:1. It does not appear in The Fire That Consumes. A verse in which God’s creation of the human spirit is listed alongside His creation of the heavens and the earth—and the most important book in the CI movement does not mention it even once.³⁹

6. Isaiah 31:3 — Flesh and Not Spirit

“Now the Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses are flesh, and not spirit. When the LORD stretches out His hand, both he who helps and he who is helped will fall down together, and they will all perish together.” (Isaiah 31:3, NKJV)

This verse is not usually discussed in the body-soul debate, and that is a mistake. It is one of the clearest ontological distinction passages in the entire Old Testament.

The historical context is this: Judah is in trouble, threatened by Assyria. Some of the leaders want to forge an alliance with Egypt for military protection. Isaiah warns them against it. Egypt cannot save them, because Egypt is human, not divine. And their military might—represented by their famous horses—is flesh, not spirit.

Look at the two contrasts Isaiah draws. The first is between man (adam) and God (el). The Egyptians are human, not divine. They lack divine power. The second contrast is between flesh (basar) and spirit (ruach). The horses are flesh, not spirit. They lack spiritual power.⁴⁰

What is Isaiah doing here? He is drawing a fundamental ontological line between two categories of reality: flesh and spirit. These are not two descriptions of the same thing. They are two contrasting kinds of being. Flesh is one kind of reality; spirit is another. To say the horses are flesh and not spirit is to say that flesh and spirit are mutually exclusive categories. Something that is purely flesh lacks the properties of spirit. Something that is spirit possesses powers and characteristics that flesh does not have.⁴¹

The physicalist wants to say that flesh and spirit are not two different kinds of substance but two different ways of talking about the same reality. But Isaiah’s grammar does not support this. The Hebrew conjunction welo (“and not”) draws a direct contrast. The horses are X, and not Y. Man is A, and not B. The logical structure requires that flesh and spirit be genuinely different things, not different perspectives on the same thing.⁴²

Now, I want to be careful about what this verse proves and what it does not. Isaiah’s primary point is about the difference between divine power and human weakness, not about the metaphysics of human nature. He is not writing a philosophy textbook. But the categories he uses—flesh versus spirit, human versus divine—reveal something about how the Old Testament understands reality. Flesh and spirit are not synonyms. They are not interchangeable descriptions of the same stuff. They are contrasting categories of being. Flesh is material, finite, weak. Spirit is immaterial, powerful, connected to the divine realm.

This has direct implications for anthropology. If flesh and spirit are genuinely different kinds of reality (as Isaiah assumes they are), then it is at least possible—and arguably expected—that human beings, who are made in God’s image, participate in both categories. We are flesh (our bodies are material). And, as Genesis 2:7 and the other passages in this chapter show, we also have a spirit dimension that comes from God. We are not merely flesh. We are flesh and spirit. The horses are flesh and not spirit. But human beings, because God breathed His own breath into them, are flesh with spirit.⁴³

This is precisely the ontological framework that substance dualism describes. There are two fundamentally different kinds of created reality: material (flesh) and immaterial (spirit). Human beings participate in both. The body is our material dimension. The soul or spirit is our immaterial dimension. Isaiah 31:3 does not develop this into a full philosophical system, but it operates within a worldview in which the flesh-spirit distinction is real, objective, and foundational.

Cooper notes that the Old Testament consistently treats dust/flesh and spirit/breath as “two different and mutually irreducible sources, elements, ingredients, ‘stuffs,’ or principles” from which human beings are constituted.⁴⁴ Isaiah 31:3 confirms this. Flesh is one kind of thing. Spirit is another. And neither can be reduced to the other.

One more observation is worth making. Isaiah does not treat the flesh-spirit distinction as something unusual or needing explanation. He assumes it. His audience understands it. He can appeal to it as a self-evident truth to make his political argument (do not trust Egypt). This suggests that the ontological distinction between flesh and spirit was part of the basic worldview of ancient Israel—not a late import from Greek philosophy, not a marginal curiosity, but a foundational category of thought. The prophets thought in terms of flesh versus spirit. They assumed their audiences did too. And that is exactly what we would expect if substance dualism—or something very much like it—was embedded in the Hebrew understanding of reality from the beginning.⁶³

Fudge’s Treatment: Fudge completely ignored Isaiah 31:3. It does not appear in The Fire That Consumes. A verse that draws a clear ontological contrast between flesh and spirit—the very categories at the heart of the physicalism-dualism debate—is entirely absent from his discussion.⁴⁵

C. Synthesis: What the Creation Texts Tell Us

We have now worked through six passages that speak directly to the creation and nature of the human person. It is time to step back and see the bigger picture.

The cumulative testimony of these texts is remarkably consistent. Over and over again, in different literary genres (narrative, wisdom, psalms, prophecy), written by different authors across different centuries, the Old Testament describes human beings as creatures composed of two fundamentally different dimensions: a material body and an immaterial spirit or soul. This is not a conclusion I am imposing on the text from the outside. It is the picture that emerges when we let the texts speak for themselves.

Genesis 2:7 shows God creating a human being from two inputs: dust (material) and breath (immaterial), producing a living soul. Job 32:8 describes a ruach (spirit) inside the person that receives understanding from God’s own neshama (breath). Psalm 139:14 attributes knowledge to the nephesh (soul), distinguishing it from the physical frame. Proverbs 20:27 describes the human neshama as God’s lamp, searching the inner depths of the heart. Zechariah 12:1 describes God as actively forming the ruach (spirit) within the person, placing this act alongside the creation of the heavens and the earth. And Isaiah 31:3 draws a sharp ontological contrast between flesh and spirit as two fundamentally different categories of reality.⁴⁶

These are not obscure, marginal texts. They include the foundational creation narrative, a major wisdom text, one of the best-known psalms, a proverb that directly addresses human nature, a prophetic oracle, and a statement about the fundamental structure of reality. Together, they form a web of testimony that is deeply dualist in its orientation—not in a Platonic sense (the soul is divine and immortal, the body is evil), but in a thoroughly biblical sense (the soul is created by God, the body is created by God, both are good, and together they constitute the whole person).

Cooper’s analysis of this material is especially helpful. After exhaustively examining the Hebrew anthropological vocabulary, he concludes that the Old Testament presents a “functional holism constituted from a duality of sources or ingredients.”⁴⁷ In other words, the human person functions as a unity—body and soul work together as one integrated system. But this unity is composed of two fundamentally different kinds of ingredient: material (dust/flesh) and immaterial (breath/spirit). Cooper argues that this picture “does not look as though it could be philosophically elaborated into monism—materialist, idealist, or neutral” because the two ingredients are mutually irreducible.⁴⁸

Moreland and Rickabaugh reinforce this conclusion from the philosophical side. They define substance dualism as the view that a human person is comprised of at least two substances—one material (the body) and one immaterial (the soul)—and that the immaterial soul is a simple, enduring substance that is the subject of consciousness, the bearer of personal identity, and the seat of rational and moral agency.⁴⁹ The Old Testament texts we have examined fit this philosophical framework remarkably well. The spirit in man gives understanding (Job 32:8). The soul knows (Psalm 139:14). The spirit searches the depths (Proverbs 20:27). God forms the spirit within (Zechariah 12:1). Flesh and spirit are different categories of being (Isaiah 31:3). These are exactly the kinds of data we would expect if substance dualism is true.

The strongest physicalist counter-argument is the one Fudge relies on: that nephesh, ruach, and neshama are flexible terms with wide semantic ranges, and that they do not point to an immaterial substance in the Platonic or Cartesian sense. This is partly true. These terms are flexible. They do have wide ranges. And the Old Testament does not use them in a philosophically precise way.

But this counter-argument proves too much. The fact that a word has multiple meanings does not mean it never refers to an immaterial reality. As Cooper carefully demonstrates, the variety of linguistic usage “defies any simple generalization, however rhetorically compelling.”⁵⁰ The words can refer to physical realities (throat, breath), to the whole person, and to the inner, immaterial dimension of the person. The physicalist latches onto the first two uses and ignores the third. But the third is there, and it is there repeatedly, and it is embedded in some of the most important theological texts in the Old Testament.

There is another problem with the physicalist counter-argument, and it is one that rarely gets the attention it deserves. The physicalist typically argues that since nephesh is used of animals as well as humans (Genesis 1:20, 24; 9:5), it cannot refer to an immaterial soul. After all, nobody argues that animals have immaterial Platonic souls. So if nephesh means the same thing for animals and humans, it must refer to biological life, not to an immaterial substance.

But this argument moves too fast. Yes, nephesh is used of animals. But so is the word “life,” and nobody concludes that human life and animal life are identical in every respect. The fact that a term has a broad application does not mean it has the same meaning in every context. A word can have a basic, general meaning (living creature) that takes on richer, more specific meanings when applied in particular theological contexts (the human soul that knows God, departs at death, and returns to the Creator). Context determines meaning, not word-frequency alone.⁶¹

And here is the crucial observation: while nephesh is used of both humans and animals in the creation accounts, the manner of creation is different. Animals are created by God’s command: “Let the earth bring forth the living creature” (Gen. 1:24). But the human being receives something no animal receives: the direct, personal, intimate breath of God into the nostrils. God does not breathe into the animals. He breathes into Adam. That is the difference. The result in both cases is a nephesh chayyah—a living creature. But the kind of living creature differs, because the input differs. Adam receives something from God that the animals do not receive. And that something—the divine breath, the neshama from God’s own person—is what gives human beings their unique rational, moral, and spiritual capacities.⁶²

D. Cross-References and Connections

The creation texts examined in this chapter do not stand alone. They are connected to a vast web of passages throughout the Old and New Testaments that confirm, develop, and extend the dualist picture of human nature.

The most obvious connection is to Ecclesiastes 12:7 (treated in detail in Chapter 6), which describes what happens at death: “Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.” This verse is the reverse image of Genesis 2:7. At creation, dust and spirit are brought together. At death, they come apart. The dust goes back to the earth. The spirit goes back to God. If the spirit were merely another word for the organized body, then there would be nothing to “return” to God at death. The body decomposes. Something else goes somewhere else. Ecclesiastes 12:7 only makes sense if the spirit is a real, separable entity distinct from the body.⁵²

Another key connection is to Genesis 35:18 (also treated in Chapter 6), where Rachel’s nephesh is described as departing at the moment of her death. This narrative presupposes exactly the ontology established in Genesis 2:7: the person is a composite of body and soul, and at death the soul leaves the body. The creation texts tell us how God put us together. The death narratives tell us what happens when the union is broken.

1 Thessalonians 5:23 (treated in Chapter 15) carries the creation pattern into the New Testament. Paul prays that the Thessalonians’ “whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Whatever one makes of the trichotomy-dichotomy debate, Paul clearly distinguishes the material dimension (body) from at least one immaterial dimension (spirit/soul). This is precisely what the creation texts establish.⁵³

The connection to Ezekiel 37:5–6 (treated in Chapter 7) is also important. In the vision of the dry bones, God reconstitutes human bodies from their scattered remains—bones, sinews, flesh, and skin come together. But the bodies are still lifeless. Only when God sends His ruach into them do they come alive. The pattern is identical to Genesis 2:7: material body + divine spirit = living being. Even in resurrection, the two ingredients are distinct.⁵⁴

Finally, the creation pattern connects directly to Matthew 10:28 (treated in Chapter 10), where Jesus says, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Jesus’ statement assumes the ontology of Genesis 2:7: the person is composed of body and soul, and these two can be separated. Humans can kill the body. Only God can destroy both body and soul. The creation texts lay the foundation; Jesus builds on it.⁵⁵

There is a beautiful arc here. Genesis 2:7 tells us how God put the person together. The death narratives (Genesis 35:18, Ecclesiastes 12:7) tell us what happens when the person comes apart. The intermediate state texts (Luke 16:19–31; Revelation 6:9–11) tell us that the soul persists between death and resurrection. And the resurrection texts (Ezekiel 37; 1 Corinthians 15) tell us that God will put the person back together again—body and soul reunited in glory. The creation texts are the first chapter of a story that runs all the way to the new creation. And if you get the first chapter wrong, the rest of the story does not make sense.

E. Pastoral Implications

The question of how God made us is not just an academic exercise. It shapes how we live, how we grieve, and how we hope.

If the creation texts teach what I believe they teach—that God made us as composite beings with both a material body and an immaterial soul—then we are more than our biology. Our worth does not depend on the health of our brains, the strength of our bodies, or the sophistication of our neural networks. It depends on the fact that God breathed something of Himself into us—a spirit that knows, that searches, that yearns for its Creator.⁵⁶

This matters for the person lying in a hospital bed, trapped in a body that no longer works the way it should. If physicalism is true, that person is diminishing as their body fails. Their “self” is shrinking along with their brain function. But if dualism is true, the person—the real person, the knowing nephesh, the spirit that is God’s lamp—is fully present, fully real, fully loved by God, regardless of what the body can or cannot do.⁵⁷

This matters for the grieving mother who has just lost a child. If physicalism is true, her child simply ceased to exist at the moment of death. There is no one to be with God. There is no one to pray for. There is no one waiting on the other side. But if the creation texts are right, and if the spirit that God formed within that child is real, then that child’s spirit has returned to the God who gave it (Ecclesiastes 12:7). The child is not gone. The child is with their Maker. And one day, body and soul will be reunited in the resurrection.⁵⁸

This matters for you. Right now. Wherever you are reading these words, you are more than dust. You are more than a clever arrangement of carbon and water and electrical impulses. God formed your spirit within you (Zechariah 12:1). Your soul knows the works of God (Psalm 139:14). The spirit in you gives you understanding (Job 32:8). And that spirit is the lamp of the LORD, searching the very depths of who you are (Proverbs 20:27).

If the physicalist reading reduces all of this to metaphor, the church loses something precious: the assurance that we are known, loved, and held by a God who made every dimension of our being—the visible body and the invisible soul. We are more than dust. The creation texts say so. And what God has made, we should not dismiss.⁵⁹

I want to speak especially to my fellow believers in the conditional immortality movement. I know that some of you came to CI partly through the physicalist door. You were told that the soul is not a separate entity, that “the whole person dies,” and that this supports the CI reading of final destruction. I understand why that argument is attractive. It is clean. It is simple. But it is not necessary. You do not need physicalism to believe in conditional immortality. Jesus Himself taught that God can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna (Matthew 10:28)—and that verse only works if the soul is a real thing, distinct from the body, that God can destroy. CI is stronger with substance dualism, not weaker. The creation texts show us why. God made us body and soul. God can unmake us body and soul. That is the heart of conditional immortality. And it requires no physicalism at all.