Do Mary's words in the Magnificat, distinguishing soul and spirit, imply a trichotomy of body, soul, and spirit?
A viewer asks whether Mary's distinction between soul and spirit in the Magnificat implies a trichotomy of body, soul, and spirit.
Answer
No. Mary's Magnificat is written in the style of Hebrew poetry, or parallelism, where you say a line and then say a second line similar to it in slightly different words but meaning basically the same thing. She says, 'My soul does magnify the Lord,' and then, 'My spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.' Because the first line has 'my soul' and the second 'my spirit,' in Hebrew poetry those are the same thing; soul and spirit are the same, simply used in two different ways. Greek had several words for soul but essentially one for spirit, pneuma, and it sometimes uses 'soul' where we would say a person: 1 Peter 3 speaks of 'eight souls saved in the ark,' meaning eight people, just as we might say so many souls were saved from a crash. When soul and spirit appear together, 'soul' is used to focus more on the bodily, human side and 'spirit' on the spiritual or godly side, but both refer to the same immaterial part of the person, not the body. You never find 'eight spirits saved in the ark.' So there is a difference in how the words are used, but no trichotomy; soul and spirit are not two different things.