
Derek Prince (1915-2003) was born in India to British parents and was a scholar of Greek and Latin, attending both Eton College and Cambridge University. At university he described himself as an atheist, but while serving with the British army in World War II, he began studying the Bible and became a Christian.{1]
Derek Prince Publications began in 1971 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. By 1990 Derek this ministry had expanded, distributing free Bible teaching material had in 140 countries. Currently Derek Prince Ministries has offices in over 45 countries with over 50 books published and translated into more than 60 languages. There is also a large archive of audio and visual material online.[2]
Derek Prince believed and taught man as spirit, soul, and body. I believe this clarity contributed to the popularity and appreciation of his teaching.[3] This view of the nature of man was integral to his teaching as in:
- What is Man? (2 sessions) Audio CD and MP3
- Bible Psychology (8 sessions) Audio CD and MP3 Only the mirror of Scripture can reveals to man his own inner nature and restore true harmony. The tabernacle and its furnishings are inspired patterns which reveal the God-ordained functions of spirit, soul and body.
- The New Creation ( 2 sessions) Audio CD and MP3 How does the new creation affect man’s spirit? His soul? His body? What is the nature of the new man?
Here is a sample recording from Prince’s 10 part series titled “Total Man.”
https://www.derekprince.com/radio/802
Description: God made man of spirit, soul, and body. Today Derek looks at these three parts to define what they are and how they work together. Apart from God, man’s soulish nature tries to run things. The divine connection of man’s spirit to God’s Spirit is necessary for man to become what he was made to be.
After surveying relevant Scriptures (such as Hebrews 4:12; 1 Thessalonians 5:23; Genesis 2:7; 1 Corinthians 15:45), Derek Prince summarized:
“Spirit has life in itself. It gives life. But soul must first receive life from spirit before it can live. So there we have the divine breath of God, the eternal, self-existent breath of God, breathed into that body of clay and the result a living soul a nefesh, something that is essentially dependent on spirit, dependent on God to receive life and to maintain life. So those are the three elements that make up man in his total personality. The spirit from above, the body from beneath and the soul which is produced by union of spirit and body, a living human personality.”
Prince then emphasized the need for biblical revelation to understand the tri-une nature of man. He testified,
“For many years I studied Greek philosophy in the original language, and Greek philosophy, in a certain sense, revolves around the soul. But the interesting thing is that there are none, or almost no words in English that begin with pneuma. And in Greek philosophy, really nothing was ever devoted to that [spiritual] element of man. What does that mean? It means this. That apart from the mirror of God’s revelation, man is aware he has a soul. He’s really unaware of his own spirit. There’s an element in him deeper than his understanding which he cannot plumb, which he cannot fathom, which he can only know about through divine revelation. So again we see that we are absolutely shut up to the mirror of God’s Word if we want to know the truth about ourselves.”
This observation is confirmed in Hebrews 4:12: “For the Word that God speaks is alive and full of power [making it active, operative, energizing, and effective]; it is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating to the dividing line of the breath of life (soul) and [the immortal] spirit…” AMPC
JBW
[1] Wikipedia.com
[2] DerekPrince.com
[3] The doctrine of holistic trichotomy of man is not merely theoretical but of great practical value.
Audio and ebook content is available at https://store-us.derekprince.com/