dichotomist

Among the Reformers, Luther stands out, possibly, as a major exception to the prevailing dichotomist view.

In maintaining the doctrine of original sin against the Pelagian party, Augustine ultimately held to the dichotomist conception of man and thought it safer to pass by the distinction of soul and spirit as an "unprofitable distinction".

The basic premise is a radical non-dualism, in which every and any dichotomist way of seeing things is denied: so phenomena are neither existent, nor non-existent, but are marked by sunyata, emptiness, an absence of any essential unchanging nature.

Pelikan has noted that in Luther's writings there is support for the "trichotomist idea of human nature as made up of body, soul, and spirit; but there are also places in his writings which seem to speak for the dichotomist idea of man's material and nonmaterial nature as the two parts of his being."