Dípsychos (δίψυχος): The unstable state of double-mindedness that arises when there are in us two (di) spirits (psyches) vying in a never-ending battle for control
[Reading Time: 14 minutes]
Introduction
Double-mindedness, which literally means having “two souls” or “two spirits” operating simultaneously within us, is the focus of this word study. And, as the title states, these two spirits (the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of the Age) are “vying” with each other “in a never-ending battle for control,” which relates this all back to our earlier word studies on reconciliation that were centered on the struggle within the human heart for either autonomy and control, on the one hand, or obedience in and through Christ, on the other. For, as we likely know by now, this battle, this war, is “never-ending” while we are in This Now Age (ho nŷn aiṓn)
The simple reason, therefore, for this brief examination (as this word only occurs two times in the NT) is to better grasp how the sides we take in this continuous battle directly relates to either our foundational security as believers or our psychological and spiritual instability. For, as James reveals to us, a “double-minded man” will be “unstable in all his ways” (Jam 1:8).
This is a categorical statement. And if it is indeed true, which we would have to say that it is, the two questions we have before us are:
What are the causes for this instability of two-spiritedness within us? and
What is the pathway offered to us in the Scriptures for confronting and dealing with this state so that we may move towards a position of singleness of heart and singleness of purpose?
With this introductory word, we will attempt a basic response to both of these questions as we move through the usages of this word, as they occur in James 1 and 4.
Etymology and Dictionary Definition
Dípsychos (δίψυχος)
From Dí + psychḗ, literally meaning that a person has “two (Dí) spirits or souls (psychḗs)” within him. The implications of this for both ourselves and our families, churches and communities are obvious.
2 occurrences in the NT
Summary Synthesis
Two-spiritedness first occurs in the opening of James’ Epistle after he had made the extraordinary statement that we are to ‘count it all joy’ when we ‘fall into varied and manifold trials.’ And the reason being is that the peirasmós, if we will but receive them, can work in us to temper a strength of character that can persevere through all the snares that the world, the flesh and the devil lay before us.
For the Lord uses these trials to make us, as the Apostle declare, ‘perfect and complete…lacking nothing’—This is to say, the Lord not only allows the peirasmos in our lives, but moreover, uses them in order to bring about in us a fullness which would not have been possible any other way.
From the spiritual benefits that come to us in and through the fires of testing, James then offers the pathway into true wisdom. In short, if we truly desire wisdom we have to ask ‘in faith, nothing doubting.’ For if we doubt, we become like the sea, tossed back and forth, this way and that.
That is to say, we ‘double-minded’ with two spirits seeking to simultaneously control our behavior. When we waver in our faith, intertwining (plékō) the realities of the eternal Kingdom with those of This Fallen Age, we end up losing whatever God can give us in this present age. And even more, in the process we become ‘unstable’ in not some, but ‘in all [our] ways.’
It is, as Jesus puts it in another passage, like trying to put “new wine” (that is, the risen life of faith) into “old wineskins” (that is, back into our old ways of thinking). Or, as Luke says, adding a further dimension of insight, it causes your spirit to be ‘crowded out’ (enochléō).
Dípsychos, then, becomes the root of all our instability in the Christian life.
This is the first occurrence of dípsychos. The second comes in the fourth chapter of James. Here, it represents the double-mindedness of inner war and divided loyalties that come when are driven by the Kingdom of God, on the one hand, and by our very intense desires for pleasure, on the other.
Where do wars and fights come from among you?
Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?
Then he relates this divided mindset to the Christian’s own prayer life, answering the question (which we ask over and over and over again) why do we not “receive” what we pray for:
You ask and do not receive
Why?
Because you ask amiss,
That you may spend it on your pleasures.
And such a life of double-minded-Kingdom-looking-yet-pleasure-seeking, drives us towards a ‘friendship with the world’ which is nothing short of an ‘enmity with God.’
What, then, is the pathway through this maze of self-deceit?
James is very simple here. It requires a singular obedience:
We must ‘submit to God.’
We must ‘resist the devil.’
We must ‘draw near to God.’
We must ‘cleanse our hands.’
And we must ‘purify our hearts’, lest we be double-minded and two spirited (dípsychos).
For He will always ‘give’ us ‘more grace.’
He will always draw near to us.
And, at the very same time, He will always ‘resist the proud.’
And so the word study comes to a conclusion with this call for a pathway forward of humble obedience.
Amen!
And so may it be!
Detailed Analysis
The words of a slave of Jesus: Count it all joy
James opens his Epistle by identifying himself, not as an “Apostle,” nor one specially called by the “will of God” (though, obviously, these are both true). Rather, he simply states that he is a “slave (doûlos) of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” (1:1). That is to say, all the authority that he possesses in his presentation of the Gospel and its application to the fledgling Christian communities resides not in his autonomous self-will but in his vital relationship of obedience to “God and Jesus Christ.”
He then begins his Epistle with possibly the most striking and extraordinary statement in any introduction of any book in the Bible. (Using the original word order), he states:
All joy (pâs chará) may you count it, my brothers, whenever into testings and trials (peirasmós) you fall, [for they will, no doubt, be] varied and manifold (poikílos),
“All joy.”
Our response to the fires of testing, whose force will change throughout our lives so as to more surgically target our areas of weakness, should be joy?
Not self-defense or anger or frustration or some sort of misdirected fight against “injustice.”
Just “joy.”
That is to be our response?
Even more, “all joy” (not just “some joy”)?
Passing through the fires of testing
As the Apostle goes on to write, we must maintain this attitude because we
know that the testing (dokimazo) of [our] faith produces persevering endurance (hupomone).
This testing, these trials, and our simple bearing up under the weight of (hupo + ménō) them can itself become the very means that enables us to pass through the fires, the crucible, of testing (again, [dokimazo]) in such a way that the fires begin working to reveal our genuine nature in the Gospel (I Cor 3:12-15).
Yet to do so, we must change the frame of our mind from the immediacy of an emotional reaction against the misery of them (“Again…Really…Unbelievable…”) to a measured response that takes the longterm view of how it relates to our formation as believers.
For the Apostle adds a further word lest we should fall short of the fullness of the promise that specifically comes to us in these fires:
But let patient endurance (hupomonḗ) work fully and completely in you (katergázomai: From kata + ergázomai), that you may be perfect (téleios) and complete (holóklēros: From holos + kleros; Lit. “that which comes out of every possible lot in life” [such that you are]), lacking nothing” (1:2-4).
“Perfect and complete…lacking nothing”—This is why the Lord not only allows peirasmos in our lives but, moreover, specifically uses them in order to bring about in us a fullness which would not have been possible any other way. Or to put it a little bit differently, without the testing of our faith, we will ever remain incomplete.
Abba Anthony in the late 3rd c. would even say after decades of intense spiritual warfare and testings and trials (Athanasius, Life of Anthony, 2-13):
“Whoever has not experienced testing cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven,” even adding “Without testing, no one can be saved.”
From the patient endurance that flows out of dokimazo to the prayer of faith that brings wisdom
From the spiritual benefits that come to us in and through the fires of testing, James then offers the pathway into true wisdom:
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, Who gives to all singularly (haplōs: From a + plékō: ‘Not” [a] woven together [plékō]’ in the sense of being “single” in one’s actions) and without reproach, and it will be given to him.
Very simple: understand what you need and ask God, Who gives to us in a way that is perfectly suited to our needs and thus, makes us singular, like Him.
Yet, there is a condition:
But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.
Faith is the sine qua non to a singular prayer for wisdom. But without such eyes of faith that enable us to first see then participate in the operations of the eternal realm, then we, like Peter, sink down into the waves that “toss us to and fro, back and forth.”
This, as James goes on to show, then produces in us a deep instability, where we become as unstable as the very waves themselves. When we waver in our faith, intertwining (plékō) the realities of the eternal Kingdom with those of This Fallen Age, then we lose whatever God can give us in this present age. For, to go back to the descriptor, God, gives haplōs—in a way that is singular, unmixed, unblended. And so, James concludes:
For let not that man suppose that he will receive (lambánō) anything from the Lord
The root of all our instability in the Christian life
And Why will we receive nothing from the Lord?
The answer: Double-mindedness.
For he is a double-minded man (anḗr dípsychos)
And a two-spirited man will ever be
unstable (akatástatos: From a + katá + hístēmi: To not [a] be made to thoroughly [katá] stand firm [hístēmi]) in all his ways.
Again, he will be unstable, not in some, but in all of his ways.
Wow! A categorical diagnosis: unstable in all his ways.
When we seek to intertwine the things of the world with the things of God, the realities of this present age with those of the Kingdom of Christ, it makes us insecure, infirm, unstable. Even more, it bursts us apart. For it is, as Jesus Himself tells us with a different analogy, like trying to put “new wine” (that is, the risen life of faith) into “old wineskins” (that is, back into our old ways of thinking):
And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined (Lk 5:37).
Our only option then, once we have tasted of the goodness of the Kingdom of God is, to continue the analogy:
But new wine must be put into new wineskins, and both are preserved (5:38).
An aside: enochléō and the crowd of divided thoughts
In Luke’s Gospel right before Jesus gives the Sermon on the Plain, it speaks of His healing work.
And He came down with them and stood on a level place with a crowd (óchlos) of His disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem, and from the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, who came to hear Him and be healed (iáomai) of their diseases (Lk 6:17).
Then, Luke adds that those came to him
who were tormented (enochléō) with unclean spirits. And they were healed (therapeúō, 6:18).
The word he selects to describe the tormenting effects of demonization is enochléō, which is derived from en + ochléō and literally means those in whom (en) there was a ‘crowd’ (ochléō). That is to say, the action of the demons in their inner spirit was to ‘crowd’ them out with a multiplicity of thoughts.
For those of us in medicine, does this possibly make any sense of some of the psychological conditions we see…? For those of us in the Church working with parishioners, does this offer some explanatory insight into the deep spiritual sicknesses we encounter?
For even in the ancient desert communities where men and women lived together after having fled the world and ‘all that is in it;’ yet even there, they still experienced this ‘crowding out.’ In the words of Amma Syncletica,
There are many who live in the mountains and behave as if they were in the town, and they are wasting their time.
It is possible to be a solitary in one’s mind while living in a crowd, and it is possible for one who is a solitary to live in the crowd of his own thoughts.
The second occurrence: The Double-mindedness of inner war and divided loyalties
We move now to the second and final occurrence of dípsychos in the NT, which comes to us in the fourth chapter of James’ Epistle. With the groundwork laid of what a true, singular life of faith looks like, he applies this to the Christian’s life in this age. And what he first targets is our “desires”, our lust for pleasure (hēdonḗ) that divide and ‘crowd out’ our spirit, bringing “war” in our very members:
He begins with a question:
Where do wars and fights come from among you?
Then the answer:
Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? (Jam 4:1)
He, then, explains,
You lust and do not have.
You murder and covet and cannot obtain.
You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask (4:2).
Then he relates this divided mindset to the Christian’s own prayer life, answering the question (which we ask over and over and over again) why do we not “receive” what we pray for:
You ask and do not receive
Why?
Because you ask amiss,
That you may spend it on your pleasures (4:3).
And what does that make us, then, who claim the name of Christ? In a word of prophetic chastisment, James declare that we are
Adulterers and adulteresses!
Then he explains, again starting with a simple question:
Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?
Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God (4:4).
Are we really being “all things to all people” or just seeking “friendship with the world”?
A pathway through double-mindedness
James continues with one further question,
Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns (epipothéō: From epi + pothéō: ‘To greatly desire and long after something that is absent’) unto jealousy (prós phthónos)”?
Or to translate it a bit less literally, following the NET,
Or do you think the Scripture means nothing when it says, “The spirit that God caused to live within us has an envious yearning”?
The “spirit,” that is, which is our “lustful capacity” that “produces a divided mind” (1:8,14) and inward conflicts regarding God (4:1-4), which He has “allowed to be in man since the Fall.”
Yet—and yet—even with this divided spirit in us, as we look in singular faith to Him,
He gives more grace.
Therefore He says:
“God resists the proud,
But gives grace to the humble” (4:6).
The pathway through which James offers to us who have to war with this inner spirit of division that is operating in us all the time, literally at every moment is a command:
Therefore submit to God.
Yet with a promise:
Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you (4:7-8a).
Then James returns to dípsychos for the final time in his letter:
Cleanse your hands, you sinners;
And purify your hearts, you double-minded (dípsychos, 4:8b).
Adding one final promise:
Grieve and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to despair.
Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up (4:9-10).
The path is laid with the mines of self-deceit and division. And our pathway through requires submission to God in true humility. No other way will suffice.
In the words of Anthony and with this we close,
7. Abba Anthony said, "I saw the snares that the enemy spreads out over the world and I said groaning, "What can get through from such snares?"
Then I heard a voice saying to me, 'Humility.'"