You have a body, indisputably, and by the concepts of theism a soul and spirit (I’m not sure I can define the distinction there, so please let’s not get into that!) as well. Your mind would be considered an aspect of your soul – the rational aspect, as opposed to the faith-feeling aspect normally referred to as “soul.”
But while everything you do is determined by your soul (sensu lato), everything you do is mediated by your body. Being too tired or too drunk will even prevent you from thinking well; any interaction with the world of the senses is done by the body in one way or another.
In the conceptions of both Jewish and pre-Christian Greek thought, a soul or spirit released from the body by death is effectively powerless – a ghost in the strictest of senses, barely perceptible if at all, and incapable of doing much of anything to interact with the world – to exercise its will in any way.
It’s in this context that Paul’s insistence on the resurrection of the body and the spiritual body in which people are raised makes a big impact – for all his hearers, Gentile and Jew alike, the idea that you might be whole after physical death was a totally new concept. Survival after death was not something to look forward to for them prior to this pronouncement; it would be more or less akin to telling you that you’ll live 1,000 years – but spend the last 900 as a quadraplegic without visitors.
Spirits at death went to Sheol (Hebrew term) or Hades (Greek term) – the land of the dead, which was divided into (Hebrews) Abraham’s Bosom and Torments / (Greeks) Elysian Fields and Tartarus. In each case, the good spirits in the former lived a shadowy afterlife with slender comforts; the evil spirits in the latter were made to suffer according to their faults in life. But in no case was there any real opportunity for a fulfilling life after death. The “good place” (conceptually based on both Abraham’s Bosom and Elysium) was developed by medieval Catholic thinkers into Limbo, the final resting place of virtuous pagans and unbaptized children.
Jesus was supposed to have brought the spirits from Abraham’s Bosom to Heaven after freeing them from death. (Later writers turned this into the Harrowing of Hell.)
Does that help to clarify matters any?
