This teaching of the Apostle Paul in his First Letter to the Church of the Corinthians introduces us into the ideas of Christianity in the first centuries, the spiritual man and his liberation through the grace of the spirit of God or in other words: the Gnosis. It is necessary to understand first the difference between the Bible and Greek philosophy. Greek philosophy focuses on the study of the soul, in consecuence the triple división of man: reason, passion and desire. Greek philosophy in particular Aristotle and Plato do not study the spirit, they focus primarily on the problem of Justice. From the point of view of the spiritual man or full of the holy spirit, justice is a form of error, thus the notion of "heresy. The justice is the desire of the soul, the spirit is focuse in the counsel of God not justice.
In the first Epistle to the Corinthians is presented the threefold division of man, we are body soul and spirit, this allows us to understand the existence of three types of people according to different elements prevailing in each one.
In those who prevais the desire for the good, remember that the desire for the good corresponds to the wisdom, we say that they are the spiritual or pnematics men, the men full of the grace of the holy spirit, the wise men. Pneuma in Greek means spirit.The proper of them is the good discernment and council.This type of man is at the top of the spiritual hierarchy: "the spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man jugdment", an example of this is the disciples who receive the holy spirit in Pentecost (Acts of the Apostles 2)
In those who prevails the passions, we say that the soul prevails since the soul is something that is related to the passions. These are often called emotionals, what belongs to them is the prudence and deliberation.
Then we say there is a third type of men called natural men, in them prevails the desires of the body and matters relating to it, these people prevail also the falsehood, the cunning and the trickery. The proper of them is the bad discernment.
These three types of men we can see them knowing that the good is a nature and that we can be deprived of a nature in different ways.
As the opinion and the ignorance are deprivations of the knowledge, so there are also different metaphysical states deprived of the good; one prevailing the passions and this is the intermediate state between good and evil; and in another metaphysical state the falsehood. This would give rise to the three types of men.