From "Tripartite Anthropology," De Lubac's Study of Christian Trichotomy from St. Paul to the Modern Age

Henri De Lubac summarizes Origen's tripartite anthropology [body, soul, spirit]:

"the pneuma [spirit] that is 'in man', in every man, assures a certain hidden transcendence of man over himself, a certain opening, a certain received continuity between man and God. Not that there is the least identity of essence between one and the other [...]; but it is at the heart of man, the privileged place, always intact, of their encounter.

Would man, be after all impeccable? No. But the center of moral freedom and choice is not the pneuma. That is why we can say that for Origen the pneuma, 'divine gift', is not, properly speaking, part of the personality. The center of choice is the soul [psyche] in its higher part (nous). The latter can be inclined, as St. Paul says, on the side of the spirit or on the side of the 'flesh' (which does not mean body); which is to say that it is 'capable of virtue and vice.' When it is said that the flesh desires against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, without any doubt the soul is posed between the two, as being able to acquiesce to the desires of the spirit (si eum sequi velit), or let itself be led to carnal desires; in the latter case, it becomes with the flesh a single body of covetousness and carnal appetite; in the former case, on the contrary, it becomes a single spirit with it.' The spiritual man is the one in whom the spirit prevails, the carnal man, he in whom the flesh prevails. The spirit itself, the pneuma, always remains holy; but, in each one, it can have vitality or torpor, flight or fall, flame or sluggishness. This is why, paradoxically, Origen can affirm both, as we have said, that the pneuma is holy and that it must become so."

(141-142)