My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE.
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HOW IMPORTANT IS OUR SOUL?
Listen to what our Lord Jesus Christ says: "For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? (St. Matthew 16:26).
"Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell" (St. Matthew 10:28).
And Saint James the Apostle writes: "Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls" (St. James 1:21).
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"THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN PERSON": THE BODY-SOUL RELATIONSHIP IN ORTHODOX THEOLOGY
By Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia
"You have made me and laid Your hand upon me; Your knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great, and I cannot attain to it" (Psalm 138 [139]: 5-6.
Microcosm and Mediator
In any dialogue between theology and science, there is one basic truth which as Christians we must keep continually in view. Spirit and matter are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, they are interdependent; they interpenetrate and interact. When speaking, therefore, of the human person, we are not to think of the soul and the body as two separable "parts" which together comprise a greater whole. The soul, so far from being a "part" of the person, is an expression and manifestation of the totality of our human personhood, when viewed from a particular point of view. The body is likewise an expression of our total personhood, viewed from another point of view - from a point of view that, although different from the first, is complementary to it and in no respect contrary. "Body" and "soul" are thus ways of describing the energies of a single undivided whole. A truly Christian view of human nature needs always to be unitary and holistic.
It is true that, in our daily experience, we often feel within ourselves not undivided unity but fragmentation and conflict, with soul and body in sharp opposition to one another. It is this that Saint Paul expresses when he exclaims: "O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?" (Romans 7:24). Saint John Climacus (7th century) voices the same perplexity when he says of his body: "He is my helper and my enemy, my assistant and my opponent, a protector, and a traitor...What is this mystery in me? What is the principle of this mixture of body and soul? How can I be both my own friend and my own enemy? "...But if we feel within ourselves this dividedness and warfare between our soul and body, that is not because God has made us that way, but because we are living in a fallen world, subject to the consequences of sin. God for His part has created us as an undivided unity; it is we human beings who through our sinfulness have undermined that unity, although it is never altogether destroyed.
Whenever, therefore, we find passages in the Holy Bible or the Holy Fathers which seem to affirm an antagonism and division between body and soul, or which appear to condemn the body as evil, we have to ask ourselves: To what level of human existence does the text in question refer? Is the author speaking about the fallen or the unfallen condition of mankind? Is he talking about the body in its natural state, as created by God, or does he have in view our present situation, subject to sin, whether ancestral ("original") or personal - a situation that is in fact altogether contranatural? When Saint Paul speaks about "the body of this death" (Romans 7:24), he means our fallen state; when he says, "Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit...Glorify God in your body" (1 Corinthians 6:19-20), he is speaking about the body as it was when originally created by God, and as it can be once more when we are redeemed in Christ. Similarly, when Saint John Climacus terms the body "enemy", "opponent" and "traitor", he has in view the body in its present state of fallen sinfulness; but when he calls the body "helper", "protector" and "friend", he is referring to its true and natural condition, whether unfallen or redeemed. When reading Holy Scripture or the Holy Fathers, we have always to place each statement about the body-soul relationship in its specific context and to allow for this crucial distinction of levels.
However acutely we may feel the inner antagonism between our physicality and our spiritual yearning, let us never to lose sight of the fundamental wholeness of our personhood, as created in the Divine image. This wholeness is vividly emphasized in a text attributed to the second-century author Saint Justin the Martyr:
"What is a human being but a rational creature constituted from a soul a body? So, then, the soul by itself is not a human being? No; it is the human being's soul. And the body is not to be regarded as a human being? No; it is just the human being's body. A human being is neither the body or the soul on its own, but only that which is formed from the combination of the two."
"...The Nicene Creed (Symbol of Faith) - or, more exactly, the expanded version of the Creed of 325 A.D. endorsed by the First Council of Constantinople (381 A.D.) - affirms in its final clause: "We await the resurrection of the dead". Body and soul, that is to say, are separated at the moment of our physical death, to the Last Day when the two will once more be reunited. As Christians, we believe, not simply in the immortality of the soul, but in the ultimate survival of the entire person, soul and body together.
A second, and less obvious, affirmation concerning human nature is to be found in the first of the Fifteen Anathemas directed against Origen, which were adopted at (or perhaps immediately before) the Second Council of Constantinople (553 A.D.), the Fifth Ecumenical Council: "If anyone maintains the mythical pre-existence of souls...let him be anathema"...soul and body, in other words, come into existence at the same time, as a single unity, and they grow to maturity together. They are strictly interdependent...According to the Christian view the human person is not a soul temporarily enclosed in a body, but an integral unity of soul and body together. The body is not a transient dwelling-place or tomb, not a piece of clothing that we shall in due course discard, but it is from the first beginnings of our human existence an indispensable and enduring expression of our total personhood.
These two Ecumenical affirmations, then, underline the unity of our personhood, both at its initial coming-into-being-there is no pre-existence of the soul-and at its final end, when soul and body, divided at death in a manner profoundly contrary to nature, will be forever restored to their primal oneness in the age to come. So at the consummation of all things, the words of the Prophet will be fulfilled: "Death is swallowed up in victory" (Isaiah 25:8; compare 1 Corinthians 15:54).
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"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!"--Saint John Chrysostomos
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With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia (Ministry),
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+Father George