Body & Soul
Some early Christian thinkers thought the body and all associated with it, eg sex, was evil. St Augustine flirted with a version of this philosophy (Manicheism) before his baptism in 387 AD. Later philosophers argued that since most of our ‘mental’ activity includes the activation of bodily parts (eg sense organs), we cannot discard the body. This fitted better with the reverence towards the body which Christians express in the doctrines of the Incarnation and Resurrection.
However, we cannot say we are only a body, for bodies do not explain life or freedom, rationality or immortality. Thus to each body corresponds a soul. A soul is not a little spirit piloting a body from inside. A soul is simply what makes the difference between a body being an object and being alive: eg thought, choice, sensation, movement, reproduction. ‘Soul’ is a translation of the Greek and Latin words for life; to have a soul is to be alive. When Christians talk about the ‘immortal soul’ they mean human life is everlasting; when they talk about the 'resurrected body' they mean everlasting life will eventually be real, physical life, not disembodied experience.
Some early Christian thinkers thought the body and all associated with it, eg sex, was evil. St Augustine flirted with a version of this philosophy (Manicheism) before his baptism in 387 AD. Later philosophers argued that since most of our ‘mental’ activity includes the activation of bodily parts (eg sense organs), we cannot discard the body. This fitted better with the reverence towards the body which Christians express in the doctrines of the Incarnation and Resurrection.
However, we cannot say we are only a body, for bodies do not explain life or freedom, rationality or immortality. Thus to each body corresponds a soul. A soul is not a little spirit piloting a body from inside. A soul is simply what makes the difference between a body being an object and being alive: eg thought, choice, sensation, movement, reproduction. ‘Soul’ is a translation of the Greek and Latin words for life; to have a soul is to be alive. When Christians talk about the ‘immortal soul’ they mean human life is everlasting; when they talk about the 'resurrected body' they mean everlasting life will eventually be real, physical life, not disembodied experience.
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