The concept of human body is a heated debate both in the secular and the religious realm. The interpretations and definitions of human body in the medical, philosophical, social, and theological positions are different. The discussions of human body lead to diverse outlook on it. If we look at the historical root of Christianity, easterners and westerners have their own approach to the human body. The main purpose of this article is a discussion on Eastern Christian concept of human body. By analyzing the Greek and the Syriac concept, we search the eastern Christian concept of the human body.
All of the major issues agitating 'moral theology today' concern the meaning of "human bodiness."1 The subject of the human body appears in debates regarding both the beginning and the end of human life. At present, scholars are looking to the Christian tradition to study the human body. The Oxford English dictionary states the definition of the human body as follows: "the body as 'a solid state of matter' refers primarily to the physical or material frame or structure of man or of any animal: the whole material organism viewed as an organic entity."2 Though the term body primarily means a living organism, it can also be used analogously for any solid: "separate portion of matter, large or small, a material thing; something that has physical existence and extension in space."3
Regarding the Christian theology on body Lisa Isherwood and Elizabeth Stuart note that "Christian theology has always been embodied theology rooted in creation, incarnation and resurrection, and sacrament. Christian theology has applied both the analogia entis (analogy of being) and the analogia fidei (analogy of faith) to the body. The body is both the site and recipient of revelation."4
The ethical value of the body necessarily derives from its ontological position in relation to the soul. Substantially united to the soul, the body shares both in the iniquity and sanctity of the soul. Subordinate to the soul both in value and function, the body can never become an end unto itself nor can it subordinate spiritual activities to itself. On the contrary, the body remains ever subordinate to the spirit; and it also sacrifices its own inclinations and tendencies in favour of the higher order. The body-soul relationship is studied in theoretical philosophy and dogmatic theology. Various theories concerning these relationships enter also into the field of moral theology.5 According to Giuseppe Graneris,
as a necessary organ or instrument of the soul in the present life, the body is not to be mutilated nor destroyed. Because the body is the lower part of man. Catholic moral doctrine, therefore, prescribes a positive asceticism with regard to body: It aims to discipline the body but not to eliminate it; it forbids bodily mutilation, but inculcates mortification; it tends to make of the body a serviceable instrument of the soul.6
As well, man's/woman's totality evolves finally from his/her basic constitution of body and soul.7 Today, there is a renewed interest in the medical ethics about the relationship of body and soul. Writers of all philosophical creeds gave a prominent place to the analogy of body and soul, to the similarity between the training of the body and the discipline of the soul, to the consideration of medicine as a counterpart of ethics. It was in the usefulness of this comparison for philosophical argument that lay the greatest debt of philosophy to medicine.8
In Christianity, we find two basically different concepts of the human person, such as Greek concept, a more-(Plato) or less-(Aristotle) extreme dualism, and the Hebrew concept, which presumed the unity of the body-person.9 In the following section, we discuss these different ideas of the human body.
To have a clear idea of Christian anthropology, we have to first understand the philosophical background of the human body, which has influenced Christianity very much.10 The first phase of the Christian theology of human body was dominated by the dualism derived from the Platonic philosophy.11 The Pre-socratics, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and the idealistic and materialistic philosophers discussed the structure of the human frame. Everywhere man's/woman's mind is seen in close relationship to his/her body.12
The Greeks first used the term soma (body) to designate the dead body.13 The term 'body' in Greek thought is sharply distinguished from the life-giving breath, or what the philosophers later called soul. Among the Greeks, as among most other races, the distinction between body and soul is of a very remote antiquity. It is a natural dualism of mankind.14 The Greeks contributed to the concept of body in two ways: Firstly, in the religious context of the sectarian cults detailed a new notion of the soul, an immortal soul. Here one must isolate and refine it to separate from a body whose role has now become nothing more than that of a receptacle or tomb. Secondly, the Greeks investigated the body through medical practice and medical literature observing, describing, theorizing about its visible aspects as well as its parts, and the internal organs that create in it.15
In Homeric thought and poems the distinction between the visible, corporal man and his invisible indwelling is presumed. Here, however, the ideas of the body and the soul assume a special complexion. The idea of life apart from the body which is also independent of the union of the body and the soul, simply lay outside the range of Homeric thought. It is the body rather than the soul around which the supreme interest circles. According to Homer, even the lifeless body is repeatedly spoken of as the true self . It is set in contrast with the psyche.16
Homeric views concerning body and soul, and their relation to each other, find their sharpest possible contrast in the ideas which (starting in the ecstasy of the Dionysan cult and the psychical experiences evoked there, or, again, in the principles of Katharsis) received their definitive form among the Orphic sects.17 According to the latter,
there obtained not only an irreconcilable dualism between body and soul, but also a profound difference in value. The soul was no longer, as in Homer, the phantom counterpart of the man, making its influence felt in the acts of dreaming, swooning, or dying; it was now regarded as intrinsically of Divine origin, uncreated and imperishable, and as having been immured within the body in expiation of its guilt.18
Moreover, the early Pythagoreans considers the soul in its endeavours to reach its celestial home, and causing it to forget its high descent.
Like this the Empedocles made a similar theory of the relation between body and soul. We can also see that similar views were taken by several other thinkers and poets. They were more or less influenced by Orphic or Pythagorean doctrines. For example, we find these ideas in the Pherecydes of Syros. Besides, Heraclitus also expresses a certain disparagement of the body. He does not, like the 'theologians,' interpret body and soul as antagonistic to each other, but he speaks them as subsisting in a state of constant interchange.20Plato elaborates the notions of body and soul. There evolves a dualism in which body is temporal, corporal, and changeable. Soul is eternal, incorporeal, and unchangeable.21 Thus, the soul has a kinship with the divine realm and the body is alien to it. Besides, Platonic philosophy accepts Pythagorean saying. This means the widespread ancient belief in the transmigration of souls, so-ma-se-ma, the body is a tomb. Plato and his followers express their deep conviction that the true human self is the spiritual soul. The soul's earthly existence in the body is a kind of death, exile or imprisonment. The body is a garment of which the soul must divest itself, a sleep from which it must awaken as from death to its true life.
Moreover, the perfect relationship between the soul and the body is exemplified physically, intellectually, and spiritually in the circular movements of the heavenly bodies, whose regularity had been demonstrated by fourth-century astronomers. Plato's search for the Ideal City and Ideal World, therefore, brings him back to the problem of the body, and to a concrete understanding of the problem that how the soul, immersed in this world, can achieve perfect immaterial freedom.23It is also worthwhile to note here the two features of the human body in the Timaeus. First of all, the cosmos is understood by the analogy with the human person. According to Plato, the human person is a copy, reflection, or image of the cosmos, which is a living creature endowed with soul and reason (Timaeus 30B). The cosmos is seen as a great body, the human being as a little body; and both owe their life and form to indwelling soul and reason. So the human body is seen against the background of the cosmos: it is both a part of it and an encapsulation of the whole. Thus, to think of the human body as a whole informed by reason, not as a mere piece of matter. Another feature of the Timaeus that is to be attended to is the account of the human body as such in the third part of the work (69A-92C). Here the body is seen as giving physical expression to the soul and desire. This physical expression takes place through the disposition of the four elements, namely fire, air, water, and earth - and the balance of the four humours. Finally, Christians express their understanding of the human person in the context of the kind of presuppositions to which the Timaeus bears witness.24
The concept of body is different in Aristotle. Plato's vision is intrinsically religious. For Aristotle, soul and body form one substantial unity. It means that soul is the main actuality of a natural, organic body potentially having life. He also explains that soul and body are two aspects of one matter. It is only distinct in thought, not in reality. Hence we can say that the soul cannot be immortal, but it is a fully immaterial principle.25 According to Aristotle, "soma is, of course primarily the human body, whether with a head or as the trunk contracted with the head. It is composed of different things, and mixture characterizes it. Naturally body and soul are mentioned together."26 In contrast to Plato, the body is primary and is viewed as existing before the soul in Aristotle. But this does not mean that soul is superior; it is the more eminent part.27
Moreover, in the Hippocratic writings of the fifth and fourth centuries B. C., there are some treatises on the human nature of body.28 The doctrines are taken from Presocratic theories of Heraclitus, Diogenes of Apollonia and of others.29 In Hellenistic times, the medical sect of the Dogmatists emphasized the value of anatomy and biology.30
Modern scholars contended that the knowledge of the body in the Hippocratic writings is only attainable through dissection. Other physicians argued that all that the Hippocratics knew about the human body could also be known without dissection.31 We could not find a universal acceptable conclusion about this. But we can see the performances of dissections in earlier times.32 Ancient and modern medicine conclude that Homeric and Hippocratic physicians performed dissections.33
Moreover, Ludwig Edelstein states that "the starting point of all the comparisons between body and soul is perhaps not too difficult to understand. Philosophers insisting on the value of the soul and proclaiming its superiority over the body, is forced with man's natural partiality to his body."34 Besides, we see that the discussion of ethical problems became an integral part of philosophy from the fifth century BC. Medicine suggests the doctrine that the body needs conscientious care if it is to perform its functions properly. Therefore, Philosophy met in medicine a basis for exhortation which appealed strongly to the Greeks.35 At this point, one may ask: how can medical knowledge, knowledge of the body, be helpful toward an adequate understanding of the soul? Are not body and soul essentially different? Ludwig Edelstein writes:
it is characteristic of Greek ethics that it conceives of the soul in the likeness of the body, that it visualizes the soul in very much the same way in which the body was understood, not on a highly technical level, to be sure, but rather in terms of that medical doctrine which was basic and almost universally accepted. The body has its desires to be filled, to be satiated. These bodily appetites in themselves tend to be extreme; they have no self-restricting limits. In order to prevent disease, to attain health, it is necessary to check the natural tendencies, to introduce measure, a standard by which to curtail the unlimited appetites. The desires of the soul, in the view of the Pythagoreans, of Plato, and of Aristotle, likewise tend to extremes; they strive unceasingly to be satisfied. Pythagorean ethics, Platonic justice, the Aristotelian doctrine of the mean, teach the measure, the standard by which the extremes of our passions are to be reduced to their right proportion. Nor did the body fail to provide an example when Cynics, Stoics, and Epicureans considered all natural activities of the soul, all natural emotions as bad, or even diseased.36
The teachings of Greek dietetics, the doctrine according to which everyone, even the healthy person, must care for his body, ran counter to man's natural feelings.37 In short, the Greeks never ceased wondering about the paradox that cauterizing and cutting, by doing violence to his/her body. Man/woman should achieve health, that good should come of something that in itself is painful and causes suffering.38 For the Greeks, the body isolates human beings, separates them from one another. Greek philosophy tends to propound a soul-body dualism.39 In the next section we will discuss the concept of the body in the Hebrew thought.
One of the oft-repeated generalizations regarding ancient Judaistic anthropology is that it had an entirely positive attitude to the body.40 Rabbinic writings present human body in high esteem as the "masterpiece" of creation. God is worshipped through the body: The 248 positive precepts of the Torah are said to correspond to the number of the body parts and the body is compared to a Torah scroll in its sanctity.41 Even though the connection between self and body may be served (through death, for example) there remains a presumptive obligation of respectful care for the 'corpose' (kavod ha'met). This obligation endures preserving the integrity of the 'corpose' as a symbol of the person and as a requirement of care for God's creation, and precludes desecration of the corpse. Jewish tradition therefore presents a strong presumption in favour of respecting bodily integrity before and after death.42
To the Hebrew mind, man is a unity. Jewish theology never seriously admits a dualism. Body and soul form one whole.43 There had been little room in Judaism for the benevolent dualism that summed up so appositely the moral common-sense of the governing classes of the pagan world. In the pagan notion of the person, the soul had been thought of as ruling the body with same alert.44 In the early Jewish notion, there was an organic unity of the self, and bodily life was co-extensive with spiritual life. But the intertestmental Judaism takes the Greek language, such as the body-soul dichotomy.45 The body is strongly identified with the individual in Philo's thought. Hence, body depicts the totality of the individual and is also characterized by its active participation and partnership with the soul.46 James F. Keenan observes:
despite a common-place belief that Christianity has maintained a negative stance toward the human body, a singular consensus among historians, scripture scholars, and theologians contradicts that assumption, asserting instead that the Christian tradition has always regarded the body as constitutive of human identity, and some of them strands that Traditions have vigorously combated various expressions of dualism.47
The historic development of scriptural teaching on the nature of the human body-person is a vast subject.48 Moreover, we see that the word "body/flesh" has several layers of meaning in the Bible. The first and basic type of meaning differs considerably from the contemporary English meaning of the term. The body refers to the whole living human being in the biblical view.49 The second manner of meaning emphasis human creatureliness, frailty and mortality, hence to call humans "flesh and blood" is another way of saying that they are perishable (Sir. 14:18; Mt 17: 17; Jn. 1:13; 1 Cor. 15: 50). The third layer of meaning puts the human solidarity found in various relationships. Husband and wife becomes "one body" (Gen. 2: 23 -24, 37:27). The fourth way of meaning has sacrificial overtones, for in sacrifice the body/flesh is separated from the blood, and the body/flesh is offered to God as burnt offering.50 In continuation with the general Biblical conception on human body, we shall have a look at the eastern theology on the human body.
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2. Eastern Christian Theology on the Human Body
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