International Journal of Orthodox Theology 12:2 (2021) 49

urn:nbn:de:0276-2021-2034

Gabriel Noje

The Human Being as Embodied

Spiritual Being. Reflections on Human
Corporeality as an Epiphany of the
Person, in the Light of the Orthodox
Anthropology and Spirituality

Abstract
In the present study, I will present
several theological aspects resulting
from the creation of human being as an
embodied spiritual being. Bringing
into this discussion the comments of
some Church Fathers and contempo-
rary theologians, I will highlight the
fact that in the creation of the human
body, God was extremely careful to
Dr. Gabriel Noje, PhD in
make it able to express and reflect
Theology (2021) at the
man’s moral life and spiritual dyna- Faculty of Orthodox Theo-
mics. Particular emphasis will be logy of the “Babeș-Bolyai”
placed on the interdependence and University, Cluj-Napoca,
shared destiny of soul and body and on Romania
 50 Gabriel Noje

underscoring the reality that the body is a subjectivized matter

due to the presence of the soul within it. The considerations
regarding the body as an epiphany of the mystery of the person
are meant to show that through human corporeality, the feelings
and spiritual dynamism of man are expressed and embodied.
From this perspective, the body, alongside the soul, manifests
the mystery of the person created by God, and at the same time,
it is able to express – through its specific language – a part of this
mystery of man.

Keywords
Creation, God, soul, body, mystery of man, image, matter

1 Introduction

In recent decades a vast amount of literature has been written

on the topic of the body. Almost no field has eschewed this
exceedingly topical issue. Philosophy, anthropology, sociology,
literature, medicine, or biotechnology – to name just some of the
most important contemporary approaches – analyse the issue of
the human body from different standpoints in an attempt to say
something about the human being. In contemporary philosophy,
phenomenologists distinguish between the perception of the
subjective body (Germ. Leib, Fr. chair) and that of the body of the
other (Germ. Körper, Fr. corps). Sociologists scrutinize the body
in relation to the emergence of contemporary individualism
(Anthony Giddens) 1, the dissolution of the great political and

1 See Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity. Self and Society in the
Late Modern Age, Polity Press, 1991, pp. 70-108.
 The Human Being as Embodied Spiritual Being… 51

religious transcendences (David Le Breton, Isabelle Queval) 2, or

the advent and development of consumer society (Jean
Baudrillard, Mike Featherstone) 3. The body was seen both as the
most precious object of consumption and as the object of
salvation (Baudrillard) 4, as a means of salvation (David Le
Breton) 5, as well as the last reality on which all human life and
identity depend. It has even been said that man takes care of his
body as he once took care of his soul, or that nowadays, the body
is striving to gain a bit more soul (David Le Breton) 6. It follows
that contemporary society places a greater emphasis on the body
at the expense of the spiritual side of man.
On the other hand, from a theological perspective, Olivier
Clément 7 is credited with emphasizing the fact that, particularly
in the Divine Liturgy, the human body becomes a language for
living and expressing faith. In the Divine, Liturgy, man listens to
the word of God and responds to it through the movements and
gestures of the body so that the body itself becomes a doxological
and liturgical epiphany. From a different viewpoint, patrologist

2 See David Le Breton, Anthropologie du corps et la modernité, Presse

Universitaire du France, coll. Quadrige, 1990 (in Romanian:
Antropologia corpului şi modernitatea [Anthropology of the Body and
Modernity], translation by Doina Lică, Editura Amacord, Timişoara,
2002); Isabelle Queval, „Le corps et la performance”, in: Actualité et
dossier en santé publique, no 67, juin 2009, pp. 43-44; Isabelle Queval,
„L’industrialisation de hédonisme. Nouveaux cultes du corps: de la
production de soi à la perfectibilité addictive”, in: Psychotropes, 18
(2012), nr. 1, pp. 23-43.
3 Jean Baudrillard, La société de consommation. Ses mythes, ses structures,
préface de J. P. Mayer, Éditions Denoël, 1970, pp. 199-238; Mike
Featherstone, „The Body in Consumer Culture”, in: Theory, Culture and
Society, I (1982), pp. 18-33.
4 Jean Baudrillard, La société de consommation…, p. 200.
5 David Le Breton, Antropologia corpului..., p. 150.
6 Ibidem, p. 13.
7 Olivier Clément, Trupul morții și al slavei. Scurtă introducere la o
teopoetică a trupului [The Body of Death and Glory. Short Introduction to
a Theopoetics of the Body], translation by Eugenia Vlad, Editura
Christiana, București, 1996, pp. 25-26.
 52 Gabriel Noje

Jean-Claude Larchet 8 develops a theology of the body in order to

underscore the eternal destiny of the body according to
Orthodox theology, based on the writings of the Church Fathers.
He thus responds to the strictly materialistic and mechanistic
view of the body prevalent in contemporary society.
Setting out from the above considerations, our study aims to
present the intimate connection between soul and body that
results from God’s act of creating the human; we will emphasize
the role of the body as the support of human spiritual life on the
one hand, and, on the other hand, the shared destiny of the two
components that make up the human being. In this way, we hope
to offer an answer to contemporary society, which, in various
forms, proposes and cultivates a reductionist view of the body.

2 The body, subjectivized matter, and support or premise

of human spiritual life

A synthesis of the spiritual and the material worlds, unifying in

its person heaven and earth according to the account of creation
in the book Genesis, the human being is brought into existence by
God as an embodied spiritual creature from the very beginning 9:
“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a
living being” (Genesis 2, 7). If man crowns the whole of visible
creation and holds a special, noble, and unique position within it
– thus distinguishing himself from the rest of living creatures and
from the material nature – this is precisely due to his
dichotomous constitution, his very special composition, that is,

8 Jean-Claude Larchet, Semnificația trupului în Ortodoxie [Theology of the

Body], translation by Monahia Antonia, Editura Basilica a Patriarhiei
Române, București, 2010.
9 See Dumitru Stăniloae, Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă [Orthodox
Dogmatic Theology], vol. 1, coll. Biblioteca Teologică, ediția a doua,
Editura Institutului Biblic și de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Române,
București, 1996, p. 266.
 The Human Being as Embodied Spiritual Being… 53

to the way and the special act by which God inserted the soul into
the body created from dust, whereby man becomes a living,
personal existence 10, that is, a “living soul” 11. In his homilies on
the book of Genesis, Saint John Chrysostom interprets this short
definition of the human being provided by the Holy Scripture and
says that by the phrase “living soul” we must actually understand
a soul “enjoying vital force, having limbs to its body that respond
to this vital force and obey its will” 12.
Despite its dichotomous structure or perhaps precisely because
of it, man enters into creation as a unitary being, and this unity
and uniqueness of the human being is based on the unity of the
image of God in man who, according to Father Dumitru Popescu,
“embraces both soul and body” 13. Therefore, this particular

10 Dumitru Radu (coord.), Îndrumări misionare [Missionary Advices],

Editura Institutului Biblic și de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Române,
București, 1986, pp. 177-178.
11 See Paul Evdokimov, Ortodoxia [The Orthodoxy], coll. Biblioteca
Teologică, seria Teologi Ortodocși Străini, translation by Dr. Irineu Ioan
Popa, Editura Institutului Biblic și de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe
Române, București, 1996, p. 69: “The human came out of God’s hands as
a ‘living being’; it does not have a soul, it is a soul, it is a body, it is ψυχή,
nefesh. If the soul vanished, there would be no body left, only the dust of
the earth ‘for dust you are, and to dust you shall return’”.
12 Sfântul Ioan Gură de Aur, Omilii la Facere [Homilies on Genesis] (I), XII,
5, coll. Părinți și Scriitori Bisericești 21, translation, introduction and
notes by Dumitru Fecioru, Editura Institutului Biblic și de Misiune al
Bisericii ortodoxe Române, București, 1987, p. 145. For the English
version see: Saint John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis, 1–17 (The
Fathers of the Church, Volume 74), XII, 15, transl. by Robert C. Hill, The
Catholic University of America Press, Washington D.C., 1999, p. 166.
13 See Dumitru Popescu, Iisus Hristos Pantocrator [Jesus Christ
Pantocrator], Ed. Institutului Biblic și de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe
Române, București, 2005, p. 168. According to the French Orthodox
theologian Jean-Claude Larchet, when the Church Fathers address the
issue of the man created as soul and body, they stress the “indissoluble
unity” of the two components of the human nature. To this respect, the
French patrologist quotes St. Irenaeus: “For that flesh which has been
moulded is not a perfect man in itself, but the body of a man, and part of
a man. Neither is the soul itself, considered apart by itself, the man; but
 54 Gabriel Noje

constitution of man as embodied soul places him from the very

beginning at the intersection of two worlds, or of two universes
that are different with respect to their substance, but that are,
nevertheless, admirably and ineffably united in the human
person.
According to Father John Meyendorff, “the dual nature of man is
not simply a static juxtaposition of two heterogeneous elements,
a mortal body and an immortal soul: it reflects a dynamic
function of man between God and creation” 14. A similar idea was
expressed by the theologian Dan-Ilie Ciobotea, the current
Patriarch Daniel of the Romanian Orthodox Church, when he
asserted that the duality of human nature is the basis of the
“ontological background” of man’s mediating and unifying
vocation encapsulated in the relationship between image and
Archetype and characterized by the tension between image and
likeness 15.
Regarding the same issue of man’s mediating and unifying
vocation, Father Stăniloae interprets the theological reflections
of Saint Maximus the Confessor on the creation of man and
suggests that there is a double purpose to humans being

it is the soul of a man, and part of a man”; see Jean-Claude Larchet,

Semnificația trupului în Ortodoxie [Theology of the Body], translation by
Monahia Antonia, Editura Basilica a Patriarhiei Române, București,
2010, p. 19.
14 John Meyendorff, Teologia bizantină. Tendințe istorice și teme doctrinare
[Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes], coll.
Biblioteca Teologică, seria Teologi Ortodocși Străini, translation by
Alexandru I. Stan, Ed. Institutului Biblic și de Misiune al Bisericii
Ortodoxe Române, București, 1996, p. 189. For the English version see
John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal
Themes, Fordham University Press, 1987, p. 141.
15 His Beatitude Daniel Ciobotea, Teologie și spiritualitate [Theology and
Spirituality], Editura Basilica a Patriarhiei Române, București, 2010, p.
127. This book is the revised and edited version of the doctoral
dissertation the author defended at Strasbourgh in 1978; the text was
restructured and condensed and the resulting thesis was later defended
at the Faculty of Orthodox Theology in Bucharest in 1980 (for more
details, see the Preface of the book).
 The Human Being as Embodied Spiritual Being… 55

fashioned as dichotomous beings. He points out, on the one hand,

that man was made up of soul and body so that through his soul,
he could bring God closer to his body in order to achieve a perfect
union with Him. On the other hand, given the fact that it has a
double nature, the human being can extend to its fellows and to
share with them – through its body – the love it receives from
God, thus spreading God’s power over the entire creation16. We
can infer from the ideas of the Romanian theologian that man’s
unifying vocation, originating in the twofold composition of his
being, manifests itself both vertically, when man unites all
creation with God, and horizontally, when the person shares the
love he receives from God with his fellow men, and they all
become united with one another, joined by this divine love.
Furthermore, according to the same Father Stăniloae, man’s
uniqueness within the boundaries of visible creation – namely
that of combining the divine breath and the matter of the
“theologically organized” 17 world in a perfect personal entity 18 –

16 Dumitru Stăniloae, Studii de Teologie Dogmatică Ortodoxă, Editura

Mitropoliei Olteniei, Craiova, 1991, p. 24.
17 Cf. Panayotis Nellas, “Théologie de l’image”, in: Contacts, 25 (1973), p.
266. According to the Greek theologian, man “was the first biological
force – clearly the highest of those present on the face of the earth on
the sixth day of creation – who was elevated by the breath of the Spirit
to the spiritual life, that is to say to the theocentric life. The created
matter, ‘the dust’, was thus organized theologically for the first time.
The material creation received a shape and a structure in God’s image.
Life on earth becomes conscious and personal”.
18 St. Maximus the Confessor in his work, Ambigua, spoke about the fact
that within man, the body and the soul form a composite nature, a single
species or a common species. Indicating the complementarity of the two
elements of the human being, as well as the impossibility of separating
them in it, St. Maximus asserts the idea of their perfect hypostatic union
within the human person. See Lars Thunberg, Antropologia teologică a
Sfântului Maxim Mărturisitorul: Microcosmos și mediator, translation by
Anca Popescu, Ed. Sophia, București, 2005, pp. 115-117 for the
Romanian version, and, for the English version see idem, Microcosm and
Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor,
Second Edition, Chicago, Open Court, 1995, p. 97-100.
 56 Gabriel Noje

is what gives the human being its inestimable dignity and

value 19.
This special significance enjoyed by man in relation to other
creatures, his splendor, and supremacy over all visible beings 20,
stems both from the fact that he is a creature who through his
soul is related to God, being endowed with those qualities that
raise him at the height of divine life by grace, as well as by the
personal manner, by the special and attentive care with which
God fashioned his body from dust. While the bodies of other
creatures have come into existence following God’s command,
“let there be…” the way the human body was shaped highlights
the Creator’s much more personal and intimate involvement and
commitment to the human being who is destined to resemble
Him 21. Father Dumitru Stăniloae states that by creating man,
“God intervenes with a special action in the shaping of his body
from the earth. This shows that Adam’s body was invisibly
organized by the act of God as a personal body, unlike the way in
which the living bodies of other species were constituted
indiscriminately by the will of God. But this personal body of man
could not but have in it what is proper to man, that is, his rational,
shaping soul” 22.
If, according to the patristic interpretations of the act of creation,
the real reason why God brought all things, and especially man,

19 Dumitru Stăniloae, Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă [Orthodox Dogmatic

Theology], vol. 1, p. 257.
20 See Irineu Pop Bistrițeanul, Chipul lui Hristos în viața creștinului [The
Image of Christ in the Life of the Christian], Ed. Renașterea, Cluj-Napoca,
2001, p. 24.
21 See Theophilus of Antioch, Ad Autolycum, text and translation by Robert
M. Grant, Oxford Early Christian Texts, Oxford at the Clarendon Press,
1970, p. 57: “When God said, ‘Let us make man after our image and
likeness’, he first reveals the dignity of man. For after making everything
else by a word, God considered all this as incidental; he regarded the
making of man as the only work worthy of his own hands”.
22 Dumitru Stăniloae, Chipul nemuritor al lui Dumnezeu [God’s Immortal
Image], vol. 1, coll. Oikoumene. Mari autori creștini, ediție îngrijită de
Camil Marius Dădârlat, Cristal, București, 1995, p. 172.
 The Human Being as Embodied Spiritual Being… 57

into existence is for them to partake of the overflowing

Trinitarian love, then this parental love of the Creator for man is
also explicitly revealed in the care with which his body receives
its form and identity within creation – “the Lord God formed man
of the dust of the ground” (Genesis 2, 7). The way in which the
human body is molded by God, the structure of the body in
relation to that of the other living beings also indicates its
identity within creation. Based on the erect position of the
human body, some of the Holy Fathers of the Church, such as
Saint Gregory of Nyssa, said that man is the only living being who
looks “upwards”, that is, towards God.
When interpreting the biblical verse that depicts the “modelling”
of Adam from the dust of the earth Saint Basil the Great captures
the following paradox regarding the human. The Bishop of
Caesarea in Cappadocia shows that, although the shaping of the
bodily part of man from dust is an indication of his humble
condition 2324, the certainty that God “molded him with his own
hands”, the “particular loving skill” 25 used by the Creator to bring
him to the existence, as well as the divine “workshop” in which
he came into the world, attest to the greatness due to the human
being by the fact that it was brought to life out of love. Moreover,
the blissful context in which man was fashioned causes the great
Cappadocian father to marvel “by what wisdom my body is
structured”, that is, the body of man in general. Therefore, by
looking at this “small work of construction” which came out of

23 See St. Basil the Great, On the Human Condition, II, 12, translation and
introduction by Nonna Verna Harrison, St. Vladimir’s Press, Crestwood,
N.Y., 2005, p. 58-59: “indeed everything, whether great or small, that
you do is on the earth – you have nearby the memory of your lowliness”.
24 A similar idea is expressed by St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis,
1–17, XII, 12, p. 164: “What is that you say? Taking dust from the earth
he shaped the human being? Yes, it says; it did not simply say ‘earth’ but
‘dust’, something more lowly and substantial even than earth, so to say”.
25 Sfântul Vasile cel Mare, Despre originea omului [On the Human
Condition], II, 4, pp. 317-318, and p. 51 in the English edition.
 58 Gabriel Noje

the hands of the Wise Creator, we may come to understand His

greatness 26.
On the one hand, the special creation of the human body from the
matter taken from the world whose creation had already been
completed on the sixth day highlights man’s solidarity with the
material, created, visible world 27. Olivier Clément notes in this
sense that: “through his body man participates in the world of
matter and life, or rather the body is the means by which the
person is integrated into the universal matter, the structure
through which personal existence personalizes the universe” 28.
On the other hand, the complete attention showed by God in His
modeling of the human body from dust with his own hands – the
Son and the Holy Spirit, according to Saint Irenaeus of Lyon –
presents man as clearly different from the material world,
especially in that his body is animated or imprinted with the
breath or grace of the Holy Spirit. “The dust of the earth” – says
an Orthodox theologian – “was kneaded and shaped by the hands
of God, according to the scriptural anthropomorphic
expressions. This sets man above any other body in which there
is life” 29. The very fact that God as Creator shapes or moulds the
human body means, moreover, that he prepares it in a very
special way, he endows it with a special, sublime purpose, he
gives it a singular particularity, he imprints rationality in order

26 Sfântul Vasile cel Mare, Despre originea omului [On the Human
Condition] I, 2, p. 296, and p. 32 in the English edition.
27 His Beatitude Daniel Ciobotea, Teologie și spiritualitate [Theology and
Spirituality], p. 127.
28 Cf. Olivier Clément, Întrebări asupra omului [Questions on Man], cuvânt
înainte de P. Boris Bobrinskoy, translation by Iosif Pop and Ciprian
Șpan, Editura Episcopiei Ortodoxe Române Alba-Iulia, 1997, p. 75.
29 Constantine Callinicos, The Foundations of Faith. An in-depth
explanation of the Eastern Orthodox Creed, translation and revision by
Rev. George Dimopoulos, Scraton, Christian Orthodox Editions, 1975, p.
66.
 The Human Being as Embodied Spiritual Being… 59

to become a basis, a premise or a receptacle of human spiritual

life 30.
According to Father Stăniloae, the divine act by which man was
created, an act that required the bodily nature to be fashioned
out of the dust of the earth and then animated by God, proves
that the man enjoys “a special position not only in relation to the
nature from whence his body was created but also in relation to
God” 31. While quoting and commenting on Saint Gregory the
Theologian, who stated that “as dust, I am bound to the life
below; but since I am also a speck of the divine, I carry in me the
desire for the life to come” 32, the Romanian theologian asserts
that in his future life man’s ascent to God concerns both his soul
and his body, that is to say, the person in its entirety, because
since the body takes part in the life of the soul, is also destined to
experience transfiguration and spiritualization 33. Though it is
made of dust, the human body differs from the matter of the
world by the fact that the plasticized rationality of created
matter reaches its highest complexity in man’s biological body 34.
“Generally, the fact that the soul and the body make up a single
being shows that man is not just material. His body is a
spiritually organized and exalted matter, permeated by the spirit
and transformed into a complex organism by it; and the spirit
contains all the powers that organize and manifest themselves
through the body. (...) The spirit united with the body makes man

30 See Dumitru Radu (coord.), Îndrumări misionare [Missionary Advices], p.

180, 186.
31 Dumitru Stăniloae, Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă [Orthodox Dogmatic
Theology], vol. 1, p. 257
32 St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Poemata dogmatica, VIII, P.G. 37, col. 452,
apud. Dumitru Stăniloae, Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă [Orthodox
Dogmatic Theology], vol. 1, p. 257.
33 Dumitru Stăniloae, Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă [Orthodox Dogmatic
Theology], vol. 1, p. 257, 253.
34 Ibidem, p. 257.
 60 Gabriel Noje

in his multiple manifestations an inexhaustible and unique abyss

and an unfathomable mystery for knowledge” 35.
Being imprinted, from the very beginning, by the inner presence
of the soul, the human body becomes a form of subjectivized
materiality. Through the action of the soul that permeates and
organizes it, the materiality of the body surpasses the biological
and psychochemical plane proper to other living things. In this
sense, by virtue of its participation in the life of the soul, the body
can no longer be thought of as a simple object – according to
Father Stăniloae –, but as a participating subject 36. At this point,
Father D. Stăniloae develops from a theological perspective
some reflections on the quality of the subject of the body
belonging to the Christian existentialist thinker and philosopher
Gabriel Marcel 37.
The Romanian theologian states the following: “In the reality of
my body, there is something that transcends what would be
called the materiality of the body and its purely automatic
movements, something that cannot be reduced to its material
properties” 38.

3 The body as epiphany of the human mystery, and the

dynamics of moral-spiritual life

The body is – in its turn – part of the person and expresses the
person 39 in its entirety; nonetheless, the body is united in a very

35 See Dumitru Stăniloae, Chipul nemuritor al lui Dumnezeu [God’s

Immortal Image], vol. 2, coll. Oikoumene. Mari autori creștini, edited by
Camil Marius Dădârlat, Cristal, București, 1995, p. 44.
36 Dumitru Stăniloae, Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă [Orthodox Dogmatic
Theology], vol. 1, p. 252.
37 See Gabriel Marcel, Journal Métaphysique, Gallimard, Paris, 1927, p. 230.
38 Dumitru Stăniloae, Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă [Orthodox Dogmatic
Theology], vol. 1, p. 252.
39 Olivier Clément, Trupul morții și al slavei. Scurtă introducere la o
teopoetică a trupului [The Body of Death and Glory. Short Introduction to
 The Human Being as Embodied Spiritual Being… 61

intimate way with the soul, so it is very difficult to clearly

distinguish their actions within their synergy in the human being
as a whole. This is due to the fact that in the human being, the
action of the soul always presupposes and implies the capacity
of the body to translate the soul’s feelings and movements
through its own manifestations and gestures – through its
characteristic language. The movements and actions of the soul
affect the body and elevate it to a high degree of spiritualization.
Through the body, therefore, this spiritualization that is enabled
by the soul also includes the material world in its entirety, as it
too is attracted to reach an even higher degree of spiritualization.
Without the existence of the body, any contact with or any action
or the manifestation in the material world would be impossible.
Nevertheless, the body and its perverted desires influence the
way the soul is, drawing it to the lower, ephemeral realities and
enslaving it to the passions. This influence or power of the body
over the soul is discernible, especially after the event of the Fall,
when the unity between the two constituent parts of the human
being was compromised. After the Fall, the intimate connection
between soul and body does not disappear because it is an
ontological datum of the human being40. The sin transforms the
unity between soul and body into enmity between the two, the
latter seeking to overpower and divert the actions of the former
from their target. Saint Paul the Apostle himself seemed to be
convinced of this truth when he stated in his Epistle to the
Galatians that “the flesh lusts against the Spirit” (Galatians 5, 17).
In a footnote referring to a reflection of Saint Athanasius the
Great on the consequences of the Fall for human bodies, Father
Dumitru Stăniloae clarifies in metaphorical form the relationship
and interdependence between soul and body within the human
being:

a Theopoetics of the Body], translation by Eugenia Vlad, Editura

Christiana, București, 1996, p. 8.
40 Jean-Claude Larchet, Semnificația trupului... [Theology of the Body], p.
21.
 62 Gabriel Noje

“The soul does not remain devoid of the lusts of the body
and undisturbed by the external images, nor does the body
remain devoid of the powers of the soul. The soul and the
body do not live their lives side by side, but each is filled by
all that the other possesses. The soul grows in the body like
a plant that has its roots in the heavenly firmament, and the
body has its roots in the soul. It could be said that the reason
or rationality of the body is implanted as an intelligible
skeleton in the soul, and on its basis, the body is built at
birth and rebuilt at the resurrection. This is the foundation
of the close unity of the soul and the body” 41.
This inseparable unity of soul and body within the created
person, their intimate, apophatic union, is emphasized by most
patristic authors in their interpretations of the creation of man
as a dual nature. The French Orthodox patrologist Jean-Claude
Larchet explains this teaching of the Church Fathers by showing
that by asserting man’s dichotomous nature, they rejected all
forms of materialism or naturalism, which tended to reduce man
to a simple biological reality and to consider the soul to be a mere
epiphenomenon of the body, as well as any spiritualist notions of
Gnostic, Neoplatonic, or Origenist 42 nature, which saw the body

41 See Dumitru Stăniloae’s footnote nr. 40 in Sfântul Atanasie cel Mare,

Cuvânt împotriva elinilor [Against the Heathen], in: Scrieri. Partea I, coll.
Părinți și Scriitori Bisericești, vol. 15, traducere din grecește, introducere
și note de D. Stăniloae, Ed. Institutului Biblic și de Misiune al Bisericii
Ortodoxe Române, București, 1987, p. 40.
42 See John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, p. 140-141: “Against Origen,
the Fathers unanimously affirmed that man is a unity of soul and body.
On this point, the Biblical view decidedly overcame Platonic
spiritualism; by the same token, the visible world and its history were
recognized as worthy of salvation and redemption. If, in the Origenistic
system, the diversity of visible phenomena was only a consequence of
the Fall and of the bodily nature of man, an ‘engrossed’ and defective
mode of the soul’s existence, the only true and eternal reality being
spiritual and divine, the Biblical Christian concept understood the
universe in its entirety as ‘very good’; and this concept applied first of
all to man”.
 The Human Being as Embodied Spiritual Being… 63

as a sign of the fallen condition of the soul, a tomb or prison,

while claiming the soul represented the true essence of man43.
In response to these philosophical-religious teachings that the
Church considered to be wrong, the Church Fathers deemed the
body as equal to the soul in dignity, and they substantiated their
views with scriptural arguments. In the simultaneous creation of
body and soul by God, the Fathers saw their unity of destiny, that
is, the fact that the path to theosis was open to both constituent
elements of the human person. Moreover, in asserting that the
body enjoys the same dignity as the soul, the Church Fathers also
sought to prove that matter itself, from which the human body is
molded or shaped, is not an evil thing or any source of evil 44, as
the Neoplatonic, Gnostic or dualistic currents professed – as did
the Origenist doctrine in the primary Church – postulating a
notable ontological and axiological difference between soul and
body. On the contrary, patristic theologians claimed the evil in
the world has no cause in the matter itself 45 but in the evil or
misguided use of man’s fundamental freedom46.
In fact, at the end of the six days of the creation of the material
world, Holy Scripture records that all that the Creator brought
into existence was “very good” (Genesis 1, 31). In other words,

43 Jean-Claude Larchet, Semnificația trupului... [Theology of the Body], pp.

19-20.
44 See Nicolae Mladin, Orest Bucevschi, Constantin Pavel, Ioan Zăgrean,
Teologia Morală Ortodoxă [Orthodox Moral Theology], vol. 2, Editura
Reîntregirea, Alba-Iulia, 2003, p. 112.
45 See Dumitru I. Belu, “Sfinții Părinți despre trup” [The Holy Fathers on
the body], in: Studii Teologice, IX (1957), nr. 5-6, p. 299: “In order to
prove that the body is not evil by nature, that it is not the cause of sin
and of all the ills that torment the human life, the leaders of the Church
endeavoured – always tactfully and patiently, often with surprising
insight – to show that the matter, and the material world as a whole, is
not only not evil, but that for the man it is a fundamental condition of
his well-being”.
46 Sf. Atanasie cel Mare, Cuvânt împotriva elinilor [Against the Heathen], pp.
37-38.
 64 Gabriel Noje

God’s visible creation did not have any created imperfection 47

but contained in itself all the prerequisites necessary to sustain
man’s life on earth and his progress towards God. In this context,
the human body, taken from the earth and shaped by the special
care of the Creator, is by nature neither evil in itself nor does it
pose a moral threat to man. The very fact that God touches the
dust of the earth to give shape to the human frame proves that
the body receives a special honour and that it is built by the
Creator as a suitable environment for the manifestation of the
spiritual life in the visible world 48.
The role of the body as the serving organ of the soul and its
collaborator in the moral and spiritual life of man stems from its
very feature of being an interface or intermediary between the
spiritual world of the soul and the material world. If man had
possessed by creation only a spiritual nature like angels, then he
could not have acted fully within the material universe.
Therefore, God prepared the body expressly so that by its
intimate union with the soul, the latter could exercise its freedom
over material things through and with the help of the body49.
God’s command to the first humans, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill
the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28), requires and at the same
time stresses the crucial role of the body in fulfilling this
mandate entrusted by God to Adam and Eve and, through them,

47 See Paul Evdokimov, Ortodoxia [The Orthodoxy], p. 69: “Everything that

was created is ‘very good’: evil does not stem from man’s condition as a
creature, because his being was good from the very beginning, whereas
evil was something foreign to him. Evil does not come from below, from
what is corporeal, but from above, from what is spiritual. The origin of
evil is to be found among the angels, and only then in a choice made by
the human spirit. It only then penetrates and settles itself in the
‘fissures’ of the being whose integrity was shattered and whose
hierarchical structure was perverted. These premises are absolutely
necessary for the foundation of biblical personalism.”
48 Irineu Pop Bistrițeanul, Chipul lui Hristos în viața creștinului [The Image
of Christ in the Life of the Christian], p. 25.
49 Dumitru Stăniloae, Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă [Orthodox Dogmatic
Theology], vol. 1, p. 252.
 The Human Being as Embodied Spiritual Being… 65

to all their descendants. Without the body, people – perceived as

mere spiritual natures – would not be able to accomplish what
God asks of them 50. It is only through the flesh that the humans’
free will is manifested and materialized in the world, and their
obedience to the command of the Lord is shown. “In fashioning
him of soul and body, God has given man the role of ruler of all
and in all, including of the body which was made partaker of this
authority of God and unifier of all in God” 51. The same is true of
other qualities and faculties of the human soul, which, in the
absence of a body, could not be perceived in our world and would
not become visible in the eyes of others. Therefore, from this
point of view, the body mediates or extends in the plane of
materiality the feelings and intentions of the soul.
Defined with a great deal of depth by His Beatitude Patriarch
Daniel of the Romanian Orthodox Church, “the body is the
epiphany of human mystery. Through his body, man manifests
the fullness of his person” 52. The body externalizes, therefore,
what in the soul comes into being as intention, thought, or
feeling. In this way, intelligence, as an aspect or particular
characteristic of the rational nature of man, is brought to the
knowledge of others through the body, through the way man
expresses his thoughts, speaks, or behaves towards others.
Feelings of love for one’s neighbour are embodied in the act of
helping, in words of encouragement or in the willingness to
commune with others 53. The body is also the vehicle through
which freedom as an expression of man’s will becomes manifest
in relation to others, to the world, and even in man’s relationship
with his body.

50 See His Beatitude Daniel Ciobotea, Teologie și spiritualitate [Theology

and Spirituality], p. 134.
51 Dumitru Stăniloae, Studii de Teologie Dogmatică... [Studies of Dogmatic
Theology], p. 24.
52 His Beatitude Daniel Ciobotea, Teologie și spiritualitate [Theology and
Spirituality], p. 134.
53 See Jean-Claude Larchet, Semnificația trupului... [Theology of the Body],
p. 34.
 66 Gabriel Noje

In general, our face, its expressions – probably the element that

makes the body of each person truly unique 54 – reveal the inner
life of each person, the intensities and spiritual dynamism of the
soul. It is probably no coincidence that human joy – and
especially spiritual joy – is reflected primarily on our face as it
radiates a spiritual glow and is able to change others and their
mood when they share in this visible bliss. Nevertheless, joy is
not the only feeling one can observe on a person’s face: there are
also other emotions such as sadness, anger, hatred, etc. From this
point of view, the body also translates by means of its facial
expression the evil thoughts and intentions of a person. “Why are
you angry? And why has your countenance fallen?” (Genesis 4,
6), the Lord God says unto Cain when he was consumed by envy
for his brother, whose sacrifice pleased God more.
Consequently, the moral value of the body springs from the fact
that the body participates in the life and activity of the soul. From
its creation, it received from God the well-determined role of
supporting and sustaining the soul in its spiritual growth, being
in its turn enriched by the fruits of this growth. The healthier –
spiritually speaking – the moral condition of the body, the better
it can fulfil its God-given purpose. Unfortunately, the support
offered by the body in maintaining the moral life of the soul
diminished after the fall of the first pair of people. Its power to
co-operate with the soul, to give the spiritual element the
support necessary for salvation, deteriorated significantly and
often even degenerated in a reversal of the purpose for which it
was intended. This is how, from a collaborator and supporter of
the soul´s energies, the body became their fierce opponent and
enemy.

54 See Olivier Clément, Întrebări asupra omului [Questions on Man], p. 39:

“The face – this locus par excellence where nature makes itself
permeable to the person by the transparence of the eyes”.
 The Human Being as Embodied Spiritual Being… 67

4 Conclusions

Being an embodied spiritual being is a fundamental ontological

fact of the person created by God. From this perspective, human
corporeality is neither an accident nor a condition added later,
but something related to man’s intimate reality as a creature.
The matter of the human body was prepared by God in such a
way as to express and sustain the dynamics of the human soul.
In this sense, the matter of the human body is not an ordinary
but a subjectivized matter, one in which the soul acts, one that is
able to indicate and reveal the mystery of man. Destined to be
the background of human spiritual life, the subjectivized matter
that makes up the human body shares the same ultimate goal of
transfiguration and theosis with the soul. Man is not saved
outside his body but through his body. Therefore, man has a
great responsibility for the spiritual state of his body, resulting
in its moral value as a whole.