The Human Body, Part 1: Death and Resurrection

“Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

St Paul (Rom 7:24)

See this essay presented live by Prof. Harry Boosalis at Andrew’s Corner, Thessaloniki Greece.

Preliminary Points

Contemporary man is obsessed with his body. This pertains not only to his own body, but to the bodies of others as well. We scrutinize each other’s body. 

We’re into body-building and body-piercing. We tan our body and tattoo our body. We try to enhance our body through plastic surgery. We even surgically alter the gender of our body, in order to match our sexual orientation.

Much of this is a manifestation of our materialistic and carnal-minded culture. But if we look deeper, perhaps this reveals a fundamental flaw in how we see ourselves and how we see each other.

Upon closer observation, a tendency toward two extremes is apparent. On one hand, we take great effort to pamper and indulge our bodies. The advertising industry exploits and encourages sensuality. Seductive images of the human body are plastered throughout the Internet, in magazines and on gigantic billboards, enticing us with various products. There is an over-infatuation with the body. For many, the human body has become an idol. 

On the other hand, our society openly disparages the human body. We discard the body through abortion, before it is born. And we dispose of the body through cremation once it dies. 

We give little thought to the natural and organic relationship between our soul and body. For many people, the common belief is that a human being is basically composed of an immaterial soul (or ‘consciousness’) which is temporarily embedded in a material container, the body. According to this belief, this union is not permanent.

Some religions teach that our soul may be re-incarnated into another body. And when that body dies, our soul continues to be re-incarnated, until attaining the ultimate spiritual state—that of no longer having a body at all.

Other philosophies teach that our soul was never meant to inhabit a body in the first place. According to this teaching, our soul existed before the body—our soul ‘pre-existed’ in a bodiless state. For this school of thought, as a result of some primeval fall, our soul is now trapped within our body and longs to be released from its prison. Here again, the highest form of human existence is for the soul to be freed from the shackles of the body, so it may return to the bodiless state from which it originated.

The Orthodox Church teaches differently. Our soul is not meant to exist apart from our body, nor our body apart from the soul. There is an innate and everlasting unity between our soul and body. They will forever be united as one: “The soul possesses such a natural union of love with its particular body that it never wants to abandon it.”¹ Our body and soul are intended to function together in a harmonious and reciprocal relationship as one.²

According to Orthodox teaching, both our body and soul together make up our human person: “Every body is connected with one soul, and every soul is connected with one body, and the two together constitute the particular [person], a definite man.”³ Our soul was not created to be separated from our body.

Sin and Death

There is one exception of course—during that un-natural and temporary tragedy of death. Death is one of life’s great mysteries. Our understanding of death reflects our understanding of life. How we see death impacts how we sees ourselves, the world around us, and God. 

Death is a fact of life. Yet the way we die is not as important as the way we approach it: “Will the death we are facing be transformed into a gift, a source of life, or will it destroy us? This depends entirely on our attitude.”⁴

Death is the direct outcome of sin. And sin is willful self-separation from God: “But on as many as, according to their own choice, depart from God, He inflicts that separation from Himself which they have chosen of their own accord. But separation from God is death, and separation from light is darkness.”⁵ Sin is when we separate ourselves from God.⁶

In Orthodoxy, sin is not viewed in a legalistic sense, such as the breaking of a rule or regulation. Rather, sin is a spiritual sickness separating us from God, from each other and from our true selves.

Sin is when we abuse our God-given freedom. We sin when we make wrong choices that lead to our separation from God’s will and likeness. Sin prevents us from participating in divine life, leading ultimately to death: “For, behold, those who keep themselves far away from You shall perish.”⁷

Death, for the Orthodox Church, is not a punishment for sin. God did not create death. He does not want it. What God wants is our freedom, even if this means we might choose living for and loving ourselves more than Him. God respects our freedom so much that He even allows us to separate ourselves from Him. Death is not a punishment so much as it is a natural outcome of what happens when we sin, when we cut ourselves off from the Source of true Life—God.

The idea that death is a punishment from God for breaking His commandments is based on an inaccurate interpretation of Genesis 2. 16-17: “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die’.”⁸

This does not say, ‘If you eat of this particular tree, I will punish you with death’. Rather, from an Orthodox perspective, when God forewarned Adam, ‘For in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die’, He was clearly cautioning him that if he ate from this specific tree, he would be separating himself from the true life that God had given him.⁹

Our separation from God results in the rampant sickness and suffering engulfing the world since the Fall of Adam. Far from what was originally intended by our Creator, the world is now bound by disease, dysfunction, destruction and death. This is not the world as originally created by God.

Our misuse of our God-given freedom and our ensuing separation from God have led to dire consequences for the entire creation. Even though we are created in the image of God, in a world originally created good and beautiful, we are, in fact, born into a ‘death-bound’ universe: “All people taste the terrible mystery of death, since we all inherit corruptibility and mortality. In other words, we are born to die. Death is the surest, most certain event in our life.”¹⁰

In many ways, however, we would rather forget death exists. Most of us try our best to avoid growing old. We try to look as young as possible, at all costs. We lose sight of the fact that we have fallen from our original glory. This way of life—indeed this way of death—is not what God intends. Our separation from God results in death, engulfing the world since Adam’s Fall.

In fact, there are two kinds of death: 1) physical death—the separation of our soul from our body; and 2) spiritual death—the separation of our soul from God’s grace.¹¹

St. Gregory Palamas teaches, “Physical death is when the soul leaves the body and is separated from it. The death of the soul is when God leaves the soul and is separated from it … Once separated from God it becomes more ugly and useless than a dead body, but unlike such a body it does not disintegrate after death …”¹²

In spite of death, life is still good. Because of God’s great benevolence, life on earth is indeed beautiful. Life is so beautiful that at times we consider our sinful condition, and even death itself, as ‘natural’ to us—he ‘died of natural causes’.

The truth is sin and death are not natural to us. Our willful separation from God’s grace and the consequent separation of our soul from our body are indeed un-natural. Sin, sickness, senility; old age, death, and bodily corruption—all these are in fact alien to our nature as human beings. God did not create us to suffer these things. These are all consequences of separating ourselves from God—in Whose image and likeness we are originally created: “I weep and I wail when I think upon death, and behold our beauty, fashioned after the image of God, lying in the tomb disfigured, dishonored, bereft of form.”¹³

Garments of Skin

Holy Scripture describes man’s fallen condition with the phrase ‘garments of skin’: “For Adam and his wife the Lord God made garments of skin, and clothed them.”¹⁴ ‘Garments of skin’ refers to our fallen, mortal state in which we now live, and will one day die.

Garments of skin are not equated with the human body per se, at least not as originally created by God. Rather, these ‘garments’ represent fallen man’s new mortality which resulted when Adam chose to separate himself from God: “The central content of the ‘garments of skin’ is mortality, the transformation of life into survival. … [God] tolerates within His infinite love even this new situation and transforms it into a blessing. … so that by using it correctly humanity can survive and realize its original goal in Christ.”¹⁵

Prior to these garments of skin, pre-fallen Adam in Paradise was naked by virtue of his simplicity.¹⁶ In other words, before the Fall, Adam lived in natural harmony with the world around him: “The body of Adam was so simple that it was in reality transparent, open to the material creation without resisting it in any way …”¹⁷

When he fell, Adam broke his original relationship with God and the world. Our soul is now preoccupied—often obsessed—with passions of the flesh, worldly pleasures and material possessions. ‘Garments of skin’ conveys the reality that fallen man is now bound by a biological mode of existence. Man must now toil and sweat to sustain himself. He must protect himself against the elements—even from the animals originally created for him: “Man no longer has life in the way that he did previously … Life continues only so long as death is postponed. That which exists now in the proper sense is death: ‘life’ has been transmuted into ‘survival’.”¹⁸

Bodily Death as a Benevolence of God

The Church Fathers teach that these ‘garments of skin’ reveal God’s goodness and compassion for man. In light of God’s great love and mercy, death is considered as a remedy for sin, not as punishment. The inevitability of death can lead man to repentance and the struggle against sin.

According to St Basil the Great, “God did not create death, but we brought it upon ourselves by a wicked intention. … He did not prevent our dissolution … that our weakness might not remain as immortal.”¹⁹ St. Gregory the Theologian adds, “Yet here too [man] makes a gain, namely death and the cutting off of sin, in order that evil may not be immortal. Thus, his punishment is changed into a mercy …”²⁰ By tolerating death, God providentially limits the extent of man’s sin and separation from Him.

Our mortality not only limits the extent of our sin, it also frees us from our personal sicknesses and sorrows. St. Cyril of Alexandria teaches: “By death the Giver of the Law stopped the spread of sin, and even in this He reveals His love for mankind. For death dissolves this animal nature of ours and stops the activity of evil, and on the other hand, it delivers or frees man from illnesses, frees him from labors, and puts an end to his sorrows and cares, and stops his bodily sufferings.”²¹

In light of the Resurrected Christ, then, instead of trying to stave off old age and perpetuate our youth by artificial means, it is better for us to grow old and eventually die. This is to say, it is better that our soul be temporarily separated from our body, rather than allow our unnatural separation from God – a life of slow corruption and decay – to last forever.²²

God provides us with opportunities to freely repent from sin and strive for the true life in Christ for which we are intended: “So here we see God’s love for mankind. He expels man from Paradise so that he will not remain mortal forever, but may repent and at the suitable time, through the Incarnation, may … overcome death … So then, man’s expulsion from Paradise was not a punishment by God, but an act of His love and philanthropy.”²³

Christ liberates human nature from the bonds of sin and death through His death and Resurrection. Furthermore, Christ empowers us, as living members of His Resurrected Body, with the means to defeat the forces of spiritual death, here and now.

Through our personal participation in the ascetic, sacramental and liturgical life of Christ’s Holy Church, we are led to spiritual therapy. Here, our spiritual illnesses are properly treated and healed. Death is a transient phenomenon. It is a momentary interim. When looking at death through the lens of Christ’s Resurrection, we see it in an entirely different perspective.

Resurrection

Belief in the resurrection of the human body is fundamental to the Orthodox Faith. It is a matter of faith alone. For many outside the Church, belief in the Resurrection appears irrational. So is our belief that God actually became man, or that bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ.

Our Church teaches that every human being who ever lived will be resurrected on the Last Day.²⁴ Each one of us, whether a believer in the Resurrection or not, will be resurrected to his own body—whether he is Christian or atheist, Buddhist or Hindu, sinner or saint.²⁵ And we will be judged in our body, for how we lived and for what we did in these bodies while here on earth.

The Apostle Paul teaches that Christ, “will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body.”²⁶ Our resurrected body will be our same body, but it will be glorified. It will be a spiritual body.²⁷ St. John Chrysostom writes, “It is the same, and not the same; the same, because the substance [οὐσία] is the same; but not the same, because this is more excellent, the substance [οὐσία] remaining the same but its beauty becoming greater, and the same body rising up new.”²⁸

St. Gregory Palamas teaches further, “When those who have lived here in a godly manner are separated from their bodies, they are not separated from God, and in the resurrection they will take their bodies with them to God, and in their bodies they will enter with inexpressible joy there where Jesus has preceded us, and in their bodies they will enjoy the glory that will be revealed in Christ.”²⁹ He continues, “But this does not apply to those who live this present life in an unregenerate manner and who at death have no communion with God. For though all will be resurrected, yet the resurrection of each individual will be in accordance with his own inner state.”³⁰

Non-believers will also be resurrected, but their bodies will not be glorified. The bodies of the faithful, however, will be glorified according to the condition of their souls.³¹

The deep respect and reverence the Orthodox Church has for the human body is based ultimately on the Incarnation of Christ. Not only are we uniquely created in the image of God,³² but the Son of God has now assumed our human nature, with a real human body. He did not assume the nature of an angel, nor of any other created being. God became human.

And not only is the fullness of our nature—including our body—assumed by the Son of God, but it was also resurrected by Him after His voluntary death on the Holy Cross. Furthermore, forty days after His Resurrection, at His glorious Ascension,³³ Christ took His body with Him, so that His complete human nature—including His human body—now sits “at the right hand of the Father.”³⁴ Christ will never cease being human.³⁵

This is the same Body that the faithful are engrafted into through Holy Baptism: “For we are members of His body, of His flesh and His bones.”³⁶ This is the same Body believers partake in when receiving Holy Communion: “The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?”³⁷

We become the Body of Christ—not because we lose our own bodies—but because we conform to the likeness of Christ.³⁸ Our bodies are intended to become holy.³⁹ Together as one, our body and soul are saved and sanctified. Together as one, our body and soul will be resurrected into eternal life.

Join us for the next article on how we are practically grafted into the Body of Christ, in a life of prayer and worship that sanctifies soul and body.

By Prof. Harry Boosalis from his book Person to Person

Photos by Michael Boosalis

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References:

1. St. Gregory Palamas, Natural Chapters 38, PG 150, 1148A, trans. Palmer, Sherrard and Ware, The Philokalia 4, London, 1995, p. 363. See St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man 29, PG 44, 233D and St. Epiphanios of Salamis, Panarion 64. 18, PG 41, 1097D. ↩︎
2. “For the Bible … the terms ‘body’ and ‘soul’ are not essentially—constituent parts, but two different ways of seeing man as a whole … For Biblical man, a human being is a personalized unity.” Monk Makarios, The Greek, Hebrew and Christian Perceptions of the Body, in Synaxis vol 1, Montreal, 2006, p. 71. ↩︎
3. Metro. Hierotheos, Life After Death, trans. E. Williams, Levadia, 1996, p. 87. ↩︎
4. Archim. Zacharias, Remember Thy First Love, Waymart, 2016, p. 162. Death is “the enemy to be destroyed, and not a mystery to be explained.” A. Schmemann, For the Life of the World, Crestwood, 1973, p. 100. ↩︎
5. St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5. 27. 2, trans. Roberts and Donaldson (ANF, vol. 1), Peabody, 2004, p. 556. ↩︎
6. “A man knows God, and is known by Him, in so far as he makes every effort not to be separated from God.” St. Anthony the Great, On the Character of Men 164, trans. Palmer, Sherrard and Ware, The Philokalia 1, London, 1979, p. 354. ↩︎
7. Psalms 72. 27 (SAAS). ↩︎
8. Gen 2. 16-17. (All Scriptural references are from the New King James Version, unless otherwise noted). ↩︎
9. For patristic perspectives on The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil see Appendix One. ↩︎
10. Metro. Hierotheos, Life After Death, p. 22. ↩︎
11. See Metro. Hierotheos, Life After Death, p. 22. ↩︎
12. St. Gregory Palamas, Homilies 16. 7, ed. and trans. C. Veniamin, Waymart, 2009, p. 118. ↩︎
13. Funeral Hymn, Tone 8 (St. John Damascene), Service Book, trans. I. Hapgood, Englewood, 1975, p. 386. ↩︎
14. Gen. 3. 21. ↩︎
15. P. Nellas, Deification in Christ, trans. N. Russell, Crestwood, 1987, pp. 60-61. ↩︎
16. “He was naked because of his simplicity and life free from artifice and far from any covering …” St. Gregory the Theologian, Orations 45. 8, PG36, 632C, trans. N. Harrison, in Festal Orations, Crestwood, 2008, p. 167. ↩︎
17. P. Nellas, Deification in Christ, pp. 52-53. ↩︎
18. P. Nellas, Deification in Christ, p. 47. See E. Theokritoff, “When Adam disobeyed the King above, the whole creation rose up against him … The wild beasts turned hostile, the earth was unwilling to feed him …” Living in God’s Creation, Crestwood, 2009, p. 82. ↩︎
19. St. Basil, God Is Not the Cause of Evil 7, PG 31, 345AB, trans. N. Harrison, in On the Human Condition, Crestwood, 2005, p. 75. “God permitted death in order that man should not remain forever in a living death.” Metro. Hierotheos, Life After Death, p. 46. ↩︎
20. St. Gregory the Theologian, Orations 45. 8, PG 36, 633AB, trans. Browne and Swallow (NPNF, vol. 7), Peabody, 2004, p. 425. See P. Nellas, “God allows death to exist but turns it against corruption and its cause, sin, and sets a boundary both to corruption and to sin. … His original plan for man’s eternal and blessed life in Him remains intact.” Deification in Christ, p. 65. ↩︎
21. St. Cyril of Alexandria, On the Incarnation of the Lord, trans. S. Rose, in Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Platina, 1984, pp. 158-159. ↩︎
22. P. Nellas, Deification in Christ, p. 64. ↩︎
23. Metro. Hierotheos, The Twelve Feasts of the Lord, trans. E. Williams, Levadia, 2000, p. 371. ↩︎
24. See John 5. 28-29. ↩︎
25. See St. Maximos the Confessor, “Our Lord and God Jesus Christ, showing His love for us, suffered for the whole of mankind and gave to all men an equal hope of resurrection, although each man determines his own fitness for glory or punishments.” Texts on Love, 1. 71, PG 90, 976C, trans. The Philokalia 2, London, 1981, p. 60. ↩︎
26. Phil. 3. 21. ↩︎
27. See 1 Cor. 15. 35, 42-44. ↩︎
28. St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on First Corinthians 41. 3, PG 61, 356-357, trans. T. Chambers (NPNF, vol. 12), Peabody, 2004, p. 250. See St. Isaac the Syrian, “That grace whereby we are resurrected after we have sinned is greater than the grace which brought us into being when we were not.” Ascetic Homilies 51, trans. Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Brookline, 2011, p. 388. ↩︎
29. St. Gregory Palamas, To the Nun Xeni 15, PG 1052AB, trans. The Philokalia 4, p. 298. ↩︎
30. St. Gregory Palamas, To the Nun Xeni 15, PG 1052B, trans. The Philokalia 4, p. 298. ↩︎
31. See 1 Cor. 15. 41. ↩︎
32. Gen. 1. 26. ↩︎
33. See Acts 1. 9-11 and Luke 24. 50, 51. ↩︎
34. The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. See Mark 16. 19. ↩︎
35. See St. Gregory Palamas, “He ascended in glory … and sat down on the right hand of the heavenly majesty, making our human substance share His own throne and divinity.” Homilies 21. 12, ed. and trans. C. Veniamin, p. 174. ↩︎
36. Eph. 5. 30. “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?” 1 Cor. 6. 15. “Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually.” 1 Cor. 12. 27. ↩︎
37. 1 Cor. 10. 16. See Luke 22. 19, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” ↩︎
38. See St. Maximos the Confessor, “We are said to be the body of Christ. We do not become this body through the loss of our own bodies; nor again because Christ’s body passes into us hypostatically or is divided into members; but rather because we conform to the likeness of the Lord’s flesh by shaking off the corruption of sin.” Two Hundred Texts on Theology 2. 84, PG 90, 1164C, trans. The Philokalia vol. 2, p. 158. ↩︎
39. See Rom. 12. 1 and 1 Cor. 6. 19. ↩︎