Over recent decades the overwhelmingly dominant view in Catholic academic and educational circles has been heavily weighted against the traditional
account of body and soul.
It is, however, a very different
kind of body and soul than is explained in traditional Christian doctrine.
It has been common in recent years for scripture scholars to tell us that the idea of the
separation of body and soul after death — indeed that any systematic distinction between body and soul — was alien to the Hebrew vision of the Old Testament.
In addition, the forces of anti-Semitism and materialist secularism threatened the very survival
of the body and soul of Jewry.
For the human person, the
union of his body and soul has been a source of bewilderment and sanctification since the Fall, which introduced a clashing discord into the harmony of the human person.
But «chastity under vow» is when a person consciously and personally dedicates all the
powers of body and soul to God, for the sake of His Kingdom.
When a man dies that whole thing dies; that is to say, that subsistent thing, made
up of body and soul, perishes as the soul is separated from the body.
He affirms that the personal subject is the second person of the Trinity, who unites to his divine nature an impersonal and unfallen human nature
consisting of both body and soul.
Calvin thus perceived in the crucifixion not only the price of redemption, but also the archetype of faith as he understood it: seeing God even in the midst of
agonies of body and soul, when every natural feeling cries out that God must be against me.
The musical and mathematical harmonies are cited first, then the mind moves to the
harmony of body and soul and the harmony of human society, until finally we think of the richest harmony of the all - embracing world in which we live and think.
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Russia Of Body and Soul, Hungary The Square, Sweden
Hence, far from conceiving
of body and soul as dualistically opposed, St.Augustine considers soul and body as dimensions of man which integrate with each other, forming a bond which is not merely accidental.
O eternal and everlasting God, I presume to present myself this morning before thy Divine majesty, beseeching thee to accept of my humble and hearty thanks, that it hath pleased thy great goodness to keep and preserve me the night past from all the dangers poor mortals are subject to, and has given me sweet and pleasant sleep, whereby I find my body refreshed and comforted for performing the duties of this day, in which I beseech thee to defend me from all
perils of body and soul...
The discipline and
penances of the body and soul are born out of an awareness of the evil which exists in the person's attachment to the fallen world through the senses, the intellect, and the spirit.They are meant to assist in the purification of these fallen attachments within the human person.
The goal, therefore, of Christian asceticism is not to reject, manipulate, or suppress the natural
instincts of the body and soul, but merely to control and spiritualise them.
The act of sexual union is truly unitive only to the extent that it is one with the meaning of God's will, within the
covenant of body and soul which is Christian marriage.
By the deliberate choice of evil, the first generation of human beings did not just lose «preternatural gifts», they tore themselves away from their true source of control and direction, damaging their own integration and ontological harmony as
creatures of body and soul.
As Selvaggi writes, «the nature of consecrated virginity [is]
holiness of body and soul, the one inseparable from the other, both for the glory of God in humble service and modest living in a stable way of life.»
However, if we presume that a person is a psychosomatic unity
inclusive of both body and soul, then their interaction at the level of the human self becomes accessible.
Jesus and Mary were also actualised in the fallen state according to the divine decree of original unity, but unlike us, are always immaculate in the
totality of their bodies and souls.
Origen, for example, prefers seed imagery to the common metaphor of the statue; Dante and Aquinas stress growth and
development of body and soul.
At a later cultural stage a sharp distinction is usually made between two kinds of existence which, it is supposed, may occur separately as mindless matter and as disembodied mind but, at least in man, in an
association of body and soul.
These glosses called into question the creation of the world in time, the role of the senses and the imagination in human knowing, the individuality (and personal responsibility) of the human intellect and will, the immortality of the human
composite of body and soul, the role of divine Providence, the simple standard of one truth governing both theology and philosophy, and other foundations of both Catholic faith and empirical (as distinct from gnostic) reason.
Apparently so, because the principles of brahmacharya, intended to achieve
purity of body and soul, prohibited young Brahmans from eating hot chiles.