Page 113 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

M A N A S B O D Y
Man as Body
What does it mean to be a body? According to Orthodox
tradition, the human being is not simply a soul that
possesses a body, but a psychosomatic unity. The truth of the
human person does not lie in the soul alone, but in the or-
ganic unity of soul and body—and, as some Fathers would
add, even spirit. This unity is so fundamental that any attempt
to separate the human identity from the body leads to distor-
tion. Indeed, such a separation was condemned by the Church
as heresy.
The case of Origen is instructive. By placing the identity of
the human being in the soul and teaching the pre-existence of
souls prior to the creation of the material world, he was ulti-
mately rejected by the Fathers and condemned by the Fifth
Ecumenical Council. For the Church, the soul does not pre-
cede the body; it comes into being with it. And more impor-
tantly, it does not find its fulfillment apart from the body, but
awaits its restoration in the resurrection.
The insight has been expressed memorably by Georges
Florovsky:
“The body without the soul is a corpse, but the soul without
the body is a ghost—not a human being.”
This is why the Church confesses, in the Creed, not the im-
mortality of the soul, but the resurrection of the dead—the
resurrection of bodies. Any quiet acceptance of a merely “im-
mortal soul,” and any weakening of the expectation of bodily
resurrection, constitutes a deviation from the truth of the hu-
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