Chapter 2
Greek Insights into the Human Person
Greek terminology for the human person
When seeking to understand the terminology used in Christian discourse, we normally turn to the Greek, Latin or Semitic roots of the words used. In the case of ‘asceticism’ there are many classical sources for the concept of athletic training or physical discipline, which the Christian tradition adapted to describe spiritual endeavour. Phil. 3.14 talks of ‘pressing on to the finish’; words suggesting a body honed by training or renunciation of physical indulgences are conspicuously used from the desert Fathers onwards. Monks are described as athletes in training, ascending spiritual mountains, perfecting their metaphysical musculature in order to make the body behave in a Christian manner.1 There is no single word in Greek philosophy which fully suggests the Christian concept of asceticism as self-control of the whole person.2 Notwithstanding that, Greek philosophical thought was immensely influential in shaping the Christian ascetic tradition as it began to disassociate itself from its Jewish sources.
Even before the practice of asceticism became widespread, arguably in conjunction with or following the spate of early martyrdoms, the Christian vocabulary for human and religious anthropology was imbued with Greek terms. Words such as sarx, psychē, sōma, pneuma and nous and their interplay were reworked through a new need to define humanity as not only containing a divine spark (a concept familiar to Stoics) but reflecting a divine image which, in Christ, was uniquely fully human and fully divine. The insistence on the dual nature of Christ required a holistic understanding of human nature; what Christ shared with mankind had to integrate all its physical and spiritual components. Superimposing a Christological reading on the complex ‘blend’ of human nature means that the ‘multiplicity of self’, articulated by Greek philosophers of the fifth century BCE3 becomes a source of acute anxiety in the late antique Christian world. The diverse aspects of human nature became redrawn as a fraught dichotomy between material and spiritual, with inevitable doom for the losing party.
Distinctions between the two worlds of spirit and matter were not a Christian invention; the Stoic view of the universe presupposes a synthesis of divine and material. Stoics thought plants had souls, which could degrade psyche to a generic sense of life force rather than what religious people would see as conscious, morally informed spirituality.4 Plato and Aristotle saw heavenly as well as human bodies as being ‘ensouled’. Such cosmological issues are certainly of concern to Christian commentators, and our focus here on the issue of souls and bodies in their human form represents only one aspect of classical thinking about these matters. Greek philosophical ideas are mediated through the writings of the New Testament, some of whose authors clearly shared and understood classical rhetorical method as well as concepts. A striking contrast between Christianity and pagan attitudes, though, is the absence of hostility to diversity in Graeco-Roman times. Polytheism and plurality presented the pagan with no major threat to intellectual as distinct to social patterns. It was normal in pre-Christian days for people to be ‘fascinated by foreign religions’ and rather than seeing them as a threat to their own beliefs, they were ‘usually eager to identify similarities or to adopt cults’.5 Considerable toleration of diversity therefore existed, in comparison to the attempted extermination of ‘the other’ practicsd by monotheistic cultures. Christianity by contrast had socio-political and religious reasons for establishing a clear demarcation between accepted and forbidden beliefs. Nowhere was this more evident than in teachings about Christ, with the earliest large-scale debates between opposing parties being devoted to defining how human and divine could combine in the one person, and quite what that humanity might be if it could be shared by its Saviour.
Living a good life: imitation or realisation of the divine within
Hellenistic and Christian ideas about the need to discipline the human body show some points of convergence as well as fundamental differences. Both see the aim of human existence as living a good life, reflecting in choices and actions the divine spark nurtured within. Both the pagan and the Christian holy man could be seen as ‘an intermediate figure’ between other humans and the divine.6 This ‘living in accordance with nature’ is a Stoic concept,7 developed also by Aristotle in a discussion on ‘degrees of perfection’.8 Within the Christian tradition a natural/contra-natural dichotomy is inferred in analysing how the desert Fathers, for example, seek to integrate the materiality of the human body within the totality of Christian experience. The Orphic myth explains the intermediary position of man as due to a mixture of the Dionysian divine nature and a Titanic evil streak.9 This, however, implies that the non-divine contribution is intrinsically wicked, something Christians continued to debate for centuries. The suggestion that the Titanic streak might be capable of purification and perfection is rooted in classical teaching, and leads to the concept of deification insisted on in Patristic thought.
Classical theurgy insisted that the use of (material) ‘sacramental actions’ combined with ‘the ineffable words by which a mortal charms the heart of the immortals’ were means by which the initiate might purify his soul and be raised to union with the gods.10 The Stoic belief in the existence of the divine spark led to an assumption that humans contained the potential to become divine, even if there were negative connotations of having ‘a divine soul imprisoned in a material body’. The boundary between divine and human was ‘fluid’,11 and a well-intentioned person might perfect themselves to release their divine potential. The aspirations of pagan holy men reflected this awareness of indwelling divinity; their spiritual ambitions showed a ‘divine madness … supernatural power’ which divorced the earth-bound body from the celestial soul and also encouraged the sage to ‘to make a positive advance into the divine realm’.12 Indeed, pagan aspiration to the divine is at the heart of their frustration with the human body. It is less that the corporeality itself is problematic than that the entrapment of the soul in the body meant that somatic humans can only lead a life which is a ‘pale imitation’ of that of the gods, who are under no such constraints.13 Late antique Christians, on the other hand, found the body problematic because it was limited; ‘it was not a body of plenitude’.14 Synthesising pagan and Christian concepts of the indwelling divine therefore meant that the holy man of late antiquity aspired to show his divine potential in a life of holy mimesis, whilst demonstrating that the ‘divine marrow of human existence’15 was expressive of human nature moulded in the image of God.
Given the anxieties and inhibitions about the body, and how it could paradoxically mirror God, there is a problem for both philosophers and religious people here. Does living a ‘good life’ consist of divorcing one’s body from the rest of oneself, or can it be achieved by the soul’s co-operation with the body, enticing it to live a virtuous life governed by the values of moderation, self-restraint and other manifestations of wisdom? Such qualities were valued alike by pagan, Jewish and Christian believers.16
Living well could mean being ‘in righteousness with God’, adherence to social laws and norms, correct use of divinely given gifts, or aspiring towards a sense of completeness and stability of self.17 Philosophers link happiness to a state of virtue, which raised problems for early Christians: in the face of uncertainty, confusion and persecution, how could they feel happy, and how did this affect their moral status? In asking this question the ghosts of Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics mixed their voices with the newly emerging Patristic ones; answers correspondingly came from Christianity, Gnosticism and Greek philosophy, with (some have argued) Christianity giving rise to Gnosticism in an attempt to place the self within relation to Christ.18 Plato connects an appropriate pursuit of pleasure with virtue in Republic, 588b and ff.: ‘if the good and just man is so much superior to the bad and unjust man in terms of pleasure, will not his superiority be infinitely greater in terms of moral beauty and value?’ to which the answer came: ‘Infinitely greater’.19 Aristotle also connected happiness and virtue; in discussing what type of happiness constitutes ‘our highest goal’, he finds it to be ‘an activity of the pyschē (mind, soul, personality) in accordance with reason (logos)’ and then as an activity ‘in accordance with virtue (aretē)’.20 His hylomorphic theory allows for the ‘affections of the soul’, such as thoughts, emotions and sensations, to take place within a material body;21 the body is therefore capable of virtue.
Sense of self
Liberating the indwelling divine helped to lead a good life; the hunger for reunion with God separates man from animal, however animalistic his superficial make-up. Desire for something beyond human existence is found from earliest Greek literature onwards: the ‘intuitive feeling that man is something other than the strength of his limbs and the appearance of his physique’ can be traced to Homer, c.750 BC.22 Religious human anthropology is illuminated by the insights of secular literature and current medical beliefs. Whilst the teachings of Greek philosophers clearly impact very significantly on Christian thought, literary figures such as Homer, Virgil and Lucretius also provided a seedbed of ideas about the human person.23 Homer’s belief that one thinks and feels with the diaphragm is reminiscent of the Semitic heart/belly-centred approaches to humanity, and suggests an integration of physical and spiritual elements in humanity which is lacking in later Greek philosophy.
Post-Enlightenment thinking all too readily attributed an exaggerated sense of the ‘self’ as a rational unity of bodily and spiritual. Cartesian dualism tends to be read back into the very varied dualisms and other constructs within Platonism where in fact the relationship between body and soul was not a simple binary opposition but driven by ‘negotiating competing desires, appetites, or emotions in the self’.24 For the pagan sage finding one’s true self comprised the victory of higher impulses over animal desires, both of which were integral parts of his make-up. The vitae of late antique sages act as essentially ‘a kind of propaganda for the cult of the divine mind, his interior self, where his wisdom and power are located’.25 Aspiring to a life of beauty and truth necessitated sufficient love of oneself to seek to become self-aware. Once the sensus sui has been achieved, rationality can follow: for Stoics, at least, this was how to distinguish between what is intrinsically good and what is ‘choice worthy’.26 Determining what is self pre-dates the Cartesian enquiry about such matters.27 Its very existence as a topic for discourse from Homeric times onwards suggests that the integration of all the divergent aspects of the self is a sine qua non of civilised human existence. Indeed, questioning whether the soul and the self are one and the same thing has long been seen as part of the inheritance of the ‘classical age’.28 Whilst Plato raises this issue it is noticeable that Aristotle barely touches on issues of self, personhood and identity in the De Anima although there is mention of it in the Nicomachean Ethics.29 The emergence of patristic Christological debates about the ‘person’ of Christ add new meaning to the concept of ‘self’, giving the Greek term prosōpon a radically new meaning, with theological as well as linguistic nuances.30
The contribution of non-philosophical sources to the issue has been mentioned. Medical practices presumed a need for treating the person as an integrated entity; Socrates states that curing the soul is an indispensible first step to curing the physical body ‘for the part can never be well unless the whole is well’. Curing the holon is thus presented as the obvious means to saving the soul. Whilst this can be read as assigning the soul’s welfare as more important than that of the material body, the very fact that a connection is made between the component parts of the human person implies an integrated view of the human person. The simultaneous healing of soul and body resonates strongly with those miracles of Jesus which depict sins being forgiven as part of a visible physical healing.31
The concept of ‘self’ sparked something of a crisis of identity for Christians, setting public and social responsibilities at odds with the biblical and ascetic demand to subjugate personhood to service of others and Christ. Christian identity was denoted by changes of personal name. During the late antique era diverse connotations of self were indicated by conventions to do with nomenclature. Personal names could be expanded or amended to show changing allegiances and. For example, baptismal names could be added to family names; bishops are routinely known to us now by their see (the plethora of Gregories makes this most helpful); within the Roman Empire a foreigner who joined the army adopted a Roman name to indicate his new ‘self’;32 monastic names throughout antiquity and beyond indicated devout aspirations such as piety, honour or peacefulness (Eulabes, Timothy and Irenaeus respectively). By the second century CE the state/family names that were inherited at birth were amplified by a third denoting either physical defects (pathē) or merits (aretē).33 But despite classical Greek questioning about the nature of self and identity, the concept of a person as a legal entity did not develop until the third century CE. This must surely owe something to increasing Christian awareness of the need to define the nature of Christ’s ‘self’ which fed into the Ecumenical Councils from 325 onwards. The formation of Christological doctrine on the unique nature of Christ’s ‘self’ required a reconsideration of what constituted the human nature Christ’s kenosis condescended to share.34 Christian self-identity, expressed by personal name, combined classical and Jewish traditions. On the one hand, Jews saw their names as primarily expressing their existence in terms of relationships to those around them; Christians, however, saw their name as indicating not only their relationships to others and to God, but something more ontological too. Their name or title conveyed an inner essence of something not ‘derived from the surveyable external world’: only the term christianos could truly express their inner and truest self.35 This individualistic, even solipsistic, sense of identity led to the dangerous possibility of ascetic extremism and competitiveness. But the norm for pagan and Christian holy men was for their outer ‘self’ to act as an example to the surrounding community with philanthropic aims taking precedence over personal status. The expectation that the pagan holy man’s chief role was to teach philosophy focused responsibility on his actions and teaching rather than self-reflection. This philosophy tended to synthesise Plato’s metaphysical approach with its pious Pythagorean antecedents. To this were added Neoplatonic interpretations which were frequently shared by Christian ascetics and writers.36
Role of the wise man or philosopher in the community
As leaders within the community pagan and Christian ‘holy men’ shared similar responsibilities. Their authority as spiritual leaders is shown by their disciples’ adherence to their teachings; pupils formed strong allegiances. Iamblichus’ disciples ‘hung on to him as though by an unbreakable chain’.37 Whilst a desert Father might teach by example and the giving of a ‘word’, so the pagan holy man’s chief social responsibility was to teach wisdom in the form of philosophy; this meant that his chief social milieu was that of his own followers.38 Inevitably an element of hero-worship and hagiographic exaggeration crept in: magical, even miraculous, powers were attributed to some wise men; Iamblichus as well as working miracles was apparently capable of levitation. When he prayed, ‘he soared ten cubits above the earth where he was transfigured with light’.39 Copious examples of similar transformation and defiance of laws of physics are recorded in the lives of the desert Fathers. Isolation from people who did not share similar aspirations is common to both milieus; virtuous living required withdrawal from other people, and especially from an urban environment, which was associated with privilege and learning whereas Christian anachoresis encouraged a marginalisation of the holy into secluded environments.40 It also became associated with a conventional assumption that being truly holy was the prerogative of the so-called ‘unlettered’ wise ascetic, who had left formal education behind along with other worldly makers of status. The topos of the illiterate hermit became one whose ‘book’ is nature, and who knows scripture by heart rather than from reading it; however, the practice of settling superfluous but suitably financially endowed mothers and sisters in communities, as a last act of responsibility before renunciation of the earthly family, suggests would-be ascetics often came from privileged backgrounds.
Pagan renunciation included the possible rejection of some or all types of sexual relationships (within and outside marriage), a carnivorous diet and other features of a full bodily existence.41 The ascetic might avoid not only marital but other human relationships. Many pagan philosophers enjoyed social backgrounds of considerable status and public eminence.42 Whilst the desire for a spiritual life might start as a response to awareness of the indwelling divine, it soon became an exclusive state. In rejecting the world as a possible locus for salvation, holy men from late Roman times onwards brought about profound social change;43 they effectively privatised what had been democratically universal salvation. The withdrawal from the city constituted the Christianisation of Hellenistic ascetic traditions. In asceticism as with many mainstream aspects of secular and religious life (such as ceremonial dress, liturgical practices, legal structures) Christians experiencing the syncretistic condition of ‘the mass pagan world’ in the late antique era readily adopted certain elements of their classical precursors.44 Indeed, it is possible that the synthesis of biblical and Platonic ideas in particular was fundamental to the establishment of successful monastic development in Egypt and Palestine.45 The evolution of the Christian ascetic from the pagan sage thus moved holiness from city to desert, from public to private, from outer self to inner self. This affected how the body was accepted as part of the human self.
Philosophical and anthropological terminology
Just as Biblical sources have a set of anthropological terms used to describe the nature of religious life and identity, so in the Graeco-Roman, especially Stoic, tradition certain words denote the aspects or components of the human person. Sōma and psychē are the key terms used to describe contrasting or complementary material and non-material parts or aspects of the human person; the biblical concern with sarx as something distinct from sōma is not readily found.
Hellenistic philosophers shared a ‘belief cluster’ with physicians of the day;46 Hippocratic medicine aimed to heal the whole person. Distinctions between body and spirit did not necessarily have religious connotations, and the anthropological vocabulary could cover a range of meanings according to context. So, in the period between Homer and Plato, for example, psychē continued to mean ‘life’ but also to include ‘expressions for perception, thought, and the emotions’ so that the word denoted the ‘mental correlate to sōma’. Together, the two words represented the totality of the living person.47 In this context, therefore, psychē denotes the mental side of the human person (in comparison to his physical side) and not, as in the Christian understanding, the spiritual side.48 Of the two words, psychē clearly denoted the immortal aspect of the human person; its associations with air and fire implied motility, suggestive of divine (and therefore immortal) qualities, according to Pythagoreans.49 The advent of Orphism was responsible for a shift towards the sense of ‘self’ being better expressed by psychē than sōma.50 Insights recognisably derived from Socratic discourse may well have precursors, such as the mutual dependence of body and soul expressed in Epicurius’ Letter to Herodotus from c. 300 BCE; here it is argued that ‘sentience’ is only possible when the mutually dependent body and soul act in harmony with each other.51 Arguably, a major distinctiveness of Plato is his more systematic and developed analysis of the relationship between psychē and sōma.52
The value of moderation
Both classical and Christian traditions see a good life as being built on integration and right ordering of the various parts which make up the whole person: proportionality was needed to balance pleasure and discipline. This state of well-being is termed sōphrosynē, meaning the well-being, health, or even wisdom brought about by moderation, a key characteristic of right living. Encratism thus gives cause for concern because its extremism fails to engage with this aspect of Socratic wisdom. Virtue (aretē) and discretion (diakrisis) are other qualities valued in pagan and Christian life. Living a virtuous life was self-centred but not in an indulgent way; temperance was valued not for being an ‘ascetic’ but a rational choice, reflecting cultural ideals of dignified sobriety.53 The ‘ensouled body’ was seen as an organism that required fine tuning, not necessarily subjugation,54 in accordance with the Republic Book IV 430E–431A, which praises sōphrosynē.55 There is greater complexity here than a dichotomy between bad materiality and virtuous spirituality; Plato suggests that a section of the soul, perhaps even its greater part, is subject to passions and irrational behaviour. The remedy is not elimination of the errant part, but control and discipline.56 Lack of discipline rather than ontological error was the danger: in classical thought, an intemperate person or akolastos was bad but not weak because they were pursing the wrong ends, and their intemperance (lack of moderation) was the source of the error. Weak-minded or weak-willed persons, on the other hand, (those suffering from akrasia) were led astray through impulsive behaviour which means they were mistaken about the truth of a situation.57 The moral discipline advocated by Diotima in the Symposium required a measure of disengagement from the world, but such self-control is far removed from renunciation of the material world.58
In addition to terms suggesting mental control over physical impulses, the Greek philosophical vocabulary provided terms explaining the integration of body and soul; some of these have found their way into Christian discourse. Chrysippus’ theory of krasis or the blending of body and soul59 is echoed in Plotinus IV.3 – ‘(the Soul in body) may be at once indivisible and divisible; it will be, as it were, a blend, a thing made up of its own divisible self with, in addition, the quality that it derives from above itself’.60
Plato
Writing about the ‘double heritage’ of Greek Christianity, Kallistos Ware distinguishes between the Hebraic approach, which he sees as holistic, and the Hellenistic one, which he takes to be that of Plato and calls dualistic.61 If we look at the full gamut of Plato’s dialogues, however, it is clear there is much more complexity and variety than simple material dualism. There is certainly plenty of negativity towards the body, but also writings which affirm moderation and discipline, by which the body is refined and made a worthy or at least a ‘non-injurious’ housing for the soul.62 Two important factors militate against a simplistic view that Platonism equates to dualism; Plato’s thoughts on the human person develop from the earliest dialogues to those written later in his life. Earlier dialogues kept closely to his inheritance of Socratic teachings, and his own voice emerges more clearly later, though it is not always possible to distinguish between the two. The second caveat relates to authenticity. Atypical teachings may be seen as either unreliable (because they diverge from the majority of his writing) or as valuable original insights. The influence of Socrates on Plato may have been a moderating one; unlike his pupil, Socrates apparently married and fathered children, and his life style is reported as showing enjoyment of the pleasures of the material world more than his pupil did. Rather than renouncing his body, Socrates sought to refine it so that its demands did not impinge on him. He aimed for passionless disengagement; rendering his body the willing instrument of his soul, he achieved a mastery of a physical existence he had fully experienced.63 In common with Oriental mystics, or Buddhists, he believed that the aim of the enlightened man or philosopher was detachment from the body.64
An example of the diversity of Platonic thought can be seen in the shift from the soul being presented as a bipartite division between reason and instinct to the soul as a tripartite entity. This owes much to the fact that the Republic follows hard on the heels of the Phaedo,65 and some close echoes between the two may be found. For example, Book X of the Republic 611B–612A talks of the soul once freed from the body being able to lose its irrational side: this compares to the Phaedo 78B–84B.66 The description in the Republic of the Greek state as tripartite may refer symbolically to the soul, but it is unclear whether the concept of tripartition was first used of the soul or the state.67 Some of the most positive (and therefore atypical) ‘Platonic’ ideas about the human person come from the Alcibiades which started to be viewed as inauthentic after Schleiermacher raised doubts about its authorship in 1836.68
The Gorgias
It is in the Gorgias that we find the key phrase from which Platonic dualism takes its form: ‘Καὶ τὸ μὲν σ
μά ἐστιν η̒μ
ν σῆμα’.69 Some modern translations disguise the brutality of the statement in an idiomatic but inaccurate translation; for example, Tom Griffith renders this as: ‘Indeed, I myself have certainly heard one of the wise say we are already dead – that we leave the womb for a tomb.’70 The older translation in the Loeb Classical Editions more accurately translates this as ‘and the body is our tomb’.71 As it stands, this extract (which is the most frequently cited passage from the text) suggests the need for ‘all out warfare between the soul and the body – literally to the death’, as the truly good and just person will do all they can to live as though not possessed of a body.72 The concept of the body as the tomb in which the soul is buried, preventing it from normal activity, is adopted from Pythagoreanism, which described the soul as having ‘fallen’ into matter as into a tomb.73 The body was no more than a container for the soul, which still remembered a previous existence in which, when divine, it lived with the Gods.74 That Plato knew of the Pythagorean dictum can be ascertained from references, such as in the Cratylus 400B.75 Pythagoras’ negativity about the body occurs also in the image of life as a prison, according to Cicero (Cato Maior 20), though the word phroura may be seen as ‘guard duty’ rather than prison.76 This is picked up by Neoplatonists following the lead of Plotinus, who uses this image in the Enneads:77 Philo talks about ‘fleeing from the base and polluted prison house of the body’.78 However, other images in the Gorgias are open to more positive interpretation, illustrating the danger of assuming a monochrome ‘Platonic’ view of the body. The concept of the body as clothing for the soul mentioned in the Gorgias is shared by some Christian traditions, especially the Syrian, where it is used to affirm the dual nature of Christ and therefore does not denote a negative view of the body.79
The Phaedo
Whereas the Gorgias appears to be Plato’s recording of Socratic wisdom, the Phaedo, written shortly afterwards, is probably the first identifiable example of Plato’s own reworking of the Socratic message. It is less condemnatory of the body’s effect on the soul, though it suggests that Socrates faces death with equanimity because he believed that his real self (his soul) would continue to exist after the death of his physical body.80 In the Phaedo 105d–106c, Plato sets out the argument for the immortality of the soul in contrast to the body’s mortality, in a way which ‘promises to underwrite soul–body dualism’.81
The moment of death aside, other statements in the Phaedo are negative about the body. The body’s fluidity and instability is seen as problematic, and an indication of mortality.82 The body is seen as a ‘disturbance’ (this is Plato’s response to the Stoic conception of the wise man derived from Seneca), with its hunger for food and susceptibility to disease, not to mention its ‘loves and lusts and fancies of all kinds’. By complaining that the body thus ‘is always breaking in on us’, it is cast as alien to the ‘real’ self, a hindrance to the right progress of the rational soul which is not only separated from the body but seen as the part of the human capable of true knowledge rather than animal sensation.83 In theory, the soul being ‘more divine and a higher thing than the body’ is still vulnerable to destruction through contamination by the body.84
In the Phaedo again we find the Orphic doctrine of the body as a prison house for the soul.85 Modern translations vary in their expression of the intensity of this experience, and in their interpretation of terms; the more recent Loeb edition talks of the soul as ‘entirely fastened and welded to the body’86 whereas Treddenick expresses the yoking of soul and body in terms of chains:
No soul which has not practised philosophy, and is not absolutely pure when it leaves the body, may attain to the divine nature; that is only for the lover of wisdom … Every seeker after wisdom knows that up to the time when philosophy takes it over his soul is a helpless prisoner, chained hand and foot in the body, compelled to view reality not directly [here Lamb has ‘not with its own unhindered vision’] but only through its prison bars, and wallowing in utter ignorance.87
Here, too, it is possible that ‘guard duty’ rather than ‘prison’ is closer to what Plato intended, which renders the Phaedo as relatively world-affirming. Another reading of this is that the image of the soul in captivity denotes the unnaturalness of the relationship between the body and soul,88 since the normal state of the soul is to be free from constraint. Evidently, the hermeneutical layers from Socrates through Plato through Plotinus to late antique Christian readings of Greek philosophy to modern translations into the vernacular contribute variants, contradictions and nuances in addition to the original meaning. A further example of this is in the Timeaus, possibly the most influential of Plato’s discourses, which contributes further to an appraisal of the human person.
The Timaeus
Section 90A–90D of the Timaeus is a detailed discourse on human biology and appears to offer a positive approach to the body, if only because it is not solely blamed for emotions and irrational activity.89 The body is conceived of as a vehicle rather than a passive container; whilst containing the soul (as suggested in the Gorgias) it does not necessarily weigh it down. Rather than focusing on the maladroitness of the body, this discourse subdivides the soul into an immortal rational soul (which is transported in the body) which also contains an irrational soul (which experiences emotions and desires appropriate to its varied locations within the body). Hence, the θυμός, is found in the chest and the lascivious desire in the ἐπιθυμία around the belly and genitals.90 The irrational soul is mortal, and subject to the vicissitudes of material existence. Both body and soul are seen as being created through divine impetus and unified in a common aim – to engage in rational existence:
And when the whole fabric of the soul had been finished to the fashioner’s mind, he next fell to shaping within her all that has body and fitting the two together, centre to centre. When she was thus inwoven every way from the centre to the utmost heaven and wrapped thereabout without, she entered on a God-given beginning of unfailing and intelligent life for all time to come.91
‘Interweaving’ suggests co-dependence of the body and soul, rather than a hostile antagonism; there are similarities here to the concept of krasis in Chrysippus. The unity between the two is morally neutral and the two potentially equal. Somato-psychic disorder92 is avoided, Plato suggests, through balance between the body and soul, and their mutual need for each other – neither body nor soul must be ‘stirred’ or move without the other.93 Comparing rational spiritual endeavour to the pursuit of ‘science or other severe discipline’, Plato here asserts that those who engage in extreme mental activity must do so with moderation. They should also ‘cultivate gymnastic’, and those who conversely focus on ‘the moulding of the body’ should balance this with ‘music and philosophy’ in order for both body and soul to be ‘beautiful and good’. This mens sana in corpora sano philosophy relies on balance and moderation; such morality prefigures the Christian ascetic’s desire for moderation (where this is preferred to encratism). The use of the term ‘gymnastic’ offers a clear route to the Christian ascetic sense of training and discipline, where spiritual athleticism or mountaineering is the dominant image for metaphysical progression which entails right use of the body.
Other Platonic findings
The Alcibiades is unusual in positing an alternative reading of the relationship between body and soul; the body is laid out as a possession of the soul.94 A hierarchy of merit is suggested here, with those things that pertain to the soul being ranked above the somatic.95
The Charmides provides a relatively holistic reading of the human person in an extract on healing; Socrates suggests that you ought not to attempt to cure the body without the soul, just as you can’t cure the eyes without curing the head. However, as he also asserts that curing the soul is the ‘first and essential thing’, this appears to suggest the primacy of the soul over the body.96 Such healing can only be undertaken with sōphrosynē. Robinson explains the various possible readings of this holistic view of the human person – the ‘whole’ could refer to body or person (that is, body and soul combined), giving rise to a more monistic than dualistic understanding of the soul–body relationship.97
Aristotle
The connection between medical theory and philosophical understandings of the human body comes to the fore with Aristotle, who was the son of a physician. His approach to the human person is as a rational animal (albeit radically different to other animals) who naturally inhabits a body.98 Aristotle’s outworking of concepts such as akrasia and the distinction he draws between belief and desire as the prompts to human behaviour99 are fundamental sources for much subsequent catholic doctrine, at a later period of the church’s development than considered in this study.100 In contrast to Plato’s suggestions of conflict between the material and psychic elements, Aristotle posits the two being integral. He is portrayed as avoiding dualism,101 though this may owe more to subsequent scholars’ seeking to polarise Platonic and Aristotelian thought. For Aristotle, the soul has pathē (such as anger or calmness) which are physiological; indeed ‘every mental act is a physiological one’.102 The complementarity of soul and body is shown by Aristotle to represent two aspects, rather than separate components, of the human person. Such hylomorphism allows for the union of body and soul as being not only possible but natural, and, indeed, desirable in achieving virtue and beauty. The relevant parts of De Anima do, however, also express the primacy of the soul as ‘the first entelecheia of a natural body that has the potential to live’.103
The inheritors of Plato
Plotinus
Porphyry’s composition of a life of Pythagoras demonstrates his adherence to a body-negative view of the human person.104 For him the human mind (rather than soul) defined man’s nature; this led him to see the body as no longer the ‘first instrument for expressing of his real character’.105 Porphyry opens his biography of Plotinus (composed at the end of the third century) with this statement: ‘Plotinus, the philosopher our contemporary, seemed ashamed of being in the body’. He apparently neglected his person so much in its disease-ridden and unwashed state that ‘his [physical] condition prompted his friends to withdraw from his company’.106 As far as he was concerned, the ‘life of the spirit’ is a life of speculative and abstract thinking.107
It is to Plotinus that we owe the beginnings of a binary opposition between Platonic thought as seeing the body as the soul’s instrument, and the Aristotelian sense of the soul as the body’s form; Plotinus develops his view that human existence is identified with the self as soul rather than a composite of body and soul.108 The majority of passages about this issue come from the Fourth Ennead, where sections III and IV treat of ‘Problems of the soul’ and section VIII with the soul’s descent from the intellectual realm – which is thus seen as separate from the human person – into the body.109 The image of ‘putting on the body’ is used here, though with very different connotations to this phrase being used to denote Christ’s kenotic descent.
Plotinus tends to read Plato through the most dualistic of lenses available: for example, in discussing the Timaeus, he focuses not on the idea that the soul and body must move together but rather on the passage at 36de, reading this as ‘[putting] the body in its soul and not its soul in the body … and [Plato] says that while there is a region of that soul which contains body, there is another region to which body does not enter’.110 This sets up barriers rather than unity between soul and body, which are further developed by an emphasis on the body’s role in relation to the soul as one of entrapment, being ‘body-bound’; souls are liable to ‘body-punishment’111 and on its own, the body can achieve nothing because it is no more than a ‘container of soul and of nature’.112 He rehearses the Pythagorean and Platonic concept of the body’s imprisonment of the soul: ‘Everywhere we hear of [the human soul] as in bitter and miserable durance in body, a victim to troubles and desires and fears and all forms of evil, the body its prison or its tomb, the Cosmos its cave or cavern’.113 His view that the soul is unwillingly entrapped in the body correspondingly denies the divine spark to the material side of humanity; ‘clear souls no longer drawing to themselves at any point any vestige of body are, by their very being, outside the bodily sphere; body-free, containing nothing of body – there where Essence is, and Being, and the Divine within the Divinity, among Those, within That, such a soul must be’.114 For Plotinus, whilst the soul is clearly superior to the body, it has within itself a hierarchy; the ‘All-Soul’ being the superior aspect or part of the soul in its entirety, and capable of creating a Cosmos.115 Plotinus’ view on the ontological position of the human soul is a lone voice in late antique epistemology;116 his assertion that the rational part of the soul never fully descends from the intelligible realm provides a clear source for Apollinarianism.117
Early Christian philosophers
The impact on early Christian thought of Hellenistic philosophical ideas should not be underestimated. Aspects of such teachings permeated not only what became orthodox doctrine, but the various heterodox or heretical variants on what became church doctrine. Whilst the teachings of Plato and Aristotle can be seen below the surface of much of the early Christian attitude to the body, it is perhaps the Stoics who leave the biggest footprint, not least because of their more balanced view of physicality.118 The dominance of Stoic philosophy is well expressed as being ‘the ancient counterpart of our current, popular, scientific world view’, one that for 500 years was ‘very likely the most widely accepted world view in the Western World’.119
Chapters 11 and 12 will explore key Patristic witnesses to the formation of Christological doctrine, and many of them are influenced by Hellenistic thought. However, we should mention here Clement and Origen as being at the forefront of synthesising Hellenistic philosophy into Christian teaching, and bearing or enduring the name of Christian Philosophers ahead of their status as Patristic writers.120 Whilst contributing to the development of discussions about the dual nature of Christ and problems to do with the somatic nature of Christ’s earthly self, their underlying Hellenism meant they had to defend their status as orthodox teachers within the new Christian world. At the time they were writing, the relationship between philosophy and religion was not yet contentious. Rather than perceiving philosophy as an erosion of religious insight, the classical world viewed the tendency of Greek and Roman philosophers as to ‘reinforce religiosity’, in three areas of thought – cosmology, eschatology and morality.121 The Alexandrian school from which these writers took their inspiration was also to be the source of the dissemination of the generation of Platonic thought known as Neoplatonism.122 (From the mystical side, the development of asceticism in the deserts of Egypt strengthened the emergent Christian religion and this led to some hostility to the competing demands of Greek philosophy.123) Mark Edwards links Clement and Origen as ‘Alexandrian catholics’ who, he believes, ‘took booty from their Valentinian neighbours’ in a manner which created doctrinal patterns which were close to the orthodox doctrines they were supposed to be defending.124 They also ‘took booty’ from the philosophical teaching they received in their youth, before they synthesised the Gnostic focus on mind and intellect with the Christian insistence on embodied divinisation. The apologetic writers of the second century together with Paul were catalysts to the later Patristic tradition, ensuring that the mix of ideas about the human person and the place of the body in the spiritual life remained rich and complicated.