Body & Soul

Hey SCF, I've got a mind to resurrect this blog. So I'm cross-posting from my personal journal into here. Read and leave your thoughts!

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Wes recently read to me a fascinating excerpt from the book of essays by Wendell Berry that he's reading. I'd heard of Wendell Berry mostly through Greg, who wrote a very long poem of his (entitled "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front") on a path with chalk to mark the start of National Poetry Month two Aprils ago. I thought it highly amusing to watch people walk up to that point in the path, and then turn around and start reading it while walking backwards beneath the young redwoods.

The rest of Berry's literary and academic work is just as intriguing. He encourages getting away from the greedy insanity of the modernized, over-technologized world, going back to our roots in the wild, staying local, knowing people personally again, sharing wealth and doing nothing for personal gain but everything for the community.



Aside from his societal values, he also talks theology, and talks with a learned mind. The essence of what Wes read, from an essay entitled "Christianity and the Survival of Creation" in the book Sex, Economy, Freedom, & Community: Eight Essays, is that what Christian and Western thought have adapted from the Greeks' notion of the duality of body and soul is not necessarily what is indicated in the second creation account in the book of Genesis.

We've all been taught or otherwise led to believe that the essence of a human being is that we are a body plus a soul; for Christians in particular, the soul was what God breathed into Adam in Genesis 2:7.

"Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being."

But Berry takes a closer look at this sentence. Does it really say that man ('adam) is a body with a soul swept into it? Not quite. Berry's argument is that the equation is actually that a "living being" (chai nephesh, or living soul (and by the way, these Hebrew references are my own)) is equal to dust and breath. Soul = Dust + Breath, not Man = Body + Soul.

What are the consequences of this? First of all, it puts the emphasis on human beings as living beings/living souls, not as men. Secondly, it necessitates the intertwining of body and soul. They are inseparable because fundamentally, they were not ever separate entities that were combined to create us; rather, our existence has always been that of the indivisible soul. Humans are souls.

Therefore, when Christians ask the difficult question of which is more important, care of the body or care of the soul, the question itself must be rephrased. The early gnostics took their spiritual mysticism very seriously and considered the body, a physical entity in a fallen world, to be unsalvageably corrupt; this led to complicated theologies that tended to allow the body's needs to be neglected. On the other hand, ethical humanists take Jesus' calls to aid the poor, the widowed and orphaned, and the marginalized of our society greatly to heart. Their version of the gospel was that distributing wealth, healing disease, and advocating for the oppressed were the issues that really matter to God. More conservative Christians' response was that anybody could provide physical needs, but only Jesus could save spiritually, and that their focus was well-intentioned but off-center.

See the conflict? Does the gospel call for us to save souls or save bodies? When the time comes to prioritize due to lack of funds or time or workers, which is more important?

Wendell Berry wants to tell both parties to stop and take a few steps back. "You're missing the point!" he cries. There is no duality, and no prioritization necessary. You see, the body and the soul are one. When you consider people, consider that they are a living being. A medical missionary to a third-world country must treat patients as souls, not just bodies to be cured. A good friend of a spiritually wayward man must also care for bodily health and safety and not treat salvation as simply a thing of the heart. It would thus seem that the way to go is "Prioritize both body and soul," but semantically speaking, even that is incorrect, because, once again, there is no "both." There is only the soul.

Act accordingly.

To close, an excerpt from "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front":

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.